by Thomas Tryon
He put his hands in his pockets and looked up at her. Again there was the outline around her head against the sky, that same white, vibrating line that reminded him of the halo around the Angel of the Brighter Day. Only in place of a lily she held in her hand a black glove.
“Child.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I am walking, even as you.”
“But what are you doing?” he pressed her. “Why aren’t you home?”
“Should I be at home?”
“Tonight’s the dinner.”
“And there is much to do, yes. Winnie is seeing to it. And your uncle. I shall be there presently.” She made a visible effort to soften the sternness of her features as she spoke. “Douschka,” she said—and it sounded to him like a beginning—“can you remember what we used to say about secrets?”
Sure, he remembered: everyone should have a secret.
“But sometimes it is not right to keep secrets.” Her fingers brushed his hair, already darkening with the sun’s cooling. “Isn’t that so?”
“When?”
“When they hurt people. Then we must tell.”
“You mean, give it up?” His hair dropped across his eyes, obscuring her look. He held his breath; hoped she wasn’t going to ask the question.
“Niles, look at me.” He raised his head, but did not look directly at her. He had a feeling. In a minute she would ask, he felt sure.
“You have a secret. Tell it to me. Tell it to Ada,” she said kindly.
“I can’t.” He waited, head averted, letting the thatch of hair screen his eyes from her. He glanced over at the open grave, saw the casket being lowered, someone stepping forward to pluck the fallen leaf away, stooping for a handful of earth, sifting it into the hole.
“Child?”
He could feel her eyes on him still; sensed what she was getting at; in another moment she would ask. Certainly she suspected. He knew that. Hadn’t he told Holland? Over there, the mourners were leaving the cemetery, going down the roadway, out the gate.
“Niles.”
Now it was coming. He recognized the no-nonsense tone. She would choose some words and say them, and together the words would form the question.
The moon pin glinted on her collar. “Does the secret have anything to do with the baby?”
See: doesn’t know; suspects. “Yes,” he answered dutifully.
“You must tell me.” Still he refused. “Do you want Torrie to go on suffering the way she is?”
No. Certainly he didn’t. He met her eyes, and now there lay between them the two things: her question, his answer. When she asked it, would he tell? He’d have to. No. No, Holland. I won’t. I was only kidding. He felt his heart pounding, the blood singing in his ears. And the question lingered, like an unwelcome guest.
Those eyes, they seemed so old, so tired, so used up as she knelt, drew the boy into her arms. The moon pin felt cold against his cheek. He didn’t want to cry, but the tears were not to be avoided. It hurt inside his chest where his heart pounded. And hers; he could feel it, faintly, through the material of her coat. Now, he knew, her arms holding him, her hands soothing, allowing no protest, the question would come; for this she had been following him, never letting him from her sight.
And it came; softly, hardly a question at all.
He twisted, tried to free himself. Her arms held him. “Don’t ask me! I don’t know!”
“Someone knows. You must say.”
“I can’t. I gave my word!”
“Yes you can.”
“It’s a secret. I promised.”
“Promised who?”
“You know!”
“Say!”
“I promised him!”
He pulled away. A thin row of drops appeared along his cheek where the moon pin had scratched.
He took her handkerchief, walked a little way away from her, blowing his nose and looking out over the cornshocks, staring at the scarecrow, whose brittle, ragged form stirred in the lifting wind. On one shoulder, like an enormous black epaulette, perched a crow, its head cocked defiantly at him.
His eye upon the scarecrow’s face, he saw, bit by bit, the face change, become another face. A face he would not recognize. Could, but would not. A face no longer straw and string, but lichen-spotted, decayed, the flesh shriveled, eyeless sockets, lips stretched away from withered gums pulled back from bare teeth, forever grinning in an ivoried skull. Yet, whose? Whose? Wait! Oh Jesus! Now he saw: the shock of blond hair, the gable-shaped brows, the mouth smiling as though hideously pleased to be staked out there among the cornshocks, mocking him.
“Niles, he is dead. Holland is dead.” She had come up beside him, took his hand, turned his face away from That Other face. “Remember, child? On his birthday? Holland? Come, you shall admit it now. It is not a game any longer. Do you understand?”
He shook his head, not wanting to give her this thing over him, this power which, he sensed, threatened him.
“Niles—” she began, then stopped, not knowing how to begin, torn by pity and fear; then, a final time, her question, she stopping his mouth when he said the words. “No, child; do not tell me to ask Holland—”
He had become a very imp, a sprite, horrid and ill-natured looking, his face a fury of maleficence, like the face of the doll-lamp. “Yes! Holland!” he accused; if she wanted the truth! Holland had taken the baby! Had come in the night and put the pills—six of them—in her root beer, had waited till she slept, had stolen the baby, had taken it away and put the doll-lamp in its place—little changeling baby.
“No, child—”
“Yes! He hates the baby! Because it’s pretty, because we all love it! He hates it!” He ranted on, spilling out a contagion of ugliness and accusation. “I was afraid—I knew he would hurt the baby. I tried to protect her. I wanted to stop him. But I couldn’t.” He caught his breath and plunged on. “He took the baby, he killed Russell—”
She gasped, her mind reeling as the revelations poured out, one after the other, nothing, nothing any longer kept from her. Yes, Russell saw the ring, so Holland put the pitchfork in the hay. Saw the ring? She was incredulous. The ring? He told her the entire story, of Holland’s gift, of the difficulty he had procuring it, how with the aid of the rose shears—“The rose shears?” “Yes, I put them back on the nail.” And Mrs. Rowe? “No, it was an accident, the Professor was just going to scare her, honest!” Holland, Holland, Holland. Had flicked the wasp at Aunt Fan, had poisoned Russell’s rat, had done it all. And Mother too, Mother snooping in the Chautauqua desk . . . Mother down the steps.
Oh God, dear God. Niles. Niles.
Sorting out the horror, she watched him move away, his back to the scarecrow, his face passionate, guileless, thoughtful, indignant. What was to be done, her expression said. To that question she must come, sooner or later. What was to be done? She stood looking through the oak branches, thinking, the frail and feeble hands, black-gloved and swollen, hands that all her life had found some business, some concern, some task to fulfill, they now could only clutch at one another, crabbed, ineffectual, helpless.
He went to her and tugged her sleeve to bring her back. Half musing, she shook her head; took him firmly by the shoulders. “Say the words, child—say them once and for all. Let that be the beginning.”
He didn’t want to understand. “What words?”
She forced his look around, across the field to the cemetery and the family burial plot. “I want you to say the words out loud so you will remember them.” He shrank into himself and like a willful pet eluded her hands; they found him again and held him tightly.
“Say the words.”
“No.”
“You must, child. Say them. Say, ‘Holland is dead.’”
“He isn’t,” he sobbed.
“He is!”
“No! There isn’t any grave! There wasn’t any funeral! How could he be dead?”
“You were sick. You had been in bed, you were in your room
in bed. Then we found you outside the barn, you were standing looking at the cupola, screaming names up at the weathervane. Never mind what sort—we understood. You took cold; while you were sick we brought Holland’s coffin to the grave—”
“When?” Defiantly.
“In March. After your birthdays.”
He shot her a triumphant look. “You see—it’s a lie! In March the ground is still frozen—you couldn’t have buried him!
“This year there was an early thaw.” Her voice was steel. “He is there, under the ground. See his gravestone.”
His face reddened, contorted, nose and eyes wet and runny, he wrenched out the denial. “No!” He struck out at her; pain stabbed her belly, her shrunken breasts contracted further where he pounded his fists against her and cruelly twisted her fingers. Screaming, kicking, using fists and feet however he might, he could not defeat her; remorselessly she held him. Finally the words came sluicing out like water; he shouted them, loudly enough so that, over the field, in the graveyard, the sexton, digging, heard each separate one.
“He’s dead, he’s dead—Holland is dead!”
Her arms relaxed; she soothed and gentled him down, wiped his tears, held him, rocked him in her arms; Oh sweet, oh douschka, no more no more it shall be all right.
“But it was only a game, wasn’t it?” he asked softly in her ear, his moist lips brushing her skin, his earnest voice causing hers to break.
“A—game. Yes, child, it was only a game. A game for us to play, you and me—”
“And Holland.”
“And Holland,” she repeated dully; then, refusing to give him this small victory over her, she took his face between her hands and peered into his eyes. “But it is all over now, do you understand?”—her fingers gripping harder—“There must be no more playing the game. It is—dangerous, do you see? It is wrong.”
Wrong? How was it wrong? Had he done the wrong? Long in coming, her reply was desolate. “No, dearest child, I did. The wrong has been mine, all the while. I am an old woman at the end of her life, but I am not a wise one. I am a foolish woman for I could not see it. Perhaps I could, but I would not.”
“Why?”
Now her whole being opened itself up to the awful realization that flooded in on her; she felt as though she were drowning; a huge wave of remorse buffeted her frail body. Now the truth was upon her and she reeled away from it; yet turn as she might the truth remained, not to be avoided, and for this truth she must dearly pay. She clenched her hands, unmindful of the pain it caused her. Through her brain poured a hundred accusations, and she lifted her fist as though to strike herself. Who has done this thing, she bitterly asked herself; and the answer mocked her: I. I have done this thing.
He repeated his question: “Why?”
“Because I did not wish to,” she said, her voice steel again. No sooner steel than it wavered, softened. “But that is no excuse. It was wrong of me to permit it. But it broke my heart to see you sitting there by the pump, knowing what you were looking at, down in the water. It broke my heart to see you so unhappy, to think that because I loved you, I should be the cause of your unhappiness. I thought that in time you would outgrow it, do you see. Little boys grow into big boys and they leave such fancies behind, if they are fortunate, for they discover the real world then.”
“Have I discovered the real world yet?”
“Oh, douschka.” She caught her breath and, continuing, her voice was heavy and bleak. “Yes child, I see it now. Your world is very real—for you. Only—” She could not go on.
He stood without moving, waiting for her to finish her sentence, eyes wide in astonishment. He had never seen her cry before, not ever in his life, and he knew somehow that these were wondrously important moments passing here in the cornfield. She had turned away so that he should not see her tears. She stood looking along the rows of cornshocks, but instead of this she saw before her a plain, a field of sunflowers, not wilted merely, but dead, trampled, the flowerfaces gray and withered, not lifted to the sun, but bent down toward the earth, all laid to waste.
And suddenly she felt very cold.
“—only I did not know how far it had gone,” she finished, as though talking to herself, forcing her voice and body into control. “It was only because I loved you.”
Still he returned her look. “Do you love me now?”
“Of course I love you.”
“I am your beloved?” he asked with a child’s innocence, the smile of an angel; and she had to answer it.
“Yes. In a manner of speaking.”
“Then why can’t it go on being the same?”
“The same?”
“Yes. You and me and Holland?”
Holland.
She pulled him to her. There was a long silence while she gathered her thoughts, then she spoke again. She had been thinking, she said, of how his father had died. That day, last November, carrying the baskets down to the apple cellar. What did he think about all that? About the way Father had died?
Forthright and unhesitating in his answer, he replied, “Holland was standing right by the trapdoor. I think he pushed it.” There was an ease, an honesty to his words which she did not doubt. Her surmise was correct then: Holland, the real Holland, had killed his own father, had thrown down the trapdoor on top of him and actually destroyed him. Holland was his own father’s murderer. This was no figment of Niles’s imagination.
“Why?” she asked.
“He hated him.”
“Did he? Did he say this to you? Did he tell you?”
“No; not in words. But I knew.”
“How?”
“I think—I think it must have been my sixth or seventh sense. You know these things when you’re twins with someone.”
His sixth or seventh sense. She tightened her arms around him.
“But you didn’t answer my question,” he told her.
“I don’t remember—”
“I said, why can’t it go on, go on being the same?
“Oh, my dear. Niles, you must listen to me. Carefully. Will you?”
“Yes.”
“Things cannot ever be the same again. Not for any of us. Not any more. We sometimes reach a point in our lives where we can’t ever go back again, we have to go on from there. All that was before is past now. It went too far. Everything has gone too far. It must stop, do you see? Now—it—must—stop.”
“No more game?”
“No. No more game.”
She shuddered as she looked at him, and he, absently thinking of a crow walking on her grave, seemed to read something in her expression that frightened him. Not something to do with Holland, because of what he had done to Father, but to do with him, Niles.
And he knew what she was thinking.
“Where are we going?” he asked as she took his hand—this atrocious child, whom even now she loved—and crossed the furrows, back to the cemetery lawn.
Where? Where indeed. Her hand to her heart as she walked, she let her mind guide her along to the logical conclusion. Well, they would go home. They would pass through the iron gates and leave the graveyard. They would go home and have supper in the kitchen, then join the selectmen for Granddaddy’s Toast and then . . . and then . . . her mind faltered. Where would he go then?
What would be his punishment, she wondered, turning the alternatives over in her mind. What did they do to a child for such crimes? What child could commit such crimes? Where would they take him? To that barren place, that place of brick and iron bars, to be held there, like some dangerous animal?
“You’re going to send me away,” he said quietly, watching the toes of his shoes as he walked along beside her.
“Away?” she repeated, shocked that he had read her thoughts. “Why, where should you go, douschka?” With an abysmal attempt at a joke.
But he refused to answer, withdrawing then and refusing to speak of it any more, and she could tell that he knew, knew what she had been thinking, that his mind was picturing
, as hers had, the dismal building of brick, red and grimy like Rose Rock, with iron bars and heavy screens, where Grandmother Perry had gone. That place, that domicile. No. No, that was not to be thought of. She would never consider such a thing, never such an end for her beloved. “No child, you shall not be sent away.”
“All right,” he said simply, squeezing her hand, and the look on his face was gentle and trustful. They were passing along the roadway, their feet making companionable sounds as they trod the gravel. She took heart once more. She had succeeded in part—had persuaded him to say the words. Holland was dead. He had admitted that much at least: Holland was dead. If Holland was dead, then who was it that had done those dreadful things? Perhaps she could get him to face it somehow; and seeing, recognizing it, perhaps there was help at hand. Holland was dead; Niles alive. It was a beginning in any case, a first step. She would have to see how the others might follow. It would be like teaching a baby to walk.
A baby . . . the baby . . .
Pale and spent, she stopped in the roadway, faced him, and asked the question once more. “Niles, where is the baby?”
“The baby?”
“Yes. The baby of Torrie.”
“Torrie’s baby?” His face was reddening again. “I don’t know.”
“But you must, child. You must!”
“No! I don’t!”
“Then who does?” she demanded.
His answer came, not so much as an answer, but as a scream.
“Holland knows! Ask Holland!”
Fast upon his scream she seemed to hear a voice, quite clearly and distinctly, warning: Beware of mad dogs lurking for lurking, they shall bite! And biting, shall bite again!
And now, no sooner did her hand strike the child’s face than it flew to her open mouth. “Oh,” she murmured, more stricken by her act than by any words of his. She stepped back, staring in horror at her palm. It was some moments before she could compose herself, and, her limp more pronounced, force her trembling limbs to carry her along the roadway. It was no good, she could tell. He would never give it up, this incredible, this most monstrous delusion, these remains he was obsessed with. It would be with him for as long as he lived. She could see that now. And this outburst she had just witnessed, so unlike him, but so like . . . the Other . . . it was almost as though . . .
