Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 37, No. 6, June 1992

No Harm in Alfie by W. Sherwood Hartman

There’s always a tiny vise of terror that twists my insides when the phone rings. I realize that coming from a county sheriff this sounds strange, but it’s true. I receive dozens of calls a day. Most of them are nothing but small talk or righteous gripes from the citizens, but you never know until you lift the receiver which call is going to knife through your spine like an icicle. I got one of those calls last night, and I hope eternity passes before I get another.

It had been a long hot day filled with petty things that fray a man’s patience. When I could finally relax, I was too tired to sleep. The late show was on, and somewhere between the commercials I must have dozed off. The jangling of the phone startled me awake. I turned off the TV and answered. “Sheriff Jackson speaking.”

“This is Dr. Fanus at the Pleasant Valley Hospital. I’m afraid I have to report that one of our patients, an Alfred Loomis, has left our bed and board.”

There was a hot knot in my chest as his words sank home in my mind. “You let Alfie escape!” I whispered, not trusting my normal voice.

“Escape is not exactly the word, sheriff. After all, Pleasant Valley is a mental hospital, not a prison.”

“How long has he been gone?” I asked, looking at the clock on the wall. It was twenty past twelve.

“I can’t tell you exactly,” the doctor said. “He was here at nine, at lights out, but his bed was empty when we checked at midnight. We searched the grounds, but he’s nowhere to be found.”

“Did you call his brother?”

“No,” the doctor said. “I thought it would be best to call you first. The man could be dangerous.”

“He never was before they put him away.”

“Sheriff, I had nothing to do with that.”

It was true. Doc Fanus just ran the place. He had no say over who was sent there. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll call Tom right away, and thanks.” I hung up and wondered what I had thanked him for. It was August, and the thermometer read a steaming eighty-five. The air outside was heavy and still. It was the kind of night for a storm that would send the hounds of hell scurrying under their master’s bed, and Alfie was loose, roaming the countryside... But I guessed I shouldn’t blame Doc. If the state would pay decent wages at a place like Pleasant Valley, perhaps they could hire some reliable security people.

I dialed Tom Loomis’s phone number and waited for him to answer, while running time and distance through my mind. Pleasant Valley was nine miles east of town and Tom Loomis’s farm was three miles west. Figuring that a man can make four miles an hour on foot, Alfie could have already reached the farm if he left the hospital just after nine, but four miles an hour would be hard to do on a moonless night across rough country. Alfie would shun the roads, yet he knew every path and lane through the woods and brush like the map of veins on the back of his hand. The phone at Tom’s rang for nearly five minutes and there was no answer. I hung up and dialed again, thinking that I might have dialed wrong the first time. There was still no answer. I waited for ten rings, then hung up and called my deputy.

Jake had a rough time getting awake, but when I told him that Alfie was loose he was all business. I told him I couldn’t get a rise out of Tom Loomis or his wife and that I was heading out to their farm right away. He was to get help and follow as soon as he could. I had no idea of what I’d find, but the thought of help behind me was welcome. After I hung up, I had the feeling that I might be too late to help anybody. I buckled on my sidearm and took a repeating shotgun off the rack and loaded it with buckshot. I was headed for the door when the phone rang again. It was Fred Acker.

“Sheriff,” he said, “I hate to bother you, but something woke me up about five minutes ago. I thought I heard a noise, and when I went downstairs the screen door was hanging open. I thought that maybe my wife had forgotten to hook it, but then I noticed my carbine is missing from back of the stove.”

“Your dogs didn’t wake you?”

“They never made a sound, sheriff. There’s only one man could ever walk past my dogs and take a pie off my windowsill without them raising hades.”

“Alfie?”

“Who else? They should have never put him away. Mame used to bake an extra pie every Friday just so Alfie could steal it. It was always a surprise to find what he would leave in its place — a fresh-killed rabbit, or a pheasant, or a bag of ripe chestnuts. But, sheriff, stealing my rifle isn’t fun stealing! And Alfie is over at Pleasant Valley, isn’t he?”

“I’m afraid he isn’t, Fred,” I said. “He escaped sometime tonight, but if he’d had any thought of harming you or Mame, you wouldn’t be talking to me now. So go back to bed. I’ll try to get your rifle back.” I hung up and tried to get through to Tom Loomis again, but there was still no answer. At least I knew now that Alfie was only five minutes away from Tom’s farm, but I didn’t know if he was on his way there or on his way away from there. I pushed the pickup for all it was worth over the rutted dirt road toward Tom’s farm, and the harder I drove, the more I agreed with Fred. They never should have put Alfie away.

Tom and Alfie Loomis had inherited the farm after the old folks had passed on. Tom was the younger son, but with Alfie’s mind the way it was, Tom took over running the place. The way it was run left a lot to be desired, but they made a living. There was a horse named Star that no one except Alfie could get near. Alfie and Star would plow the fields in the spring, but after that chore was finished they would wander off for weeks at a time, leaving Tom to work the fields after the planting. Even when Alfie was home, he never slept in the house. He’d bed down with a blanket in the stall next to Star’s. Alfie, a big man with a shaggy head of unkempt hair and soft brown eyes, was so shy that few people had ever seen him close up, but he was a familiar blur in the distance sitting astride Star with neither saddle nor bridle, as though they both knew where they were going and had no reason to communicate with anyone else.

Alfie was strange, that’s true. He could talk to animals, and he was afraid of people. Perhaps he had a reason. But I could never see where there was an ounce of harm in him. Nobody else could, either. He might walk past your dogs in the middle of the night and take a dozen eggs out of your henhouse, but you’d find a big bag of dew-fresh wild strawberries on your doorstep in the morning, or something else that was worth more in time and thought than the thing that was taken.

Yet all of these things sounded bad when Tom Loomis went to court to have Alfie put away. They’d put a warrant in my hand and told me to bring Alfie in. I found him sleeping in the barn and sweet-talked him into putting his hands out for me to put the cuffs on. Then Star started kicking splinters out of the stall next door, and Alfie went berserk. I managed to deliver him to Pleasant Valley but had three cracked ribs to live with for the next few months. All that happened two years ago, shortly after Millie came to town.

As far as I can understand, Millie arrived with a truck driver from up north and stayed on as a waitress at the Easy-Bee Cafe. She must have been hitchhiking because the truck driver left and Millie remained to remind our little community of how far we were behind the times. From the rear she rippled under the tight white uniform, and when she put a cup of coffee down in front of you, there was nothing to do but start counting freckles.

I don’t know if it was the ripples or the freckles, but it wasn’t too long until Tom Loomis and Millie were a regular thing together. Then Tom had Alfie put away, and he and Millie got married and moved into the farm. I guess it was only natural for Tom to have Alfie committed. With a woman like Millie around, and Alfie not being altogether responsible, anything could have happened. Still, it didn’t seem right, depriving Alfie of his freedom and the half ownership of the farm that was rightfully his. I had done my job, but I hadn’t liked it.

I liked it even less when I pulled up in front of Tom Loomis’s farm and found the place as dark as the bottom of a well.

I laid a hand to the horn, but no lights came on.

It had been months since I had been to Tom’s farm. Millie had greeted me wearing a thin shift that left little to the imagination as she bounced barefoot down the porch steps. “Tom’s trying to feed that fool horse,” she said. I followed her to the barn. Star was standing with his head down and his lips stretched across his teeth, a powerful coiling spring of concentrated hate daring Tom to enter the stall. Tom opened the door and shoved a bucket of oats inside, then slammed the door shut as Star lunged forward, his hooves slashing the heavy oak. “That horse is crazy,” Tom said. “When Alfie was here, he would at least tolerate me. Now he goes insane the minute I walk into the barn.”

“Can’t you sell him?” I asked.

“Who would buy?” he laughed. “Everybody around here knows that nobody can work him but Alfie. I’ll keep trying to bring him around for a few months. Then if he don’t calm down, I’ll have to put him away.”

Star stopped chewing his oats and lifted his head to watch us, almost as though he understood what was being said.

“He’s a beautiful animal,” I said. “It seems a shame.”

Tom lowered his head for a moment, then his eyes leveled with mine. “Sometimes, Sheriff Jack,” he said slowly, “a man has to do things that don’t make him too proud of himself.” The hurt in his eyes told me that having Alfie put away hadn’t been his idea.

“The sooner that damned animal goes,” Millie shrilled, “the better I’ll feel.” Star laid his ears back and curled his lip in a horsey sneer. I had left then, almost embarrassed for having been there.

I leaned on the horn again, but there was still no response. The house was a silhouette of india ink in the dim night. I turned off the lights of the pickup and took the five cell flashlight out of the glove compartment. Then I cradled the shotgun in my left arm and walked carefully to the house. After the racking noise of the horn, the silence was overpowering. Only the soft scent of the barnyard seemed real. Even the crickets had stopped breathing, and my soft footsteps sounded as loud as drums. A loose board squealed under my weight as I crossed the porch. The door was unlocked and sighed as I pushed it open. I flashed the light slowly across the combination kitchen-living room. The dinner dishes and coffee cups were still at their place on the table. The room was empty. I didn’t turn on the lights, regardless of the silence. I knew I wasn’t alone on the farm. I checked all the rooms. The house was empty. I went back out on the front porch and listened.

There was a sound of a motor in the distance, and I sighed with relief at the thought that help was on the way. Then I heard the sound of movement from the stable. I crouched low and ran across the yard to the front of the barn. The doors were open. I swung the beam of my flashlight inside and shivered at what I saw. Millie was a bloodied broken doll, her face hidden in the straw. Tom was seated a few feet past her, slumped against the wall with his head hanging at an impossible angle. I swung the light slowly around and saw Star, the door to his stall open. Then I had a glimpse of Alfie crouched beside the horse with his rifle leveled. The flashlight smashed out of my hand as he fired, and my arm went numb up to the elbow. I ran back along the front of the barn, out of the line of fire, and stretched out prone with the shotgun leveled toward the doors.

Then there was another shot from inside and a scream that was too huge to be human, then a long sigh and silence. He shot the horse, I thought. Why did he shoot the horse?

I didn’t have time to think about it. Jake’s car pulled around the house, and the headlights turned the front of the barn to daylight. Alfie stepped through the door and put a bullet through one headlight, but he didn’t have a chance to fire again. The shotgun kicked against my shoulder and tore the life out of him with one lethal whirlwind of buckshot. I pushed the gun away and buried my face in my arms.

Jake was shaking me. “Are you all right, Sheriff Jack?”

“Sure,” I said, but I was lying. Somewhere, in the tiny second after I fired the shotgun, the picture of what the flashlight had shown inside the barn flashed across my mind, and I knew I shouldn’t have shot him. But it had all happened so fast, and it was final. I got to my feet and we went into the barn. Jake’s flashlight found the light switch and it was all there before us.

“Good lord,” Jake gasped. “What did he beat them with?”

Tom’s rifle lay beside him, the stock splintered and useless.

“Alfie didn’t beat them,” I said. “Look at the blood. It’s brown now, not red. They were dead before Alfie ever left Pleasant Valley. Look at the horse.” Star’s front hooves were caked with dried blood. “Millie must have finally talked Tom into putting the horse away, but something went wrong.” I looked at the door of Star’s stall and knew what it was. The latch had tom loose and was hanging on bent and rusted nails. “This is what Alfie found when he got home. He knew what had to be done, but Tom’s rifle was broken, so he went over to Acker’s and stole the carbine. He must have got back here about the same time I arrived. Star was Alfie’s horse. If anyone had the right to put him away, it was Alfie.”

“But why did he come out shooting?” Jake asked.

“He shot the flashlight out of my hand. That bullet could just as easy have gone between my eyes. And the shot that put out your headlight could have gone through the windshield. Alfie wasn’t aiming to hurt anybody. He was just making sure he didn’t have to go back to Pleasant Valley.”