Early's Fall

by Jerry Peterson

  “Jimmy,” she said, her eyes going wide, “you let them kill me.”

  “Thelma,” Grafton said, “it's only gonna make you go to sleep.”

  “Jimmy?” Her voice and her eyes pleaded with Early.

  A knee gave way, and he felt her weight increasing as she clung to him. “What the hell's going on here?”

  “Sedative. Enough to knock a horse down,” Grafton said. He wiped the needle on his sleeve before he dropped the syringe in his breast pocket. “You gonna help get her into bed or are you gonna stand there like some dumb yahoo gaping at the moon?”

  “I still want to know what the hell's going on.”

  “Put her in bed, and we'll tell you. It's damn complicated. Gladys is cut, and I got to look after her.”

  Early shook the butcher knife from Thelma's hand. He then turned her, got an arm behind her back and his other under her knees and swept her up—carried her out of the kitchen, leaving in his wake the parched smell of a coffeepot boiled dry. Early went through the front room and into the sleeping room, a room spared the coffee stench, a room where a slight perfume of lilac claimed the air. He lowered Thelma onto the bed.

  She worked at keeping her eyes open, yet they seemed not to focus. “Jimmy, why they doing this to me?”

  “Who's doing what to you?”

  “People outside. Got a hearse with them.”

  “Thel, there's no one outside,” Early said as he drew a sheet over her. He thought better of it—too warm a day, too warm an evening, gonna be too warm a night—and drew the sheet back. Early sat down on the edge of the bed. He ran his fingers through Thelma's hair, brushed it into place, taking care not to pull too hard at the snarls.

  “Jimmy,” she said, words slurring, “can't keep awake.”

  “You don't have to.”

  “. . . afraid.”

  “It's all right. I'm here.”

  “Jim . . .”

  Thelma's eyes closed. The lines in her forehead that had been trenched there by anguish softened.

  “Jimmy,” Gladys said from behind him, from the doorway.

  He turned. Her sleeve had been cut away and a bandage taped to her upper arm.

  “Jimmy, I came out to check on Thelma like I told you I would, and you're not going to believe it.”

  “I sure don't believe what I saw,” he croaked out.

  “Jimmy, I know. I found her hiding in your little pantry. When I called her out, she rushed at me with that knife, screaming I'd killed you.”

  Early shook his head. “Couldn't be.”

  “I swear it was, Jimmy, I swear it was. I ran out of your kitchen as fast as I could and next door and used their phone to call Doctor Grafton. Stayed out of the house until he came.”

  “Where's Ellis and his wife?”

  “Who?”

  “The people next door.”

  “There was nobody there. I just went in and used their phone, and waited.”

  Grafton pushed past Gladys. He hauled a kitchen chair with him and parked it beside the bed. He slumped down, the chair squeaking under his weight.

  “Anything happen like this before, Cactus, anything remotely like it that you didn't tell me?” Grafton put his fingertips on Thelma's wrist and counted the pulse.

  “Hell, I don't even know what happened this time.”

  “Gladys told you.” He caressed the pale skin of Thelma's forehead and temples. “Well, she's gonna sleep now.”

  “How long?”

  “The night. Maybe longer.” Grafton peered up at Early. “Now tell me how she's been doing.”

  “I don't know, maybe worried about the baby some. Judith's murder was getting to her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  Grafton leaned with his elbows on his knees. He stared up into Early's face. “Cactus, I doctor the body, not the mind. What we got here is way beyond me. We got three choices. You can do as my grandfather did when his sister went off her nut—hide her away in the attic and never let the world know anything.” He raised two fingers. “Second, we can bundle Thelma off to the Menninger boys over in Topeka. They know a helluva lot about the mind.”

  Early drew down on his mustache. “I've heard they demand big pay. On my salary, I can't afford that.”

  Grafton brought up a third finger. “We wait and see. Maybe it's just what the Menningers would call an episode, and it won't repeat itself.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Cactus, I don't know what to believe.”

  “Jimmy,” Gladys said. She came up beside Early and put her hand on his shoulder. “I can wait with you. I can stay the night.”

  He touched her hand. It had a warmth he had not expected. “No, Henry's going to worry as it is. You'd best get on home.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. You drive all right?”

  “She didn't hurt me that bad, and I'm sure she didn't mean to hurt me at all. You be in in the morning?”

  “I'll call and let you know.”

  Her hand went to the back of Early's neck. She stroked his hair, then left.

  “She's never been so nice to me,” Early said.

  “Gladys is a better soul than you give her credit for.”

  As if they had run out of words to share with one another, Early and Grafton went silent, a silence broken only by the squeak of a screen door's hinge, then a car's motor starting, and the whine of a transmission as a car backed around and drove out. Silence again until crickets and tree frogs filled the void with their night music.

  Grafton roused himself. He pushed up and rubbed his face, his whiskers rasping like sandpaper against the skin of his hands. “Think I'll boil us up some coffee if the pot isn't burned too bad,” he said. “You had any supper?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. I'll see what your good wife's got in the fridge and the cupboard.”

  He wandered out, leaving Early alone in the gloom. Early thought about turning on the lamp on the night table, but . . . He let his shoulders slump.

  He felt something shaking his forearm.

  “Cactus?”

  Early opened his eyes, and he massaged the heels of his hands over his brows. “Yeah?”

  “Coffee here and something to eat,” Grafton said.

  Early took the mug and the plate offered him.

  Grafton slipped a knife and fork into Early's shirt pocket. With his hands free, Grafton turned on the lamp, a Tiffany, on the night table. “Nice,” he said.

  “That was Thel's grandma's.”

  Grafton touched the glass shade. “They're not making these anymore, old friend. You'd best take care of it.” He went back to the kitchen.

  Early sucked on the coffee before he tried the main course—scrambled eggs with chopped onion, pepper, meat of some kind, and fried potatoes thrown in, and a slab of well-buttered bread that Thelma had baked before he went to Kansas City.

  Grafton returned with his own plate and coffee. “The way you're putting it down, it can't be too bad,” he said.

  Early pointed his fork at his plate. “You put cowboy round steak in this.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Baloney. My granddad always called baloney cowboy round steak. . . . Doc, didn't know you could do kitchen duty.”

  “Worked my way through college as a short-order cook. Never had much time for it since medical school. You?”

  “Fair hand. Batched for years. My momma taught me well.”

  “That's good.”

  “Why?”

  “If Thelma doesn't come back, you may be doing the cooking again. . . . Gladys told me you went to Kansas City. Learn much?”

  Early fiddled with the food remaining on his plate. “A lot about some things and not much about others.”

  “Tell me about the not much. It's probably more interesting.”

  Early scooped a forkful of scrambled—well, he didn't know what to call it—into his mouth and chewed. After he swallowed, he waved his fork at Grafton. “Met
this fella who knew Judith in Israel, well, Palestine as it was then. He said he'd heard the Arabs had sent someone to kill Judith, and he dispatched one of his men to protect her.”

  “Good bread,” Grafton said, pointing to the quarter slab he had left.

  “Thelma baked it.”

  “Figured. Probably the only thing you ever baked was biscuits.”

  “Catheads, biscuits the size of a man's fist.”

  “Ooo, that's good. . . . So whatever became of this international conspiracy?”

  “Nothing. He called his man home. He thinks the person who killed Judith is in the neighborhood.”

  “Oh?”

  “Bill.”

  Grafton, working on his coffee, stopped. He stared at Early. “You said people told you he was with them at the time, in Abilene, wasn't it?”

  “Judith's friend thinks they're lying.”

  “You gonna check it out?”

  “Guess I'll have to.”

  Early, long asleep, felt something flop over his chest. He opened an eye and peered down at it—Thelma's arm. She had rolled onto her side and thrown her arm across him. “Hon,” he said.

  Thelma mumbled.

  Early rubbed the arm. “Hon?”

  “Yes.”

  “You awake?”

  “Little. When you get home?”

  “Last night. You all right?”

  “Shouldn't I be?”

  “Can we talk?”

  Thelma turned her face to him, a world of exhaustion showing in the trenched lines. “Feel like I been hit with a board.”

  Early kicked at Grafton snoring in the kitchen chair.

  “What?” he said.

  “Thelma's awake.”

  Grafton itched around his dome of thinning hair as he yawned. He pulled a watch from his pants pocket and squinted at it. “Seven-ten. Good God, it's morning.”

  “What's he doing here?” Thelma asked.

  “You had a bad day, yesterday. He came out to help you.”

  “Don't 'member.”

  Grafton slipped his fingertips under Thelma's wrist. He counted the pulse.

  “What you doing that for?” she asked.

  “Dammit, you made me lose count.”

  “Jimmy, shhh,” Thelma said, putting a finger to his lips.

  “That's right, it's my fault.”

  “Pulse is right where it ought to be,” Grafton said. He put his hand on her forehead. “No fever.”

  “Am I going to have my baby?”

  “Not today. Not for three months if everything goes as it's supposed to.”

  “Good, 'cause I'm not ready.” Thelma yawned.

  Early's nose wrinkled. “Morning mouth. You need to brush your teeth.”

  “Bet you do, too.”

  “Thelma,” Grafton said, interrupting, “if Cactus helps you, you think you can get up and come in the kitchen? We need to talk a bit.”

  “Can try.”

  Grafton slapped at Early's leg as he made his way out of the room.

  Early slipped from under Thelma's arm. He rolled out of the bed in stockinged feet and the tans he'd worn yesterday. Early let the window shade up as he came around to the other side of the bed. There he helped Thelma turn onto her back and sit up. “Ready to put your feet on the floor?”

  “I'm not helpless.”

  “All right.” Early threw up his hands in surrender and stepped back.

  Thelma twisted around. She brought her feet out and down. “Where are my shoes?” she asked, peering around.

  Early hunkered down on all fours. He looked under the bed. “These old beaters?” he asked, raking out a pair of cracked leather shoes Thelma wore to work in the garden.

  “They're fine.” She slipped her feet into them. As she and Early came up, she fell against him, giggling. “My legs don't work too well, do they? Guess that comes from being pregnant.”

  And then Thelma groaned. She leaned on Early, clutched at his arm. “I got to go to the toilet.”

  “Slop jar or the outhouse?”

  “Jimmy, I haven't peed in a chamber pot since I was a kid.”

  “All right, let's go,” he said and helped her along, out into the brighter front room and the even brighter, sunshine-filled kitchen. Early gestured at the screen door.

  “I can guess that one,” Grafton said from the counter space where he whipped away at something in a mixing bowl.

  “Now will you really tell me why Doctor Grafton is here?” Thelma asked when she and Early were outside, stepping off the porch and onto the dew-drenched path that led to the house of easy rest. Early had painted the thing and put in a new padded seat when he and Thelma bought the place at Keats.

  “Thelma, you had a bad night.”

  “I don't remember it. Truly, Jimmy, I don't.”

  “Do you remember Gladys being here?” Early asked as he opened the door. He helped Thelma up the step and inside.

  “No,” she said.

  Early closed the door and hummed around outside, waiting. A mockingbird and its mate winged into the hackberry above his head. He watched them, marveling at the complex songs of the male, none of them his—the redwing blackbird's, the robin's, the chipping sparrow's, the wood thrush's. The male even mewed like a cat. That drew the attention of the neighbors' calico wandering through Early's backyard. The cat glanced up, its gaze searching the branches of the tree. It answered the call, turning its mew up at the end, as if asking, who are you?

  Early didn't have time to react. The two mockingbirds threw themselves from the tree. They dove toward the cat, the cat shocked and surprised. It raced away, to save itself from the gray fiends that rose, twisted, and dove again.

  And then it was over. The birds swept back up into the hackberry where the male resumed his mewing.

  “Is that cat out there?” Thelma asked through the cracks in the board wall.

  “Not anymore,” Early said. “It's a mockingbird.”

  She stepped outside, straightening her nightgown. “Where is it?”

  He pointed up, and Thelma twisted to follow the direction of his index finger. “Oh, isn't he pretty. And look, there's two of them.”

  “Man and wife.”

  “Isn't that nice?”

  Early took Thelma's hand. He placed it over his arm. “You hungry for breakfast?”

  “Unusually hungry. I can't explain it.”

  “You are eating for two.”

  “I suppose. Wouldn't it be amazing if I were eating for three? Wouldn't you like to have twins, husband?”

  That thought hadn't occurred to Early. He wasn't all certain he could handle one baby, but two? He choked on the idea, went silent.

  They walked together back to the kitchen porch, Thelma's gaze flitting from the English rose bush to her herb garden, her smiles and “oohs” suggesting to Early that she was seeing them for the first time, enjoying their perfumes. And they went on inside.

  Grafton flopped a crispy-edged pancake onto a plate. “Sit the both of you and enjoy the great doctor's corn cakes. Found some sweet corn in the fridge and threw it in the batter.”

  He handed Early an amber jar. “Cactus, you lucky fella, you managed to get hold of a jar of Homer Greene's sorghum syrup. You're gonna live rich this morning.”

  Thelma slathered her pancake with butter before she accepted the open jar from Early. She drizzled some of its contents over her pancake. “Sorghum, doesn't that smell wonderful?”

  “Doc,” Early said, “she doesn't have any memory of last night, not even Gladys.”

  “That's good.” Grafton slipped a china mug of coffee in front of Thelma and one in front of Early. “There are some things that aren't worth remembering.” He went back to the stove and poured fresh batter into the skillet, the batter's edges hissing and snapping in the hot bacon fat.

  Thelma cut a bite from her pancake. “You know, Jimmy, I really ought to hurry. I'm going to be late for school.”

  “It's Saturday.”

  “It is not,”
she said and fit the bite of pancake into her mouth.

  Grafton lifted the edge of the pancake in his skillet. He studied the underside before he worked his flipper under and turned the pancake over to fry on its second side. “Thelma, what day is it?” he asked.

  “Friday.”

  “That was yesterday.”

  “No, it wasn't.”

  “What do you remember of yesterday?”

  “Everything I had my students do in class, then coming home and finding Jimmy's note on the table saying he'd gone to Kansas City and would be home Friday.” She laid her fork aside as she turned to Early, her eyes widening. “You told me you got in last night. Have I lost a day?”

  Grafton came over. He shoveled a pancake from his skillet onto Early's plate. “It appears so.”

  “What happened?”

  “Probably nothing important.”

  “Why can't I remember yesterday? Why can't I remember Jimmy coming home?”

  “It's a mystery, Thelma,” Grafton said. “We don't really know. And if that's the only day you lose, well, that's really not so bad, is it?”

  CHAPTER 20

  * * *

  September 19—Monday Morning

  Abilene

  Early, rolling out of Chapman for Abilene, fiddled with the frequency selector on his police radio. Satisfied he'd found the Dickinson County crystal, he squeezed the transmitter button on his microphone.

  “Dickinson County Sheriff's Department, this is Riley County Sheriff James Early, come on?”

  A crackling came back through his speaker followed by the voice of someone who could sing bass in a church choir. “Who the hell's on my frequency?”

  Early pressed his transmitter button again. “James Early.”

  “Cactus, you got my crystal in your radio?”

  “Sure 'nuff, Ronnie.”

  “That's gawddamn illegal, doncha know?”

  “You gonna report me?”

  After a long silence, the Dickinson sheriff came back. “Manhattan's too far out for your signal to reach my tower. Where the hell are you?”

  “Chapman. Just topped Indian Hill. Be in your office in fifteen minutes. I need your help.”

  “The hell you say.”

  “Ronnie, you in a mood? Wife kick you out? You sleeping in the jail again?”