Afternoon in April

by Philip Wylie

"It means," she said after a while, "that what he said was the trouble--isn't. It means there is a lot more to it, maybe. Do you think he killed somebody in that accident?

  Or that he's hurt, and won't say so? Will you please, please call us as soon as you find out?"

  "You know I will."

  "Don't you think you really ought to get somebody up there on the wire before you go?"

  I shook my head. "Be there in four hours. And he used the password just so we wouldn't try to investigate at long range. He wanted you and me to keep Connie and John out of whatever it is. If he were hurt--if he'd hurt somebody--he'd kick through with the facts instanter. You know Larry--"

  She let out half of a sigh and caught it. "But what else on earth could it be--"

  "I don't know. And that's why I'm flying."

  I patted the top of her head.

  At the New Haven airport we shook hands. She sat in the roadster to watch the plane take off. I saw her wave.

  It was a warm, cloudy day. The pilot took us above the murk and I grew tired staring down at a leaden floor that seemed solid enough to snowshoe on. He dove back through it on a beam, I suppose, and there was Boston, looking dirty and undignified from the air. There wasn't any train to Ridgely Heights till three P.M., so I took six dollars and eighty cents worth of rattling taxi and poor radio reception out to the school. I went past the grounds and on to the Court House. The jail was in the rear and I walked around to the entrance, looking for Hawkshaw. He was part policeman and part warden--

  playing the latter role when there was a prisoner--and his name was really Twiffert. I'd made his acquaintance myself the year our football team had beaten Andover and Hill.

  Twiffert was staring at a crossword puzzle when I came in, and he didn't remember me. I asked for Larry. "Lawrence Sheffield? Haven't anybody here by that name. Sure of that. Haven't anybody here at all, in fact."

  That relieved me--and my relief was speedily compensated by a stab of fresh apprehension. Larry wouldn't have invented so elaborate a lie unless he'd had a forceful reason. Or--maybe--he was in some other jail.

  I hurried from Hawkshaw's domain without giving him a four letter word for a part of a church beginning with an "a"--and my mind vexed itself as I walked because it kept on thinking. "Altar" had five letters, damn it. But--what was it?--apse. Apse was the word he'd wanted.

  I went into Larry's dormitory and up the stairs and banged on the heavy oak door.

  Larry let me in, and he was alone. He had a black eye, and there were cigarette ashes allover the rug--walked on.

  Connie's maiden name was Porter, and there had been a great-grandfather Porter with the same sort of eyes and skin and hair that Larry had--all pale--his eyes greenish and translucent, his skin white, his hair the shade of a new penny. He was tall and angular. He had a sharp chin and a smile above it that was always warm and sympathetic.

  In another family, a youngster like Larry might have become neurotic, but, on the one hand, Connie had gaily vaporised the nervous defenses he created for himself during his childhood, and on the other, John's steady nature had given him a perpetual example of sensitivity successfully combined with force.

  Larry tossed a cigarette into the fireplace and said, "I knew you'd come. I don't know what I'd have done if it had been Father."

  I dropped my bag on the floor and took off my hat and coat. Then my tie. He didn't say anything. There was a picture of a blonde over the mantel. She seemed terribly young and very sweet.

  "Wheezie?" I asked.

  "They call her that because of how she sings. But I like the way she sings."

  He held a match for me.

  "That's a fairish mouse," I said.

  He felt it. "The guy I got it from is over in the infirmary. They thought he got a concussion when he fell--but he didn't. Only a headache. And I found out afterward that he was right."

  "Oh?"

  "Of course all that stuff about cracking up somebody's car was phoney. I did spend a lot of time with Wheezie, and I flunked plane geometry, but I can make it up next year. The headmaster knew about it because Wheezie is his daughter. He gave me a lecture. I just wired that wrecked car stuff so I could get in the 'Five C's.' See?"

  "You might have figured out some less lavish way. Connie thinks that you are in prison, injured, and guilty of manslaughter or mayhem." "Well--I was in a hurry. I judged that if I sent a flippant telegram, the family would more or less think it was just another scrape-and you'd get the signal--and come up."

  "And it isn't--just another scraper?"

  "No."

  "What is it?"

  "It hasn't anything to do with me whatever," he said. And that was all he said for a full minute. I didn't prompt him or hurry him. I could see that he was abnormally agitated and that it was going to be hard enough for him to talk without being made self-conscious by me. He sat in a Morris chair and twisted the toe of his brown-saddled sports shoe with one hand.

  Finally he spoke. "It's about--Connie."

  "Connie!"

  I was thunderstruck--and in another way at the same time, I wasn't surprised. No literal idea of what he was going to say about his mother had entered my head, but a liaison took place. The hidden tocsin in Larry's telegram had re-aroused my fears over Connie and Virginia. It did not seem strange, therefore, to learn that Larry, also, had a worry about one of them.

  "There's a fellow here named Bates," Larry continued, after he had watched me absorb his first statement. "And there's an inn about forty miles south of here, near the Connecticut border, called the Colonial Elm. Bates is a smooth bird and a lush. He drives a tomato-colored model--I guess to camouflage the tomatoes he likes to pick up over in Lynn or Lowell. He's the factory girl's Romeo. And anybody else's he can get. He often snakes down to the Elm--though it's out of bounds. And the Elm could be made, driving fast, in maybe three hours or even less from Fort Sheffield."

  Then the pieces fell together. Pieces I had ignored in the ten days I had enjoyed my idiot's Nirvana. Connie had made two trips to "town"--and she'd driven instead of taking the train. She occasionally did drive in. Connie was a passionate shopper. I hadn't thought anything of it.

  "Bates knew Connie?"

  Larry had been watching me tensely and speaking with a slowly fading voice. My question showed him that I was on the track of his painful theme--that I might even be able to add more to it--or explain it. "Met her last Commencement. Say--Frankie--"

  I wiped out my cigarette on the cold hearth. "And Bates saw Connie with a man at the Inn. He reported the fact to you-with details and insinuations-and you sent him to the infirmary--at the cost of a mouse."

  "I should have minded my own business," Larry responded.

  "Am I right?"

  He hesitated. "As far as you go."

  CHAPTER VI

  It was necessary for me now to hear the rest of Larry's story. And I didn't want to.

  Learning that Connie had sneaked away from the Fort to keep a date with Barney Colby was like learning that she had cheated at bridge or embezzled from John's bank account.

  She could have seen Colby as much as she wished and all the Sheffields would have been delighted. Colby would have fitted into their collective interests and temperaments. I couldn't imagine any reason for such behavior even if she were infatuated with him. The family was as modern as television. The keystone of their harmony was tolerance. And when I'd thought over John's moodiness on the night we went trout fishing together I'd been amazed that any Sheffield could be that much perturbed.

  But here was the identical element--in Larry.

  I told him to go ahead.

  He did. "Bates came in here about four nights ago and said he'd seen Connie having lunch with a guy who looked like a movie actor down at the Elm. I said so what-though I was surprised she hadn't dropped in here-being so near. Then he went into a lot of stuff about how Connie had behaved toward the guy. The more he talked, the less I believed it and when he wouldn't stop, I advised him to take
a powder. But he was enjoying it and that's how the fight started."

  Larry looked across the room toward a table. "He hit that corner when he dropped. I brought him around and told him that if he said any more to anybody I'd really go to work on him. He was groggy, but he told me then to go and see for myself. Connie had made another date with this bird--and Bates had heard it."

  Larry gazed at me numbly for a minute and went on. "The date was for yesterday.

  Connie hadn't recognized Bates--he's the kind of rat who would take care not to be recognized when he had spotted a thing like that. Well--he'd banged his head a little and he talked pretty thickly so I dragged him over to the infirmary. We said we'd been rough-housing and they X-rayed him. He's still there--not because he needs to be-but it got him out of an exam--and he thinks he's making a hit with a brunette nurse named Mabel. He won't talk any more, because he knows I'll really fracture his skull the next time. Only--"

  "Only--" I said--"you went to the Elm yesterday."

  He crumpled a cigarette package, after looking into it, and then he tossed an empty carton into the grate. So I handed my pack to him.

  "Yeah. I went. They have a big dining room down there, and they serve on the porch, too. The porch--one side of it--looks out over a pond. Connie is a sucker for water-

  -the way you are--so I got a table inside the joint, by a window, on the lake end. I got there early and I had a newspaper to hide behind. I didn't need it. They came around one-the guy first--and they didn't look at anybody. Except each other. I couldn't hear much of what they said, and I didn't stay long after they arrived. But it was as plain as the end of a movie that Connie is nuts about him." Larry rose nervously and stood in front of me. He said three harsh, strained words. "Who is he?"

  I told him.

  When I had finished, he murmured, "So John knows about him?"

  "Sure. And I kind of think you got in a tizzie too fast."

  "You didn't see them together!"

  He was calmer--but not satisfied. I knew that no amount of rhetoric would improve his emotions. I didn't try, much. I said, "Connie's flirted before-and maybe life got a little dull. In fact--that's the answer. All this clandestine stuff is just for fun. It's the trip to Massachusetts--not the guy--that she's enjoying. What harm is there in it? She was safe back home at six yesterday, and all we should do is nothing whatever."

  "You know that's a lot of cabbage!"

  "I don't. And--even if it is--can we do anything else?"

  "We could go and see this Colby--!"

  Larry was getting out of hand. "You've been reading too much Dumas," I said.

  "What would you do? Slap him with gloves?"

  Then he grinned and sighed and stretched. "Anyway, I'm glad you know about it."

  "And I've got to phone your anguishing mother and sister and tell them--that there was no accident, no jail, no five hundred dollars--and all you wanted was somebody to put a poultice on your boyish fears--"

  "You can do better than that."

  I pondered. "Sure. John provided me with the cash presumably necessary to salvage you from the law. I can say I settled for fifty. You can get Wheezie and some of your friends and we'll blow in the fifty on a quick junket to Boston. Say, dinner and a show for about six of you?"

  A spark had come back in his eye. "That's constructive."

  "Where has Mike been, through all this, by the way?" Michael Duffy was Larry's roommate.

  Larry grunted. "The cheap, weaseling grub, by sheer kowtowing and sycophancy sucked three A's in three courses and was exempted from three exams. He went down to Rhode Island to sell his damned boat--"

  Mike was quarterback on the football team and less sycophantic than anybody his age I have ever met. But Larry's words showed that he was back in what he would have called his "groove." He was already deep in a closet, worrying vocally about a lipstick stain on his mess jacket. However, the matter of boats reminded me of something. I went to the closet.

  I gave him the blow in two sentences. "John was a little riled at the idea of buying five hundred dollars worth of car just because you flung a bit of woo on a curve. He wanted me to tell you that he planned to put you to work in the Bridgeport factory this summer so you could reduce the debt and avoid the woo."

  Shock and anathema of the most violent sort were what I had expected. Instead, Larry went on fumbling with hangers and coats and said briefly, "That's great! I was going to ask him for a job, anyhow. We of the corning generation need scope in our social outlook. Knowledge of the other half. Say. What do girls use to take their lipstick off their own clothes, do you know?"

  It's wonderful to be seventeen. At seventeen, if someone says that you've been drafted to make the first voyage to the moon by rocket, you can reply, "Really? Where do we take off?" Even a year makes a difference. At eighteen, you'd reply, "I'm not so sure that flying to the moon would serve any valid human purpose." At nineteen you'd say,

  "Nuts."

  We managed the six o'clock to Boston--after some parley with the headmaster.

  We had two Manhattans apiece at the Merry-go-round Bar in the Copley-Plaza. We saw a musical. We danced--even I got insisted into it--and we made the Owl to Ridgely by a bare three seconds. I had fun. A few of the kids tried to interest me in what they thought were suitable topics--Thackeray and termite control, among others--but I remembered too much Ridgely idiom to be left in the cold entirely by the six year gulf of seniority.

  Besides, Wheezie, at seventeen, was a more worldly woman that her grandmother had been in her prime. In fact, if Larry hadn't doted upon her by incessantly insulting her, and if there had been no Virginia, I am not sure but that I would have followed Wheezie's evolution with more than casual interest.

  I had phoned Connie an "all clear" before Larry and I had gone out for lunch-and I spent the night in the Alumni Annex. The next morning I had breakfast with Larry and we were scrupulous about ignoring the cause for my visit. He put me on the eight-fifty and beat it for an exam in Livy. All he said was, "I'll leave--that business we discussed--

  up to you."

  On the way back to Reedy Cove I thought about it. What could I do?

  Because she'd driven me to the airport, I guess, I'd assumed that Virginia would meet me. But it was Connie who sat in the roadster in the station parking yard. I walked down the privet and through a clipped embrasure and put my bag in the rumble.

  Connie was happy. "So it came to nothing, after all? And he wasn't in the wrong?"

  "Nope." I leaned back and watched her drive. "He was O.K."

  "I'm glad. Every time I read the annual accident statistics--I get a chill. According to statistics, at least one of us ought to be badly hurt in the next ten years. That's a cold and horrible way of looking at it--every one would say. But it's a simple fact. If we escape--then somebody else's family is certain to have two hurt."

  "It's not like you to be morbid," I said.

  She smiled a little. "No. But I heard a speech about auto accidents the other day.

  And I got to thinking about how dangerous and short life is--"

  I could read behind that. I went on looking at her. Connie is beautiful and alive.

  She doesn't look her age. Most people don't--any more--if they have the sense to take care of themselves. And the chance. She has a figure that is mature, but swift-lined. She has long, intelligent hands and they sometimes express for her what she refuses to say with her eyes and lips. Dark blue eyes and a mouth very much like Virginia's. She has a luxurious amount of light-brown hair. Butterscotch is her name for the color, but that is not definite enough. Maple sugar would be more accurate, but not quite dark enough. I imagine that anyone in love with Connie would think a good deal about that color--

  blowing in the wind, and fanned out in its heavy waves. It's bobbed, at the nape of her neck. She has an even and active disposition. She's impulsive, and compared to John, she's frivolous. But anyone who had known her for a year, witnessing her perceptions and thoughtfulne
sses and her generosities, would have applied that word to her with reservation.

  The road alternated land and seascapes and I wondered what she was thinking about. Then it suddenly entered my head that other people besides Bates might have been at the Colonial Elm. At any rate, she would go to inns where, sooner or later, there would be people. It was all a matter of time. And if I said something now--it might succeed where a later effort would be resisted.

  Maybe that was rationalizing. Perhaps, even, I wanted to avenge the way she had hurt Larry--and John--and me. But I don't think so. I think I realized she hadn't let herself consider that possibility. She'd driven more than a hundred miles, to an obscure roadside restaurant, in another State--and she'd blinded herself to that constant belier of the law of averages, coincidence. Anyway, to be discovered, one must first hide. So I asked her if she'd go a bit more slowly.

  "Did I make you nervous? I'm sorry."

  "Lord, no. I wanted to talk to you, Connie."

  She turned from the road to look at me speculatively. Her face was the same. But her fingers took a different grip on the wheel. "What's on your mind, Frankie?"

  I wish I'd said nothing, then. But it was too late. She sensed what was coming. "A Ridgely kid named Bates was at the Colonial Elm the other day."

  "Yes," she replied softly, after a moment. "The day before yesterday."

  Her face went so white that I was on the point of reaching for the wheel. Then that draining tide turned and she slowly flushed a deep and deeper red--up to the roots of her hair -along her bare arms, even.

  "No, Connie. Bates was there last week. Day before yesterday--Larry was there."

  "Larry." She said it inconsolably.

  I nodded.

  "That's why--he sent that ridiculous telegram. He was--worrying about me--"

  I told her, then, about Larry's black eye and the five C's. The part about the fight made her swallow hard--and she smiled when I described the origin of the password.

  "I used to wonder why you youngsters went around whistling the way you did,"

  she said. "And why you kept talking about century plants. There wasn't one in the whole of New England, as far as I knew." She stopped--and thought for a long time. "There isn't anything I can do--is there?"