Dead in D Minor

by David Crossman

  Albert was reminded of a sign on the door at Rudy’s restaurant. “No shirt, no shoes, no service,” he said aloud.

  “Say what?”

  “Nothing.”

  The man’s hair had been close-cut until recently. Now he was letting it grow. His face was ruddy. He spent a lot of time outside. His huge hands were rough, but their motion was graceful. Albert could discern this much, and no more. What did those traits make him. Boxer? Ballet dancer? Who knew?

  “The ground gave way, did it?” said Trelawney, returning from his thoughts.

  Albert said that it had.

  “Well, take care,” Trelawney replied. “That'd be a nasty fall.”

  “Thank you,” said Albert. Trelawney had started walking; Albert jogged along to catch up. He wanted to know more about this man whose appearance told so little. “I've never heard a name like that,” he said.

  “Which one?” said Trelawney with a smile.

  “Either,” Albert replied. He was taking one and a half steps to each of Trelawney's.

  “Barbados.”

  “Barbados,” Albert echoed.

  “That's what they say.”

  “10 degrees four minutes north, sixty-two degrees twelve minutes east,” said Albert. “I've never known anyone from Barbados.” Of course, the same could be said of almost anyone from almost anywhere, but that would have spoiled the conversation.

  “I'm not from Barbados,” said Trelawney. “I'm from right here in Tryon.”

  Albert stopped walking. His feet refused to function while his head was confused. Trelawney turned in his tracks and walked backward for a few steps. “My father was from Barbados,” he said. “That's where the name came from. I was born here.” He turned around.

  “Oh,” said Albert. He didn’t know where he was born. He’d never thought to ask. Probably on the farm in Maine; or maybe the hospital in Sanford.

  How did people discover things like that? Had Jesus – the only person of whose birth Albert had a vague awareness – gone through life telling everyone he was born in a manger?

  Trelawney was far ahead, just rounding the corner. Albert stood and watched as his long legs carried him out of sight. “Tanjore,” he said to himself. There was something musical about the name. “Tanjore,” he repeated a few times, accenting an alternate syllable each time.

  There wasn't any hurry. Albert went back to his roost, lit another cigarette, and sat down just in time to see Marchant DuShane come out of the house. Matt Harvey led him to the patrol car and put him in the back seat. They were talking, but Albert couldn't make out the words. The other policeman got in beside him. The two from the rear of the house got in the other car, and they all drove away.

  Doors and windows opened in their wake.

  Tanjore Trelawney emerged from the woods at the end of the sidewalk half a block up the hill from DuShane's. Albert watched him as he walked. Even from this distance he looked tall. He was walking leisurely, studying the houses as he past them: DuShane's, Miz Grandy's, then he stopped in front of Judge Antrim's house and looked at it for a long time. Maybe Heather was in the front yard. That would explain it. Men liked to look at women like Heather. It was why they painted nudes and pretended to be artists.

  Albert found it painful. Women reminded him of Miss Bjork. At least the pain let him know he was alive. He hadn't been so much of his life.

  Finally Trelawney moved on a few steps, stopped, looked once more at the house then, hanging his head, walked away.

  “Here he comes now,” Sarah whispered sharply. She and Alice were sitting on the porch. Alice was peeling potatoes. Sarah was beating a mixture in a bowl with something that looked like a knot of coat hangers. Whatever was in the bowl, it got beat harder as Albert came up the walk.

  “You're an early riser, Professor,” she said, with a wink at Alice. “I've saved some breakfast for you. Not much, mind, just oatmeal and muffins. Help yourself to some coffee, it's in on the side table.”

  Albert went in and helped himself.

  “We've had a little excitement while you were gone,” Sarah called through the screen door.

  There was the sound of spilled sugar and milk as Albert made his coffee. He came back and stood by the door.

  “I know,” he said. He sipped his coffee. Not enough sugar. He went back to the dining room, tossed in a few more spoonfuls and returned to the door.

  “Land sakes,” Alice exclaimed, “I know word travels fast in a small town, but . . . “

  “I was up on the hill – walking,” said Albert with a tilt of the head in that general direction. “I saw the police. I saw when they came to get him.”

  “What do you suppose they took him for?” Sarah asked. She stopped beating for a moment, squinting at Albert through the screen.

  “I don't know,” he said. Truer words were never spoken, especially if broadly applied. People took Albert for an idiot, he suspected that and accepted it. They probably weren't far wrong. Who knew what they took Marchant DuShane for?

  “Well,” said Alice, “I expect we'll know in good time. Cynthia will have the whole story when she comes home.”

  Sarah returned to her beating. “And then some,” she said.

  “Well, you didn't happen to see that derelict, did you Professor?” said Alice. She gently placed a perfectly peeled potato in a bowl and began on another.

  “Derelict?”

  “I was sitting up in my room reading myGuidepost – this was early on, not long after seven – “

  “Just after all the excitement next door,” Sarah reminded.

  “That's correct,” Alice agreed. “Sarah was in the kitchen, and the gentlemen had returned to their breakfast. Anyway, I happened to glance out the window and saw this fellow walking along the sidewalk toward town.”

  Alice spoke very slowly and clearly and kept a tight reign on her consonants. “He seemed to take a keen interest in the house.” She turned a serious expression toward Sarah. “He was staring.”

  “Oh, Piffle,” said Sarah. “What's there to stare at here?”

  “There's Cynthia,” Alice suggested.

  “Well, she's at work. Everybody knows that.” Sarah leaned toward the door and spoke to Albert in a loud aside. “Besides, that's taking one's life in one's hands. Alice has a hyperactive imagination gland, Professor.”

  Albert had no such gland; probably a birth defect. It would explain a lot.

  “You mean a man?” Albert hazarded. The only time he'd heard the word 'derelict' was in connection with the ships rotting in the Edgecomb River in Wiscasset, Maine. There had been no ships on Croft Street that morning.

  “Yes, a tall man with dark hair . . . “

  “Trelawney,” said Albert.

  The coat hangers stopped beating. The peeler stopped peeling. The women looked at Albert with their mouths open. He was afraid they thought he'd said something profane. “That's his name,” he added. “I met him on the hill.”

  “Tanjore Trelawney,” whispered Sarah. She looked at Alice.

  “Has it been seven years already?” said Alice. She looked at Sarah.

  “Good thing the Judge is already dead,” said Sarah.

  The screen seemed to be sifting all the sense out of their words. Albert came out onto the porch. “What does Trelawney have to do with the Judge?”

  “Well, it's a long story,” said Sarah, she began stirring again absent-mindedly. “Tanjore was a wild young man.”

  “Mischievous,” Alice appended. “Always in trouble . . . “

  “In and out of jail,” said Sarah. It amazed Albert how the women could weave their sentences into one another, one picking up where the other left off, and never lose the meaning. He wondered if their brains were somehow telepathically connected. You never knew with women. So much about them was so – strange; just as lumpy inside as out.

  “He tied the library door shut one night,” said Alice shyly. “Mr. Cuthbertson and I were trapped inside for nearly an hour.”

  �
�Boney Cuthbertson was a big noise in the Ku Klux Klan at the time, Professor,” Sarah explained.

  Alice brushed the hem of her dress. “It was not funny,” she said.

  Tanjore had struck Albert as thoughtful. His eyes, if not exactly welcoming, were not unkind. “It was a long time ago?”

  “Seven years,” said Sarah. The beater in her hand waded aimlessly through the mixture at the deep end of the bowl. “I’m surprised they ever let him out. I'd almost forgotten him.”

  “Not I,” said Alice, clearing her throat in a ladylike fashion. “Not I.”

  “Well, I understand,” said Sarah, who probably did. “But I must say I'm surprised he had the temerity to come back here.”

  “Temerity?” said Albert.

  “Boldness, Professor,” said Alice. Words were, after all, her stock-in-trade. “Foolish boldness.”

  “He's foolish to come back here,” Albert synopsized. “Why? He was born here.”

  Sarah began to stir again on purpose. The beater, tinking against the bowl at regular intervals, reminded Albert of train wheels on a railroad track. “The town was well rid of him, if you must know,” she said all at once, battling back a recent sermon in which Pastor Henry admonished his flock not to speak ill of others.

  “'The wicked delight in doing wrong and rejoice in the perverseness of evil,'“ she added.

  That was from a different sermon, but it made her feel better.

  “'Their paths are crooked and they are devious in their ways,”' Alice said in conclusion. “Proverbs 2:14 and 15.” She leaned toward Albert. “A paraphrase, from theNew American StandardI'm afraid,” she apologized demurely. “The print’s so small in myKing James I can’t read it anymore.”

  Albert was wondering whether he should wonder who new Americans were and what they had to do with King James, whoever he was.

  “All of which applies, without exception, to the gentleman in question,” said Sarah. “I use the term loosely. He threatened to kill Judge Antrim – right there in the courtroom – after the Judge delivered the verdict.”

  “Sent shivers up my spine,” said Alice.

  Albert was curious. “You were there?”

  “I served as court reporter whenever Geneva was on vacation.”

  “She was often on 'vacation',” said Sarah, with something unspoken about the eyes.

  “Well, we mustn't speak ill of the dead,” said Alice, carefully placing another perfectly peeled potato in the bowl.

  “She’s not dead,” Sarah corrected. “Last I heard she was in Milwaukee.”

  Alice centered her big eyes in the fish bowls of her glasses and looked at Sarah as if to say, ‘need I say more?’

  It was Sarah's turn to lean toward Albert and speak in low tones everyone could hear. “Geneva was often incapacitated by her tippling, Professor.”

  Tippling? Albert asked with his eyebrows. He was sure he'd never had a shot for that.

  “But if anyone knows anything about this town, it’s her,” Alice conceded. “Or Rupert Runyon.”

  Albert went in for more coffee but froze between the fourth and fifth sugar when his eyes fell on the coffee table. There, once again, was his picture staring back at him, this time from an album cover.

  Chapter Seven

  Albert's head spun. The spoon fell from his hand and, as he reached out to keep it from falling off the table, he knocked the table over with a crash. Sarah and Alice appeared before he could collect himself. They hadn't dropped their bowls. The door hadn't slammed. He hadn't heard them running. But there they were. Domestic specters.

  Sarah looked at Albert, then at the mess then, with widening eyes, at the coffee table. “Oh dear,” she said. She nudged Alice with her elbow and pointed at the album cover.

  “Oh dear,” Alice said unanimously. The emotion was carried. She started toward the table. Her first impulse was to pick up the album and put it in her apron. “Oh dear,” she said again.

  It was too late for that. Albert was already halfway up the stairs on his way to his room. A moment later they heard the door slam. Sarah and Alice bounced looks of self-recrimination off one another. Alice was the first to speak. “Well there,” she said. “Now I've done it.” So profound was her distraction that when one hand went to her cheek, the other couldn’t balance the bowl of potatoes, which tumbled to the floor one by one and rolled around like the clean-shaven heads of French aristocrats.

  “Don’t be silly, Alice,” said Sarah. “We didn’t do anything.” Innocence by association. “It was the men. They should never have left it there.”

  Upon reflection, Alice approved of this perspective.

  Albert didn’t know what to do. If he had a suitcase he could pack. But he didn’t even have the little paper bag for his underwear anymore. The only bag he did have was full of cigarettes . . . no room for underwear. And there were all these new clothes. He couldn’t wear them all at once. It was too hot.

  He walked in semi-circles around his bed, troubling his hair with one hand and flicking the space between the first and second fingers of the other with his thumb as if there was a cigarette there. Now and then he adjusted the glasses on his nose, little troubled by the fact that he’d taken them off and put them on the dresser when he came into the room, preparatory to not packing.

  It was several minutes before he realized his brain had begun to orchestrate his pacing. There was an airy little flute decrescendo threaded along the upper reaches of a nice, lacy wash of melody punctuated by a marching beat. Odd. Interesting.

  Of all times for his paramour to return, and with stories to tell of her wanderings, apparently. No time. Not now.

  He sat on the bed. He wanted to think, to come up with some kind of idea on purpose. Dump-dump-dump-dump tweedle-eelde-edop. Stop! No music! Action was needed! Steps had to be taken. Something positive had to be done. He was reminding himself of a political speech. “Ask not what your country can do for you . . . “ all of a sudden the music had words. Albert didn’t do lyrics! “Four score and – some-odd years ago . . . “

  “Professor.”

  The word was barely a whisper outside the door, but it threw rumble strips in the path of Albert’s stream of semi-consciousness and brought the music to an abrupt halt, spilling all over itself.

  The door opened slowly. “May I come in?” said Sarah, coming in. What could he do? It was her house. He stood when she entered the room. Disaster was no excuse for lack of manners. Just as he sat back down, Alice came in on Sarah’s apron strings. He stood up again, squinting through the glasses that weren’t there.

  “Professor,” said Sarah. Her hands were knotted in her apron. Through blurry eyes, Albert was reminded of a very little girl he’d seen once at a piano recital. “Professor,” she said again. She wanted to say something else. “May I call you – “

  “Professor,” said Albert. “Professor is fine.”

  “Professor,” said Sarah. “Yes,” she added. Her attitude toward him had changed. She was bobbing at him, like the people with flowers who waited in line on the way to the limousine after a concert. “I'm afraid the men were – they were watching the news.”

  That's where they went wrong. Life would be so much more pleasant if people just stopped watching the news.

  “I went to Woolworth's,” said a man’s voice from the hall. Mr. Carmody followed it into the room, and behind him was the Commander. They’d recently returned from their ritual breakfast at Rudy Tatum’s and were enveloped in an aura of bacon.

  Albert had never had this much company before, and hoped he never would again. The cigarettes plagued him. He knew some people were particularly sensitive to cigarette smoke – were they equally sensitive to unlit cigarettes? If someone smelled them, an investigation would ensue. His fingerprints would be discovered all over them. Terrible things. Ten little Judases marking your trail, waiting to betray you at any moment.

  He put his hands in his pockets.

  “We wanted to make sure,” said the Commande
r, apologetically.

  Alice held the album in her hands. “It's a lovely likeness,” she said in consolation.

  “It’s true, isn’t it?” said Carmody. “You’re really – you?” He took the album from Alice and compared it to Albert. A little earlier he’d had no doubt. Now, though, with his glasses off . . .

  Albert didn’t sense that he could finesse his way out of the situation. And, had he sensed it, he wouldn’t have known how. As far as he knew, he was cornered. He nodded.

  “You came here to get away from all that business didn’t you?” the Commander hazarded. Albert hung his head. “And now we’ve found you out,” he added sadly. “I’m sorry.”

  Albert shrugged. In the last few minutes, he’d run the gamut of his physiological expressions. He glanced at the closet and shrugged again. They didn’t know the worst of it. The large lady. The Lie. Bob. The cigarettes.

  At this uncomfortable juncture, Cindy appeared at the door. “What’s everybody doing?”

  “What on earth are you doing home at this hour?” Sarah asked. “Maylene’s not sick, is she?”

  “No, she’s fine,” said Cindy as the teeming masses parted to let her in. Maylene followed, smiling benignly at everything in general and Albert in particular. “Mrs. Girelli’s the one sick this time – had to send all the kids home. She called me at work. What’s going on here, anyway?” The words weren’t out of her mouth before her eyes fell on the LP in Carmody’s hand. “Oh,” she said. She looked at Albert. “You weren’t s’posed to know we knew.”

  “Right,” said Alice. “That lasted about as long as a prom date’s promise.”

  Albert sat down again. He was surrounded. He raised his eyes to his captors. “I wish you didn’t.”

  “Well, we’re not going to tell anybody,” said Cindy. “If that’s what you’re worried about. We all decided.”

  That was surely part of it. But there was the other thing. The change in the way they people treated him when they found out who he was. All of a sudden, he wasn’t just a person anymore. He was a thing. That’s why he never liked being around people. One of the reasons, anyway. He could think of others. “Thank you,” he said softly.