EQMM, July 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

"Sure am, boy. Every year I speak. Give the party's humanitarian award. It's voted on by secret ballot of all the party members in town."

  "Who won it?"

  "That's something no one knows but me, boy. And I don't tell till afternoon."

  "Are you like the mayor here, Gramps?"

  "Sort of, boy,” he said with a chuckle. “I'm what you call a selectman, and since I'm the oldest of them here, I guess I have quite a lot to say about the town."

  "Are you in charge of the picnic?"

  "I'm in charge of the awards."

  "Can we get free Coke and hot dogs?"

  He chuckled at that. “We'll see, boy. We'll see."

  Grandfather didn't drive, and as a result, we were picked up for the picnic by Miss Pinkney and Miss Hazel, two old schoolteachers who drove a white Cord with a certain misplaced pride. Since they were already in front, the two of us piled in back, a bit crowded but happy. On the way to the picnic grounds we passed others going on foot, and Grandfather waved like a prince might wave.

  "What a day for a picnic!” Miss Hazel exclaimed. “Remember how it rained last year?"

  The sun was indeed bright and the weather warm, but with the contrariness of the very young I remember wishing that I'd been at the rainy picnic instead. I'd never been at a rainy picnic for the very simple reason that my parents always called them off if it rained.

  "It's a good day,” my grandfather said. “It'll bring out the voters. They hold elections in the summertime, and we'd win by a landslide every time."

  The Fourth of July was not yet two weeks past, and as we neared the old picnic grounds we could hear the belated occasional crackling of leftover fireworks being set off by the other kids. I was more than ever anxious to join them, though I did wonder vaguely what kind of kids ever have firecrackers unexploded and left over after the big day.

  We traveled down a long and dusty road to the picnic property, winding down a hillside to a sort of cove by the water where sandy bluffs rose on three sides. There was room here for some hundred people, which is the number that might be attracted by perfect weather, and already a few cars were parked in the makeshift parking area, disgorging their loads of children and adults. Miss Pinkney and Miss Hazel parked next to the big touring car that belonged to Dr. Stout, and my grandfather immediately cornered the doctor on some political subject. They stood talking for some minutes about—as I remember—the forthcoming primary election, and all the while I shifted from one foot to the other watching the other kids at play down by the water, watching the waves of the lake whitened by a brisk warming breeze that fanned through the trees and tall uncut grass of the bluffs.

  Finally, with a nod of permission from my grandfather, I took off on the run, searching out a few of the boys I'd come to know best in these weeks of my visit. I found them finally, playing in a sort of cave on the hillside. Looking back now, I realized it was probably no more than a lovers’ trysting place, but at the time it held for us all the excitement and mystery of a smuggler's den. I played there with the others for nearly an hour, until I heard my grandfather calling me from down near the speakers’ platform.

  Already as I ran back down the hill I saw that the campaign posters and patriotic bunting were in place. The picnic crowd was gradually drifting down to the platform, clutching hot dogs and bottles of soda pop and foaming mugs of beer. Over near the cars I could see the men tapping another keg of beer, and I watched as a sudden miscalculation on the part of the men sent the liquid shooting up into a fizzing fountain. “It's raining beer,” shouted one of the men, standing beneath the descending stream with his mouth open. “This must be heaven!"

  Frank Coons, the town's handyman and occasional black sheep, had cornered my grandfather and was asking him something. “Come on, how about some of your gin cough medicine? I been waitin’ all afternoon for it!"

  But my grandfather was having none of it. “None today, Frank."

  "Why not? Just a drop."

  "Have some beer instead. It's just as good.” He moved off, away from Frank, and I followed him. There were hands to be shaken, words to be spoken, and in all of it Grandfather was a past master.

  "When's your speech, Gramps?” I asked him.

  "Soon now, boy. Want a soda pop?"

  "Sure!"

  He picked a bottle of cherry-colored liquid from the red-and-white cooler and opened it for me. It tasted good after my running and playing in the hot sun of the hillside. Now Grandfather saw someone else he knew, a tall handsome man named Jim Tweller, whom I'd seen at the house on occasion. He had business dealings with my grandfather, and I understood that he owned much of the property in the town.

  "Stay close to the platform, Jim,” Grandfather was saying.

  "Don't tell me I won that foolish award!"

  "Can't say yet, Jim. Just stay close."

  I saw Miss Pinkney and Miss Hazel pass by, casting admiring glances at Jim Tweller. “Doesn't he have such a mannish smell about him!” Miss Pinkney whispered loudly. Tweller, I gathered even at that tender age, was much admired by the women of the town.

  "Come, boy,” Grandfather was saying. “Bring your soda and I'll find you a seat right up in front. You can listen to my speech."

  I saw that the mayor, a Mr. Myerton, was already on the platform, flanked by two men and a woman I didn't know. In the very center was a big microphone hooked up to an overhead loudspeaker system borrowed from the sole local radio station. Empty beer mugs stood in front of each place. My grandfather's chair was over on the end, but right now he strode to the speaker's position, between Mayor Myerton and the woman.

  "Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, speaking in his best political voice. “And children, too, of course. I see a lot of you little ones here today, and that always makes me happy. It makes me aware of the fact that another generation is on the rise, a generation that will carry on the fine principles of our party in the decades to come. As many of you know, I have devoted the years since the death of my wife almost exclusively to party activities. The party has been my life-blood, as I hope it will be the lifeblood of other, future generations. But enough of that for the moment. Mayor Myerton and Mrs. Finch of the school board will speak to you in due time about the battle that lies ahead of us this November. Right now, it's my always pleasant duty to announce the annual winner of the party's great humanitarian award, given to the man who has done the most for this community and its people. I should say the man or woman, because we've had a number of charming lady winners past years. But this year it's a man, a man who has perhaps done more than any other to develop the real estate of our town to its full potential, a man who during this past year donated—yes, I said donated—the land for our new hospital building. You all know who I mean, the winner by popular vote of this year's humanitarian award—Mr. Jim Tweller!"

  Tweller had stayed near the speakers’ stand and now he hopped up, waving to a crowd that was cheering him with some visible restraint. Young as I was, I wondered about this, wondered even as I watched Grandfather yield the honored speaker's position to Tweller and take his chair at the end of the platform. Tweller waited until the scattered cheers had played themselves out in the afternoon breeze and then fully cleared his throat. I noticed Frank Coons standing near the platform and saw Grandfather call him over. “Get a pitcher of beer for us, Frank,” he said. “Speeches make us thirsty."

  While Frank went off on his mission, Jim Tweller adjusted the wobbly microphone and began his speech of thanks and acceptance. I was just then more interested in two boys wrestling along the water's edge, tussling, kicking sand at each other. But Tweller's speech was not altogether lost on me. I remember scattered words and phrases, and even then, to me they seemed the words and phrases of a political candidate rather than simply an award winner. “. . . thank you from the bottom of my heart for this great honor . . . I realize, I think, more than anyone else the fact that our party needs a rebirth with new blood if it is to win again in November . . . loyal old horses turned out t
o pasture while the political colts run the race . . . “ I saw Mayor Myerton, a man in his sixties, flinch at these words, and I realized that the simple acceptance speech was taking a most unexpected turn.

  But now my attention was caught by the sight of Frank Coons returning with the foaming pitcher of beer. He'd been gone some minutes and I figured he'd stopped long enough to have one himself, or perhaps he'd found someone else who carried gin in a cough-medicine bottle. Anyway, he passed the pitcher up to a man at the end of the platform, the opposite end from my grandfather. I wondered if this was his revengefor being refused that drink earlier. The man on the end filled his glass with beer and then passed it on to the mayor, who did likewise. Jim Tweller interrupted his speech a moment to accept the pitcher and fill his glass, then pass it to Mrs. Finch of the school board, who was on his right. She shook her head with a temperant vigorand let it go on to the man I didn't know, sitting next to Grandfather at the end of the platform.

  Tweller had taken a drink of his beer and shook his head violently as if it were castor oil. “Got a bad barrel here,” he told the people with a laugh. “I'm going to stick to the hard stuff after this. Or else drink milk. Anyway, before I finish I want to tell you about my plans for our community. I want to tell you a little about how . . . “ He paused for another drink of the beer. “. . . about how we can push back the final remains of the Depression and surge ahead into the forties with a new prosperity, a new ve . . . agh . . . “

  Something was wrong. Tweller had suddenly stopped speaking and was gripping the microphone before him. Mayor Myerton put down his own beer and started to get up. “What's wrong, man?” he whispered too near the microphone. “Are you sick?"

  "I . . . gnugh . . . can't breathe . . . help me . . . “ Then he toppled backward, dragging the microphone with him, upsetting his glass of beer as he fell screaming and gasping to the ground.

  Somewhere behind me a woman's voicetook up the scream, and I thought it might havebeen Miss Hazel. Already Dr. Stout had appeared at the platform and was hurrying around to comfort the stricken man. As I ran forward myself I caught a funny odor in the air near the platform, near where the beer had spilled from Jim Tweller's overturned glass. It was a new smell to me, one I couldn't identify.

  Behind the platform, Dr. Stout was loosening the collar of the convulsed man as Grandfather and the mayor tried to assist him. But after a moment, the thrashing of arms and legs ceased, and the doctor straightened up. The overhead sun caught his glasses as he did so, reflecting, for an instant, a glare of brilliance. “There's nothing I can do,” he said quietly, almost sadly. “The man is dead."

  * * * *

  Suddenly I was bundled off with the other children to play where we would, while the adults moved in to form a solid ring of curiosity about the platform. The children were curious too, of course, but after a few minutes of playing many of the younger ones had forgotten the events with wonder at their newfound freedom. They ran and romped along the water's edge, setting off what few firecrackers still remained, wrestling and chasing each other up the brilliant brown dunes to some imagined summit. But all at once I was too old for their games and longed to be back with the adults, back around the body of this man whom I hadn't even known a few weeks earlier.

  Finally I did break away, and hurried back to the edges thinning now as women pulled their husbands away. I crept under the wooden crossbeams of the platform, became momentarily entangled in the wires of the loudspeaker system, and finally freed myself to creep even closer to the center of the excitement. A big man wearing a pistol on his belt, like a cowboy, had joined them now, and he appeared to be the sheriff.

  "Just tell me what happened,” he was saying. “One at a time, not all at once."

  Mayor Myerton grunted. “If you'd been at the picnic, Gene, instead of chasing around town, you'd know what happened."

  "Do you pay me to be the sheriff or to drink beer and listen to speeches?” He turned to one of the other men. “What happened, Sam?"

  Sam was the man who'd been on the end of the platform, the opposite end from Grandfather. “Hell, Gene, you know as much about it as I do. He was talkin’ and all of a sudden he just toppled over and died."

  At this point Dr. Stout interrupted. “There's no doubt in my mind that the man was poisoned. The odor of bitter almonds was very strong by the body."

  "Bitter almonds?” This from Mayor Myerton. He was wiping the sweat from his forehead, though it didn't seem that hot to me.

  Dr. Stout nodded. “I think someone put prussic acid in Tweller's beer. Prussic acid solution or maybe bitter almond water."

  "That's impossible,” the mayor insisted. “I was sitting right next to him."

  Grandfather joined in the discussion now, and I ducked low to the ground so he wouldn't see me. “Maybe the whole pitcher was poisoned. I didn't get around to drinking mine."

  But the mayor had drunk some of his without ill effects, as had the man on the end named Sam. Someone went for the pitcher of beer, now almost empty, and Dr. Stout sniffed it suspiciously. “Nothing here. But the odor was on the body, and up there where his glass spilled."

  "Maybe he killed himself,” Frank Coons suggested, and they seemed to notice him for the first time. Frank seemed to be a sort of town character, lacking the stature of the others, and an outsider within the party.

  And—I knew they were thinking it—after all, he was the one who went for the pitcher of beer in the first place.

  "Frank,” the sheriff said a little too kindly, “did you have any reason to dislike Jim Tweller?"

  "Who, me?"

  "Don't I remember hearing something a few years back about a house he sold you? A bum deal on a house he sold you?"

  Frank Coons waved his hands airily. “That was nothing, a misunderstanding. I've always liked Jim. You don't think I could have killed him, do you?"

  The sheriff named Gene said, “I think we'd all better go down to my office. Maybe I can get to the bottom of things there."

  Some of them moved off then, and I saw that the undertaker's ambulance had come for Jim Tweller's body. The undertaker discussed the details of the autopsy with the sheriff, and the two of them proceeded to lift the body onto a stretcher. At that time and that place, no one worried about taking pictures of the death scene or measuring critical distances.

  But I noticed that the woman from the school board, Mrs. Finch, pulled Grandfather back from the rest of the group. They paused just above me, and she said, “You know what he was trying to do as well as I do. He was using the acceptance of the award to launch a political campaign of his own. All this talk about rebirth and new blood meant just one thing—he was getting to the point where he was going to run against Mayor Myerton."

  "Perhaps,” my grandfather said.

  "Do you think it's possible that the mayor slipped the poison into his beer?"

  "Let me answer that with another question, Mrs. Finch. Do you think the mayor would be carrying a fatal dose of prussic acid in his pocket for such an occasion?"

  "I don't know. He was sitting next to Tweller, that's all I know."

  "So were you, though, Mrs. Finch,” my grandfather reminded her. They moved off with that, and separated, and I crawled back out to mingle with the children once more. Over by the beer barrel, the man named Sam was helping himself to a drink, and I saw a couple of others still eating their lunch. But for the most part the picnic had ended with Tweller's death. Even the weather seemed suddenly to have turned coolish, and the breeze blowing off the water had an uncomfortable chill to it. Families were folding up their chairs and loading picnic baskets into the cars, and one group of boys was helpfully ripping down the big colored banners and campaign posters. Nobody stopped them, because it was no longer a very good day for a picnic.

  * * * *

  The two remaining weeks of my visit were a blur of comings and goings and frequent phone calls at my grandfather's house. I remember the first few days after the killing, when the excitement of t
he thing was still on everybody's lips, when one hardly noticed the children of the town and we ran free as birds for hours on end. Frank Coons was jailed by the sheriff when they learned for certain that the beer had been poisoned, but after a few days of questioning they were forced to release him. No one could demonstrate just how he would have been able to poison only the beer poured into Jim Tweller's glass while leaving the mayor and the others unharmed.

  I knew that Mrs. Finch still harbored her suspicion of the mayor, and it was very possible that he suspected her as well. All of them came to Grandfather's house, and the conversations went on by the hour. The fact that no one much regretted the death of Tweller did little to pacify things in those first two weeks. The man still had his supporters outside of the political high command, all the little people of the town who'd known him not as a rising politician but only as the donor of land for a hospital. These were the people who'd voted him his humanitarian award, and these were the people who publicly mourned him now, while the top-level conferences at Grandfather's house continued long into the night.

  At the end of two weeks I departed, and Grandfather took me down to the railroad station with what seemed a genuine sadness at my going. I stood in the back of the train waving at him as we pulled out of the station, and he seemed at that moment, as always, to be a man of untried greatness. His white hair caught the afternoon sunlight as he waved, and I felt a tear of genuine feeling trickle down my cheek.

  If this had been a detective novel instead of a simple memoir of youth, I would have provided a neat and simple solution to the poisoning of Jim Tweller. But no such solution was ever forthcoming. I heard from my mother and father that the excitement died down within a few weeks and the life of the town went on as it had before. That November, the mayor and my grandfather and the other town officials were reelected.

  I saw my grandfather only briefly after that, at annual family reunions and his occasional visits to our home. When I was sixteen, he died quietly in his sleep, and we went up to the town once more. It hadn't changed much, really, and the people seemed much the same as I remembered them. In the cemetery, I stood between father and Mrs. Finch, who commented on how much I'd grown. The mayor was there, of course, and Dr. Stout, and even Miss Pinkney and Miss Hazel. I understood from the talk that Frank Coons no longer lived in town. He'd moved south shortly after the murder investigation.