Edenville Owls

Chapter 42

I stood behind some trash barrels, in the shadows behind the package store. I heard his footsteps before I saw him as he came down the little walkway between the package store and the Village Shop toward the bandstand. He paused when he saw her on the bandstand, sitting on the rail, her head turned, looking at the harbor. She was wearing a camel’s hair coat with a dark scarf on her head. As he passed me, I came out from the shadows and walked very quietly behind him. The moon was out and nearly full. You could see pretty well, but everything looked sort of pale. It was kind of chilly. But there was no wind.

When he reached the bandstand, he said, “Claudia?”

She turned.

“You’re not Claudia,” he said.

“My name’s Joanie Gibson,” she said.

“What are you doing here?” Tupper said.

His voice was getting that sound again.

“Waiting for you,” Joanie said.

“Where’s Miss Delaney?” Tupper asked.

“She doesn’t know anything about this.”

Tupper stood motionless at the edge of the bandstand, with one foot on the step. I was ten feet behind him, but he didn’t know it.

“Young lady,” Tupper said with the jagged edge sound in his voice. “You will tell me right now what you are up to.”

He stepped up onto the bandstand. Joanie swung her legs over the rail and jumped down outside the bandstand.

“If I have to chase you, young lady, you will be very sorry.”

“You can’t catch me,” Joanie said.

Behind him I said, “Your name isn’t Oswald Tupper.”

He whirled toward me, standing now in the middle of the bandstand.

“Your name is Richard Krauss,” I said.

He stared.

“Bobby?” he said.

“And you’re a deserter,” I said.

“Am I?” he said.

His voice seemed very calm all of a sudden.

“We know all about you,” I said.

“You’re a good kid, Bobby,” Tupper said. “And I’m sure that’s true of your little girlfriend. But you’ve got it all wrong.”

“No, we don’t,” Joanie said. “And I’m not his girlfriend.”

“Look,” Tupper said. “Let’s all sit down on one of these benches and I’ll explain it to you.”

Neither of us moved.

“You owe me a chance to explain,” he said.

I walked closer to the bandstand, but didn’t go up on it.

“Go ahead,” I said.

“It’s a mistake that has been made before. There was a man named Richard Krauss in my outfit, and he was killed. I went to him when he fell, and saw that he was dead, and that he wore no dog tags. I wanted him to have an identity, so I put mine on him, planning to correct the matter when there was a lull in the battle. But somehow, in the heat of battle...”

He seemed to be lost in the memory of it, walking slowly around on the bandstand. He seemed sweet and sorrowful at what had happened. The way he had seemed jolly and kind when he’d first welcomed me to his youth group.

“They thought I had died and he had deserted.”

“You’re Krauss,” I said. “We’ve seen your picture in your college yearbook.”

He stopped walking for a minute and looked at me. Then at Joanie. He was closer than I thought, and he was very quick. He reached out all of a sudden with his left hand and got hold of my jacket and dragged me toward him onto the bandstand. With his right hand he took a big jackknife out of his pocket and pressed something, and the blade popped open. I felt like I might pass out. At the same time, the little part of me who always sat and watched was thinking, This is real fear, this is what people must have felt in the war. It was the kind of fear that made you sick. I would always remember it.

“I’ll tell,” Joanie said from off the bandstand. “I’ll tell the police and everybody else.”

“You come up here now, young lady, or I’ll cut your boyfriend’s head off.”

Russell came out suddenly from behind the corner of the Village Shop.

“I know too,” he said.

Tupper seemed shocked. He looked kind of wildly at Russell. I bit his hand where he was holding the knife and stomped as hard as I could on his toes. He dropped the knife and kind of gasped and I pulled loose and jumped off the bandstand.

Tupper picked up the knife.

“I’ll kill all of you if I have to,” Tupper said.

His hand was bleeding a little where I bit it. His voice sounded funny. Higher than it had been.

“Me too?” Nick said.

He had been behind the wharf office shed, and now he was in full view in the moonlight walking up toward the bandstand. Tupper was holding his big knife low in front of him, moving it back and forth toward us. When he heard Nick, he pivoted in that direction and waved the knife at him.

“How about me?” Billy said.

He came out from behind the other side of the wharf office.

“Or me?” Manny said in his soft voice.

He had been behind some low evergreen shrubs.

“You can’t kill us all,” I said.

“I can,” Tupper said.

He lunged off the bandstand toward me. I ran. He couldn’t catch me, so he whirled and dashed toward Joanie. She ran, faster than I had. He couldn’t catch her. He stopped and looked around.

“Nigger,” he said to Manny and lunged at him.

Manny was the fastest runner of any of the Owls. He got away from Tupper easily. I thought about a story I had read in Argosy where they were hunting a bear with dogs. The dogs were all around the bear and every time the bear charged, the dogs in front of him would run off and the dogs behind him would nip at him.

“You can’t catch us,” I said. “So you gotta do what we say or we tell everyone.”

I wasn’t as scared anymore. My heart was still beating very hard. But I didn’t feel so sick to my stomach now. In the moonlight everything looked pale. But I thought that Tupper looked paler than the rest of us. And even though it was kind of chilly, there was sweat on his face. He backed up onto the bandstand again.

“If any of you tell anyone,” he said, “I will find you alone, and kill you.”

“No,” I said. “You won’t.”

He stood still on the bandstand, as if he didn’t know where else to go. Even though he wasn’t moving, he seemed somehow in a frenzy.

“Because all the rest of us will tell on you,” I said. “I looked in the encyclopedia in the library. The punishment for people who desert in wartime is death.”

“There’s been a mistake,” he said. “I tried to explain that to you.”

“And then you threatened to kill us,” I said.

“I was frantic,” he said. “I didn’t mean it.”

“We’ll make a deal with you,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“You leave Miss Delaney alone,” I said. “And her kid.”

“It’s my child too,” he said.

“You leave both of them alone,” I said. “And you move away from here. We don’t care where, but it has to be a long way from here, and you never come back and you never bother Miss Delaney again.”

It was quiet. I could hear my own breathing. And my heartbeat. He stood alone on the bandstand. The six of us stood around the bandstand. Nobody moved.

“And if I don’t?” he said.

“We start talking, including how you threatened to kill us.”

“And if I talk about Miss Delaney and the marriage and divorce she didn’t mention and the child she lied about...?”

“Maybe she gets fired,” Joanie said from behind him. “But you get taken away by the army and executed.”

“Are you willing to make that swap?” I said.

He looked around at us. He looked at the big knife he was holding. Then he pushed the button and closed the knife and put it in his pocket.

“I accept your offer,” he said.