The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery

by Alan Cook

  Everybody had made it to the top of the bales now. I heard my father telling the women to take off their stockings. My father and Uncle Jeff fired questions at me about whether I could break through the window. I assured them that I could. But could I do it fast enough? Looking back across the hayloft, I saw tongues of flame lapping up the sides of the haystack. The smoke became thicker every second.

  I thrust the pitchfork at the frame of the window several times, being careful not to do it so violently that I would fall or lose my grip on the fork. I made a break in the frame and worked on enlarging it enough for us to get through. I also knocked out all six panes of glass in the half-window to keep us from cutting ourselves.

  “That should do it,” Uncle Jeff called from below. “There isn’t time for neatness.”

  He had carried a section of the rope that hung from the rafters over to the ladder. He climbed the ladder, holding the rope between his body and the wall. I handed the pitchfork down to my father and reached my hand down to take the rope from Uncle Jeff. I had to shove the rope through the gap in the window and then keep threading it until the end of the rope that was resting on the bales in an untidy coil went through the window and dropped down toward the ground.

  It would have been easier to start threading with the end of the rope instead of somewhere in the middle, but the end was buried in the tangled coil on the bales and we didn’t have time to untangle it. By threading it from the middle, we would eventually come to the end as the rope uncoiled.

  That was the theory. In practice, when I shoved a length of the rope through the window, the weight of the rope below and above it pulled it back into the barn. Uncle Jeff saw what was happening. He stood on the ladder just below me and held a length of rope up with one hand, so that most of the downward pull was eliminated.

  This enabled me to shove a section of rope through the hole and hold it there with the pressure of my body while I let go with my hand and grabbed it again a foot lower. Then I shoved the next section through. It wasn’t fast, and it certainly wasn’t elegant, but we were making progress.

  After a number of thrusts, enough of the rope was hanging out the window so that its weight kept it from being pulled back inside. But the rope was still a long way above the ground, as I could see when I stuck my head through the hole and looked down. And below the window I saw tall weeds growing, the kind that have protective spines sticking out of the stalks.

  No time to think about that now. The smoke had reached me and was billowing out the window. I started coughing, and everybody below me was coughing, too. We had to get out of the barn, or we would be overcome by smoke inhalation.

  I sped up the process, grabbing the rope at a point below the window and shoving it through. Since I didn’t have to hold it while I grabbed the next section, I fed it through the window faster and faster.

  I was doing this without looking down, so I was surprised when the last few feet of the rope were pulled through the window by the weight of the rope outside. I looked out the window again and saw that the rope was fully extended downward but didn’t reach the ground. I couldn’t tell exactly how far above the ground it stopped, but it was definitely above the nettles.

  I reported this to Uncle Jeff, who was still standing on the ladder just below me.

  “That’s the best we can do,” he said. “We have to get out now. Gary, you go first and prepare to catch the others as they come down.”

  He said this in the voice he would use if I were going down a slide at a playground, although his face looked harried, and he was coughing while trying to hang onto the ladder. I was about to argue that the women should go first. I was especially afraid that my mother and Aunt Dorothy wouldn’t make it out. But then I realized that they would have a better chance if someone were below to help them. And I think my biggest fear was that I would be the only one to get out.

  But there wasn’t even time for Uncle Jeff and me to climb down the ladder to let somebody else go first. I wasn’t ready for what came next, but I would never be. I grabbed the rope and pulled, making sure it was anchored firmly from above. Then I climbed to the top rung of the ladder, holding on to the remains of the window frame.

  I looked down. The height now appeared dizzying, since I was about to have only a rope to keep me from falling. I wouldn’t look down again. The situation was awkward, because I had to grab the rope with both hands while making sure that I didn’t swing inward toward the fire instead of outward. I hooked a leg over the window ledge to hold myself, and then, with as tight a grip as I could manage on the rope, swung the other leg over.

  I was hanging on the rope by my hands, pushed against the side of the barn. I frantically wrapped one foot around the rope and pressed against my foot and the rope with the sole of my other foot. Now I could lower myself slowly, hand over hand, while my feet helped hold my weight. But could the others do that?

  I bumped against the side of the barn as I slid down the rope, but that was a minor irritation. And then my feet ran out of rope. I looked down. I was just above the nettles. I lowered myself using only my hands for another yard, pushed myself away from the barn with my feet, and let go of the rope. The pain as I fell through the nettles was astonishing. I cried out as I hit the ground.

  “Are you all right?”

  It was Kate’s voice, calling from above. Shaking off the pain, I stood up, getting my face, arms, and legs scratched more and more in the process, and said, “I’m okay. Wrap one leg around the rope and hold it with your other leg.”

  Kate came down the rope fast—maybe too fast. I braced myself as she dropped the last few feet, knocking me down. She screamed from the shock of the nettles tearing into her, but I wasn’t feeling the pain anymore. She rolled off me, and I stood up again.

  Archie was coming down the rope. He had taken gymnastics classes, and he had no trouble with the rope at all. He barely needed our help for the final drop, and he didn’t get scratched much because we had knocked most of the nettles that were directly under the rope out of the way.

  Tom was already halfway down the rope. He, too, didn’t need much help and landed almost gracefully. I looked up and saw that my mother was next. She was clearly terrified. Her skirt was rolled up, but that was the least of her problems. She probably hadn’t done anything like this for twenty-five years.

  She was sitting astride the windowsill. The broken pieces of the frame must be cutting into her backside. She was holding onto the rope but afraid to move. I saw Uncle Jeff’s head. He must be standing at the top of the ladder, and he was coaching her, talking calmly and soothingly. It was amazing that he could be so cool when the smoke was now pouring out of the window around them.

  He got my mother to twist around, so that both of her legs dangled out the window. She was still more or less sitting on the ledge and was clinging to the rope. Uncle Jeff talked her into positioning her legs on the rope before she left the safety of the ledge.

  Then she shoved off from the ledge. The back of her head hit the ledge as she slid past, but I don’t think she even noticed that. At first she came down slowly, her legs locked together, holding her weight. She shifted her feet to make herself slide faster, but then she slid too fast. She came shooting down the rope, which must be burning her hands and legs, screaming as she came.

  The four of us all stood underneath and received her full weight as she fell on top of us. We were all shouting and groaning. I hurt all over, but I tried to roll my mother out of the way because Aunt Dorothy was now coming down. Her descent was a little more graceful, but the ones of us who could still move tried to catch her as she dropped off the end of the rope. We ended up in a pile on the ground again.

  I looked up and saw that both Uncle Jeff and my father were on the rope. Time had run out, with the smoke pouring out of the broken window. Both of them were in relatively good shape and had been athletes in their time. We didn’t try to catch them at the bottom; they would have crushed us. Instead, we tried to get out of their wa
y. They landed with a minimum of groaning. The nettles were now gone from the drop zone.

  The men were still coughing as they tried to stand up. I looked at the others. Everybody was conscious, at least, although various ones of us had injuries, ranging from nettle scratches to rope burns to perhaps sprained ankles or worse.

  “You saved us, Gary,” my father said, between coughs.

  This was the first time I had heard him say something complimentary to me in the past few weeks. I started to bask in his approval when something else occurred to me. I pulled myself to my feet and started limping toward the side of the barn where the outside door was located.

  “Where are you going?” my father asked.

  “To get Ed,” I said. “If he’s hurt, he needs help.”

  Kate trotted along beside me. Then she passed me since I was hobbled by a variety of injuries. By the time I reached the door to the barn, she had already opened it and was inside. Not much smoke had reached the lower part of the barn yet. I could see Kate bending over Ed, who was lying on the concrete floor near the ladder.

  “He’s hurt,” she said, urgently.

  And indeed, he had blood on his head where it had apparently hit the hard floor. But his eyes were open, and he was semi-conscious.

  “We have to get you out of here, Ed,” I said to him, lifting him by the shoulders.

  Kate tried to lift his legs, but he yelled when she did. I could see that one leg looked twisted, even through his pants.

  “I think his leg is broken,” I told Kate.

  Broken leg or not, we still had to get him out of the barn, because I was afraid the ceiling above us, which also served as the floor of the hayloft, was going to collapse. Kate and I dragged Ed toward the door, even though he screamed all the way. Perhaps I even received some kind of grim satisfaction from his screams. We pulled him through the doorway and well onto the grass and away from the barn.

  Then I collapsed on the lawn. Kate knelt beside Ed, frantically telling him that everything was going to be all right, as if she were trying to convince herself. Our eyes met. Hers had a look of shock and disbelief.

  CHAPTER 32

  “When my dad called me out of the room, it was to tell me that he had arranged for my return to Atherton High School.”

  Sylvia caught her breath and stared at me. She was looking mighty pretty in a shimmery green dress that matched her green eyes, with her short blond hair waved just right. In the background, the hired band played “Stranger in Paradise” from Kismet, as the band members harmonized their voices to the words.

  Autumn leaves adorned the walls of the high school gymnasium, as if there weren’t already enough outside, and young couples glided around the dance floor with greater or lesser proficiency, the boys wearing suits and the girls wearing calf-length dresses much like Sylvia’s. But she was the prettiest one there, even including Natalie, who had her arms wrapped around Joe in apparent bliss.

  I had asked Sylvia if we could sit this one out, so that I could bring her up to date without Tom and Kate being there. They were dancing together; Tom was in heaven, and Kate looked as if she were having fun. I hoped so. She had been through a lot in the past week.

  “I told him I wanted to stay at Carter.”

  Sylvia started breathing again. It was terrible of me to do this to her. I had been experimenting with my newfound power ever since I had been declared a hero by the Buffalo Express in a front-page article. Now I had to come back down to earth.

  The first thing I had done was to figure out how I could take Sylvia to the autumn dance. My father was no longer in any position to object. I had won over other key players. Aunt Dorothy wouldn’t be reporting my misdeeds to him any longer and Dr. Graves had even asked me to take over as editor of the Carter school paper.

  Convincing Tom to take Kate to the dance was a piece of cake. I thought the hardest part would be to convince Kate that I wasn’t standing her up. It turned out that what upset her most was the fear that everybody would turn against her because of what Ed had done. I got Kate and Tom talking on the phone. Tom’s obvious liking for her helped put her world back together.

  Barney said he could find another date, which left Sylvia free to go with me. In fact, at this very moment, Barney was dancing with Ruth Allen, the girl he had brought. Maybe there was something to her other than her body. After all, Barney was an intellectual. But then, he had been hot for Natalie, too. Even intellectuals had their urges.

  I picked up Sylvia and Kate, in that order. Sylvia’s parents congratulated me for being a hero. Kate’s parents were strangely absent when I called for her. We all drove to Atherton to collect Tom. I introduced Sylvia to my parents while we were there. They were very cordial to her. My father turned on his politician’s campaign personality with her. And then he took me aside.

  I related to Sylvia what he had said. “He said he had talked to the Atherton principal who would accept me back. Even the mother of the girl I libeled agreed to drop any plans for a lawsuit.”

  “So why aren’t you going? After all, you’ve only been here a month.”

  “For a minute I considered it. I would be returning as the conquering hero. But then I thought it was more likely that I would be returning as the prodigal son. There seemed to be a hint of condescension in what my father was doing, as if he were saying, ‘You done wrong, but you have atoned for it, and we forgive you.’ Sylvia, I’m not looking for forgiveness.”

  Sylvia took my hand and said, “Now I know why I like you, Gary.”

  “The fact that I would have to be separated from you entered into my thinking, too.”

  “I’m sure it did.” Sylvia said that with a lilt. She was her old playful self again.

  “He mentioned the benefits of living at home. But I think I’ve outgrown home, at least as a permanent residence.”

  “It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”

  “Well, maybe summers.”

  The music stopped, and Tom and Kate returned, hand in hand, to the chairs in our little group. Kate looked delectable in a red dress that matched her hair. She had successfully covered many of the scars on her face and arms from the scratches of the nettles, with makeup, something I had been much less successful at. Girls are so much better at those things than boys. But perhaps the scratches had enhanced my reputation at Carter during the past week. I certainly didn’t have a low profile anymore.

  Tom was handsome in a dark suit, white shirt, and red tie. He hadn’t suffered any damage that was noticeable and in fact, had probably come out of the fire in better shape than anybody else, with the possible exception of Archie. My mother had suffered rope burns on her hands and sprained her ankle. Aunt Dorothy had hurt her knee and was hobbling around with a cane. Both my father and Uncle Jeff had been treated for smoke inhalation and been given oxygen by the volunteer firemen, who couldn’t do anything to save the barn.

  The barn was a total loss. It had burned down to the concrete foundation. My father and Aunt Dorothy didn’t seem to be as concerned about that as they could be. Perhaps because they were insured, but more likely because we had all gotten out safely.

  “Good band,” Tom said, enthusiastically. “Kate, would you like something to drink?”

  She answered in the affirmative, and Tom set off to the refreshment table. The music started again. This time the band played “The Tennessee Waltz.”

  “Gary, you haven’t danced with Kate yet,” Sylvia said. “Now is your chance.”

  I wasn’t sure about leaving Sylvia alone, but her look told me this was my duty. Although my waltzing was not major league, and it was made worse by my sore hip, I escorted Kate out onto the floor and did my best. At least the intricacies of the waltz would keep us at a respectable distance from each other. As I looked at her, I realized for the first time that both she and Sylvia had green eyes. They were the only green-eyed girls I had ever known.

  After a short silence, I said, “When is Ed getting out of the h
ospital?” We hadn’t talked about Ed in the car, trying to focus on happier things.

  “He’ll be out next week,” Kate said. “His skull fracture is mending well and so is his leg. And then…what’s going to happen to him, Gary?”

  I saw two tears rolling down her cheeks. I wished I hadn’t said anything about Ed. But I wasn’t going to lie to her.

  “Well, he has some serious charges against him. Murder and attempted murder.” Not to mention false imprisonment and destruction of property. “But the murder charge won’t be first degree. And he’s a minor, so he’s treated differently than an adult. If he…has learned his lesson, I suspect that he will be able to live a normal life someday. But he won’t be returning to Carter.”

  Ed had confessed to pushing Ralph off the balcony, because Ralph was teasing him about the necklace. They had met after the assembly for some reason that wasn’t clear. The subject of the map had come up. Ralph had the map but wouldn’t show it to Ed. They argued about it, and Ralph did his handstand trick. It was his undoing. Ed went down to the main floor of the auditorium and took the map off his body.

  “I know. They’re going to send him to reform school or someplace like that. But first they’re going to give him a psychiatric evaluation. Do you think they might send him to the loony bin?”

  I couldn’t answer that. I held Kate a little closer.

  “I’ve seen him in the hospital,” Kate continued, “and he seems very repentant. I think he’s learned his lesson.”

  “I’m sure he has.” I hoped this was true.

  “Where do you think he went wrong? Do you think he was corrupted by reading those magazines?”

  “Magazines?”

  “You know, the nudist magazines.”

  “Uh, no, I think they’re basically harmless.”

  I didn’t mention that I had been struggling not to be corrupted by the magazine I had purloined from Ed. I was glad when the dance ended. Kate excused herself to go to the “powder” room and fix her makeup. She declined an invitation from Sylvia to go with her.