by Gil Brewer
“You looked in the window and he saw you,” I prompted.
“Alma won’t never come back,” he said.
“I’m sorry.
“It don’t matter now. Not any more it don’t. He called my name. But you know something?” He straightened in the chair, his face a gray, wrinkle-shot mask. “He never hurt us and I kind of liked the old man. So I went in.”
“In the bank?”
“Right to his office, I went.”
Spash’s hand prowled over the edge of the chair for his bottle, almost as if the action were performed without volition, without knowledge of what he was doing. The fingers fiddled and clawed, pawing for the bottle as he talked.
“He was setting behind his desk, right there.” Spash lifted his hand and pointed, then resumed the search for the bottle, his fingers dancing just above the uncorked neck. If he got it, he would likely pass out cold—
“What was he doing?” I asked.
“Setting there, that’s all. ‘Herb,’ he says. ‘Herb, I want you to do a little chore for me.’ Them are his exact words. ‘A little chore.’ I told him whatever I could do I’d be glad to do it. I recall it so plain—” He clenched his eyes tightly, then looked at me again. “Cy Harper told me to go to Sam Gunther’s house down on the hill. He said to tell Sam to come to the bank in about an hour, that he wanted to see him. Said to tell Gunther it was urgent, that he would be waiting.”
He was concentrating hard and his eyes began to glaze with the effort. A sheen of perspiration coated his face.
“Sunday night,” I said.
“Yep. Sunday night—just dark. Said he’d give me five bucks if I’d go do that for him—see Sam Gunther and tell him. So I did.”
“And then?”
“Then what?”
“Afterwards, what did you do—where did you go?”
“I bought a quart—a fi’th—down to Augostino’s, and opened up shop and sat in the chair and tied one on. There in the chair. Opened up shop.” He put his head back and grimaced horribly and made noises in his throat which probably were supposed to be laughter. “In the morning I’d drunk two and a half bottles—and everybody was yelling out there. They found him hanging, right on that Monday morning. Lew Welch, him and Jeannie Hayes—they found him.”
“So you think—?”
He came out of the chair, lunging at me. I tried to grab him. He wheeled like an animal, dodged into the other room and dived at the bunk. He turned and he held a double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun pointed at me.
“Get out!” he yelled. “Get out of here, damn you! I told you. You didn’t come back, and that was all right. But now you come back so I had to tell you.”
I did not move. I tried to make my voice calm, but there was nervousness in it. “What have you been drinking on all this time, Herb? Where do you get your money? Do you work?”
“Work!” He said the word with bitter sarcasm. He held the gun levelly on me and made the grimace and the sickening throat-noises again. “I earned it and that’s enough. Don’t need to work. Now, get out of here.”
“Herb, you’ve got to tell me all of it.”
He lay back against the bunk, holding the gun, and something bad came into his eyes. You could tell he meant to use the gun and that he did not care—that nothing mattered to him now. It was there in his face.
“I swear it,” he said quietly. “I’ll kill you if you don’t go away.”
“All right, Herb. Tell me one thing—did you see Gunther? What did he say?”
“Said he didn’t go to the bank—couldn’t make it. Said to forget about it—it would make folks maybe think wrong.”
“And he paid you?”
He lurched to his feet, the shotgun swinging straight at my chest. I turned and went outside quickly. I half expected to get shot in the back. He rushed across the room and slammed the door. I could hear him reeling around, knocking against things. Then he shouted:
“Stay away from me! I told you—that’s all I’m going to tell you!”
He had told the truth. Walking through the thinly crusted snow, I felt old and helpless and full of calamity. So far as was known, nobody had seen Cy Harper since Saturday noon, when the bank closed. For all I knew, Gunther was telling the truth, too—perhaps he didn’t go there Sunday night. Yet why would he insist on covering it—and what was it exactly that worried Herb Spash so much? Just the not telling didn’t seem enough.
I walked on through the sawmill grounds, conscious of aches and pains and stiffness. Thinking about that, about Gunther standing above me in the night, gloating, didn’t help.
I came across the grounds, past the shadowed sheds, around the sawdust pile, and approached the coupe. Something occurred to me that I should have thought of before. It was an almost certain fact that this trouble I found myself facing wasn’t Pine Springs as a whole. It couldn’t be. There would be some strong resentment, people would perhaps dislike me—but would they go out of their way physically to make me leave the town? I didn’t think so.
I climbed into the coupé, started the engine and backed swiftly out onto the road. I wanted to talk with Noraine.
Noraine had followed me all over the country, proclaiming her love. It seemed odd that she would suddenly turn it off in favor of a man like Sam Gunther. This troubled me more than I liked to admit.
There was something in my mind just out of reach, something I did not see …
I stopped the car in front of the cottage near Mrs. White’s boarding house, not far behind the black shape of a large sedan. It was the Gunther Buick. I laid my hand on the hood and looked up toward the house. The hood was not very warm. The lights were dim through the livingroom window.
There were puddles reflecting a nearby streetlight in the front yard, and the snow was fast melting. Slush ridged the road, sparkling faintly.
I came along the wet grass and snow, my feet sucking into the earth, then paused by the front steps. A faint murmur of a man’s voice reached me.
I stepped softly up onto the porch, moved across the porch to the living-room window. I edged around the jamb and peered inside. It was like being kicked in the stomach.
They stood in the middle of the room. Noraine was wearing black lounging pajamas, her rich blonde hair rumpled on her shoulders, twisted in Sam Gunther’s meaty hands. They were kissing. Her body moved in his arms and his hands slid down across her back to a white sash tightly drawn at her waist. The fingers hooked into the sash. She pulled away from him and laughed up into his face, her hands on his shoulders.
“Would you like to come up to the house?” he said.
There was a thickness to his voice. I watched her, knowing I should leave, hating the whole sight as badly as I’d ever hated anything—yet I couldn’t move.
She shook her head, smiling at him.
“Why not?” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know.
“Sure?”
She grinned at him, put both hands up behind her hair and loosened it across her shoulders, leaning far back, and I saw the perspiration on Sam Gunther’s face.
“How long before you’ll be ready?” he said.
“It won’t take long, Sam. Where are we going?”
“Riverton?”
“All right. I’ll go in and change.”
He looked down at her, his arms still around her.
“I don’t need any help, Sam.”
“All right.” He kissed her cheek, stabbed for her throat, but she dodged, still smiling at him. He released her, started for the front door. “I’ll be right back,” he said.
I made it fast across the porch, touched the rail lightly and sailed down into the yard. I raced across the lawn to the coupé, started it, made a swift U turn and headed back into town.
I stopped off at the diner and drank a cup of coffee in silence, while Jake Weston tuned back and forth on the radio dial, now and then glancing at me. He had not spoken. My hands were shaking badly.
The sight of Noraine in G
unther’s arms, looking at him the way she had, was like knives.
“Jake?”
He turned slowly. “Yes?”
“Who sells liquor out here?”
“There’s a bar just outside town, up past Watts’.”
I remembered. I paid for the coffee, took the car out there and had two double whiskies. It was a road-house, but it was oddly empty. Two young girls and an older man talked quietly in a booth over beer. It was a dead night. I bought two fifths, and started home.
People were running out of houses, herding toward the sawmill road. I slowed at the corner and looked. A spotlight glared on a crowd of people. I stopped.
Brakes squealed faintly beside me. I turned in the seat and looked into the wide eyes of Noraine, staring at me. Then I saw Sam Gunther behind the wheel of his Buick.
“Harper—get on down there by the mill. Sheriff Luckham’s looking for you.”
Noraine continued to stare at me over the rim of the door, her lips dark and slightly pouted.
“You hear me, Harper? You get down there! They just found Herb Spash—he’s been murdered. Luckham wants to talk to you.”
EIGHT
Herb Spash had been stabbed seventeen times in the back, sides, throat, face and arms. The murder had apparently taken place in a running fight from Spash’s shack on Cat Creek, out across the thawing grounds of the mill, until he finally fell just beyond the ditch into the road. Spurts of blood colored the ground along the staggering path his feet had followed. He was sprawled on his back and the entire front of his head from hairline to chin had been smashed to a red meaty pulp, mingled with white shards of bone.
Near the ditch where the dead man lay was a pile of broken slump block. A large, jagged chunk of the block had been used to finish the poor fellow off. Spash’s right arm, curiously, was raised into the air from the elbow, the fingers formed into a claw. It was a hell of a thing to see.
“Found a shotgun!” somebody called, running up. It was a young fellow with a round red face, wearing a dark mackinaw. “Busted all to hell—found it back there by the fence. Still loaded—smashed—looka the stock!”
The stock was badly splintered.
Sheriff Luckham had been kneeling by the body talking with a slim middle-aged man in a trench-coat. I recognized the man as Dr. Lolladue, who had set up practice in Pine Springs only a year or two before I left.
“Odd thing about rigor,” the doctor was saying in a raggy voice, his mind preoccupied. “Sometimes it can fool you. Take this one, for example—he’s getting stiff already. Look at that arm, too—frozen, like. Still, there’s blood in the road here that hasn’t even coagulated—liquid, almost, there. Damn.”
Luckham nodded. He had already seen me. He turned to the young man with the shotgun. “Give me that, sonny,” he said.
He began looking at the shotgun and nodding sagely.
“Well, Harper?” Gunther said.
I looked up at him standing on the pile of block. I wanted to hit him. He stood there rocking a little on his heels, holding Noraine’s arm, forcing her to occupy the grandstand seat along with him. She had her face turned away and every now and again, she tugged at him as if trying to pull away. He kept saying, “Now, now, honey—it’s all right. Just a sec.”
Everything of what had happened the other night out in the snowy fields rushed back into my mind. I turned away and started back toward the coupé.
“Here, Harper!” Gunther said.
I kept walking. Noraine hadn’t said a word to me.
“Tom?” Gunther called.
“Wha—oh!” I heard feet pounding along toward me. Luckham was bearing down on me, almost at a run.
“Where the hell you think you’re going?”
I did not answer him.
He reached for my arm. I jerked my arm away, looking at him. He didn’t reach again. He was carrying the shotgun.
Gunther and Noraine stopped about five feet away. Noraine was watching me. Her eyes said absolutely nothing.
Over by the body, I saw Weyman Gunther, talking and gesticulating in front of Lolladue. His glasses glinted in the bright spot from the sheriff’s car.
Luckham showed a great deal of bluster. He wore no coat, only a khaki shirt, khaki pants and high-tops and the heavy black gun belt and gun.
“You and me are going down to the office for a little talk,” Luckham said.
“What about?”
“Take a little guess, Harper.”
Weyman came along and paused by his father’s side, his eyes on Noraine. He watched her with a kind of steady, deliberate concentration, his glasses glinting. Noraine was wearing a tan coat, hooked around the throat, and it gaped in the wind. Under the coat she was wearing a white sweater which appeared to be extremely tight and Weyman Gunther was concentrating on her. I saw her move, trying to pull at Sam’s arm. Sam wouldn’t budge. Weyman glanced into her eyes and grinned, then down at her flaring coat again. He edged closer to her, then still closer.
“We figure you might know something about this,” Luckham said. “That right, Harper?”
“How do you mean?”
“You know how he means,” Sam Gunther said.
“Why don’t you take your girl friend and beat it?” I said.
Noraine’s face reddened, the high color showing even in the shadows.
“Enough of that there,” Luckham said. He raised his eyebrows and the brim of his hat moved. “Did you see Herb tonight?”
“Yes. I talked with Herb.”
Luckham glanced at Gunther. Gunther nodded and poked Noraine with his elbow. Weyman continued to stare at her and she was beginning to bridle now.
Luckham said, “It’s a good thing you didn’t try to lie. I saw your car parked in there by the mill not long ago.”
“You did?”
“That’s right. And you weren’t in it—I checked. I was just cruising around.”
“Why do you talk to him like that?” Weyman snapped suddenly, his pale face turned toward me. “Throw him in jail! He killed him—you know that.”
“Quiet, Son,” Sam said.
Weyman looked at his father, his mouth tense and white.
“You were back there with Herb, Harper,” Luckham said. “There was fresh snow and your tracks went right back there.”
“There was no fresh snow,” I said. “And when I left Herb, he was still alive—drunk, but alive.”
Dr. Lolladue came up behind Gunther, poked his head over Luckham’s shoulder. “Near as I can tell—and it’s hard telling—Spash hasn’t been dead more than a half hour.”
“Later,” Luckham said.
Lolladue shrugged, hunched his shoulders and moved off.
“You’re not fool enough to think I did this?” I asked Luckham. “Are you?”
“We’ll go down to the office and talk about it.”
A tall figure called out from across the road.
“Sheriff!”
Luckham waved the shotgun and I spotted Kirk Hartmann moving toward us. His broad shoulders swung lazily as he lounged through the talkative men, women and children. He had his pipe clamped between his teeth, big hands deep in the slashed chest pockets of his jacket.
“That right, seventeen wounds?” Kirk said. “Not counting the brickbat?” He looked at me and turned his gaze toward Luckham.
“Probably more,” Luckham said. “We counted seventeen times, but when they get him on the table they’ll probably find more. Lolladue thinks so.”
Hartmann looked at me again, unsmiling. “Hello, Al,” he said. He bit down on the stem of his pipe, glanced at Noraine, then shook his head.
“We’re taking Harper down to the office,” Luckham said. “You saw his car parked in there on the mill grounds, too—didn’t you, Kirk?”
Hartmann’s face was impassive.
“Yes,” he said, “I saw it in there.” He puffed away on his pipe, watching me. Then he shook his head again, turned away and moved slowly back across the road.
The whole night went silent. There was an abrupt ceasing of talk and there was only the remote sound of the wind. Gunther and his son stood there, looking at me. I felt alone—trapped. I couldn’t understand Kirk.
Noraine was watching Sam Gunther. Gunther took her arm, turned her, and they walked away. I watched her slim legs scissoring along beside him.
Weyman was watching, too. Then his eyes turned toward his father’s back.
Deputy Cole was seated on a pile of books on the floor under the girly calendar, his face coated with a thin sheen of perspiration. Luckham closed the door. He placed the shotgun on the desk, nodded at Cole.
“What you got there?” Cole said.
“Shotgun. Kid found it by the fence over on the mill grounds.” He patted it with his hand. “Why didn’t you stick around, Cole?”
“What was there to stick around for? You sent me after him.” He looked at me. “I saw Gunther bring him down, so I cut out. I been sitting here.”
“Well, dammit,” Luckham said. “That’s no way to act.”
I heard a high keening sound from somewhere down the valley. The noise increased until it was a whine, strong and high, and I knew it was a speeding car coming from the direction of Riverton.
Luckham paused, taking his beautiful Stetson off. Cole stood up and moved quickly to the window.
“It’s that crazy woman again,” Cole said.
“Now what?” Luckham said.
“She’ll kill somebody yet,” Cole said. “Listen to that, will you?’
The noise of a highly revving engine neared, screaming in the night.
“Here she comes!”
There was a vicious splay of brilliant light on the highway. I was beside Cole, peering outside. A flash and roar like an explosion between the few buildings of the village, a blurred white low-flying object burst past in a crazed cutting of wet snow and grit. Directly in front of the sheriff’s office, whoever it was slammed the gas pedal to the floor. The car took out and lay down and positively rocketed like a wild jet. The noise of the engine banked a moment into the night, then began to fade.
