The Dreadful Revenge of Ernest Gallen

by James Lincoln Collier

  I decided to change the subject. “Sam, what newspaper is this from?” I handed her the clipping. She looked it over. “I don’t know,” she said. “It wasn’t the Chronicle.” She frowned. “I wish I could understand why my dad covered all this up. Kept it out of the newspaper.”

  “He probably had a good reason, Sam,” I said.

  We were quiet, and then Sonny said, “I reckon they all thought they had good reasons for what they was doing. Half the town might of been in on it as far as we know. Every one of ‘em with a good reason. Never any shortage of good reasons when you need one.”

  “What about your dad, Sonny?” Sam said. “What was his good reason for being in on it?”

  “Wanted some free money. There ain’t nothin’ people like better than free money. They’ll do most anything for money they don’t have to work for. Most people think they got a right to free money if they think there’s any around. I don’t guess my dad was any different from the rest.”

  “That doesn’t explain why the voice wanted to kill him.”

  Sonny didn’t say anything for a while, but looked down at the bones all tumbled around on the floor. “I guess it embarrassed him a good deal to have got swindled out of his free money. Reckon he might not have been sorry to see this here Gallen get it stuck to him.”

  That was as close as he was going to come to admitting that his dad had been in on the lynching. I figured that was a subject we might as well stay off of, too. “What are we going to do with these clothes? Just leave them here?”

  “I sure don’t want ‘em,” Sonny said.

  “Let’s just leave them,” Sam said.

  “Okay by me.” I took a look around. The bones were now scattered around in a jumble—ribs here, leg bones over there, hand bones scattered, toe bones still in the shoes. The sight was causing me to take deep breaths. “What about the bones?”

  Sonny shook his head. “Seems strange to me that nobody came out here and buried them. I don’t care what he did, he ought to of got buried.”

  “Maybe they were too ashamed of themselves to come out here again and bury them,” I said.

  “Most likely,” Sonny said.

  None of us felt much like gathering those bones, however. “Maybe we could do it sometime,” I said. “We’d need a couple of shovels and a pick.”

  “All right,” Sam said. “Someday we’ll do it.” She looked at us. “Anything else we need to do here?”

  There wasn’t, so we got out of there.

  I’d hardly left Sam off at her house when I began to feel that tightness and the little movements inside me. “Go away,” I said. “You’ve got me into enough trouble.”

  “Don’t say that, Gene. I came to congratulate you on your work. You’re doing very well.”

  “I’m not doing it because you want me to. I’ve got my own reasons for it.”

  “That doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that you’re beginning to see that your beloved grampa is not the sweet old man he’s cracked up to be.”

  I was silent for a moment. I hated asking it for anything, but the voice knew a lot of things I wanted to know. So I said, “If you want me to do something for you, tell me what my dad had to do with it.”

  “You don’t know much about your dad, do you, Gene?”

  “No. They won’t tell me.”

  “I’m not surprised. Talking about him would lead them onto dangerous subjects. Why is it fair for them to keep these things secret from you? He’s your dad, isn’t he?”

  “You’re keeping them secret from me, too. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “No, Gene. You won’t believe me unless you find out for yourself.”

  “Suppose I don’t want to find out. Suppose I decide to drop the whole thing.”

  “It isn’t going to be so easy for you to make me go away.”

  “I’m tired of having you inside of me. Just tired of it.”

  It gave its low, throaty chuckle. “I expect you are. But I like it. It’s pleasant for me to have somebody to talk to. Nice to have somebody to chat with from time to time.”

  I thought for a moment. “Those are your bones up there in the Toffey house, aren’t they?”

  “I wish people would stop calling it the Toffey house. Properly speaking, it’s the Gallen house.”

  “Your house.”

  “I bought and paid for it.”

  “With money you swindled out of people.”

  “There you go again. Such an unpleasant term. They were grown-ups. They made their own choices. For a smart person, there’s always money to be made from other people’s greed.”

  I puzzled over that for a minute. “I don’t get it.”

  “You will. Your beloved grampa could explain it to you, I’m sure.” Then I felt the movements inside of me grow still, and the specter was gone.

  Chapter 9

  When I first thought about it, it seemed strange that my best friends and me would all have dads who were mixed up in this oil lynching. How come us? But by and by I realized that it wasn’t so strange after all. A whole lot of people in Magnolia had got caught up in it. Got greedy for free money, the way Sonny had put it. A lot of kids around town were bound to have dads who’d been involved. So I decided it wasn’t so strange that our three dads had been in on it.

  Working together on it with Sonny and Sam made me feel a whole lot more comfortable than I had been. Still pretty scared a lot of the time. Still worried that the specter might find a way to make me go after Grampa. Still felt like I’d done something wrong for not having a dad, but it was a big help that we all liked each other. There wasn’t any reason why we ought to like each other. Weren’t on the same wavelength half the time. But we liked each other anyway. Maybe being on the same wavelength wasn’t so important after all.

  I was thinking about this as I got to our narrow little house and went in. Mom was in the kitchen. “Wash up for supper, Gene,” she said. I went on upstairs to the little bathroom there and started washing my hands. I was still thinking about whether you had to be on the same wavelength as somebody to like them. Was I on the same wavelength as Grampa? Well, I don’t guess a kid could ever exactly be on the same wavelength as a grown-up. They had too many different ideas about things. But partly you could. I mean, Grampa liked baseball and had played on the baseball team at the college he went to—he had a picture of his team lined up on bleacher seats wearing those funny old fashioned baseball pants with high socks almost up to the knee.

  Would I have been on the same wavelength as my dad? Did he like baseball? Maybe right then he was reading in the evening paper about his favorite baseball team—Pittsburgh Pirates, New York Giants, Cleveland Indians, maybe. He could easily be living someplace like one of those. What if he sent me a railroad ticket to come and see him, saying he had box seats for the Detroit Tigers and I should hurry on up to Detroit and he’d meet me at the station and we’d go right out to the ball park to see Mickey Cochrane and Charlie Gehringer.

  Suddenly I put my wet and soapy hands over my face and began to cry. It took me completely by surprise. I had no idea I was going to cry. I stood there with my wet and soapy hands over my face, the tears all mixed up with the soap, just crying away to beat the band and gasping for breath through the soap. Even while I was crying I was thinking what a strange thing I was doing, for I’d never cried over my dad before. It wasn’t even so much something I was doing; it was more something that was happening to me. It hurt to think that he’d left me, but at the same time it was a relief to cry. And I figured maybe I ought to have cried about it sooner.

  Mom knocked on the bathroom door. “You all right, Gene?”

  I took a deep, shuddery breath. “I’m fine,” I said. “I was washing my face and got soap in my eyes.”

  But right then I made my mind up about something. I went down to supper. Mom was putting the dishes on. Spanish rice, she called it—rice with tomatoes and a little hamburger mixed in for flavor. I waited until Mom had got us served and
we’d started eating. Then I looked at them, one after the other. “You have to tell me about my dad. I have a right to know. You have to tell me.”

  Mom and Grampa looked at each other. “That’s what’s been bothering you, Gene?” Grampa said.

  “Not just that. A lot of things.”

  Grampa nodded. “Tell us about it, Gene.”

  “No. You tell me about my dad.”

  Mom looked at Grampa. He put down his fork and leaned back in his chair for a minute. “Gene, I can certainly understand your feelings about it. It’s perfectly normal for somebody in your position to want to know who his father is. If it were me, I’d want to know, too.” He paused to think. “Why has this come up all of a sudden?”

  How was I going to answer that? “We found a news story in an old Chronicle that mentioned my dad. Thomas Richards. That’s him, isn’t it?” That much was true, anyway.

  “Who’s we?”

  “Sonny, Sam, and me.”

  “What were you looking through old Chronicles for?” Mom asked.

  “Why are you grilling me?” I said. “I’m just trying to find out about my dad.”

  “We’re not trying to grill you, Gene,” Grampa said. “We just don’t understand what this is all about. It’s a little unusual for Sonny and Sam to be working on something together.”

  “You’re not being fair,” I said. “I’m just trying to find out about my dad and you keep changing the subject back to me. Something happened in Magnolia back then, something nobody ever talks about.”

  “Where’d you get that idea, Gene? From Alice Samuels? Can I suggest that Alice might be misinformed?”

  “It isn’t from Sam.”

  “Who, then?”

  “I’m not going to tell you, Grampa. You won’t tell me anything, why should I tell you anything? You’re just beating around the bush.”

  “Yes, that’s true. I’m being evasive. I have a reason for it. You’re right. Something did happen in Magnolia back then. A number of people did some things they shouldn’t have done. It’s the opinion of those of us who know about it that it ought to be left where it lies. I can understand that you kids are curious, but I’d appreciate it very much if you’d drop the whole matter. You have plenty enough to keep you occupied. You don’t need to go rummaging around in matters that are best left alone.”

  I looked square at him. “Grampa, did you do something you shouldn’t have done back then?”

  “Gene,” Mom said, “I don’t think you have a right to question your grandfather that way.”

  “Why not? He’s questioning me.”

  “It’s all right, May,” Grampa said. “Yes, I made a mistake. An error of judgment. I’ve always been sorry for it, but it was an honest mistake. I made a decision and it turned out to have been the wrong one.”

  “My dad had something to do with it, didn’t he?”

  “Gene, I don’t want to discuss this any further.”

  “I have a right to know about my dad.”

  He was silent for a minute. Then he said, “Someday, when you’re older, we’ll discuss the whole thing. Not now. It isn’t anything a bunch of kids ought to be fooling around with. You’re rushing into something you don’t know anything about. People could be hurt.” He picked up his fork. “That’s all I’m going to say about it. I hope you kids will let the matter drop. Now let’s eat the good supper your mom made for us while it’s still hot.”

  They weren’t going to tell me. I couldn’t remember the last time I was sore at Grampa—probably sometime when I was little and he wouldn’t let me play in the mud or something. But I was sore at him now. Sore at a lot of people, for that matter. Sore at Mom for siding with Grampa instead of me, sore at the specter for getting me into this mess, sore at the world, when you got down to it. So far as I could see, they were the ones who had done wrong, not me, but I was the one who was in trouble. About the only people I wasn’t sore at were Sonny and Sam. They were sticking up for me. As far as I was concerned, everybody else could just disappear.

  I guess I was sore at my dad, too, for not being there. I was beginning to see that probably he’d had to run for it back then. I hoped he’d been blamed for something he hadn’t done. That would have made it easier for me to take. Why wasn’t he here when I needed him? Was there any way I could get in touch with him? Find his phone number somehow? Or send him a message through the air? Maybe I could. I’d have to think about that.

  After school on Monday we went over to the bandstand and I told them about it. Nice day, with the sun shining down through the big elms in the park in patches and pieces, a few big clouds, just the right kind of breeze. Perfect day for baseball, but I was too sore at the world for it. Too sore at the world for delivering groceries, too. The heck with them; they could carry their own groceries.

  “I asked about the whole thing,” I said. “What happened back then, what my dad had done. They wouldn’t tell me. Grampa said that if it came out, a lot of people would be hurt. He said he’d made a mistake back then. He claims it was an honest mistake, he was sorry about it, but he hadn’t done it on purpose to hurt anyone.”

  “They wouldn’t tell you about your dad, either?” Sam said.

  “No.”

  “Don’t you know where he lives? Couldn’t you call him up?” she said.

  “I don’t think they know where he is. I don’t think Mom wants to know where he is. She always says we should forget about him. But how can I forget about my own dad?”

  “My mom wants us to forget about my dad, too,” Sonny said. “She says we’re better off without him. But sometimes at night when we’re all in bed I hear her crying. Gene, maybe your mom cries in bed at night, too.”

  I had never thought about that side of it. “I don’t think she would now,” I said. “Maybe she did, once.”

  “We still haven’t figured out what we’re going to do,” Sam said. “If we knew exactly what happened back then, we might be able to figure out what the voice wants.”

  “It wants me to kill Grampa,” I said.

  “But why?” Sam said.

  “Sam, your dad knows,” I said. “Grampa knows. I’m pretty sure Sonny’s dad knew.”

  “They all knew,” Sonny said. “I don’t see what’s the big secret. Half the town must of known. Sam, did your dad ever say he’d heard a voice when he crashed into that tree?”

  “He just said he blanked out for a minute. A mental lapse. He said it’s a common enough thing.”

  “He didn’t say nothing about hearing voices?”

  “No. But I don’t think he’d admit it even if he had. He’s not the kind of person who would admit a thing like that.”

  “What if we asked him point-blank?” Sonny said.

  Sam looked out through the park, then up in the sky, and then down to the ground. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she said.

  “Why not?” Sonny said.

  “I just don’t think it’s a good idea, Sonny.”

  “Sam, my grampa didn’t like it very much when I asked him point-blank about my dad,” I said. “But I did it anyway. We can’t be scared of asking.”

  “I’m not scared,” she said. “I only thought it wasn’t a good idea.”

  “Gotta do it, Sam,” Sonny said. “Gotta do it.”

  Sam gave Sonny a dirty look. “Did you ever ask your dad anything about it, Sonny?”

  “Ask what? I didn’t know nothing about a lynching until after he walked off that lumber platform. By then he wasn’t in no kind of shape to ask anything of.”

  “You could have asked him about the oil certificates.”

  “Back then when I was little, it just seemed like some grown-up thing that wasn’t of no interest to me.”

  “You could ask your mom.”

  “I did, a little while ago, before Dad died. I guess he knew he was in trouble, for he brought them oil certificates up again a couple of times. Told us we should take good care of them in case anything happened to him, because t
hey might be worth a lot of money someday. He couldn’t give up hoping. I was older, and more curious about such things. The next day, when Dad wasn’t around, I asked her. She said she never understood what it was all about herself, except that it was some kind of bad business that it was best to stay away from. She didn’t know, she said, and she didn’t want to know.” He paused. “So you see, Sam, I did my share of asking.”

  “Stop arguing about it,” I said. “Sam, I brought it up with Grampa and Mom, so you’ve got to bring it up with your dad.”

  “All right,” she said finally. “We’ll all do it.” We agreed we’d do it Sunday morning after church. Mr. Samuels put the paper to bed Saturday afternoon and generally took it easy on Sunday. So that was set.

  The specter paid me a visit Friday afternoon when I was heading away from Snuffy’s Groceries with a heavy box on my shoulder. “Go away,” I said. “I’m busy. I don’t want to talk to you when I’ve got a heavy box on my shoulder.”

  “You can put the box down for a minute, Gene. I’ll be brief.”

  I kept on walking with the box on my shoulder. “I’m not listening,” I said.

  “This has been going on too long. We need to get moving. It’s time we did something about Grampa.”

  “I told you, I’m not listening. You’re just a swindler.”

  “I thought we weren’t going to use that word. Caveat emptor is so much nicer. It’s Latin, you know. It means ‘let the buyer beware.’“

  “I don’t care what it means. I’m not listening.”

  “Caveat emptor. The spirit of American capitalism. A seller has a perfect right to present his wares in the best possible light.”

  “It wasn’t in the spirit of anything. It was cheating, plain and simple. There was never any oil under that old Toffey farm and you knew it.”

  “Not so, Gene. There was never any evidence that there wasn’t oil there. There might well have been. Nobody knew. Oil still might be found there.”

  I’d got suckered into arguing with him. “I told you, I’m not listening.”

  “They’ll do anything they can to prove I was wrong, but they can’t prove it. A clever lawyer would have made the jury see that. I’d have gone scot-free. You know they’re covering it up. That’s as plain as the nose on one’s face.” He gave that throaty chuckle, like a heavy chain rattling. “A good deal plainer than the nose on my face, that’s certain.”