Bring Me Children

by David Martin

  “Your art?”

  “I make everything you see here and everything you see here is for sale except the gnomes and dwarfs. I collect ’em.”

  “Yes, that’s what —”

  “Randolph Welby owns something like three hundred acres, most of it logged over and too steep to farm, I grant you, but even at a hundred dollars an acre, you figure it out — where does he get all that money?”

  “Do you know if he has any connection to —”

  “Word is he was left a fortune by his high-tone mother. Or he’s some kind of insane genius, made a bundle inventing weird stuff for the space program or the H-bomb and then moved out into the mountains to get away from people ’cause they was always making fun of his size and the way he looks. Or maybe he runs a still or grows mari-ja-wanna or raises a particularly fierce line of bear dog and sells them down to Kentucky.”

  “I think I might have seen one of those dogs last —”

  “I myself however am of the opinion — generally ridiculed in other quarters I grant you — that Randolph Welby acquired his fortune by setting up trade with the owl eaters.”

  “The owl eaters?”

  “Many have gone looking for Randolph’s shack but few have found it and fewer still have lived to tell the tale.”

  Lyon smiles, realizing now that he’s hearing a story that is part of the old liar’s stock and trade. Before Lyon can decide if it’s worth listening to any more of this nonsense, Charlie launches again.

  “Even deer poachers — meat hunters, they’re called, freezer fillers, not sportsmen — avoid Goose Creek, the Rosebush Mountain area where old Randolph owns all those vertical acres of his. First off he knows them hills and hollers and sink holes and all them limestone caves better than any man, snake alive. Especially the caves. Word is he’s got them all mapped out and memorized in his mind so that if he wanted to he could walk one of his dogs down to Kentucky without ever seeing the sun. Even goes into those caves without a light, doesn’t need one, and he’s tunneled into the abandoned coal shafts that snake through this whole area, making it possible for Randolph Welby to proceed underground just about anyplace he pleases hereabouts, even to popping up outside your window one night and slitting your throat so’s you wake up dead the next morning.” The old man cackles.

  Wearying of this and put off by the reference to Randolph Welby popping up outside his window, Lyon tells Charlie he appreciates the information but he’s running late and must —

  “A confirmed black powder man, Randolph fills that old muzzle-loading shotgun of his with bent nails and rusty bobwire so that if the shooting doesn’t kill you, lockjaw will. Fond of booby traps too, wire snares and iron jaws. Once he catches you he’ll truss you up like a Christmas turkey and tuck you away in some cave where you won’t be heard of ’til come Judgment Day or maybe he’ll feed you to them bear dogs of his, a couple pounds of your tender meat at a time. I’ll sell you one of them Heartsick Frogs for twelve-fifty and I don’t charge tax either.”

  Lyon laughs. “Actually, Mr. Renfro, what I really wanted to find out was if there is any connection between Randolph Welby and Dr. Quinndell.”

  “Quinndell kills babies, everybody knows that.”

  Lyon is stunned to hear this declaration — but then wonders what he can possibly do with it. Tell his producer he has two sources now, one of them a woman who handed Lyon a voodoo doll before killing herself in front of a cab and the other source an old man who makes concrete frogs? Besides, Charlie is undoubtedly just repeating the accusations that everyone here knew Claire had lodged against Quinndell. Still, Lyon feels obligated to ask, “What makes you think Dr. Quinndell kills babies?”

  “The hermit Randolph Welby gives them babies to the owl eaters and in exchange the owl eaters give ol’ Randolph tree moss, ferns, ginseng, mushrooms, roots, herbs, and other forest products that the hermit sells via UPS to regional dealers, thereby making enough money to buy all those up and down acres of his.”

  “So you’re saying there is some connection between Randolph Welby and Dr. Quinndell? Quinndell kills the babies, gives the bodies to the hermit for disposal, in those caves — is that what you mean?”

  After listening carefully to Lyon, Charlie resumes his own story, apparently unaware of any link between what Lyon is asking and what he, Charlie, is relating. “Them owl eaters haven’t even full evolved yet into human beans or else they have kinda reverted, wearing animal skins and eating owls, they’re such little people you could snip off both hands of a owl eater with a pair of your grandmother’s sewing scissors, put both of them hands in a shot glass, pour in the whiskey, and still have plenty of room to get drunk. If it wasn’t for getting those little hands of theirs on other people’s babies them owl eaters wouldn’t be able to perpetrate themselves.”

  As he stands, Lyon says, “Okay, then, Mr. Renfro. Thanks again for all the information. I have to be going now.” Lyon reaches down and shakes the old man’s hand.

  Charlie Renfro is smiling, his transparent blue eyes still looking happy and eager. “You ain’t going to buy anything from me, are you?”

  You old fraud, Lyon thinks. Making up tales for the tourists, charming them into buying your concrete art. What the hell. “I’ll take the smallest frog you have.”

  “Twelve-fifty, don’t matter the size when it comes to frogs. That one over there I call Heartsick. See how he’s got his little hands folded over his heart. He’s pining for lost love. I could tell you his story too.”

  “That’s all right.” Lyon gives the old man two bills, a ten and a five.

  Charlie quickly pockets the fifteen bucks, saying, “What with tax and handling and all, that’ll just about do it.”

  Lyon laughs, walks over and picks up the hideous little frog, surprised by how heavy it is. When he turns to tell the old man goodbye one last time, Charlie says:

  “Three things a body would never want to do. Never kill a owl anywhere near where Randolph Welby lives. And never go into a cave with that little hermit.”

  Lyon waits a moment. Then bites. “What’s the third?”

  “Huh?”

  “You said there were three things a body would never want to do.”

  Charlie looks up as if searching the sky for what that third thing might be. He apparently finds it there, telling Lyon with some authority, “Never try to get information out of a UPS man.”

  “What?”

  “Word is that the UPS man is the only outsider ol’ Randolph ever sees or talks to, them shit-brown trucks making deliveries to his shack ’bout ever other day, God knows what the little dwarf is ordering. Maybe elevator shoes.”

  Lyon laughs.

  But the old man has turned suddenly serious. “So what you’re thinking is, if you could ever find out what the UPS is delivering to Randolph, you’d know the answer to the hermit’s secret. And you are absolutely right about that. But never try to get information out of a UPS man. They wear uniforms and are trained to withstand torture.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Maybe it’s something in the water, Lyon thinks as he tries to find his way back, walking through weeds and empty lots.

  The day has become seriously hot, an amazing array of bugs tormenting him as he finally reaches the dry creekbed, crossing it however at a spot he doesn’t recognize. More junky lots, more bugs, more sweating — but then he eventually reaches a residential neighborhood.

  Lyon continues walking, heading in what he believes is the general direction of the diner and the county building. He feels foolish carrying the thirty-five-pound concrete frog and thinks maybe he’ll leave it in someone’s yard. He’s just about to do that in fact when he notices a house in the middle of the block: three stories, painted a brilliant white, red shutters. Quinndell’s place.

  Lyon approaches it with a mixture of curiosity and dread. He certainly doesn’t want to bump into the doctor now, before Lyon has had a chance to talk with anyone at the hospital or has identified the comatose black woman. The thi
ng to do is cross over here and pass the house from the safety of the other side of the street.

  Still carrying the concrete frog, Lyon is just stepping into the street when a woman comes from around the corner of Quinndell’s house. She’s tall, blond, wearing very short red shorts and a white halter top; she’s dragging a watering hose.

  When she catches him staring at her, the woman gives Lyon a friendly wave and cheery “Hello!”

  He says “Hi” back and thinks, nice legs.

  With Lyon now in the middle of the quiet residential street, the woman drops the hose and comes to the sidewalk. “Nice frog.”

  Looking down at the concrete creation in his arms, Lyon can’t figure out how to explain it.

  She’s motioning for him to join her on the sidewalk. “Would you like to see Dr. Quinndell now?”

  Lyon is nonplussed.

  The woman is still smiling broadly. “Sometimes a car comes down this street.”

  Lyon checks both ways and then, red-faced, goes to the sidewalk. Up close, the woman looks hard-edged and too carefully made up for yard work — looks in fact like an aging model who used to work industrial trade shows. Fine lines radiate from those green eyes and her neck has begun to go crepey, and you can tell by the way she makes up her face and keeps her hair too blond and too fluffed that she’s still trying to hold on to an image she had of herself a decade or so ago when she wowed conventioneers by being named that year’s Miss Crescent Wrench.

  Her smile, however, seems genuine enough. “Come on in, Dr. Quinndell is expecting you.”

  Lyon finally finds his voice. “I think you’re mistaken. I didn’t make an appointment. I mean, I’m not a patient.”

  “Oh, Dr. Quinndell doesn’t have any patients.”

  They both laugh.

  She steps closer to him. “Come on, I’ll show you the way, Mr. Lyon.”

  “You recognize me,” he says — a statement, not a question.

  “Sure. And Dr. Quinndell is expecting you.”

  “But he can’t be, I haven’t talked to him.”

  “You’ll have to take that up with the doctor,” she says, linking her arm with Lyon’s and leading him toward the house. “Do you take your frog with you everywhere you go?”

  “I just bought it,” he mumbles. When they reach the porch, Lyon says, “Wait. I can’t go in.”

  The woman flashes him another of her bright smiles. “Why not?”

  “I don’t … uh, I’m not …”

  “You’re in town to interview him aren’t you?”

  “Well, that’s something I’m really not —”

  She tugs good-naturedly on his arm. “Come on, he just wants to meet you.”

  He allows himself to be taken into the house and down the central hallway, panicking when the woman stops by a set of dark mahogany doors. He realizes he is indeed about to be introduced to the doctor. “I’m not prepared to meet Dr. Quinndell just yet. Please. I’ll call and make an appointment. What’s your name?”

  “Mary. Mary Aurora. I work for the doctor.”

  “As?”

  “As chauffeur, secretary, traveling companion, reader —”

  “Reader?”

  “Sure.” She reaches for the door. “He’s right in there waiting for you.”

  “He can’t be waiting for me, I haven’t made an appointment to see him. I shouldn’t even have come in here with you.” And to emphasize that, Lyon pulls his arm away from hers. “I’ll call —”

  He’s interrupted when a deep voice comes from somewhere behind those double doors. “Mary? Who’s out there with you?”

  Lyon frantically shakes his head, a signal Mary blithely ignores. “It’s John Lyon.”

  “Well by all means show him in!”

  Lyon’s heart sinks as Mary opens one of the double doors and holds it for him. The room is completely dark, but Mary is standing there still smiling, nodding encouragement. “Go on,” she says as if speaking to a shy child.

  As soon as Lyon takes a step into that dark room, the door closes behind him.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” comes a honeyed voice somewhere in the room.

  A faint light showing around the edges of a heavy set of curtains helps Lyon make out certain shapes, bookcases and tables and a few overstuffed chairs, but he still can’t see who has spoken. “Dr. Quinndell?”

  “I feel more comfortable, at less of a disadvantage, if the first few minutes of our meeting can be conducted like this, but if you find it absolutely unbearable I will of course turn on the lights.”

  The voice is pleasant, almost theatrical in its resonance, and cultured in the fashion of a courtly Southern gentleman.

  Lyon takes a few tentative steps toward the voice, putting his hand out until he comes to the back of a large chair. He rests the frog there. “How could you have been expecting me?”

  The voice chuckles. “Well, I’m tempted to say, ‘Elementary, my dear Watson,’ but I’ll resist that particular cliché. I was informed you had rented a cabin — a cabin once owned by someone I think we both know — and I assumed that I am the reason for your visit to our area. Is that assumption incorrect?”

  Lyon’s not sure what to say. “Normally I would have called for an appointment.”

  “But you just happened to be in the neighborhood?”

  “Yes!” Lyon replies too quickly. He laughs nervously. “I was walking by and —”

  The lights flash on, causing Lyon to squint toward the back of the room where Dr. Quinndell is standing behind a large desk.

  Mason Quinndell looks like one of the Barrymore men in their glory days, a jutting chin and a long straight nose, black hair combed back, his face so dramatically handsome that it’s almost a caricature of an old-fashioned matinee idol.

  He’s dressed in an expensive pinstriped suit, his shirt very white and heavily starched. His black hair curls fashionably at the shirt’s collar, and he’s wearing onyx cufflinks. The doctor’s presentation is so perfect that Lyon — still sweaty from his walk, standing there balancing that thirty-five-pound concrete frog on the back of a chair — feels awkward and inferior.

  “Mr. Lyon?”

  When he notices that the doctor is holding out his hand, Lyon lifts the frog from the chairback and hurries to the desk. While shaking hands with Quinndell and trying to figure out how he’s going to explain the frog, Lyon sees that the doctor’s unnaturally blue eyes don’t quite focus on him.

  “Surely you knew I was blind.”

  Lyon doesn’t reply.

  Quinndell laughs. “Goodness, Claire must be slipping, she’s usually more than eager to explain how my blindness is the result of God’s vengeance. She didn’t go into that with you?”

  Lyon still doesn’t reply. When he tries to withdraw his hand, Quinndell won’t release it. The doctor is grinning, showing his one physical flaw: teeth so small they look as if they should be in a child’s mouth, as if they’ve been filed down, the enamel stained yellow.

  When Lyon again tries to get his hand free, Quinndell holds it all the more tightly. “I’m going to have to insist that you answer me aloud when I ask a question, Mr. Lyon. Head shaking, chin nodding, face making, eye rolling — all lost on me I’m afraid.”

  Then the doctor waits.

  “Of course, I’m sorry.”

  Quinndell releases his hand. “You’re sorry?”

  “I mean I understand.”

  Quinndell sits behind his desk and Lyon takes a straight-backed chair in front of the desk, placing the concrete frog at his feet. At least I don’t have to explain the frog, Lyon thinks.

  “We’ll see if we can’t get through this as painlessly as possible,” the doctor says, as if reassuring a patient on whom he is about to begin some potentially troublesome procedure.

  Lyon nods but then quickly adds, “All right.” He senses he has already relinquished control of the conversation.

  “Claire must have made a deep impression on you because you’re the first one actuall
y to come here and visit me in person.” Quinndell again offers his yellow, tiny-toothed smile.

  “The first one to visit you in person? I don’t —”

  “It’s all in here,” Quinndell says, lifting a thick folder from his desk and holding it out to Lyon. “In the past five years Claire has managed to convince three individuals to look into those ghastly charges she has lodged against me. Two newspaper reporters and one gentleman from a Charleston television station. Their names and telephone numbers are in the folder. None of them got past making a few calls before dropping their so-called investigations. The results of their initial inquiries were so conclusively in my favor that two of the three wrote me letters of apology. Copies of those are in the file too. You’re the first of Claire’s contacts who ever bothered to visit me in person. What did she say to you, Mr. Lyon?”

  Lyon is still staring at the doctor’s impressive bearing and perfect clothing. Claire’s file says that Quinndell is sixty-one but he looks a decade younger, Lyon’s age.

  “Mr. Lyon, please — your silence is rude.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m wondering if you could give me a little background on —”

  “Absolutely not,” comes the immediate reply. “Everything you need to know is in that file. Please try to understand my position, Mr. Lyon. I devoted my life to a pediatric medical practice and that woman has accused me of murdering children. It’s obscene. I’ve tried to feel compassion for her, considering her insanity, but —”

  “Her insanity?”

  “It’s all in the file, Mr. Lyon. The woman is a classic paranoiac, accusing me of murdering children, accusing another doctor of drinking blood.”

  “Drinking —”

  “Surely you’ve looked into this matter before coming down here. You are aware that in the past five years that woman has been fired from seven nursing positions at hospitals in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and New York City.”

  “No, I wasn’t actually —”

  “Unforgivable.” The doctor pronounces this the way a judge might pass a harsh but justified sentence. “I suppose then you’re also unaware of why it was under my care that those poor children died.” Quinndell pauses but then continues before Lyon can say anything. “All eighteen of the infants Claire cited in her original accusation were the children of destitute families or unwed girls. Not women, Mr. Lyon, girls. And why was I caring for those infants? Because I allowed the mothers to pay whatever they could afford, usually writing off my fees entirely. The poorest of the poor were among my clients. And who are the victims of this country’s abysmal child mortality rate? The poorest of the poor, Mr. Lyon. Their babies do not receive proper nutrition or medical care, and when those babies are brought into the hospital, the situation usually is so acute that it’s long past reversal — so of course many of those infants died while officially under my care, even though my care was being offered without charge and usually consisted of a few desperate moments of emergency procedures.