Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 33, No. 1, January, 1988

Deuteronomy 32:35 by Lawrence Doorley

When word reached Ainsley Yaugher Means, town banker of Battle Grove — population 3875 — county seat of Walnut County, West Virginia, that Crazy Bill Grapeseed had died in a squatter’s cabin on state land up on Elder’s Knob, Banker Means heaved a mammoth sigh of relief (everything about Banker Means was mammoth, as shall be shown) and said to himself, “Well, that’s that. Thank God I’m finally rid of that crazy old coot.”

So it seemed, for what further harm could a poor old shrunken seventy-year-old dead man possibly do? Obviously not much, but then there was a Higher Authority to consider.

As a self-promoted pillar of the community, Banker Means was very active in community affairs and seldom missed an opportunity to attend weddings, family reunions, church suppers, and funerals, especially funerals. His funeral attendance was close to ninety percent of all such affairs. And he had actually become, over the years, the county’s most sought-after pallbearer, bereaved folks taking a peculiar pride in sending their dearly beloved off into the Hereafter with the pompous assistance of the most prominent personage in that neck of the woods, a rapacious individual who had gotten filthy rich by foreclosing on barely overdue mortgages, by charging interest a fraction of a point from blatant usury, by assiduously procuring valuable coal and timber acreage for little more than the miserably low back taxes.

It got so that folks who had sent their Dear Departed to the Great Beyond with Banker Means, an imposing figure, massive and jowly, over six feet, at least two hundred and seventy-five pounds, manning the left front of the casket (usually little more than a pine box) actually felt superior to those families who for one reason or another had buried a family member without Banker Means’ adding “jest the right smart tech to the lastin’,” as they say up the hollow (“holler” there).

And perhaps they had a point, for funerals are important affairs in that part of West Virginia and Banker Means, attired in an expensively tailored black suit, white silk shirt, black derby, and long dark overcoat, spurious sympathy oozing from every clean-shaved pinkish pore, did indeed give a distinct air of importance to the melancholy proceedings which was transferred to the poor unfortunate in the casket, however ordinary, unimportant, even pathetic, he or she might have been in life.

Although poor Crazy Bill had a whole slew of first, second, and third cousins and nieces and nephews, they were all “as poor as Job’s turkey,” so the county authorities told Willard Gravely, the undertaker, to provide Bill with a cheap box and lay the poor fellow to final rest in Potter’s Field (“And they took counsel, and brought with them to the potter’s field, to bury strangers in.” Matt. 27:7), where in times past indigents from the now closed county home were buried.

Willard, a jovial little round pumpkin with twinkling blue eyes and a shiny bald pate, rounded up five of Bill’s cousins to act as pallbearers and then, chortling inwardly, he phoned Banker Means and inquired if he planned to take part, as per custom, in the obsequies for his long-time adversary, the late William Grapeseed.

“Derned if he didn’t fool me,” Willard told the Sons of the Mountaineers, an informal group who got together every Tuesday at noon for lunch at the Azalea Restaurant behind the courthouse.

“Not only did he say, ‘You’re damn right I’ll be a pallbearer for Bill,’ but he told me to see that Bill was given the semi-deluxe, that’s our medium-grade funeral, and he’d pay fer it. How about that?”

“Remorse, pure and simple remorse,” sneered Ackley Hootley, who, like most of the others, had a low opinion of Sneaky Meany. “It’s his conscience bothering him fer what he did to Bill. That’s what it is.”

“Now that you mention it,” said the young pharmacist at Bailey’s Drugstore — he had only been in town for five or six years — “just what was this so-called feud between Grapeseed and Means all about? What started it all?”

Ackley said that it had begun back in the Depression when Ainsley’s father, who had started the bank around 1900, had cozened Bill’s illiterate father into signing away coal and timber rights to one hundred acres of land for twenty-five cents an acre.

Nope, that wasn’t it, insisted Emmett Pollard, clerk of courts.

“My daddy knew all about it,” said Emmett. “He and Bill’s pa were close. Well, back in the Depression about the only two ways to make a little money was bootleggin’ an’ sanging.”

“Sanging?” inquired the young pharmacist. “That’s a new one on me.”

“Shouldn’t be,” said Emmett, “you being familiar with potions and elixirs. Anyways ‘sang’ is a Southern Appalachian... ah... ah...”

“Designation,” suggested Attorney Elias Scattergood, an oldtimer, held in high esteem by one and all, a kind, honest, decent lawyer.

“Yes, designation, thank you, Elias,” said Emmett. “As us oldtimers well know, the word ‘sang’ is a designation for ginseng, a plant of the wild that is to this day held in very high esteem by the Chinese as an aphrodisiac.”

He was interrupted by a half dozen titters and at least two full-throated guffaws.

“Now, fellows, let’s keep it clean,” he told them, a sheepish grin on his weathered face. “Remember we have a young waitress in our midst. Anyway, to get on with what I was saying, back then, this is around 1932, when Bill was about twenty and eggs were selling for twelve cents a dozen, coffee three pounds for a dollar, bread a dime, prices like that, hard to believe nowadays, anyway, even then sang was selling for two to three dollars a pound, big money. ’Course today it goes for forty, fifty dollars, imagine. Anyway Bill was great for the woods and word got around that he had found a big patch of sang somewhere around Elder’s Knob and he was curing it, they hang it from rafters, in a shack where he was living. He had left home for some reason... up Dismal Hollow... well, this is taking longer than I expected. To make it short, that sneaky kid Ainsley, couldn’t have been more than ten years old, just hated (time proved that, didn’t it) to see anyone else get hold of a little money. He hired some poor old drunken ridge-runner, I forget his name, to steal Bill’s sang... that’s the story I heard.”

“I heard that story, too, Emmett,” said Elias Scattergood. “But I think some of us have another version of what started the feud, don’t we, Oswald?”

“Yes, we do,” agreed Oswald Easterham, retired postmaster. “Like the fellow says, ‘Shar say lee feminne.’ ” No one laughed at Oswald’s pronunciation, not sure it was wrong.

He continued.

“The way I heard it, somewhere around 1942, 1943, about a year after poor old Bill lost his leg when a tree fell on him when he was working at a lumber camp... well, to back up... there were eighteen, nineteen, maybe twenty in the Grapeseeds, that poor woman... none of them what folks would call remarkable looking, just ordinary... except for... for Junie...”

Oswald stopped; an odd hush fell over the dining room. Now what gives, thought the young pharmacist.

“Ahem,” went Oswald, clearing his throat. “Ahem” again, then, “Ah, she was the last of the... she was number nineteen or twenty, doesn’t matter now which... Oh, she was... well, once in a blue moon there comes along, among hollow families, for some unexplainable reason, a real, genuine beauty. Junie was one of those. Slender as an autumn daisy... with hair like corn-silk... shiny... big blue eyes... lovely face... and she always smelled like... like springtime in April... you remember her, don’t you, Elias?”

“If you had me on the witness stand right now, Oswald, I’d have to answer that I... I... well, who could forget Junie?” And it was noted by five or six of the fellows that Elias’s usually strong, firm, resonant voice seemed to quiver just a bit.

“I enlisted that year,” went on Elias, a kind of dreamy expression on his handsome face, “and when I came back home on furlough, I made haste to hurry down to Bailey’s for one of those double-decker chocolate walnut sundaes. Junie was behind the soda fountain that summer... well, go ahead, Oswald, before I say something foolish.”

“Hey, Elias,” said Oswald, “you weren’t the only one. There’s at least eight or ten old bast... oldtimers in this room who were crazy about that... that... oh, she was something... but that was long ago... that brings up Ainsley Means.”

“Boooooooooooo,” came a spontaneous burst. “Booooooo.”

“Exactly,” said Oswald. “Yep, exactly. Anyway old J.P., Ainsley’s father, was head of the county draft board, and he finagled a deferment for Ainsley. Ainsley had the world by the tail. Had a white Chrysler convertible and all the girls in the county, others his age off to the war. Well, Junie suddenly disappeared from Bailey’s, and though old man Bailey, a kind soul, never said a word about why she left, folks soon learned that the dear, sweet, beautiful girl — she weren’t more than seventeen — had been put in a family way and... died in Beckley while a doc was per, forming an abortion...”

Another hush fell. Later several of the chaps remarked that this particular informal gathering had been quite different from the usual jolly get-together.

The hush was broken by the young pharmacist.

“You mean,” he said, “that Means... he... it was he who was responsible?”

“There was never any proof,” answered Oswald, quite subdued, even more than before. “But Junie had been seen in Ainsley’s convertible on the back roads on her days off. Poor old Bill... he was away that summer, trying to enlist in whatever branch of the service would take a wooden-legged man... none would... not even the Merchant Marines. Well, when he got back home, his... little sister... Junie was dead and buried... he went crazy... would have killed Ainsley right then and there had not old J.P. got wind of Bill’s intentions and shipped Ainsley out to California for eight or ten months.”

“It doesn’t really matter now what caused the feud,” said one of the oldtimers. “Poor old Bill spent the rest of his unhappy life, the poor bast... the poor old fellow... trying hard to make Ainsley suffer. I can hear him now, the poor chap, snarling that if it took the rest of his life he was going to make Ainsley pay. Funny, now, thinking back, I can’t recall his ever saying just what he was going to make Ainsley pay for.”

Someone else recalled that Bill had been arrested at least ten times over the years on suspicion of having committed various offenses against Ainsley, including dynamiting Ainsley’s Packard, starting a whispering campaign that the bank was going under, shooting a hole in the front window of the bank when Ainsley was working late, setting fire to Ainsley’s summer cottage on Lake Stonewall Jackson, things like that, and though Bill was never caught redhanded, he was convicted twice and spent a total of nine years in the state pen at Moundsville and each time when he came back to Battle Grove his first words were, “I’ll git him, I’ll git him, if en it’s the last thing I do on this cher earth.”

Well, as the Tuesday noon gathering broke up — the funeral was scheduled for the following day — one of the fellows summed up things this way:

“Maybe poor old Bill had a justifiable reason for hating Ainsley; lots of us do. But it’s all over, Sneaky Meany has won again, just like he always does. Now he can concentrate on cheating the rest of us.”

Next morning, spring, which had appeared the week before in a rhapsody of birdsong, budding blossoms, and warm sunshine, cringed under a blanket of fog and freezing rain, a typical mid-March day in southern West Virginia. The turnout for Bill’s funeral would have been slim at best; with the dismal weather only eleven mourners showed up, including, of course, the six pallbearers.

Reverend Amos Stokes of the poverty-stricken Hard Rock Church of the Old Testament, a gaunt fellow with a prominent nose and an even more prominent Adam’s apple, tried his best to say something kind about a poor unfortunate human being who had spent a good part of his life “festering in hate and vindictiveness.” Several of the pallbearers reported later that Banker Means was seen to snicker briefly at that remark of the Reverend Stokes, but when the parson went on from there to Deuteronomy 32:35 — suggested to the Reverend by the whimsical undertaker Gravely — “To me belongeth vengeance, and recompense; their feet shall slide in due time; for their day of calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste,” it was obvious by the sudden blotches of fiery purple that smote Banker Means’ fat pink cheeks that the passage from Scripture had hit the mark.

The brief, pathetic service concluded, it was time to brave the horrible weather. The rain had frozen to the ground, and as the pallbearers cowered under the pelting sleet while they loaded the casket into the hearse (a 1952 Packard, in perfect shape), it certainly looked as if old Deuteronomy 32:35 had soothsaid right on the button, for Banker Means suddenly slipped on the icy ground, fell head over heels, and hit his head a resounding bang on the back of the casket.

“I’ll be damned,” Emmett Pollard whispered to Elias Scattergood, both of them shivering half to death and determined to beat it to warmer quarters as soon as the casket was loaded. “Looks like old Bill’s still trying to get even.”

By then Banker Means, cursing a blue streak, had righted himself. Someone handed him his derby, the burgeoning bump on his right temple turning a nasty purplish-blue.

“No, I don’t need a doctor, Willard,” he snarled when Undertaker Gravely suggested such a possibility. “Let’s get going. I’m a busy man. Why I ever agreed to participate in this... this... miserable mess is beyond me. Let’s go, God damn it.”

They got going. Everybody found his place and the little cortege — the hearse carrying the wispy remains, the black limousine (a 1950 Packard) — departed for Potter’s Field, the old cemetery high on a windswept hill four miles out of town, up a long, winding road with a dozen hairpin turns.

Joe Simmons, the regular hearse driver, had come down with a bug and was unable to drive the hearse that morning, and Pearly Poggs, an unemployed coal truck driver, unversed in the do’s and don’ts of funeral procedure but a veteran driver in all kinds of weather, had been pressed into service. As usual, Digger Downs, a jack of all trades (his main occupation was well-drilling) handled the big limousine.

Traffic was practically nonexistent on the highway. Fog swirled, sleet pounded down, it was an appropriate day for a funeral; cold, grey, dismal. The hearse turned off the highway onto the narrow road leading to the cemetery. The limousine followed. The road proved to be “slicker’n a frog on a fryin’ pan” as one of the pallbearers put it. Banker Means agreed, not in those words.

“This road’s not safe,” he shouted as the limousine, imitating the hearse, began to slide back and forth on the icy road, almost hitting the cliffside on the left, nearly banging against the wire cables of the guard rail on the right.

“Who’s responsible for not having ashed this road?” Banker Means yelled. “Turn around. I’m not risking my neck for a maundering old fool who was a thorn in my side for over forty years. Damn it, Downs,” he screamed, mad as hell now, starting to pound poor old Digger on the back (Means was sitting directly behind him), “turn around this minute... do you hear me?”

“I hear ya, Ainsley,” said Digger, bending over the steering wheel to get out of range and also to peer a bit better through the fog and sleet. “We got snow tires on and besides there ain’t no turnabout till we git halfway up the hill... an’ quit your hittin’ me, ’less you want me to git us wrecked.”

That stopped the pummelling but not the tirade.

“You’ll hear from me, every damn one of you,” raved Ainsley. “Particularly Willard Gravely Risking people’s lives on a day like this just to... oh my God, Downs, watch out... you’re gettin too close to the right... Wait’ll I get back down... I’ll sue the lot of you.”

It should be mentioned that Ainsley was not the only one in the limousine with his heart in his mouth. Just as frightened were the five other pallbearers. And so was Digger himself (“Jesus, even if we git up to the top, how the hell are we gonna git down?” he was thinking as he very tenderly kept one foot on the accelerator, the other barely touching the brake). But Digger and the five other pallbearers, having experienced many more of life’s vicissitudes than the rich Banker Means, had learned to take it easy, don’t make a big fuss, do the best you can, trust in God.

Upward toiled the diminutive funeral procession, slipping and sliding, the limousine staying about twenty yards behind the hearse. And the higher they got, the more the fog dissipated, a mixed blessing because though they could see the hearse more clearly they also had a better view of the rocky cliff to the left, the deep ravine to the right.

“For God’s sake, Digger,” implored Ainsley, his pink face including all his chins and jowls a ghostly hue, “please, for the love of God, be careful.”

“I’m doin’ my best, Ainsley,” replied Digger, making a note to tell the fellows at the next informal meeting of the Sons of the Mountaineers that it wasn’t exactly true that Ainsley Means was agnostic.

Digger had hardly gotten the words out of his mouth when the hearse suddenly lurched across the road, hit the left side, bounced back against the wire rope attached to the guard posts. The cables screeched, the guard posts started to bend, the wheels spun, the tires smoked, it looked bad. But the hearse careened back to the center of the narrow road, spun, squealed, and smoked some more, got traction, and leaped ahead, and the back door swung open. The casket — apparently not secured properly by the substitute driver, Pearly Poggs, and not checked due to the terrible weather by the usually reliable Undertaker Gravely — slid out. It mattered not who was at fault, the casket was loose on the icy road, coming at the limousine.

“Holy smoke,” yelled Digger Downs, slamming on the brakes, “God A’mighty.” The limousine started to drift backward, toward the wire cables, the ravine. It was too much for Banker Means. He jerked the door open and jumped out onto the icy road, a big mistake as events would immediately prove.

Banker Means, arms waving madly, his sizable body teetering and swaying, a falling windmill in a hurricane, gave a spontaneous performance for a second and a half. Then his feet slid out from under him. Screaming to high heaven (which was of no avail, the dismal weather precluding two-way transmission), one hand pressing down on his derby, Banker Means slid down the steep hill.

Meantime — it all happened in a flash, zip, boom, bang, just like that — Digger had managed to regain control of the limousine. It lurched away from the whining wire cables on the right and slid over against the cliff on the left side, just missing the casket, which swished by at about ten miles an hour, picking up speed with every yard.

Also meantime — it happened in a blur — Undertaker Gravely and Pearly Poggs, having seen in the rear view mirrors the abrupt exit of the casket and its contents, exchanged horrified unspeakables (“Sweet Jesus,” Pearly; “Mother of God,” Willard). Then:

“Keep going, Pearly,” squealed Willard.

“I ain’t plannin’ to stop, Willard,” quoth Pearly in a shaky voice.

Also meantime — swish, zoom — dear old Crazy Bill in the casket caught up with the shrieking Banker Means about ten yards down the hill, and as all hands in the limousine scampered from the car, but very cautiously, holding on to it, a sight all swore they would remember to their dying days was barely discernible through the fog. The casket, poor old one-legged Bill Grapeseed at the controls, had affixed itself against the amplitudinous hindquarters of the howling Banker Means. It was noted by one of the more farsighted pallbearers that Banker Means was still wearing his derby. But that was about the extent of it, since the fog below took over and all that was left were dwindling screams. Soon they were gone.

“Well, fellows,” said Digger after a while, “ya wanta git back in and see if we kin make it to the top?”

They didn’t want to, but what else was there to do? First, though, Digger suggested that it would be a good idea to kind of see if they couldn’t figure out some way of making a clear spot in front and behind the tires so as to get some initial traction.

At which one of the chaps, a dour, skinny old fellow not noted for a sense of humor, muttered dryly that if they all “peed afore an’ behind it jest might melt the ice.” No one took that seriously, they being all too damn frozen to think of such a suggestion. Digger opened the tool box on the rear of the Packard and handed out a jack handle, a small shovel, three stout wooden tomato stakes.

So, scrunched down against the icy wind and rain, the five stalwart chaps dug into the side of the high dirt wall, using the tools and their hands, their white pallbearer gloves soon turning torn and dirty. It took about ten minutes to accumulate a fair-sized pile of dirt, pebbles, and outcrop coal. This was scattered in front of the tires, all got in, Digger took it easy, the limousine got traction, away they went.

They were rescued sometime after midnight, the county ash trucks having to take care of the main roads first. It had been a miserable experience high up there in the old cemetery, the wind howling, ghosts of poor old indigents hovering in the foggy mist around the front of the cars. As the skinny old chap who had suggested they piddle their way out of the predicament said on the way down the well-ashed hill:

“Somethin’ liken this’n goin’ on ’s liable ta maken a God-fearin’ person outta an athyfist.”

“Amen,” came the chorus.

Next day the sun came out, the ice melted, birds perked up and resumed their mating calls, excitement ran high. The sheriff and all of his deputies together with half the population of the county hastened out to Cemetery Hill, everyone eager to see where Banker Means and Crazy Bill had finally wound up.

Bill was located first, around nine thirty, nine forty. Incredible, considering the many hairpin curves, he had made it almost to the very bottom of the hill. When found he was sitting up in the casket, the lid having come open, with what about a third of the over-awed viewers thought was a satisfied smirk on his face. But another third insisted it was actually a real happy grin. The last third figured it was merely the way a person’s mouth looks when he has misplaced his false teeth.

Under Willard Gravely’s supervision Bill was gently pushed back down into the coffin, the lid was nailed back on, and eight or ten husky chaps picked up the coffin and carried it through brush, snow, and barren rhododendron up to where the hearse was parked on the road. Joe Simmons — the bug about licked — back at the wheel, Willard beside Joe, the hearse left for Willard’s undertaking parlor, there to deposit old Bill Grapeseed for the time being, then back to Cemetery Hill to await the discovery of Ainsley Means. It was one down, one to go.

Ainsley was located about one thirty in the afternoon, his shiny black derby, glistening in the sun far down at the bottom of the three hundred foot ravine, being the clue. It was a hell of a job getting the heavy body back up to the road. It required a stretcher, a couple of hundred feet of stout rope, the cable of the winch on the tow truck, and the energetic help of a bunch of able-bodied men. Around four fifteen the task was completed. All agreed that they were “plumb tuckered out.”

That took care of Wednesday. On Thursday, Bill, ensconced in a nine hundred and seventy-five dollar metal casket (Willard’s donation), with a brand new set of false teeth donated by Hiram Cloksley (they had been around the house ever since his deceased grandfather bought a new pair long ago), was given a real sendoff, the poor little tumblydown, leaky-roofed Hard Rock Church of the Old Testament packed, excited mourners standing in the aisles and in the rear.

It was by far the biggest turnout the Reverend Stokes had ever experienced. But he was more than equal to the task. Here was a Heaven-sent opportunity to bring the fallen and those who had never embraced the faith close to the Almighty. Thundering and roaring, in great voice, he started with Matthew 14:31 (“O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?”), reminding “the puny little turnout of the previous ceremony for our late brother William Grapeseed, God rest his kind soul” that he had no doubt at all that his lesson Tuesday morning, Deuteronomy 32:35 — and here he roared out the trenchant part: “To me belongeth vengenance and recompense; their feet shall slide in due time” — had fallen on deaf, nay, doubting ears. But what of now, oh ye doubters, what of now?

He went on like that for over an hour, his Adam’s apple bulging, the gist being that what had happened on Cemetery Hill should be a warning to all backsliders, all those who had fallen away from the Holy Scripture. Get back in God’s Holy Grace before it is too late.

After that an impressive cortege, considering the indisputably lowly position in life of the deceased — there were twelve cars, four pickups, Herman Beaver’s big red tow truck, and, of course, the two funeral vehicles — departed for Potter’s Field, but not before Willard and Elias Scattergood had given grave consideration to paying for a plot for Bill in the well-kept cemetery north of town. They finally agreed that Bill would not have been happy there, too many fourflushers.

Ainsley was buried on Friday morning. Everyone thought that, considering the condition of the body when brought up from the ravine, Willard “did hisself proud.” Of course the pastor of the richest church in town eulogized Ainsley to high heaven. But no one snickered, consideration being felt for the widow, a meek, nervous creature who had been made to toe a mighty strict line all through the marriage.

Naturally, Ainsley’s funeral outdid that of Bill’s, but the talk around town was all in favor of Bill, he having emerged as a hero, a fellow to admire, one who never quit, never gave up; good old Bill, yes sir.

A year has gone by since the above events. The widow Means, word has it, who retired to Florida — there were no children — has blossomed into a pretty damn good looking woman. Further word is that she is being sparked by a retired minister, a widower. The bank, sold at a reasonable price to the employees by the widow, is doing well, repossessions are down, the interest rate also, the rate charged for loans.

But the most astonishing result of Grapeseed’s Revenge, as the extraordinary happening has come to be known, has been the enormous increase in the number of worshippers who religiously attend, never miss, the services of the Hard Rock Church of the Old Testament. Collections have improved (“Praise the Lord,”, exclaims the jubilant Reverend Stokes a dozen times a day) to the extent that the church roof has been repaired, it has been painted inside and out, twenty new pews have been purchased, and next week an expert organ tuner is coming from Pittsburgh to pump new life into the old organ. And right now Reverend Stokes is seriously considering trading in his 1972 Buick; it has 87,654 miles on it. He’s looking at a secondhand Olds 88 with only 27,402 miles which the dealer is holding for $3675, not counting the six percent discount accorded to men of the cloth.

Of course none of the former backsliders who are now devout, semi-devout — but they go all the time — worshippers has admitted to being brought up short by the unnatural manner in which Banker Means went to his Final Judgment. But deep down, each and every one is keeping a sharp eye out for banana peels, oily spots, recently waxed floors such as at the American Legion hall on bingo night. And of course winter hazards are of prime concern. For it has been indelibly etched on one and all that Deuteronomy 32:35 speaks of THEIR FEET (“their feet shall slide in due time.”).

So if there is a lesson to be learned from all of this it is: backsliders, beware, watch your step.