The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

by Donis Casey

  Chapter Four

  Shaw and Alafair sat together glumly on the front porch of the Day place while Dr. Addison was inside with Mrs. Day and what was left of Harley. The two girls were in there, too, which distressed Alafair, but their mother wanted them, and there was nothing Alafair could do about it. She consoled herself with the thought that the two children were apparently quite unconcerned about finding themselves fatherless. She expected that Dr. Addison made the family wait in the parlor while he conducted the preliminary examination.

  “Do you think John Lee killed the old scalawag?” Alafair asked Shaw, after a long silence.

  Shaw shrugged. “Looks bad,” he admitted, “if he lied about the mule and then run off.”

  “If he did, do you think Miz Day knows about it?”

  Shaw looked over at her. “It would seem likely,” he admitted. “She said she stood on the porch and watched Harley and John Lee chase around in the yard. She could just as likely have stood there and watched the boy put a bullet in his daddy’s head.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Alafair said with a shudder. “It’s awful cold to shoot a man as he lies drunk, even if he deserves it. Of course, there was no love lost between Harley and his wife. If she watched her boy kill her man, I don’t doubt she’d do anything to protect him. I would.”

  Shaw chuckled. “I know you would. You’d defy the Lord himself to protect one of yours.”

  It was Alafair’s turn to shrug. “He’d expect me to. That’s what he put me here for.”

  “So you think John Lee did it, too?”

  “I don’t know, Shaw. I haven’t seen much of John Lee for five years. He and Phoebe used to be particular friends where they were little, and it looks like they are still. He was a nice little kid, polite and well-behaved. Biggest old brown eyes. It just doesn’t seem like he could have grown into somebody who would murder his own father.”

  “Maybe he grew into somebody who would do anything to protect his mother,” Shaw pointed out.

  “Oh, this is a terrible poser,” Alafair said. “Did the boy do the worst thing in the world for the best reason? I have to say, though, I suspect that Miz Day doesn’t know herself who killed her man. Why would she have called the sheriff if she was in on it? She seemed genuinely surprised to find a hole in the man’s head, didn’t she? If they conspired to help Harley keep his appointment with the Grim Reaper, then why didn’t they just bury the body in the woods and say that he run out on them? Nobody would have thought twice.” She leaned forward in her chair, her finger poking the air eagerly as she punctuated her argument. “And if John Lee did it, why did he go ahead on and tell Scott what had happened before he disappeared?”

  There was a flash of white teeth under Shaw’s mustache as he smiled at Alafair’s enthusiasm for justice. “It’s early days, yet, darlin’. Things may come clear all by themselves as time goes on. We don’t even know what Doc Addison has to say about all this, yet.”

  “Scott sure has his teeth into it,” Alafair observed.

  “That’s his job. You know how he is. Easy going as the day is long until an injustice needs to be righted.”

  Before Alafair could make another point, the screen creaked open and Dr. Addison came out onto the porch and walked over to them. Four doctors had set up practice in the booming town of Boynton in just the last five years, but Dr. Jasper Addison and his wife Dr. Ann had been practicing medicine around these parts since before most folks could remember. He was an imposing old fellow in his mid-seventies with flowing white hair and an equally flowing white beard. He had been doctoring since he was a surgeon’s assistant with the Union’s Fifteenth Arkansas Volunteers in the War Between the States, and he was by far the most educated man from Muskogee to Tulsa. Shaw stood when he came toward them.

  Dr. Addison held up a tiny object between his thumb and forefinger for their inspection. “Twenty-two slug,” he said. “My guess is it was fired from a derringer—some small lady’s gun. Point blank into the mastoid.”

  “So you think it is as it appears,” Alafair said. “Somebody put a gun to his head as he lay drunk and pulled the trigger.”

  Dr. Addison sat down in the chair that Shaw had vacated and leaned back, crossing one leg over his knee elegantly. He slipped the distorted bullet into the inside breast pocket of his coat. “Obviously someone did just that, Alafair,” he replied. “The question is, is that what killed the man?”

  A surprised sound escaped Shaw, and Alafair leaned toward the doctor, interested. “Do you mean that he was already dead when he was shot?” she asked.

  The good doctor shrugged. “Who is to know, my dear? There are signs in the body that suggest that Mr. Harley Day froze to death, and was already speaking to his Maker when his would-be killer wasted his bullet.”

  “So it wasn’t murder!” Alafair burst out, infinitely relieved.

  “I didn’t say that,” Dr. Addison hastened to disabuse her. “All I can say for sure is that Mr. Day was already in the process of freezing when he was shot. I cannot tell which event ended his life. I can only tell that one occurrence followed hard upon the other.”

  “Well, well,” Shaw mused. “I doubt if our gunman intended to make a simple empty gesture by purposely shooting a dead man in the head. Whether Harley was already dead or not, someone intended murder.”

  “And it could be that murder was indeed done,” Dr. Addison admitted.

  Alafair didn’t comment. Her moment of hope had flown.

  ***

  The rest of the day proceeded in spite of Alafair’s disappointment. Scott returned from town and received Dr. Addison’s report. As Shaw had predicted, Scott was little troubled by the question of when the bullet entered Harley’s skull. Alafair desperately wanted to stay and watch as the investigation continued, but duty intervened. Shaw took her home, and together they did the afternoon milking before he drove off to pick up the children from their various pursuits and she brought in the laundry and began supper.

  To supplement the leftovers from Sunday’s dinner, Alafair prepared the brace of rabbits that Gee Dub had shot a couple of days before. She had taken them down earlier from the eaves off the back porch, where they had been hanging, and cleaned them over a tin washtub, and now she washed them and cut them into joints. She dipped them into beaten egg and flour, sprinkled them with a little salt and pepper, and fried them in a mixture of butter and lard in her cast iron skillet.

  It didn’t escape Alafair’s notice that while the other children spent the entire evening in excited speculation about the intriguing end of their neighbor, Phoebe withdrew into a troubled silence. As far as Alafair could tell, only Alice seemed to notice her twin’s mood, but uncharacteristically refrained from teasing her about it.

  The girls were well drilled in their after-supper duties. Alice and Ruth drew the water from the pump by the back door while Mary brought up the fire in the stove to heat the dishwater. Martha hauled out the dishpan from the pantry, and Phoebe led the younger girls, Blanche and Sophronia, in clearing the table. Alafair seated herself in a chair by the kitchen door with her mending in her lap, presiding over the cleanup.

  “You haven’t had much to say this evening,” Alafair observed to Phoebe. Phoebe shot her mother a surprised and wary glance. How do they know, her expression said, these mothers, when something is on your mind? “I’m feeling a little draggy, Ma,” Phoebe managed.

  Alafair eyed her. “Are you feeling poorly? Come over here.”

  Obediently, Phoebe let her mother feel her forehead and cheeks. “No fever,” Alafair pronounced.

  Phoebe straightened. Her eyes wouldn’t meet her mother’s. “I’m not sick, Mama. It’s just that time of the month. I’m a bit wan.”

  “You feel like you need to lie down? Fronie, stop that.” Her eyes returned to Phoebe’s face after her brief aside to Sophronia.

  “No, Mama,” Phoebe assured her. “I can finish clearing.”

  Alafair studied Phoebe in silence as the girl made
several trips to hand dishes to Mary.

  “You haven’t said anything about Mr. Day,” Alafair finally noted.

  Phoebe gave her a furtive glance. “I don’t know what to say, Ma. It’s an awful thing.”

  Alafair considered this comment. It was very much in character for Phoebe, who was by far the tenderest of all of Alafair’s brood. “It’s beginning to look like John Lee may be in trouble,” Alafair finally said, in her best conversational tone. “He shouldn’t have run off. Should have stayed around and explained himself. It’d look a whole lot less suspicious.”

  Phoebe had finished clearing the table. Blanche and Sophronia had scampered off somewhere and the other girls were still involved in the kitchen. There was a lot of noise. Phoebe sat down. “Maybe he felt like he had to run off, Ma. He had fought with his daddy and all.”

  “I can see where he might want to hide in the first heat of things, but if he’d thought about it, he’d have seen it looks bad.”

  For an instant, Phoebe looked as if she might cry. “Things always are bad for him,” she said. “I don’t think he’d expect much different.”

  Phoebe’s response took Alafair by surprise, and she swallowed hard, touched. “Well, honey,” she finally said, “if it makes you feel any better, I’ve been thinking about it, and it seems unlikely to me that that poor boy did it. If he did shoot his father, it wouldn’t be very smart of him to hang around home for three days waiting for a thaw.”

  Phoebe bit her lip and nodded, but didn’t answer.

  “You want me to make you some chamomile tea?” Alafair asked, falling back on a practical action she often took for her daughters’ discomforts, physical and emotional.

  Phoebe smiled. “Thank you, Mama.” She hesitated, then continued, “You think it would be all right if I made up a pallet and slept here in the kitchen for a couple of nights?”

  Alafair didn’t think that a particularly odd request. The family’s normal sleeping arrangements had the parents in the smaller north bedroom, the boys on cots in the parlor, and the girls in the larger south bedroom. Martha and Mary shared a bed, as did Alice and Phoebe. The younger girls shared cots that trundled under the big beds during the day. Often, when one of the kids was sick, Alafair allowed her the luxury of privacy by fixing up a makeshift bed by the stove in the kitchen.

  “I think that would be all right,” Alafair decided. Not that any of the sisters would mind. Ruth, Blanche, and Sophronia would immediately take advantage of the vacancy by jumping into the big bed with Alice, who would spend most of the night devising story and deed to scare them silly and irritate the older girls with muffled shrieks and scuffles. “In fact,” Alafair continued, “I’ll be going out to the Day place tomorrow to take some food out to them. I don’t see anything wrong with your staying home and helping me, just for the day. Would you be willing to do that?”

  A look a relief and gratitude passed over Phoebe’s face and she leaned over to give her mother a hug. “Thank you, Mama,” she said.

  ***

  Later that evening, the family gathered in the parlor by the dim light of kerosene lamps to spend some time entertaining one another before bedtime.

  Shaw melted a glob of butter in the bottom of one of Alafair’s soup pots and popped an enormous batch of popcorn on the pot belly stove. He and Charlie-boy took turns shaking the pan and shaking the pan until every last kernel of corn was popped. The popcorn was meted out in bowls, and while the family snacked, Martha and Mary alternated reading from a favorite book of poems.

  “Listen my children, and you shall hear

  Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere…”

  Alafair sat in her rocker by the window, listening with one ear as Martha regaled the family with her tales of working for Mr. Bushyhead at the bank and Ruth picked out a couple of tunes on the old upright piano. She tried to observe Phoebe without being too conspicuous about it. The girl seemed as engrossed in Martha’s story as the rest of her siblings, and not overly nervous or upset. The idea that was niggling at Alafair, that Phoebe knew something she wasn’t telling about this whole Harley Day affair, must just be her imagination. Phoebe was not good at being devious. Not like Mary or Alice or Charlie, the imps.

  Of course, love makes one bold.

  Alafair stopped rocking. She urgently tried to remember what she had heard in the last year or two about John Lee Day in conjunction with Phoebe. In fact, she had heard little enough about John Lee at all since his father had forced him to quit school and work the farm. She and Shaw and their friends and neighbors had all known of and deplored the situation at the Day place, but it was not unheard of for a man to drink to excess, or to determine that work was more important than education for his children, or to keep his wife at home. It was no one else’s business, and none of the neighbors would have interfered. They would have helped any member of the family who asked, but no one had asked.

  Shaw was playing his guitar now, and singing.

  “The old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be,

  Got stung by a bumblebee,

  Climbed up the apple tree…”

  Little Sophronia, scandalized, cried, “Oh, Daddy!”

  Alafair got up and began collecting popcorn bowls to carry back into the kitchen. It seemed increasingly obvious, she thought, that Phoebe had not only kept in touch with John Lee, but had developed a relationship with him. She couldn’t quite figure out how Phoebe had gone about it so thoroughly in secret. She wasn’t surprised, though. If she had learned anything in all her years of motherhood, it was that children have lives, inward or outward, of which their parents know nothing.

  Chapter Five

  Alafair ran the hat pin through her good black felt bonnet with the bunch of carved cherries on the band, anchoring it to the thick knot of dark hair at her crown. It was an ongoing battle of hers to keep her hair neatly pulled back out of the way, but it seemed to have a mind of its own, and exasperated tendrils were always escaping any coif she attempted. She spent a moment trying to force a few tresses back into place.

  As her mother arranged herself in the mirror by the door, Phoebe stood aside, clutching a covered dish before her in two hands. In the mirror, Phoebe could see the dart of Alafair’s sharp brown eyes as she sized up Phoebe’s reflection. Apparently, she passed muster, since her mother offered no criticism.

  ***

  The Day farm was a sad, sorry place. The frame house had been white once, but no more. The yard was scattered with trash and rusty farm implements, rangy chickens, a cat or two and a yellow dog. The thought of lockjaw immediately entered Alafair’s mind as they rode up the rutted drive. “Watch where you step, sugar,” she said offhandedly to Phoebe.

  A well-appointed buggy stood incongruously in front of the the house, the horse hitched to a porch railing. “Looks like Miz Day already has some visitors,” Phoebe observed.

  Several children stood on the porch and watched them as they halted the shay in front of the house and climbed out. The eldest child, an ephemeral brown girl, stepped toward them. “Good morning, Miz Tucker,” she greeted with an adult solemnity that startled Alafair enough to make her look at the girl more closely.

  She was a small girl for her age, which Alafair judged to be early teens. She looked stringy and malnourished, even wrapped in a coat two sizes too big for her. Her Chickasaw ancestry showed in her high cheekbones and broad forehead, and her dark coloring. She bore a striking resemblance to John Lee. She had the body and face of a young fairy maiden, but the black eyes that scrutinized Alafair were the eyes of a forty year old woman who had not led a particularly pleasant life.

  “You must be Naomi,” Alafair acknowledged. “Will you please tell your mama that she has some callers?”

  The girl smiled a weary smile. “Yes, ma’am. We’ve had a passel of callers today. Won’t you ladies please come on in?”

  “Why, thank you,” Alafair responded, careful to accord this girl the respect that any civilized woman would show to another. />
  Naomi nodded, and her gaze shifted to Phoebe as they walked up the steps. “Hello, Phoebe,” she said. “I’m glad you come.”

  “I didn’t know you two were so well acquainted,” Alafair said.

  “We have spoke,” Naomi informed her, as she led them inside. The knot of urchins followed silently.

  Mrs. Day met them just inside the door, and Naomi took her place at her mother’s side. “Y’all come into the parlor and look at how Harley turned out,” Mrs. Day invited, “then have some tea with us in the kitchen. Naomi, take that there dish from Miss Phoebe and put it on the table with the others.”

  Alafair removed her coat and handed it to one of Mrs. Day’s other minions, a boy of about ten, who appeared at her elbow. “You’ve been getting a bunch of callers, I hear,” she observed.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mrs. Day assured her. “I can’t remember when we had so much food in the house.” She led them into the parlor. The room had been cleaned and the beds removed, and Harley had been decently laid out in a plain pine box perched on two sawhorses in the middle of the floor. Alafair stepped up to the coffin and examined Harley’s body, lying so inoffensively boxed. Well, Harley, she thought, look at you now. In all your pathetic life, somebody must have loved you sometime. “He looks right peaceful,” she said.

  “Don’t he, though,” Mrs. Day agreed. “Come on into the kitchen for some tea and cake, won’t you? I’d like for you to meet some of our kin that’s come to visit with us.”

  When they entered the kitchen, a tall, leathery man with graying hair stood up from a chair at the table. His companion, a pretty, black-haired woman, remained seated, but gave them a sweet smile. She had the most striking blue-green eyes Alafair had ever seen.