Stronghold

by Stanley Ellin

  No answer.

  What’s the matter, Coco baby, cat got your Eye-lond tongue?

  Night is coming.

  Panic time for the hyenas.

  In Raiford, I told them it depended on Hayworth. Could take three hours or three days. Could mean cold war or hot war. That’s all right, Jimmy. We’re with you, Jimmy. Shee-it, let it take four days, if it pays off a million dollars a day.

  And now night is coming.

  Panic time.

  Did they really think there were days without nights to them?

  I’m holding an empty gun, you’re holding a loaded one, Coco baby, so phase two is now yours. What do you want to do about it?

  Coco doesn’t know what. Gun jammed into me, he can only shake his head slowly back and forth considering his troubles.

  Coco the blacksnake.

  Flood the copperhead.

  I say, “What do we do, stand here like this until the cops knock on the door?”

  “Cops,” says Coco, the unbeliever, but Harvey and Lester look uneasy. They glance up the stairway. They can count well enough on their fingers to know that nobody is up there on the sun deck keeping watch.

  Now.

  It must be said in the right tone. A shade of impatience, a touch of concern.

  I say, “If nobody wants to stand lookout all alone, we can finish this meeting up there. All of us. Where’s the girl? Deborah?”

  “Locked up in the cellar,” Harvey says. “Once we found out the old lady is dead, no need for anybody to watch after her.”

  So far, so good.

  I say, “All right, Deborah can stay down there. Mamma’ll be enough company up on top anyhow.”

  Now to ease the pressure of that gun barrel in my belly. Not too fast so that there will be abrupt consequences, not too slow so that Coco will suspect I am worried about consequences. Imperceptibly I lean back a little, and the pressure is gone. I move, not too fast, not too slow, toward the stairway. I am alone on it the first three steps, then Coco is right there behind me, then Harvey and Lester.

  Flood the Pied Piper.

  Up one flight. Up another flight to the attic. Up the ladder. The trapdoor is bolted. I shove the bolt clear, push up the hatch. Face to face with Emily. Wild-eyed. “Jimmy, where’s Janet? You didn’t bring her back with you. What happened to her?”

  “Nothing.” I am on the sun deck now, the pack taking their places around me. “I left her on the road. Right now she’s telling the police that fun time is over.”

  Emily grabs my arm. “She’s all right? You’re sure?”

  “Yes, God damn it.” The woman is right in the middle of the stage, fouling up the scene. I have to shove her away.

  “Jimmy—”

  “Knock it off!”

  Good. I am doing the talking, I am giving the commands, the current of leadership is passing from Coco back to me.

  The binoculars are on the floor near the railing. I pick them up, and down low behind the railing I sight into the distance beyond the road. Trees, the bark clearly defined. Emptiness between the trees. General Duffy is not ready to make himself a target yet.

  Downstairs, Coco knew there was no enemy out there. Now he is not so sure. Not so quick to stand up at this railing with a bull’s-eye painted on his forehead. He crouches behind me, the Uzi leveled at my back. “You want cops?” I say. I thrust the glasses at him. “Take a look, baby.” And there are Harvey and Lester, wondering about it, getting into a crouch too, just to make sure. “The back,” I order them. “Cover the back!”

  Commands. Sharp, decisive commands. Order out of confusion. They move to the back railing fast, get down there on guard.

  Coco is sighting through the binoculars. “Where, man? Where do you see anybody?”

  “Look. There. Straight ahead.” I stand, and he is instantly up behind me. Mistrustful. I aim my Uzi at the distance and pull the trigger on nothing. Click.

  Now.

  If Coco’s finger is too tight on his trigger—

  But now. It must be now.

  I fling my gun aside. “Damn!” I turn halfway around. “No load. Give me that thing.”

  I reach for it. He lets it go.

  I swing around all the way to face him, and he knows what’s coming before it comes. He grabs at the barrel, but before he can deflect it, the burst hits him in the chest like a pile driver, knocks him back on his heels, arms thrown wide reaching for nothing. Another burst, chest to crotch, and he goes down on his back in that position. He was probably dead before that second load, but you never know.

  And Harvey and Lester facing me from across the sun deck, guns on me, brains scrambled. And not a sound from Mamma Emily. Hands over her ears, she is backed off to the side staring at me. Not at little Jimmy Flood, cut-rate hired hand, but at James Flood, the doomsday man.

  I wait. Harvey and Lester wait. The O.K. Corral.

  But I will need them.

  When Duffy comes to finish what he started ten years ago, I will need them.

  Not too fast, not too slow, I lower my gun. I point it at what’s left of Hubert Digby. My turn to slowly shake my head. I say to my partners reproachfully, “You believed him. That’s what I can’t understand. You believed the lying son of a bitch.”

  “Man—” Harvey says. His gun droops. Lester’s gun droops. “He told us—”

  “You believed him. You didn’t have the brains to see that once we got the money, he’s the only one who could go the rest of the way himself. They’re waiting for him at St. Hilary, not us.”

  “But he made sense,” Lester protests. “Like about that old Sarah. Man, when it comes down to wasting old ladies—”

  “And the radio news,” Harvey says. “That still makes sense.”

  “Not much,” I say. “What makes sense is getting ready for the cops, if it’s them instead of Hayworth. The guns and ammo, some extension lines and lamps—”

  “Old ladies,” Lester says. Another idea has taken root in that skull. Three in fifteen minutes. A record for Lester.

  “—and Deborah,” I say. “Bring her up here. We’ll all stay right up here until things take shape. This is control center.”

  “Control center,” Lester says, testing the sound of it. “Control center.”

  He likes it.

  Marcus Hayworth

  There is no end to it.

  We go through the motions. One must go through the motions.

  David leaves in the station wagon to relieve Kenneth—a roundabout trip to town, then north along Front Street to the juncture with the highway, then back along the highway—and at last the wagon reappears, now with Kenneth at the wheel.

  David phones from the truck. “Anything happening?”

  “No. I told you I’d call you if there was anything to report.” I say it too sharply, nerves rubbed raw by the obscene ticking of that ancient clock near the phone stand, the deadly motion of its pendulum. The pit and the pendulum. But I am here among company at least, and he is sitting there alone in the truck, the end-of-day shadows growing long across the highway. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean it to sound like that.”

  “Sure. I understand.”

  “David, how long will you stay there?”

  “Till it’s really dark. Eight-thirty, nine o’clock. No use staying after that. They’ll never be able to make it down the trail once it’s dark.”

  “Meanwhile, you won’t take any chances, will you? If you see them coming?”

  “Trust me. Only chance I’ve taken so far is with the state troopers. They pulled up a few minutes ago, wanted to know why the truck is parked here. I told them motor trouble, and they let it go at that. Now I’ve got the hood up and I make like I’m working on the motor now and then.”

  “Good.”

  “Yes, well—”

  There seems nothing more to say. Rather, there is too much to say which best remains unsaid. But we remain on the phone as if we are clutching at each other in our silence. At last I can’t hol
d it back. “Those men must know Flood has let them down. If only Digby takes over for him—”

  “It could happen, Marcus. It might have happened already.”

  I’m grateful to him for that. It’s what I wanted from him.

  The motions.

  Suddenly Anna remembers we have not eaten. She and Elizabeth prepare sandwiches, coffee, a fruit drink. The thought of eating makes my gorge rise, but Anna, ever the tyrant, insists I do. One mouthful does it. I leave the room, vomit up what little there is in me down to the last drop of bile.

  It is hard to get rid of that taste.

  John Duffy.

  What if I were to go to him right now, say, “John, is there any way that without passion, without guns, without killing—”

  No.

  If I were in his place, and he came to me with that plea, would I comprehend him? Would anyone? Duffy and Flood, Flood and Duffy. Both blindfolded and locked in a cage where the only way out is over each other’s dead body.

  Madness. There is a madness in the world around me.

  And what of you, Friend Marcus?

  There must be no killing.

  My father, at meeting for worship that First Day morning after I told him I had chosen prison rather than service in the army. Gray-faced, shaky-voiced, announcing this to the meeting, then the voice growing stronger, delivering his message: Every man has the right to die for his beliefs. No man has the right to kill for them.

  Look deep into your heart, Friend Marcus. At this moment, if you faced Flood with a gun in your hand as Janet did, would you kill him?

  I don’t know. I’m not sure. Besides, what good would it do? There are others with him.

  We are talking only about James Flood, Friend Marcus. A cold-blooded murderer who threatens the lives of your wife and daughter.

  How can I know? Kenneth said it for me: How can any of us know until we face the moment?

  The truth, Friend Marcus. The truth.

  Yes, I think I would kill him.

  The madness is in me too.

  The motions.

  The women clean dishes in the kitchen. I go outside, Kenneth and Uri following, and we make a meaningless patrol up and down, up and down, on the road in front of the house. I am grateful that neither of them feels compelled to say anything.

  That sound.

  It comes from far away, the quick rapping of a woodpecker’s beak on metal. It freezes us all in our tracks. And there it is again. The breeze carrying it is blowing northward, coming from the direction of my home. I know what it is even before Kenneth says it. “Guns!”

  “The police?” Uri says.

  The police? How could they even drive past the commune without McGrath letting me know?

  I sprint for the house, fling open the door hard enough to take it off its hinges. Now I can’t remember the phone number. That number has been the same for twenty years—thirty years—and now I can’t remember it. Then I do.

  An unfamiliar voice answers. “Marcus Hayworth,” I say. “I have to speak to Ray McGrath right now. Fast,” and then, not all that fast, McGrath is saying to me, “Yes? What is it, Marcus?”

  “Ray, the police. Were they around there? Did they go by on the road a little while ago?”

  “The police? No. No sign of them. Why?”

  “We heard what sounded like gunfire here. Coming from that direction.”

  “Gunfire,” McGrath says. “Ah, damn. Damn.”

  He is thinking what I am thinking. Not the police. A firing squad. Or can this be the means that Flood has struck on to establish communication with me?

  “Ray, don’t tell Janet. How is she?”

  “We’ve got her halfway under, but she’s still hurting bad. Flood rigged up a splint on that leg, but it’s got to be set right. And if you just say the word hospital to her, she starts climbing the wall.”

  “What about a hospital out of town?”

  “No way, man. We try to get her there without her okay, we’ll have a real mental case on our hands. She says she’ll stay with it this way as long as she has to. But it can’t be too long, Marcus. You hear me?”

  “Yes. I understand.”

  I put down the phone. Flood rigged up a splint on that leg. An act of kindness? A touch of humanity? And the gunfire. A signal to me? After all, what sense could there be in executing one of those hostages? What sense? Flood needs only one hostage, so there is one to spare. And he must be wild with frustration by now. And who else to vent it on?

  And here I am, keeping myself at a distance, with no way of getting answers to any of this.

  The clock sounds seven. Seven chimes spaced so that the tone of one must fade away completely before the next is heard. More than enough time for me to make up my mind about what must finally be done.

  The Friends are gathered around me, waiting on me. I say to them, “I’m going to the house now.”

  “I have been thinking of that,” Anna says. “I am going too.”

  I am caught completely off balance by this. I hold on to my temper with an effort. “No, Anna. That’s impossible. I’m going alone.”

  I can tell from their faces what is coming. I move toward the door before they can muster their objections. Kenneth plants his back against it. “Hold on, Marcus. What do you expect to gain by this?”

  “Flood might be ready to compromise. If not, his men might be. There’s no way of finding out unless I talk to them.”

  “Why would he compromise?” Uri says. “He still has Emily and Deborah there with him.”

  “He’ll have to release them. I’ll make that plain to him. After that, he can have whatever he wants.”

  “But he won’t release them, Marcus. He won’t trust you enough for that.”

  “No,” Anna says. “Marcus is right. He will go to them, and I will go too. How can someone be held up to the Light, if thee does not speak with him?”

  I recognize that look in her eye, that set of her jaw. Damned maddening stubborn old woman. Temper gets the best of me now. “I must go alone, don’t you understand? If anyone comes with me, it only means another hostage for them.”

  “I am not afraid, Marcus. And it will be a comfort to Emily and Deborah if I am there.”

  “That is true,” Elizabeth puts in. “I will go too.”

  Kenneth remains with his back to the door. “Look,” he says, “nobody is going. Nobody at all.” And to me, “All right, you can’t take any more of what you’re going through. I understand that. That means it’s time to go to the police, Marcus. It’s their job now.”

  “Ken’s right,” Ethel says to me. “If there was any sense to meeting with Flood—” And it is Anna who abruptly cuts her short. “Ethel Quimby,” she says in a hard voice, “I did not stand in the way when thee and Kenneth went to demonstrations in Washington and twice spent nights in the jailhouse there. Thee may not stand in my way now.”

  “Oh? Well, if you think there’s any resemblance between those demonstrations and this kind of reckless, useless gesture, Anna, you don’t know what it’s all about.”

  “But she may,” Uri says. He struggles to find the words. “I think—I feel—how can I put it?—that to try now to seek the Light in James Flood may be part of the great design. And how often that message has come to us in meeting. ‘Ours not to complete the task, but neither may we lay it down.’ ”

  Oh God, I think, another recruit in the making. Uri, of all people.

  I say to him caustically, “The Light in James Flood? Uri, be sensible. You might as well talk about the Light in the devil.”

  “But thee will join with us?” Anna asks him.

  “If you go, I must. I have no choice.”

  “Anna,” I say, “get it into your head that these men are dangerous criminals. Murderers. And this is not the same Jimmy Flood you knew as a child. Maybe you see yourself tenderly counseling with him, but believe me, it won’t be like that.”

  “How does thee know that for a certainty, Marcus?”

 
“All right, all right, that settles it. If you make it impossible for me to go alone, then I won’t go at all. Nobody will.”

  “Whether thee does or not,” Anna says, “there are three of us who will. But not Ethel and Kenneth.”

  “Look,” Ethel says, “if you’re trying to bug us into agreeing with you about this—”

  “Ethel, I am only saying that thee and Kenneth have small children. Thee should remain here to attend to calls on the telephone.”

  “Oh.” Ethel looks almost contrite. “But then you admit that what you want to do is foolish and dangerous.”

  Before Anna can answer, I say, “For the rest of you, yes. Absolutely. Not for me. Try to understand that it’s the only thing left for me to do now, if I don’t want to call in the police. Me alone.”

  Anna shakes her head slowly. “Marcus Hayworth, if thee wished to be alone in this concern, thee should not have brought it to meeting. Thee should not have laid the weight of it on us.”

  “Please,” Uri says. “We are facing a terrible question that cannot be answered by sharp tongues and angry voices. Our Friendly heritage tells us to move only as the way becomes clear. So I say, let us share a silence now and wait upon the Light for that clearness.”

  James Flood

  Get ready.

  What’s left of Coco is carted downstairs, stashed in a bedroom. Mop up the blood. The hell with mopping up the blood, I say, but Lester says no, it’s making Emily sick to the stomach, so he mops it up. Methodically. When he’s done and there are still stains showing on the planking, I expect him to sandpaper down the wood, but this far he doesn’t go.

  Methodical.

  Five mattresses are brought up from the bedrooms, doubled up, squeezed through the trapdoor. No one else could have done it, my troops make it look easy. A mattress is propped lengthwise against the railing on each side of the sun deck, north, south, east, and west, hopeful barricades, and the remaining mattress is laid out in the middle of the plank flooring for the off-duty man during the siege. Two on duty every minute, one catching up on his sleep.

  A bonus package. A chair for mamma. The troops have developed a soft spot for Emily along with their hard-on for Deborah. Lester calls her mamma. Take it easy, mamma. Harvey respectfully calls her lady. No sweat, lady. I think they’re apologizing to her this way for what happened to the old crone Sarah who used to do her dirty undies for her. They are establishing a nice distance from nasty old J. Flood this way. Harvey and Lester, the white-hats. Flood, the black-hat. I don’t make an issue of this. The relationship between the general and the troops is not all that warm right now. It will warm up when the action starts.