Handling Sin

by Malone, Michael

  “Raleigh, Raleigh, wake up, and please, oh please, tell me I’m wrong!”

  “You’re wrong.” Hayes sat up among the ruffled violets, and rubbed his eyes. “Vera is downstairs sleeping with Aura. Only in, to the best of my knowledge, the literal sense.” Yes, despite his strange hideous headache, the insurance man felt himself to be in excellent form this sunny morning. “You see, Mingo, I was a sweetheart and gave up my bed to your wife, who I gather shares your entirely irrational fear of electrical storms.”

  At this news, Sheffield expelled so huge a gust of air that Hayes actually felt a breeze. “I knew it!” the fat man happily nodded. “I just knew my best friend wouldn’t betray me.” He leaned over to crush Raleigh in a hug. “It’s true. Vera’s scared to death of lightning. I bet it’s the only thing in the world she is scared of. I guess I’m afraid she got it from me. Whew. I’m ashamed of myself, that’s for sure.”

  “Good.”

  “I ought to know God wouldn’t let something like that happen.”

  “Right,” growled Hayes. “He’s too busy starting earthquakes and famines.” He snatched his glasses off the table to look at his watch. “Mingo, it’s six thirty-threeA.M. Did you just get here? And where’s Gates?”

  “I took an early bus so I could see the sun come up. Boy, was it beautiful! Plus they gave us a danish. But, oh Raleigh.” Sheffield flopped down on the bed. “We’ve had the worst troubles. You’re lucky you were gone.”

  “That’s what you think. Where is Gates?”

  “Hiding at Sara’s house.”

  “Sara?”

  “You know, Zane. He says he loves her.”

  “I bet. Mingo, would you please move over, you’re crushing the life out of me. Well, I told you you couldn’t keep up that ridiculous charade about the movies. The Wetherells threw you out.”

  “Not exactly, but we had to leave in a hurry and didn’t even get to really say good-bye. I guess I’ll write Lady Bug a note. My mama always said, if you don’t write your bread and butter notes, pretty soon you’ll run out of bread and butter.”

  “Mingo, it’s clear you’ve outdone Emily Post.”

  “Well, I just don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings.”

  “That’s nice. Now, just excuse me one second. I have to use the facilities. Lend me your robe. Mine got wet. No, don’t ask. Then I want you to tell me what happened. There’s no sense in trying to sleep in this damn place.”

  What had happened was this, and not all of it was known to Mingo Sheffield. Yesterday morning, while Payne Wetherell was up on the balcony trying to decide if it was fair to use a ruler to fix the steps of Sacre Coeur, and while Mr. Mingo and Lady Wetherell (bourbon in hand) were in the conservatory trying to decide if they should strip the red lacquer from the linen-fold oak paneling, and while Jean Claude Claudel was in the library putting the finishing touches to a gentleman’s agreement bestowing upon Mr. Wetherell, for only $25,000, all the prerogatives of an associate producership in Spare Me the Magnolias Please, and while Crystal was in the dogshed, the butler (as Ethan preferred to be called, rather than “house servant”) was in the front hall, up on a high ladder, dropping the Venetian glass shades from the chandelier he was dusting. It was consequently Ethan who opened the door to the two men, one with a bone cane, one with a squished face, who announced brusquely that they were with the FBI, and were looking for the criminal Gates Hayes, who’d recently been seen in that neighborhood in a late-model white Cadillac.

  Despite Mrs. Wetherell’s slur on his veracity, Ethan was no liar. He told the simple truth. There was no one visiting in the house but a French filmmaker named John Claude and a friend of his, Mr. Mingo. But it was a fact that these two had arrived there in a white Cadillac, which the day before a Mr. Rallycough had driven off to Charleston, taking with him a little old blind man. Asked to describe this John Claude, Ethan had proceeded no further than “great big blue eyes and lots of black curly hair,” when the younger man with the cane insisted that this was the very criminal they were after, and that Ethan should produce him at once. “If you like wearing your ears,” added the other man. Ethan, having in his youth suffered the entirely meretricious harassment of the local police, found nothing improbable in such threats from the law. He dropped the light bulb, and started slowly up the cantilevered stairs.

  The library happened to be directly off the front hall. Gates Hayes happened to hear enough of this exchange to decide to leave business behind, slip out a side door, race through the kitchen, and bound up the rear stairs, where he hurriedly told his chère madame and Mr. Mingo that two secret agents of an East-European terrorist group, one of them named Solinsky, were at the front door disguised as FBI men, and that they were there to eradicate him for having helped Mr. Raleighkov, and that if Mrs. Wetherell loved America, she would stall these these foes of art while he, Jean Claude, her most happy admirer, and Mr. Mingo escaped. He had only time to say he would never forget her, not that of course they wouldn’t be back in June or July or possibly August to begin filming their epic on the “Wild Oaks” estate. Now, Lady Wetherell did love America. She had, moreover, grown double D damn fond of Monsieur Claudel, even to the point, it must be admitted, of visiting his slave cabin on Monday night. Accepting his kiss on the hands with a heartfelt ciao, and a big bear hug from Mr. Mingo, Lady Bug watched until her two guests had raced to the dogshed. Then, flouncing the jet-beaded fringe of her Neiman-Marcus leisure suit, she descended the front stairs as if she were playing the lead in Spare Me the Magnolias Please.

  By the time her hysterical laughter at his every word convinced Cupid Calhoun that he’d been given the slip, the North Carolineans had already tossed their possessions out of their cabins and into the jeep, which Crystal (with a wisdom beyond her years, born perhaps of her constant concourse with the animal world) declined to lend Gates, but offered to chauffeur.

  “And gollee, Raleigh, could she drive!” continued Mingo, who (having concluded his approving examination of every object in the room, and unpacked the contents of his immense suitcase) was now back on the blue-violets bed beside his friend. “So, well, those guys jumped in their Saab and chased us, but Crystal shot right into the woods, and you know how it is, Raleigh, you just can’t drive a regular car over rocks and stumps and all in the woods.”

  “Or a swamp,” agreed Hayes. According to Sheffield, if Gates were a flier, Crystal Wetherell was a charioteer worthy of an epic simile placing her in the company of Charlton Heston in Ben Hur. “Why, she knew those woods like the back of her hand, and Big Nose and Cupid crashed right into this split-rail fence! They weren’t hurt, though, ’cause I saw them jump out of the Saab and curse at us.”

  The debutante pathfinder had then driven the two men to Sara Zane’s apartment in Midway, where they’d slept on the couch, and where, bright and early, Mingo had risen to take the dawn bus to Charleston and a cab here to the Ambrose Inn, only to find his wife registered and his friend in her bed.

  “Well,” sighed Hayes. “I guess we can kiss Gates good-bye for another five years.”

  “Oh, no, he’s coming. Here.” Mingo squeezed his hands through all the pockets of his madras pants until he found a balled-up piece of elementary-school notebook paper.

  Dear Ace,

  Hang on. Don’t split. Tell Weep I need truck plates and a good body man. Keep the faith, babe. P.S. I think this is It, I mean Her, the big picket fence. Move over. It’s hit hard. Not sure I can handle it.

  G.

  “Ah,” said Hayes. “I didn’t read it, he handed it to me just like that. He was kind of in a hurry to get to Roxanne’s while it was still dark.”

  “Help yourself.” Raleigh handed over the note.

  “Where is Weeper, anyhow? You didn’t let the police get him, did you, Raleigh?”

  “Oh, no. He drops by now and again. I have no idea what he’s up to, and don’t plan to inquire. Let’s assume he knows what ‘a good body man’ means. I wonder…” Hayes mused in his peaceful ironic
style, “if it means a hired killer? We’ll probably need one of those any day now.”

  At this moment Vera, followed by Aura, rushed into the room. Leaving the floor about a yard from the bed, and flying through air like a full-breasted dove cooing “Sweetie sweetie,” Mrs. Sheffield landed upon her spouse, on whose moony face she pecked dozens of kisses. The giant fortress of a bed having withstood this aerial attack, Raleigh saw no reason not to say, “Don’t be so standoffish, Aura, please join us.”

  But before she could decide to do so, or before Mingo could comment that it was just like Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice or perhaps Cheaper by the Dozen, doors on the floor below began to be pounded upon, shaken, and in some cases, flung open. This commotion had neither the sound nor the pace of a maid, nor was it the polite tap of Mr. Vanderhost inquiring of all his guests if there were anything he could do for them at seven in the morning. But someone was starting up the stairs toward the Sheffields’ room, someone moving at a house-shaking clip.

  There is nevertheless a moment remaining to sketch in the background to what was about to occur. Although it is improbable that Pierce Jimson could ever be compelled to admit this, he was soon to owe his infamous blackmailer Raleigh Hayes a debt of gratitude. For thanks to Raleigh, Room 1 was vacant. So understandably distressed had the fairly inexperienced adulterers felt after being violently interrupted at the very moment of bliss, that their already stimulated emotions discharged themselves in a horrible argument about whether or not it had been politic of Pierce to assault rather than placate a prominent Thermopylean like Raleigh Hayes. This, the first of their affair, was such a serious argument that, without even waiting for dawn, they’d thrown their clothes into suitcases and driven in furious silence to take Lizzie to her mother’s in Columbia. Any desire to speak had been burned away by the feelings that consumed them. For his part, Pierce was enflamed with rage against Raleigh (whom he now believed to be diabolically fixated on a family vendetta to destroy the last of the Jimsons). He was enflamed with fear of exposure, with guilt about his wife, with shame about his morals, and, torturously mixed with all these, he was still enflamed, despite their fight, with Lizzie. As for Mrs. Joyner, her emotions were more concentrated. She was, to the exclusion of any other sensation, terrified of her husband, Boyd, and of his response to any public discovery of her shame. She no longer loved Boyd (if, in fact, she ever had), but he had convinced her so long ago that everything she had, including her self, “belonged” to him that she could not conceive of openly escaping his authority. She could only circumvent it. In such duplicity, she could take (she had discovered) some pride, as she took pride in Pierce Jimson’s insatiable infatuation with her. For while Lizzie Joyner did not love Pierce either…not in any heart-stopping way…he had assuredly awakened just enough of a self in her for vanity to flourish. And as vanity cannot see itself without a mirror, Mrs. Joyner had eventually been unable to resist telling her friend Fran Whitefield how much the town leader loved her, and how cleverly she’d kept their complicated maneuvers secret from Boyd, who thought her such a silly incompetent; nor resist showing Fran a few of her lover’s beautiful presents, which, sadly, she had to keep hidden in the attic crawl space. Panic now convinced Mrs. Joyner that somebody (probably Raleigh Hayes) was going to tell Boyd, and that Boyd was going to (though she couldn’t define what she meant by this) somehow eradicate her existence.

  She was right to worry. Naturally, though sworn to die first, sooner or later, Fran Whitefield had told her friend Misty Boylan who’d told her sister-in-law Patricia Ware who’d told her husband, Ned, who sooner or later (as Raleigh had predicted) took Boyd Joyner aside to console him about his wife’s having an affair with Pierce Jimson. In saying so (and in adding that it was a rotten thing to have to mention, but if Boyd didn’t make his loan payment in sixty days, Carolina Bank and Trust would be forced against its will to take his house), Ned Ware had not a malign thought in his head; he was really just trying to help.

  It had been not until last night at the Civitans’ spaghetti dinner that Ned’s candor had found an opportunity to enlighten the cuckolded Mr. Joyner, for Boyd had not been a Marine hero for nothing: he enjoyed killing things, and had spent a long weekend off shooting birds with Nemours Kettell (who’d fled to the wilderness to curse the female sex); Ned had therefore looked for Boyd in vain at the golf course and the coffee shop, and was a bit sorry he’d ever found him at the spaghetti dinner, since the volunteer judo instructor had squeezed all the blood out of the old halfback’s biceps while telling Ned that he’d better know what he was talking about, or, conversely, he’d better hope they never met again; for if Ned was calling Lizzie a whore, and if it turned out that she wasn’t, Ned should accept the fact that he was, already, dead.

  When Boyd Joyner called Columbia, Lizzie’s mother (quite puzzled) told him she hadn’t expected Lizzie until Thursday; he didn’t explain a thing; he simply hung up. And called Brenda Jimson. He said nothing to her either, except thank you for the information that her husband Pierce was in Charleston at a furniture convention. Joyner’s construction company’s pickup truck arrived at the convention hotel at 5:30A.M. It took him until 6:30 to learn that any messages for Jimson were to be sent to the Ambrose Inn. He went up (some of) the steps to the inn at 6:50. He walked into the Sheffields’ room, without bothering to knock, at 6:59, looked at Raleigh, Mingo, and Vera in the big bed, Aura standing laughing beside it, and his handsome dark face turned as black as a raisin. “BOYD!” bellowed Mingo, amazed.

  Joyner spit out his words as if he couldn’t stand the taste of them. “What is this, you creeps, hunh? A sex club? Hunh, y’all all come down here together? Don’t need to go to work, just take off and stay in places like this, hunh? Come out, you Christ-fucking motherfucker! Y’all make me sick!”

  Now, of the stunned foursome, only Raleigh had the vaguest notion of what Boyd Joyner was ranting about. And Raleigh’s notion was not at all vague. But he didn’t speak up at once. It must be clear by now that our hero balanced his moral books with fastidious care. It was imperative not to make a mistake, but to think, to evaluate, to judge, as if he were God—that is, if God were as just as Raleigh Hayes, which He manifestly was not. Hayes needed a moment to choose the correct response. Should he tell Boyd, “Try Room 1,” which would be tattle-telling, or should he tell Boyd nothing, which would be harboring the guilty? But while he was thinking, Vera rose up in the bed like a fleshy Venus in a fluffy red sea, and shouted, “You have got one HELL of a nerve, Boyd Joyner, bursting into my room and taking the Lord’s name in vain and accusing us of being in a sex club! You can just march your butt out of here!”

  “Right,” said Mingo. “All we’re doing is talking!”

  “Boyd, what on earth is wrong?” threw in Aura. But by then Raleigh had crawled over the Sheffields, pulled on Joyner’s arm and led him twisting into the hall, where they were confronted by the ever-vigilant Mr. Vanderhost. This man appeared to be immune to the normal human need for sleep, and impervious to surprise at seeing Raleigh emerge from a room not his own, with a man who (in his messy black jeans and black Orlon shirt, with his black bloodshot eyes and rumpled slicked black hair—for Boyd had been driving all night with a pint of Seagram’s to his lips, and wasn’t at his best) did not look anything like a guest of the Ambrose Inn. Not a shade of surprise was reflected in the hotelier’s apologetic voice as he said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Hayes, but we’ve had a little complaint about a… disturbance?”

  Hayes glanced at the irate faces peeking from most of the rooms up and down the hall—at all of which Joyner had pounded or kicked, including the door from which glowered (one white hair-netted head atop the other) the two elderly ladies whose rockers Raleigh had tripped over on the porch; including the door from which Mingo, Aura, and Vera were watching.

  Boyd Joyner now grabbed both of Mr. Vanderhost’s brocaded lapels in one muscled, grimy hand, and raised him to his tiptoes. Never before had Raleigh encountered such imperturbable poise. Even o
n his toes, with Joyner’s knuckles under his chin, the owner of the Ambrose Inn managed to sound polite as he explained that Mr. Jimson had checked out earlier, and as for who was with him, or not, he certainly couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say. All the tension left Joyner’s muscles. If Jimson and Lizzie weren’t here to kill, he had no idea what to do.

  Hayes led Mr. Vanderhost a few feet down the hall, and apologized. “Please excuse this disturbance. I know this man…slightly. He’s deeply distressed. I think I can take care of it. Really, my apologies.”

  Vanderhost straightened his yellow ascot. “Not at all, sir. It’s just that…” And he waved a tinged hand slowly down the line of doors as if to introduce his other guests, whom he then began to lure back into their rooms.

  Raleigh had by now reached a decision. He would attempt to save the Joyner marriage. In doing so, he might be forced to toss Pierce Jimson’s reputation to the dogs, but (1) Jimson had already done that anyhow, and (2) Jimson had tried to choke him to death for absolutely no reason, and (3) Jimson’s father, PeeWee, had been a fat-faced, false-hearted hog who’d stolen Clayton Hayes’s furniture store. Therefore, back in Room 7, Hayes sat the catatonic Joyner down in a Sheraton chair (whose needlepoint seat had been stitched by Mr. Vanderhost himself).

  “Boyd. Boyd? I don’t mean to pry. But I have the impression you think Pierce Jimson was here in this inn with Lizzie.”

  “Never mind what I think, it’s none of your crap-ass business.”

  Hayes gave this response some thought, but decided to sidestep it. “Now. Look. Does that really make any sense? I mean, look at you. And look at Pierce. He’s…well, let’s be honest, the man is very homely.” (And, God, was he ugly without his clothes!) “Yes, Pierce is downright ugly, Boyd, and he’s a real prig too. Come on. A beautiful woman like Lizzie? Let’s give her a little credit here. Now, who told you this story?”