Time to Die

by Hilda Lawrence

  They wound down the mountain under a blazing sky. Bear River was deserted. The neat porches were empty, the shutters drawn together against the heat. The solitary traffic cop at Mountain Road and Main Street sat on a camp stool under a green umbrella and nodded.

  “Fine time to rob a bank if a bank was open,” Archie said. He stopped the car at Perley’s gate. “Want me to pick you up later?” He sounded wistful.

  “No thanks. Wilcox will drive me back.”

  He watched Archie drive slowly away, watched him drive even more slowly when a pretty girl in summer finery came out of one of the houses and walked jauntily toward Main Street. Archie, with his big diamond ring and his twelve dollar shirts, might whistle, but that’s all he would do. Mark walked up the path.

  Perley was in the converted woodshed that he called his den. It opened off the kitchen; it was cool and slightly damp, and reminiscent of kindling. Pansy was stacking Sunday school papers on the kitchen table and worrying about her hair. It was as straight as a poker, she said to Mark. The heat did that. That was the kind of hair she had, and why did it have to happen to her? Her sister’s hair was lovely. But then her sister didn’t have any children either, so you see things always even up. She straightened her hat, ran a nervous hand over her back buttons, and told Floyd she was ready and to come on.

  “I give out the library books before class,” she explained to Mark; “that’s why I have to get there early. They get in fights over who’s to get what. But I say it’s all right to fight over a book. A good book.”

  She gave Perley a hasty kiss, told him not to worry but do his best, told Mark she missed him around the house but understood, and trotted out into the sunshine, followed by Floyd.

  Perley settled back. “Now,” he said with authority, “we’ll get some work done. You’ll want to hear about the telegrams. I read through about seventy, sent and received by the hotel people. Five or six by town people. Unless somebody used a code they’re harmless.”

  “No code,” Mark said absently. “At least I don’t see why there should be. Get on with it. What kind were they?”

  “Ordinary summer stuff the operator tells me. Outgoing: ladies who forgot their good white slip telling somebody to rush same; men who forgot to tell the office where they put the keys to the place, telling them where; girls like Roberta Beacham running out of nail polish. Incoming: answers to above and some requests to meet trains. Funny thing though. Miss Sheffield sent sixty words, day rate, to Louisville when her pet horse had a colt. And a lady here in town did the same thing when her daughter had a baby in Chicago. Put ’em side by side and you couldn’t tell the difference. . . . They’ll make you copies if you want ’em.”

  “No. What about long distance calls?”

  “Business only. Men at the hotel ringing up their offices and brokers. Couple of girls here in town calling fellows at camps. What made you think of that angle, Mark?”

  “I thought she might have had a wire or a call. Something urgent and personal that she kept to herself.”

  “Well, she didn’t. Her name didn’t turn up once. . . . You find out anything?”

  “Everybody asks me that. I don’t know. We’ve had a few exhibitions of temper and nerves, but that may be the weather. What about Amos?”

  “Still at it. Not even a cigarette butt with rouge on it, he says. He was a little worried about Miss Sheffield and Mr. Kirby though. They were sneaking in and out the back roads all morning with a big bundle roped on their car. But he didn’t think the outline was human.”

  “It was a cherry wood commode with a drawer full of illegal whiskey. . . . Perley, I wonder if I’m wrong to concentrate on the hotel?”

  “No, you’re right. You got to be right. Nobody in Bear River would harm Miss Cassidy. Not for any reason. You take that ring of hers now. I’ve heard people say somebody might have been tempted by that, tried to get it, and hit too hard. I don’t believe it. You want to know why? No body. You can’t hide a body in this weather. And there’s other ladies with ten times that much jewelry. You take that little Mrs. Peck. She can sparkle like a frosty morning when she wants to. I’ve seen her driving around by herself, day and night, looking like a show window. And those little white beads Miss Sheffield wears around her neck. Pansy says they’re pearls. No, it wasn’t any robbery.”

  “What was it then?”

  “Could she have walked off by herself and had a heart attack?”

  “You’ve already answered that. We’d have found her. Try another.”

  “The only other I can think of is yours. The one you had first, about her going away on purpose, to scare somebody. I never did believe that. And we know she didn’t take any clothes. That’s all the angles except—”

  “Except what?”

  “Somebody killed her.”

  “The body, Perley, the body! And—why?”

  “Why? Why? I don’t know!” Perley cleared his throat, and Mark recognized the resulting mild rasp as the Wilcox snarl. “And I don’t know why anybody’d shoot an old lady with an arrow and cut up a nice little girl’s clothes, either!”

  “That’s the fascinating part,” Mark said. “That part about the clothes. That’s the part that gets me. Lovely hot afternoon, everybody out or asleep. Somebody breaks in with a pair of shears or a razor and wreck’s a kid’s wardrobe. Sparing, oddly enough, a choice item with field flowers on it and Irish lace insershom.”

  “Insertion,” corrected Perley. “Insertion is dress trimming.” He added hastily, “I happen to know that because Pansy keeps her sewing machine in the kitchen.”

  “Thank you,” Mark said. “That’s the kind of thing that broadens a man. . . . Got anything cold to drink?”

  “Iced tea with lots of ice. Can you swallow that?”

  “Yes.”

  Perley brought the tea and they drank in silence. Once Mark said, “I think I’ll stop by Sunday school and pick up Joey. I can ride home with her in the wagon. Don’t talk to me. I want to think.” He closed his eyes and thought about Joey. He wondered if the blue silk banner, complete with gold stick, had changed hands.

  Sunday school was nearly over. The occupants of the varnished chairs, set in circles, had recited a text in unison and rendered two songs. They had listened to a little talk by Mr. Walters. He’d looked over the shining heads out into the blue and green world beyond the windows and told them to fear not. They didn’t know what he was talking about.

  They had also listened to their individual lessons and been encouraged to ask questions. Some of the children did, but not Joey. Her eyes were on the banner, still standing proudly in Pee Wee’s circle, and her mind was on the library book she was sitting on. It was The Little Colonel’s Knight Comes Riding.

  Somebody struck a bell and the end drew near. Two of the big boys collected the warm pennies and nickels. Everybody sang, “Dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping, hear the pennies fall.” Then Pansy Wilcox stood up, drew a deep breath, and read the attendance record of her class. The class stood up too. It was Joey’s.

  Joey had trouble keeping her hat on at this point; she felt impelled to twist her head around for gloating purposes, and the anchoring elastic under her chin had been chewed into a useless string. She righted the hat with a blow that made the field flowers quiver, and shot a triumphant look at Pee Wee. In Pee Wee’s circle the mumps had left a gap like a lost tooth.

  “And now,” continued Pansy, “Joey Beacham will fetch the banner, please.”

  The word fetch, implying alacrity, was wasted. Joey had world enough and time, and while she didn’t actually sit down and think which way to walk, that was the impression she managed to give. She approached the banner like a pilgrim advancing on a shrine, pausing for a prayer at each step. Her moving, silent lips formed the words, “Beatcha, beatcha.” The pale young divinity student who shepherded Pee Wee’s class found himself unable to meet that fixed stare and finally seized the banner himself and handed it over. Relief, like a soft wind, swept through the s
tuffy room. There hadn’t been a fight.

  Mark walked up the hill to the church and crossed the clover grass. The big birds had returned and were wheeling in the sky. When he came up to the church itself he moved quietly from window to window until he found one that gave him the picture he wanted. He looked in, unobserved.

  The sing-song drone of prayers rose and fell like a swarm of bees. Joey, he was happy to note, was on her knees with the rest of the children, her head bowed over the seat she had recently vacated. Pansy sat with bowed head propped on a hand that was in turn propped on a hymn book. He saw the banner in its new position and rejoiced. His eyes returned to Joey, and he stifled a whistle.

  What he had taken for devotion was exactly that, with a difference. She was not praying, she was chewing her hat elastic; her eyes were not closed, they were wide open, devouring the pages of a book iniquitously cradled in her arms. He stared intently and soon she began to twitch. Finally she turned around. He beckoned. She sent an appraising look over the still bowed heads and shoulders of her neighbors and fluttered across the room and out the door like thistledown. He didn’t know she could do it.

  “You weren’t getting a thing out of that,” he said mildly. “Aren’t you ashamed?”

  “No,” she said. “The important part’s over. The end doesn’t count.”

  “That’s what I thought,” he said, easing his conscience. “Like grabbing your hat and beating it before the last curtain. It was too hot in there, anyway. Let’s walk under the trees and talk.”

  “I don’t care if I do,” she said graciously. “Will you carry my hat? It itches.”

  He hung the hat over his arm, and they walked under the locusts. He planned to lead her gradually into a mood for confidences. He didn’t like to do it, but it was his only hope. He asked her about the library book, and she was relieved because he didn’t scold.

  The library book was wonderful. It was going to have love in it, but what could you expect? The Little Colonel was getting old and this boy she was going to be in love with was an old friend from when they were kids. So it would be all right. She didn’t mind at all. She’d followed the Little Colonel from childhood to girlhood, and now it was womanhood. The childhood was swell.

  “I used to practice talking like her,” she confided. “When nobody was around. Southern. You know, ‘suh.’ That’s sir. She had a colored mammy and I wanted a colored mammy, but Mike said if I did I couldn’t have Cassie too.”

  It was going to be easy, he told himself with relief.

  “So?” he asked.

  “So I kept Cassie.” Her thin, scratched little legs missed a step, but only one. They walked on.

  “Do you mind if I talk to you a little about Cassie?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer at once. Then, “She didn’t run away!”

  “I’m pretty sure of that myself.” He took out a package of cigarettes. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Nope. . . . Then why did you tell Mike she did?”

  “That’s what I thought at first, but I’ve changed my mind. I think she was nice. That’s why I want to talk to you about her. Everything you can tell me will help to bring her back again.”

  “She didn’t run away. . . . Go ahead and ask me something.”

  “Did Cassie get many letters?”

  “No, I guess she didn’t. I mean I never saw her get any except from Mike. When he went away he wrote to Cassie the same as he wrote to Roberta and me.”

  “That’s fine, Joey. That’s just what I wanted to know. Now what about parties and things like that? Did she go out much? When you were in New York, for instance, did she go out calling in the evenings? To see friends?”

  “She didn’t like having friends. She said so. She said she’d seen enough people to last her the rest of her life.” She chewed soberly on a thumbnail. “Sometimes she’d go out to hear music, but that’s all.”

  “And when you came up here in the summers, didn’t she go calling then? She might have liked the kind of friend she could make in Bear River, you know. I’ve seen some nice people down there.”

  “No. She didn’t go anywhere. Except to the Pecks. We know the Pecks very well. They live near us in New York. No.” Her eyes clouded. “No, she never went away before without telling me.”

  He insisted, gently. “Not even on a little vacation, by herself?”

  “Not by herself. We always had vacations together. We went everywhere together. Except a couple of times, but they don’t count. Sometimes when we were away she had to go back to New York. That was Mike’s fault.” She managed a wan grin. “Mike is a worrier. A couple of weeks ago he had to go to New York on business and he had a fight with the caretaker in our house there. So he wrote Cassie to come down and fire him and get another one. He was scared to do it himself. . . . Men!”

  “We’re terrible,” he agreed. He swung the hat casually. “Did Cassie go?”

  “Sure. When Mike hollered she always went. We took her to the station and she stayed two days. She got a good caretaker too, named Albert. And while she was there Mike made her balance his checkbook, She laughed like anything about that.”

  Mark laughed too, and they walked on. She accepted his sudden silence without comment. He looked down at the small, frowning face and saw that she was thinking. He hoped it was about the Little Colonel.

  He wondered what had happened to that summons to Cassie. He remembered the letter about the caretaker, but it was nothing more than a complaint. It said nothing about a trip to town. There must have been a second letter. Destroyed? But why?

  A faint and straggling Amen floated out of the windows behind them, hung briefly in the air, and drifted away.

  Joey turned. “It’s over,” she said.

  “Yes, it’s over,” he answered absently.

  Almost at once she began to jump up and down. “Look, Mr. East, look! Boy oh boy, I bet they’re mad as hops!”

  He turned obediently. Floyd and Pee Wee, led by Mr. Walters, were heading for the well on the far side of the grounds. They carried a bucket, a chain, and a dipper. The chain dragged across the grass as slowly as their feet.

  “Mr. Walters gave them a good talking to before Sunday school,” Joey said with relish. “He said he hadn’t realized what they’d done. Some old louse told him. But he took the money they made. Almost six dollars.”

  When Floyd and Pee Wee saw they had an audience, they immediately fell into a lockstep. They capered and grimaced and indicated by signs that their disgrace was only temporary. They beckoned generously, if furtively.

  “Let’s go over and see what happens,” begged Joey. “Maybe somebody’ll fall in. Or maybe they’ll lose the bucket.”

  He took her hand and they moved out from under the trees into the glaring sun. The smell of the locust followed them.

  After a few yards, Mark stopped. “Wait,” he said. He put his hand on her shoulder. They stood where they were, watching.

  Mr. Walters lifted the heavy wooden cover from the well. He held it high for an instant and dropped it with a clatter. They heard it strike the stone curbing. They also heard him shout.

  Joey looked up into Mark’s face. “W-what are they doing?” she quavered.

  He put her quickly behind him. “W-what are they doing?” she repeated.

  Mr. Walters and the boys were running away, back to the church, back to the security of living people, running away from the uncovered well. A shrill, exultant cry tore the air and two dark shapes rose from a tree and circled.

  “Come along, kid,” Mark said. He picked her up and walked away as fast as he dared. “They lost the bucket after all. They’re coming back to get a pole or something. They’re clumsy.”

  She buried her face in his neck. “You don’t have to tell me,” she wailed. “I know. . . . Cassie’s in there.”

  Ten minutes later Archie Peck, idling along the church road, met a stream of frightened children; some were laughing shrilly, some were crying, and they flowed down the hill towa
rd town as if a piper were playing.

  He swung his car around and sped up the hill to the church grounds. Mark and Joey stood in the vestibule with two hysterical townswomen and the rest of the hotel children. The children had always been told to wait until the wagon called for them. Today the wagon was late and there was no place to send them. They huddled in a corner.

  “Peck!” Mark took his arm. “Get these kids back to the hotel. You know what’s happened?”

  Archie didn’t know. Mark drew him aside and told him.

  Archie’s fat cheeks quivered. “Where’s Pee Wee?”

  “He and Floyd ran down to get Wilcox. Don’t worry about them. They’re—perfect. You get these other kids home as fast as you can and bring Beacham back. Right away. Wilcox will round up his own men.” He hesitated before adding, “Better play dumb up there. Let Wilcox do his own talking.”

  He herded the children out to the car and packed them in. He put Joey on the seat beside Archie. “Cheer up,” he said heartily, dealing out indiscriminate pats and feeling like a helpless fool. Archie drove off.

  The two townswomen, relieved of their responsibility, scuttled down the hill. He closed the door to the empty Sunday school room before he went out to the well.

  The cover had been replaced. Pansy was there, and Mr. Walters. The man stood bareheaded, his hat on the grass beside him. He was fumbling through the pages of a pocket Bible and his hands shook. For the first time in his life the words he knew by heart refused to come to his lips. Pansy took the book from his lax fingers, found the place he wanted, and silently handed it back. Mr. Walters stared at the page and began to read, softly, under his breath. Prayers for the dead and comfort for the living. He read desperately, as if for his own sake.

  “Go home, Pansy,” Mark whispered. “You can’t do anything here.”

  She looked up at the wheeling birds and placed her small hands firmly on the wooden cover. “Those buzzards,” she said painfully. “They’re awful strong.”

  “I’m strong too,” he said. “Go home and wait for us. We’ll be back.”