Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 6, June, 1994

What Comes Our Way by Dan Crawford

There are nights when you don’t go out. You can tell by the signs. He comes for somebody in particular, but you don’t know who. And it may be if he doesn’t see you out he might not think of taking you. Because maybe he makes up his mind right then and there who goes and who doesn’t. So you don’t go out. Only sometimes you’ve got to.

Yes, the Death Coach rides in our county. I see you smile. No, I don’t think you’re laughing at me. You didn’t smile that kind of smile. You just think it’s quaint, an old kind of superstition that we back in the country still have a mind to.

But let me tell you, there’s many an old woman, and old man too, will tell you they don’t believe any such thing, and at night she dreams of the Death Coach coming to the door by night and going away empty. And maybe there’s a last dream that ends different. Only nobody ever tells that dream because it is the last one.

So you don’t go out when you hear the owl screech just at sunset, and the cats yowl to go out the same time the dogs whine to come in. Because they know, and if you can read the signs, you’ll know, too. There’s a lot to the clouds, and a color in the sunset, that lets you know the great coach is coming by night, coming for the soul of one or another, with fear shooting out the black eyes in the skull of the coachman.

I’ve heard stories about folks getting away from the Death Coach, but I expect those are just stories. You can’t really hide from death, I guess, any more than you can hide from trouble. They both know where they’re meant to go, and you just have to take what comes your way.

It was some years back that trouble came our way: lots of trouble, all together. The spring was so wet that most folks couldn’t get anything planted until June, and the summer was so dry that it didn’t matter that they did get it planted. Milton was working the farm part of the time and going into town to handle the accounts for Hughes’ Grocery. After a while, though, Hughes couldn’t pay him any more, because though there was plenty to write down in the accounts, none of it was about money coming in.

So he kind of slouched around the farm, maybe fixing a fence once in a while, or making a new scarecrow to scare off crows that had more sense than to come around where there wasn’t anything for them anyhow. And some days he’d get tired of pretending to work, and he’d say to me, “Keshleen, a man can’t sit around and just watch his life dry up out there. He’s likely to go out and do something desperate.”

I knew what he meant, and I never blamed him for a second. I’d just tell him how it would make all the difference to Robynn, who everybody knew was the smartest little girl in the state. How she worked so hard on all her schoolwork and was going to be somebody someday, but not if everybody knew her dad had done... whatever it was he was planning to do.

His eyes would kind of pinch up at the sides, and if Robynn was around I’d point to her, and if she wasn’t, I’d go get that Sunday school picture of her. And he’d look at that face, and then he’d sigh. “I guess, Keshleen, that we’ll just take what comes our way.”

Things came our way. There was a man came through, offered to buy the place, and even gave us a down payment. But that was all the money we ever saw from him because he was in bankruptcy a week later. We got free groceries now and again because Hughes would call on Milton and have him straighten out the books about once a month. But then Hughes went bankrupt and the store went to some man who didn’t know Milton at all.

There was a little crop. I put up what I could, but there was a big storm in November knocked down a tree. It missed the house, thanks be, but it did knock the porch to pieces, and sent floorboards down into the cellar. We lost a dozen jars of tomatoes and three of peaches. That was the first storm of the season, and there were plenty. Freezing rain and ice: there were days in a row when nobody could get around. Robynn was studying hard for her first spelling bee; she was just old enough to be in the youngest level. But they had to cancel four times because of the weather. That’s hard on somebody so young. I had to tell her, “It’s rough, honey, but we have to take what comes our way.”

Then it snowed, a deeper snow than anyone had seen in the county in years. There was nothing else to do, especially, that day, so Milton and Robynn and I went out with an old box from the shed and used it like a sled all around the place. Robynn hated to come in at all, and I couldn’t see much to go in for at that: mighty little warmth and less food.

But Milton was getting worn out. Lean as the holidays were, they were still holidays, and we had things to do. After Robynn went off to bed, we trimmed the tree. There wasn’t much in the way of presents. Milton had carved her an animal that was sort of a duck if you squinted a little. He never had any hand for that work. I’d scraped up some flour and raisins to make a kind of cookie. Those cookies weren’t much to look at either, now that I think about it. But at least there were plenty of them.

“I’ll just peek in and see if she’s been peeking out,” I told Milton when he sat down to try to heat his hands against the little smoke in the fireplace. I stepped on over to her room.

She wasn’t there.

I closed the door and went around to the back room where Milton had nailed up boards and tarpaper to cover the holes the porch had made when it fell in. The coat pegs were there. Robynn’s coat wasn’t. Her boots and that old box were gone, too. While the grownups were busy, she’d slipped out to go sliding some more.

“Milton,” I said quietly, like I didn’t want to wake up our girl. “Milton, I see where some branches have blown up against the shed. I’ll just fetch them in, and we can have a good fire tomorrow.”

He only nodded. He was worn out after a long day chasing around in the snow and no supper. I didn’t believe I’d bother him with this at all.

I almost didn’t go myself. I stepped out the back, and I could see by the moon and the clouds what kind of a night this was going to be. The wind, too: it was the very whistle of the Death Coach wheels. But I looked around and said to myself, how’s the Death Coach going to get through all this snow, I’d like to know? The coachman’s after someone in town, I have no doubt, and he won’t be out this way until spring.

I could see her fresh tracks, and I followed those, saying to myself some things I was going to say to Robynn when I found her. Now and then I saw long drags where she’d been doing some sliding, and I wondered how long she’d been out. I walked faster. The wind was whipping the trees around, and she’d had that old winter coat three years now. It needed patching where some old patches had come off and I’d never got around to it.

The shadows were looking red as I went along, and the icicles like blood dripping off the big limbs of the trees. And there was this crow calling, loud and late. I knew what that was a sign of, and what I was saying now wasn’t to Robynn but about Robynn. I was telling the Dear Lord I was ready to take what came my way, but oh Lord, if it didn’t come, who’d be hurt?

I got to the windbreak, where there was branches down and the snow was patchier. The dark patches all around me, I nearly walked right past. She’d curled up to rest and gone right to sleep. I scooped her up and went running for the house. She was cold, but she moved a little, so I knew I wasn’t late yet.

It was a long way to run, and I’d already walked it once. My feet seemed to stick in things under the snow, and catch under every branch. I didn’t drop Robynn, but it was mighty slow getting up. It didn’t hurt my feet, either; I figured they’d frozen up already. I could take that. It meant I could run faster.

But I wasn’t faster than the sound I heard. I looked back at it and saw this big shadow coming at us from out of the shadows of the windbreak, gliding along over the snow. A sleigh, of course: stupid me, to think a little snow would stop Death.

That was no civilized sleigh at all. It glowed cold, and the sound I’d heard was a clink of bones. I thought I saw skeletons dancing over the heads of the horses, grinning to be catching up to us.

I moved faster, but not that much faster. The sleigh was up to us and this big deep voice calls out, “Keshleen! Robynn!”

There was only one person in that county who would have a sleigh and know my name. If it hadn’t been for that, I still would have known by his voice that he was no mortal man.

When he calls your name, you’ve got to go. “I can take what comes my way,” I said, “but let my Robynn go. She’s been working so long on her spelling, and she deserves that gold medal.”

He laughed, and he put down these arms I could never break free of. “I have found you both,” he said, “so tonight you ride with me!” His voice bounced across the fields and it was like he shook the snow off all the trees because the world went white before me. Then I could see he’d pulled up in front of the house.

“Haven’t you got enough?” I said to him. “Do you have to take Milton as well?”

That laugh again, only this time the arms were setting me down out of the sleigh. “I do not take, good Keshleen! That has never been my profession!”

I looked up into that face for the first time. And I figured out that there was never any clink of bones, or grinning skeletons. I knew what they’d really been, just as I could see what I’d been thinking was a skull was a pure white beard.

“Surely,” I said, “you could take some milk and cookies while you fill the stockings.”

“Good Keshleen,” he said, stepping down. “In that case, I believe I can take what comes my way.”