Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

In the August 1962 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, we published Mrs. Behney’s “first story” — “On the Road to Jericho.” It was, you may recall, an impressive “first,” with sharply delineated characters and subtle, emotional overtones. Now we bring you a group of stories by this new author — and to the best of our recollection, this is the first time in the twenty-three-year history of EQMM that we have included three stories by the same author in a single issue or in a single anthology...

The author tells us that everything she writes “deals of necessity with everyday people.” She claims to know nothing about “society people, or wealthy people, or highly cultured people.” She was raised on a small farm, and has always lived in the country. When she was a child, “even staying overnight at a friend’s house in a nearby, sleepy, one-horse town was a great adventure.”

So now you know what to expect. You will find the three stories entirely different from one another — and yet they are interrelated and intertwined in a curious way, and as homogeneous as if they were cut from the same bolt of cloth — as indeed they were, the bolt of cloth being Mrs. Behney’s mind, her remembrance of things past.

We think you will find both sensitivity and texture in these three short stories — a moving and perceptive quality, rich in detail, that has the pulse and bitterness and impact of realism. And you will find all three stories intensely American — yet the people are as universal as the sun and the earth. In the first story, for example, you will observe the daily mosaic, piece by piece, of the work and chores of an American farm woman — but couldn’t Marcy Bayliss be any farm woman in any land, or for that matter, in any time?

I: The Day of the Fair

Marcy was putting on her pink gingham best dress when she heard the truck start. Her fingers hurried with the row of white pearl buttons down the front of the dress. It was like Joe to try to scare her like that. She shouted, “I’m coming!” Thrusting her bare feet into her good black shoes and snatching up her purse and her hairbrush she ran through the kitchen and out onto the front porch.

The truck was already moving. She ran after it, despairing and then crying. She could see the back of Joe’s fat red neck through the rear cab window. The kids were looking back at her, their faces pale and frightened.

The truck picked up speed. Through a cloud of dust it roared down the lane, up the long hill on the other side of the draw, and then disappeared from sight among the scrub pine and chaparral.

Marcy dropped to the dry grass beside the road. She was sobbing breathlessly. He didn’t have to leave her, she wouldn’t have been any trouble to him. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair. She had wanted to go so badly. She and the kids had planned this day for weeks. It had to be a Saturday so they would be out of school and it had to be a day when Joe was home so he could take them. Marcy could drive the truck, but the red Ford was Joe’s proudest possession and he would sooner Marcy and the kids walked all the way to the city than let her touch it.

She had managed to get him to promise to take them by being mighty nice to him and fixing all the things he liked to eat and never saying a mean word back to him no matter what he said or did. Keeping a cage on her tongue hadn’t been easy. He wasn’t an easy man to be married to, Joe Bayliss wasn’t. Lazy and mean he was. Gone off most of the time with his friends, leaving the farm work to her and the kids.

Gary was twelve, big for his age, and near as much help as a man. Kathy was nine and blonde and cute and she helped out a lot too, mostly with the housework. She was getting to be a real good cook. Danny was only six, but he could hoe weeds and pick up apples and gather eggs and dry dishes. They were wonderful kids, and that was why she had wanted to go to the County Fair so much. Just to see them enjoy themselves without a worry but to have a good time...

Marcy Bayliss stood up and brushed the dust and grass from her best dress. She took off her shoes and walked back to their weathered cabin, her feet scuffing in the soft red dust. She stood on the porch and felt the cool of the roof shade on her back and the splintery boards under her feet. She listened a long minute; maybe Joe might come back after her. He might have been teasing her. Just like him to joke so mean.

A jaybird scolded in the orchard and the hens were singing busily around the yard. It was the first week of October. The sun still burned with summer’s heat but the sky had a soft haze and the distant back-country peaks were a deep violet-blue. Near at hand the willows in the creekbeds were starting to change from silver-green to pale gold. The fields and hillsides wore tawny lion-colored pelts of dry grass. The air hung hot and still, and the red truck had vanished as though she had only dreamed of it.

Marcy sighed. She went into the silent house. “Busy, busy, busy,” her mother used to say, buzzing her swift tongue with the sound of bees. “Git busy if you’re hankerin’ fer the time to git by.” Marcy went into the bedroom and took off her good clothes. She put on a pair of clean but much mended Levis and an old shirt and hung up her dress carefully. She brushed her shoes and put them away on a shelf.

In the kitchen she put two small sticks of wood in the firebox of the old black range and put the dishwater on to heat She started to clear the breakfast table. There in the middle of the table, hidden behind the syrup jug, was her money can. She snatched it up. Empty. Joe had taken her money. It had taken her a whole summer’s careful scrimping to save that $20. She had saved it for a special treat for the kids. Together they had decided it was to be one big wonderful day at the County Fair.

Marcy stared at the empty can. She had told Joe about the money when he had growled that he was broke and couldn’t afford to take them. Joe was using the money for the things they had planned. What if she wasn’t there? Pretty soon the kids would be home full of excited talk and she could listen and imagine that she had been along to share their fun. Joe would surely be good to them — he sometimes was. Sometimes, when he had been lucky in a card game, he would come home with armloads of expensive gifts for the kids.

Marcy did the dishes. Then she made the beds, swept the house, filled the woodbox beside the range, and carried water from the spring for the washing. She filled the copper boiler on its fireplace in the back yard and started a pine fire under it. She filled the rinse tubs on the back porch beside the old gasoline-motor washing machine. She was proud of the old machine. It beat hand-scrubbing all hollow and it was a present to her from Gary. The boy had worked all last summer piling brush for a logging crew to make money enough to buy it for her. He was a fine boy and not one little bit lazy or mean like his Pa.

While the water heated, Marcy carried the soiled clothing out to the back porch and sorted it and went through the pockets. Once she had found a live frog in one of Danny’s pants pockets. Today he had two marbles and a dead beetle. In Joe’s clothes she found a woman’s lace handkerchief. It smelled of cheap perfume and was stained with lipstick. Tight-lipped, Marcy threw it into the fire. In the first years of their marriage she would have fought with Joe about it, been hurt and bitter. Now it didn’t matter. Except for an inexpressible disgust.

By noon she had the washing done and hung out on the fine. She ate a slice of bread and drank a glass of milk, went out to the hillside pasture, and caught the horses. She hitched them to the disk plow and worked the orchard and the garden plot below the spring. She loved to work with the big, slow-moving team. There was something so good, so satisfying about the powerful way they moved. She liked their smell and the way they whickered at her and the way their great, shining eyes watched her.

She liked the feel of the cool ground against her feet and the clean smell of the fresh-turned earth. She had been raised on a farm on Stony Ridge and had shared the outside work with her brothers. Her Pa used to say, “Marcy’s as good a man as any of you fellers.” She’d been proud even if she wasn’t as pretty as her sisters. Maybe that was why Joe Bayliss had come courting her. He was so all-fired lazy he’d figured on getting his farm worked without having to pay a hired man’s wages.

The sun was nearing the top of Deadwood Mountain when Marcy finished the disking. She turned the team out to pasture and started the chores.

The farm was hidden in cool shadow when she finished tending the chickens, milking the cows, and feeding the stock. She strained the milk into big shallow pans and set it to cool in the cellar. She sorted the bucket of eggs and packed them into cartons. She gathered in the dry, sun-smelling clothes. The house, still warm from the afternoon’s heat, was lonesome-feeling in the dark.

Marcy shivered. She lighted both kerosene lamps but the dim, golden lampglow only made the house seem more empty, more forsaken. Listening, Marcy peered out into the dusk. In the west the sky was still pale and in the east a full moon was rising like a great, round yellow eye. There was no sound of Joe’s truck. The paper down at the store had said there would be fireworks on Saturday and Sunday evenings. The Fair people wouldn’t be firing them off until it got good and dark. Maybe Joe and the kids decided to stay and watch.

Marcy started a fire in the range and heated a bucket of water. She carried in a tub from the back porch and took a bath in the corner behind the stove. The lamplight glistened on her flat hard body and on her long muscular arms. When she finished bathing she dressed in clean underclothing and her pink gingham dress. She brushed her short, sun-streaked hair and used her lipstick. She thought, when she peered at herself in the cracked mirror above the kitchen worktable, that she looked right nice.

She carried out the tub of bathwater and mopped up the splashed floor. The clock on the shelf over the stove said 8:30. She’d have to wait a time yet, but it shouldn’t be too long. It took about an hour to drive home from the Fair and they ought to be home by ten, maybe a little after. Marcy felt that if she sat down to wait she’d go plumb crazy.

She sorted the clean clothes, dampened the clothes to be ironed, and put the others away. Oakwood was best for a long-burning hot fire. She put a big chunk in the firebox and set her heavy irons on the front stove-lid. When the irons sizzled at the touch of her wet finger she got out her ironing board and began to press the clothes. Homemade shirts for the boys, feed-sack school dresses for Kathy, Joe’s fancy store-bought shirts...

The waiting was so hard. Maybe they’d run off of the road, or got hit by a long truck. She strained to hear every sound. Again and again she went out to the front porch to listen. In the bright moonlight she could see her work-rough hands twisting in the folds of her pink gingham skirt.

The slow hands of the clock reached and passed eleven o’clock. Then Marcy heard the sound of the truck. They were coming at last!

Thankfully she rushed about putting away the pressed clothes and the ironing board, setting the table with her best cloth and plates, bringing in fried chicken and cake from the water cooler on the back porch, slicing fresh bread and tomatoes. She put a pitcher of milk and a pat of butter on the table and checked the coffee pot on the stove.

The truck came into the yard and stopped. Joe came in grinning at her. The children stumbled after him, Gary carrying his sleeping brother, Kathy sleepily clinging to his arm. Marcy hugged the children all at once. Gary looked away from her with a queer, ashamed look.

“I got a bite of supper all fixed for you,” Marcy said. “Come and eat a little and tell me about everything.”

“We’re not hungry,” Gary said and pulled roughly away from her. He carried his small brother into the bedroom. Kathy trailed unsteadily after him, rubbing her tear-stained eyes with a grubby fist.

Joe had seated himself at the table and loaded his plate with food. He ate noisily, stuffing his big mouth and smacking his thick lips. The fat bulk of him filled the chair. He was in a good mood and between bites he grinned at Marcy derisively.

Nothing was the way she had thought it would be. The kids hadn’t said one word about the Fair. Of course they were tired — just plumb beat out.

She asked Joe, “How was the Fair?”

“Best Fair I ever seen,” he said, grinning slyly at her.

“Why did you leave me, Joe?” The words had burst out.

“Learn ya to be so slow. Nag an’ tease a man for weeks, and then keep him waitin’.”

“I was coming,” Marcy said numbly.

Joe ate a slab of cake. He shoved his chair back and stood up. His small eyes surveyed her. “Come on to bed, Marcy. Ya look real cute tonight.”

He swaggered across the kitchen to their bedroom. The curtain that covered the opening closed behind him. She heard him sit on the creaking bed, heard his heavy boots hit the floor, heard his bulky stirrings — and then silence.

“Hurry up, ol’ woman.”

“In a minute,” she called evenly. She slid her feet out of her shoes, turned out one lamp, and carried the other one into the children’s room.

Danny and Kathy were asleep in their bunks, looking like smudged angels, but her older son’s eyes were dark and troubled in the lamplight. She stood beside his bed, leaned down and kissed him softly on the forehead. His hard young hand caught her arm.

“Ma?” It was a tortured whisper.

“Yes, Gary?” Marcy set the lamp on the dresser and knelt beside the bed.

“I’m sorry about this morning, Ma. I should’ve... should’ve made him stop. I tried. Honest I did.”

“I know. Don’t be blaming yourself, Gary. You couldn’t make your Pa do nothing he didn’t have a mind to.”

“Some day I’ll be big enough.”

The boy’s thin body was tense as a newly stretched wire fence, his lips taut, his dark eyes staring past her.

Marcy touched his cheek. “How was the Fair? Don’t matter I wasn’t there. I do truly hope you had a fine time. All the things to see... Did Kathy and Danny get to ride the merry-go-round all they wanted? Did you all have candy apples and spun sugar candy on a stick and ride the Ferris wheel and see the clowns and the whole building full of fruit and vegetables in baskets and the cattle all fixed up pretty and fancy? Did you get to see all that?”

The boy’s young face twisted as he fought against crying. His worried eyes searched her shadowed face. “Pa said we weren’t to tell you, said he’d skin us if we did. But I never did lie to you, Ma.”

“No, son.” Marcy felt a sudden cold fear.

“Pa said to tell you we went to the Fair, all of us. But we didn’t. He gave Kathy a dollar and she and Danny went. They were waiting right at the gate when we got back. Kathy was crying but she was all right.”

“Where did you go, Gary?”

“I don’t know — some place on the west side of town. Pa said it was time I started living like a man. He didn’t want any sissy sons, he said. We went to a place, sort of in back of a store, I guess. Anyway, it was a big room and a lot of men were there and some women, too. There was a jukebox and it was kind of dark and funny-smelling. Everybody seemed to be having a real good time. They danced some and talked loud and laughed a lot. Everybody liked Pa and he took me around and told everybody I was his son. They were real friendly. Pa started playing cards with some fellows. One of the ladies brought me some cookies and a sandwich and something to drink — soda pop, it was. It was sort of smoky in there and I got to feeling sick and after a while I went to sleep. Then Pa woke me up and said it was time to go home.”

Marcy was so quiet and motionless that the boy finally touched her face. “Ma, please don’t be mad at me.”

“I love you,” said Marcy Bayliss fiercely. “I love you and Kathy and Danny so much I can’t find words enough to tell you how much. You know that, Gary?”

“Sure, Ma.”

“Then don’t you worry any more. Everything’s going to be all right.” She rose and picked up the lamp. “Go to sleep,” she whispered, and stroked his tangled dark hair.

The boy’s tense body relaxed. His face lighted with a brief smile. He turned on his side and his eyes closed heavily. Marcy smoothed the quilt over him.

Then, moving as silently as the monstrous black shadow that followed her along the rough board walls, she went into the kitchen. Her strong hand closed on the bone handle of a kitchen knife. The long blade was worn to a thin point, razor-sharp, gleaming in the yellow lamplight. She carried the lamp in her left hand, the knife in her right. She brushed aside the curtain and entered the bedroom.

Joe lay on his back, one arm stretched out across her pillow. His naked chest, thickly matted with black hair, rose and fell with his breathing. He looked at her and his eyes shone, catlike, in the lamp’s dim glow. “Come on, Marcy,” he said. “Hurry up, ol’ woman.”

She set the lamp on the packing case that saved as a table beside the bed. She leaned over him and with both hands and all her strength she drove the knife into his chest clear to the handle.

He made a hoarse sound and struggled to sit up. His fingers fumbled with the knife. He stared at her with horrified unbelief. He coughed and blood gushed down his heaving body. Then he fell back on the bed.

Marcy turned down the lamp wick and blew out the flame. The small room flooded with the black and silver of the moonlight. The woman leaned against the bed frame. Now that it was done she was trembling and sick, but she was glad. The children were hers — she had borne them, she had raised them...

Slowly her strength came back to her and her hands were steady as she changed to her work clothes. She went out to the toolshed in the back yard and got a shovel. She dug a grave for Joe beneath a young Black Twig apple tree in the orchard. The ground was hard and the grave deep so that the night was almost over when she had finished.

She wrapped the body in the stained bedclothing and dragged it out through the house, across the back porch, and across the yard to the grave. When she had tumbled it in, she stood gasping for breath. Joe was a big man and heavy. The moon, low in the west, gave an eerie unearthly look to the dark bulk of the familiar mountain ridges, and its pale light made weblike shadows of the tree branches in the lifeless grass. Only the brightest of the stars blazed with chill, diamond brilliance in the black velvet sky. It seemed a time set aside for death.

Marcy shivered. She hurried back into the house and brought out the clothes Joe had worn. Sitting on the mound of fresh earth, she searched his pockets — some of her $20 might be left. She found the keys to his red Ford truck and a roll of bills. She counted the money — nearly $200! No wonder he had come home in such a good humor — the card game had been lucky for him.

Marcy dropped Joe’s clothes into the grave and then quickly filled it in. She smoothed the ground and spread the extra dirt into the freshly disked orchard rows. She cleaned the shovel and put it away and washed her face and hands in the spring’s icy overflow.

The eastern sky was growing light with the coming of the sun when Marcy Bayliss finally sat on her front-porch step. A rooster crowed in the hen house and a coyote sang in the dark canyon below the house.

Marcy smiled. The eastern sky faded into gold and palest blue. It was a new day — a fine new day to go to the County Fair.

II: Cross My Heart...

Louise lay flat on her stomach on the lumpy bed under the poplar tree in the back yard of her home. She lay with her knees bent and her calloused bare feet twined and twisted with a snaky life of their own as she looked at the bright-colored pictures in an old Montgomery Ward catalogue. She removed one grimy hand from her chin as she turned a page. Behind her thick-lensed, black-rimmed glasses her dark eyes were glassy with longing. She leaned on her elbow and stabbed at the pages with a grimy forefinger.

“I wish I had that,” she said. “And that... and that... and that—”

Above her head the heart-shaped poplar leaves hung limp and dark, unstirring in the morning’s oppressively humid heat. Her mother’s White Leghorns car-r-rked lazily as they dusted themselves in the powdery dirt of the chicken pen. Bees hummed sluggishly in the alfalfa patch beyond the unkempt yard. Over the flat fields the sun flung a pale, wavering haze of moisture drawn from the irrigation ditches and the soaked earth. The hot air smelled of steaming plant growth and stagnant water.

Louise turned on her back. Her eyes stared sightlessly up into the inert dark leaves. She felt herself sinking delightfully into her own inner world where she seemed to hang suspended in space, cushioned in the softest down, caressed tenderly by unseen hands.

She closed her eyes and waited breathlessly. Silken billows lifted her and she saw herself standing on a stage in front of a huge audience. The people in the audience were indistinct mouths smiling at her and shining eyes looking at her with love. She stood apart and saw herself and she was beautiful with a skin like ivory satin and a little red mouth and great dark eyes. And her dress felt light as a moonbeam and was of palest rose chiffon.

There were jewels in her ears and around her throat. She stretched out her arms to the people, a hush fell on the audience, a crescendo of violins played — and she sang. Her voice was clear and true and incredibly sweet She sang and sang and when she had finished the audience stood as one and shouted and cried and rained flowers on her — all but two who crouched, black as vultures, in the wings of the vast stage.

Louise tried to hold onto the wonderful dream but the two evil figures tore her away from all the beauty and warm delight. Their faces grew and swelled until they were close, staring at her, pointing their long clawlike fingers... The faces belonged to Miss Miles and Miss Henderson.

Louise had been in the cloakroom that last week of school in June. The children were supposed to play outside during recess, so she had stepped back into a corner behind an old coat when she heard the thump of sensible heels on the board floor. Then they had come into the room, Miss Miles and Miss Henderson, who taught Louise’s sixth-grade classes.

Miss Miles said to Miss Henderson, “What do you think of that Carter girl?” Her voice sounded funny as if she were speaking about something unclean.

Miss Henderson said, “I never saw such a thoroughly unattractive child.” Her voice had the same sound as Miss Miles’s voice.

“I know it,” said Miss Miles. “I can’t bear to have her close to me. I know I shouldn’t feel that way, but she makes my skin absolutely crawl!”

“I wonder,” began Miss Henderson thoughtfully. “It’s an odd thing—”

She and Miss Miles talked some more, but they began to use big words.

The rest of the week Louise had kept as far away from her teachers as she could. But in her mind, with dreadful relish, she had destroyed them a hundred times.

Now, as she lay quietly on her back under the old poplar tree, she ran them down with her powerful red sports car. It wasn’t as gruesome as some of her other methods of destruction, but it had its juicy points. The two teachers were walking down a steep banked road in a dark forest — Miss Miles, round and fat, Miss Henderson, thin and flat. They heard her coming — the deadly whirr of the powerful engine, the vengeful scream of the racing tires on the rough pavement. They looked back over their shoulders. Their eyes grew wide. They looked funny — Miss Miles, her round face like a pale sugar cookie with raisin eyes, and Miss Henderson, her long face like a slab of colorless cheese with a carrot nose. They ran. They screamed. They clawed at the steep bank, but it didn’t do them one bit of good. Louise ran over them and over them and over them until they looked like printed linoleum rugs, one round and one long and narrow.

“Louise! Louise!”

The girl heard the voice faintly.

“Louise, you lazy good-for-nothin’! If I have to yell once more, I’ll come over there an’ swat you good!”

The dream burst into a thousand crimson bubbles that floated into the dark forest and vanished.

The girl opened her eyes and saw the leaves of the poplar tree and the shattered glass sparkles of the sun. She moved her head. “What d’ya want?”

Her mother stood on the back porch of the old frame house. She was a tall graying woman in a faded housedress. She was all angles and flat unyielding planes. A sour and bitter defeat shone in her tired eyes and in the bitter harshness of her mouth.

“Rosellen’s come over to play,” she said. “And you play nice with her or I’ll whale the livin’ tar out of you.”

“Like fun you will,” the girl said under her breath. Aloud she said, “Sure, Ma.”

The woman went back into the house slamming the door behind her. The girl lay quietly, her thin body flat and shapeless on the worn quilt that covered the bed. She became aware of the sounds and the heat of the day. In the mesh-fenced pen a hen sang proudly of a newly laid egg. Across the fields drifted the somnolent purr of a moving machine and the irritating monotonous chir-r-r of cicadas in the dry grass.

Around the corner of the house a small figure appeared picking its way along the overgrown path. Rosellen was a tiny, exquisitely fashioned child with vacant, round blue eyes and curly blonde hair. Louise despised her for many reasons, and her dislike was mixed with a hopeless envy. For her part, Rosellen’s somewhat simple mind couldn’t conceive that in all the world there was a person who did not like and admire her. She lived in a large, beautifully kept house close to the road and her father was the Carters’ landlord. She seldom came to see Louise and when she did, the older girl’s sullen dislike was so apparent that Rosellen went home puzzled and unhappy — which alarmed Louise’s parents so much that they threatened her with dire punishment if she didn’t behave more civilly.

Louise watched her small visitor approach with coldly impassive eyes. Rosellen was wearing a blue-and-white checked pinafore. Her hair was slicked into two braids with blue ribbons and she wore tiny white sandals. She carried a long flat box.

“Hello,” Rosellen said, looking down at Louise with a testy superiority.

“Hello,” said Louise flatly.

The blonde child fidgeted. “Mama said I was to go play and leave her alone. Annie’s gone and Laura’s gone and Sally went to the coast with her mama, so I came over here. Do you want to play paper dolls? I brought mine.”

“They stink, stink, stink!”

The round blue eyes stared. The childish red lips pouted. “They don’t either! If you don’t play nice with me I’ll tell your mama on you.”

Rosellen leaned forward and set the flat box on the bed. She tugged open the lid. As she did so, Louise saw a heavy gold chain around her visitor’s neck and a heavy something that swung below it.

“Whatcha got on the chain?”

The blue eyes widened self-consciously. A small dimpled hand touched the lumped pinafore. “That’s a secret,” said Rosellen mysteriously. “I got it out of Mama’s jewel box.” Defensively she added, “Mama never told me I couldn’t wear it.”

“Lemme see it.”

The blue eyes regarded Louise with a cool importance. “You got to promise you won’t tell anybody.”

“I promise, lemme see it.”

“Mama’d be awful mad if she knew.”

“Thought you said she let you wear it.”

“N-no — she let me look at it though. Daddy doesn’t even know she’s got it. She said he’d be mad and make her send it back.”

“I bet! You’re making up stories, Rosellen. It’s some ole dime store junk somebody gave you.”

“It is not!” The blonde child flushed. “A nice man my mama used to know sent it to her from South America.”

“Quit making up stories. Ole brass chain — turn your ole neck all green!”

Rosellen pulled the heavy chain out from the front of her pinafore. “There, see! It’s not any ole junk! It’s a real ruby! Mama said sol”

The jewel at the end of the chain was the most beautiful thing Louise had ever seen. It was a deep-red stone as large as a sparrow’s egg, surrounded by clear brilliants and smaller red stones, all intricately wrapped in fine gold wire.

“Oh-h-h-!” Louise sat up straight Her eyes glowed. Never in all her life had she seen anything so beautiful or envisioned anything so desirable, even in her most precious dreams. The red gem glowed at her like a beckoning ember.

Rosellen smiled proudly. “It’s terribly valuable,” she said with insufferable self-importance. “It’s a real, real gen-u-wine ruby. I bet you never saw one before, did you?”

“I bet it’s nothing but glass,” Louise said automatically. She put out her hand to touch the wonderful red stone.

Rosellen jerked away from her. “You’ll get it all dirty putting your fingers on it.”

“I just want to see it a minute.”

The blonde little girl dropped the jewel down the front of the dress. “If you aren’t going to play with me, I’m going home.”

Louise caught her arm. “Don’t leave yet,” she said. “Let me just put it on a minute. Then I’ll play anything you like.”

“I’ve got to go home,” said Rosellen uneasily.

“No, you don’t. Just let me wear it a little while. I’ll play dolls with you an’ I’ll be real nice.”

“Give it right back?”

“I promise.”

“Well — all right. You’ve got to take it off when I say so. You promised.”

The chain was unsnapped from the slender white neck and clasped around the bony dark one. The gem seemed to burn Louise’s skin as she slid it down inside the open collar of her old shirt. It settled and seemed to be at home between the swelling bumps of breasts.

She held her hand over it and through the thin fabric of her shirt and the blood-red web of her fingers it seemed to glow with a marvelous and sinister light. Her thoughts folded in on it. It would be her lucky talisman, her protector, her friend. Something really truly would happen to old Miss Miles and old Miss Henderson — something awful, much worse than she could ever imagine. She felt her whole being transformed and made beautiful by the miraculous presence of the jewel against her body.

Rosellen laid her paper dolls out on the bed. She hummed to herself with housewifely zeal. “You can have Maria for your mama,” she said brightly, “and Kathy and Dora for your children. I’ll take Debbie for my mama and Alice and Susan for my little girls.”

She spread the brightly colored dolls and sorted out a pile of elegant paper clothing for each one.

Louise sat silently, her hand clutching the stone beneath her shirt, her thin, ugly face translucent with an inner light.

Rosellen said importantly, “I’m all ready, Louise. You can come visit my house first.” She stared doubtfully at the darkly silent girl. “Louise, come on. You said you’d play. You promised.” She shook Louise’s arm insistently. “If you don’t play I’m going home. Give me my mama’s necklace!”

Louise sat silent and immovable.

Rosellen’s blue eyes filled with angry tears. “I’m going to tell your mama you won’t play with me. You’ll git it! You’ll see!”

She started toward the house.

Louise leaped from the bed and caught her by the shoulder. She dug her wiry fingers into the soft flesh. “You tell my mama anything, I’ll tell your mama you stole her necklace!”

Rosellen began to wail.

“Shut up! Mama’ll hear you!”

The children returned to the bed.

“You said you’d play with me,” Rosellen sobbed. “You promised!”

“I didn’t say where I’d play, did I?” Louise asked. Behind her thick glasses her eyes gleamed redly. “Let’s take the dolls an’ go up to the ditch. I’ve got a nice playhouse up there, all cut out of the weeds. Just like a real house. It’s got rooms an’ a little table an’ chairs.”

“I don’t want to go up there. Mama told me not to get dirty.”

“It’s got real rugs on the floor. You won’t get a bit dirty.” Louise began to press the dolls into the box.

“I don’t want to go. I want my mama’s necklace and my dolls. I’m going home. You’re not nice.”

Louise seemed to swell darkly. “You do like I say or I’ll fix you! I’ll follow you around all day an’ I’ll bite you an’ I’ll hit you an’ I’ll kick you and I’ll tell all the kids nasty stories about you!”

“I want my mama’s necklace!” The tearful blue eyes were frightened. The small lips pouted stubbornly.

“You can’t have it till you do as I say.”

“P-p-please, Louise!”

“Come on. When we get up there to my playhouse I’ll really truly give it to you. Come on. Hurry up.”

The blonde child followed reluctantly as they trotted through the hot dust to the irrigation canal that crossed the fields behind the houses. The canal banks were covered with water willows, silver-leafed in the sun, white-flowered, lacy yarrow, water grass, and silky milkweed. In stagnant pools cattails raised pithy spikes. Except for the path it was a secretive, impenetrable wilderness.

The children followed the tunnel-like opening and the grasses closed vibrantly over their heads. They came out of the thick vegetation onto the concrete abutments of the headgate that controlled the flow of water into the smaller ditches. In the wide spillway the water ran swift and dark as it poured in a thick greenish torrent into the deep pool below. The water moved silently except for an oily lapping against the rough walls of the spillway. Dimpled whirlpools formed on its surface and vanished with sucking gurgles. Things moved in the greenish depths — swirls of moss, flickering shadows, sibilant things.

“Look here,” Louise cried, standing close to the edge.

“No,” Rosellen sniffed, drawing back. Her small face was pale beneath the sweat and tears. “I’m scared. I want to go home. I bet you haven’t got any ole playhouse. I want my mama’s necklace.”

“Don’t be a baby. Come look.”

“L-l-look at what?”

“There’s a turtle. A big yellow one with red eyes. Come look, then you can go home. I promise.”

“You’ll give me Mama’s necklace?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

The oath was a fearful one. Rosellen edged closer to the dark water. She stretched her slender neck. Her yellow braids fell forward over her small shoulders. “Where’s the turtle? I don’t see any ole turtle.”

“Right there,” said Louise, pointing downward. “You watch. He’ll come up again in a minute.”

Around the children rose moist hot air, thick with the smells of slimy mud and decay. Blue dragonflies hovered on silken wings above the green water.

“See. Here he comes.” Louise held the jewel against her skinny chest. Her fingers caressed its carved edges.

“Where? I don’t see any ole turtle!” Rosellen leaned forward.

Louise put her free hand against the small warm back — and pushed.

There wasn’t much splash and only a choked scream. The struggling child came to the surface once. Her small hands reached out toward Louise. Her eyes were round and black with terror. Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly.

Louise, still leaning a little forward, watched impassively, her left hand still clenched around the blood-red stone that seemed to throb like a living thing.

A whirling current seized Rosellen and pulled her under. The checked pinafore and the blue-ribboned braids vanished in the greenish depths.

Louise straightened. She had put the paper-doll box on the ground and now she picked it up and threw it into the water. It drifted like a small flat boat across the pool and then capsized and sank, slowly turning. The paper dolls floated down the stream. They might have been gay flowers on a peaceful lily pond.

Louise sat on the bank and drew the necklace from its hiding place. The crimson lights leaped and danced in her hand. She held the stone to her eye and lay back on the grass.

Quickly and effortlessly a crimson, silken softness came up about her and carried her away to a small room where a dinner party was in progress. It was a wonderfully rich room with deep-red velvet carpets and red silk wall hangings. Everything was jeweled with gold and diamonds, and soft lights glowed from crystal chandeliers. She was there inside herself, feeling all the delicious things, and yet she was watching herself with all-seeing eyes.

She was more beautiful than ever. Her dress was of glittering cloth of gold, and rubies covered her wrists and neck. Rubies smoldered in her high-piled black hair. People with smiling mouths and admiring eyes crowded around her. She lifted a golden cup and drank sweet red wine that tasted better than the smell of perfume and the touch of soft feathers. Her whole body tingled with a rapturous delight. Her pulses throbbed with a dizzying ecstasy. She seemed to be floating in a world of brilliant, gilded, crimson light and high, clear, ringing sounds that were unbelievably beautiful.

Then the vision, despite her best efforts to sustain it, began to grow dull. The melodies faded, and a strident something was pulling her down, down into a dark pit.

“Louise! Louise!” It was her mother’s angry voice. “Where are you? Come here this instant!”

The girl sat up on the bank. She drew a deep breath. She felt weak and languidly spent. She smiled slowly and dropped the pendant back inside her shirt and buttoned the collar high around her throat.

She stood up and peered into the water. Then she turned and began to run and scream.

She burst through the tall grass shrieking hysterically, “Help! Help! Mama, come quick! Rosellen fell in!”

III: The Sound of Women Weeping

The houses faced each other across the dingy street; one was weathered, white-painted, two-storied, the other squat, drab-brown with a wide veranda and a screened-in side porch. They seemed to regard each other with suspicious eyes — the two-story one from narrow windows pinched beneath a high, white-walled forehead, and the squat one from beneath the beetling veranda roof that projected like a thick, dark brow. The pale and wintry light of the late afternoon sun made barred shadows across the dead lawns. The street was quiet. Only an occasional car scuttled by, crisping through the fallen leaves.

Ed Crossman stood behind his front windows and gazed with somber gray eyes across the street at the brown house. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a gentle and deep-lined face. The black suit he was wearing was too small for him and smelled faintly of moth spray. He drew his hand over his face with a gesture of inarticulate grief and turned from the window to the stairs.

At the bottom of the steps he leaned against the banister and listened to the silence of the old house. In the kitchen the refrigerator hummed monotonously; beneath the floor some timbers creaked faintly; against the outside wall the thin cold wind drove a branch with a stealthy tapping — all the sounds seemed to intensify the hollow emptiness of the rooms. The house seemed to be waiting, listening — for the gay laughter and skipping feet that would never come again.

Since that night of horror, Ed Crossman had never been alone to think of the future, to plan the things that must be done. Doctor Miller had come first and then the police and the ambulance crew. Later the neighbors had appeared, and the relatives with their tears and their shocked faces, and inevitably the reporters with their notebooks and cameras, and finally the curious with their prying eyes and pointing fingers. Carloads of them had come, staring and whispering under the bare-limbed elms that lined the street.

It was over now — the unbelievable, the unbearable thing that had happened; and he and Ellie must face the long darkness that lay ahead. Ed Crossman straightened his shoulders and climbed the stairs. He tapped at the door of the front bedroom, and when there was no answer he pushed open the paneled door.

His wife lay motionless on the big fourposter bed. She hadn’t changed her dress after the funeral and the limp, black silk made her small body look shrunken and shapeless. Her eyes were closed and her hands folded inertly on her breasts. She lay so quietly that the man hurried to her side with a sudden cold fear. He touched her cheek and felt the burning dryness of her skin. She opened her eyes and stared dully up at him.

“Everybody’s gone,” he said. “We’re alone, Ellie.”

He sat on the bed and took her fevered hands in his — small hands, work-hardened hands, good hands, busy hands; through all the years of their marriage they had never been idle until now.

“Get her up, get her busy,” Doctor Miller had said. “Don’t let her lie there and brood about it. Make her angry, make her cry, make her feel something. She needs to cry. If she doesn’t, she may drift away from us into a world of unreality.”

But Ellie Crossman hadn’t cried — not since that night.

“Ellie,” said Ed Crossman. “Do you hear me, Ellie?”

Her eyes stared at him blankly.

He shook her gently. “Ellie, I want to talk to you. We’ve got a lot to do, a lot to decide.”

She looked at him. “Why?” she asked. “What does anything matter?”

“You can’t give up,” he said. “We’ve got to go on living and the sooner we get at it the better for both of us.”

Ellie closed her shadowed eyes. “I don’t care any more, Ed. She was all we had. There’s nothing left.”

“I know how you feel... she was my daughter too. My life. Everything.” The words were hollow dust in his mouth. He said, “I want to do something that is very hard for me. Right now, this afternoon, and I need you. I need you with me where you’ve always been.”

“Not today, Ed. Let me be.”

“Today, Ellie, while I have the strength. Tomorrow bitterness may be too much a habit. I want to go see Steve and Alice.”

Her body jerked and tensed, her fingers dug into his hands, her eyes blazed at him. “Why?” she cried. “How can you forget? How can you even speak their names?”

Ed Crossman shook his head. “It wasn’t their fault, Ellie. You can’t blame them any more than you can blame yourself. None of us knew what was going to happen. If we’d stayed home, if we hadn’t left her alone... None of us knew there was any danger — in this house, in this quiet street, in this peaceful town. Who could think... It was one of those stupid, senseless things, without reason or meaning. We can’t live the rest of our lives blaming ourselves — or blaming anyone.”

He stood up and crossed the room to the front window. He looked down on the dry front lawn and suddenly it was spring and long ago. The grass was green, the flower beds blazed with color, and children played with shrill laughter in the golden sunlight. He remembered the day so long ago and so long forgotten — Steve’s son, Carl, standing by the hedge, his still eyes watching, his dark face frowning.

Had Ed felt a cold premonition even then? The vision was so real that he felt again the swelling half-awed pride he had known that day as he had watched his chubby, blonde-headed little daughter. So beautiful and perfect she had always been to him...

His eyes lifted now to the squat brown house across the street, and the happy voices were silent, the withered lawn empty and cold.

A car came slowly down the street and clattered up the opposite driveway. A small man got out of the car and stood a moment leaning against it. His thin body was stooped and aged and the wind sent his wisps of dark hair flying.

Ed Crossman turned from the window and spoke to his wife. “Steve just came home and I’m going over there. Come along, Ellie. They’re still our friends. They’ve got awful trouble.”

The woman moaned and covered her face with her hands. “What’s their trouble compared to ours? Our child is dead! I hate them, Ed. I’ll hate them as long as I live and I don’t want to ever see them again. How can you be so... so... unfeeling?”

The man rubbed the side of his face. His big hand shook. He said slowly, “Ellie, I know I’m asking a lot. Too much, maybe. But look at it this way. If the kids were sick or got hurt in an accident, wouldn’t you and Alice comfort each other? If our Joanie died and Carl was terribly injured wouldn’t you do all you could to help Alice?”

The woman turned on the bed and stared at him with burning eyes. “It’s not the same, Ed.”

“No,” the big man agreed heavily. “It’s worse. Our pain and sorrow are clean things and all our memories of our daughter are tender and good. But think of Steve and Alice. What will they have to remember all the rest of their lives? Come with me. Please, Ellie.”

The woman shook her head and buried her face in the bedclothes. Ed Crossman covered his wife with a blanket and went out of the room and down the stairs.

The wind was cold and damp on his face when he reached the street. There was a feel of fog in the air, and a trace of rising mist paled the thin light of the sun. Ed Crossman walked slowly through the rustling leaves. How Joanie had loved to tumble in the big leaf piles! How she had shrieked with delight as she raced the falling leaves, her eyes blue as the sky, her yellow curls flying. It was as if the recent years had never been, as if he remembered her most vividly as a child. Sometimes she seemed to skip beside him, her small warm hand clasping his. In these moments his crushing sense of loss was so great that it seemed unbearable.

He stood before the brown house. The windows were dark, the shades drawn, the porch leaf-littered. With leaden feet he climbed the porch steps. He was sweating coldly. Beyond the closed front door some malevolent presence seemed to lurk. He knew it was only his tortured mind that made it seem so, but it was with the greatest difficulty that he forced himself to raise his hand to the knocker.

He tapped gently. No answer. He struck the knocker more firmly. This house where he had always come and gone almost as though it were his own had become an unfriendly thing.

The house remained coldly silent. Almost with relief he turned away. And turning, he heard the savage chuck-chuck of a hoe in the back yard. He went down the steps and around to the back.

Steve Parkson was wielding the tool with violent slashing strokes as he dug into the earth of his vegetable garden.

Ed Crossman watched him a moment, then called his name.

The small man swung around. He had been crying and the pale light glinted on his thin, tear-streaked cheeks. He stared at Ed with incredulous eyes and his face twisted in an anguished grimace. Then their hands met.

Steve Parkson said huskily, “You didn’t need to come, Ed. I know how you must feel and, God, I can’t blame you. I can’t believe it’s happened. It’s a damn dream, a nightmare. I keep thinking I’ll wake up and... and I’ll see Carl and Joanie...”

“I know, Steve, I know.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if we’d had other kids. But I guess it wouldn’t matter. It’d be the same. I got to talk to someone. You, Ed? You want to talk? You got time?”

“I’ve got time, Steve.”

The men sat on a stone bench in the fading sunlight. Behind the back-yard fence and out of the wind the sun had a faint warmth. They were silent for a time, each buried in his own thoughts.

“I went to see the boy today,” Steve Parkson said with a shuddering effort. “They got him in a cage like an animal. He walks up and down, up and down. He said he’s sorry and if I saw you I was to tell you he didn’t mean it. He didn’t mean to hurt Joanie. He said something just sort of snapped. He loved her. I guess he always did, even when they were kids, only it was play then.”

“If he loved her,” Ed Crossman cried, “how could he kill her?”

“I don’t know, Ed. I don’t know.” Steve Parkson pounded his fist on the stone bench. “I tried to raise him right, teach him right from wrong. I guess I’m not much of a teacher. I figured if I just loved him enough he’d come out okay. Inside I knew there was something wrong. He was such a quiet boy but he had a temper — he always did even when he was a little kid. You know how it is, you can’t believe there’s anything wrong with your own kid. Other people’s kids, yes — but not your own. Sometimes he was such a good boy. Helped his ma, helped me. And always when I’d see him growing so big and handsome and strong, it was like a flame warming me, my pride in him. I loved everybody because he was my son.”

“I know, Steve, I know.” The big man put his arms around the small man’s shoulders.

“I knew something was wrong with him. But I just wouldn’t believe it.” The small man choked, tears sliding down his cheeks. “I saw a lot of things. I kept making excuses for him. It’s my fault. If I’d beat it out of him, maybe? I don’t know. I did lick him good once, the time I saw him burn Mrs. Carter’s cat in the incinerator. He swore up and down he didn’t, but I saw him. The cat scratched him. I licked him more because he lied to me, I guess, and then I was scared because he’d do a thing like that. If I’d taken him to the doctor then, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”

“You didn’t know, Steve. You can’t take all the blame on yourself for what happened. Maybe if we hadn’t left her there alone...” The night of the lodge party. He and Ellie had wanted to go. It had seemed safe enough. Joanie had laughed at his fears, called him her Darling Worry Bug. “I’m sixteen,” she had laughed. “I don’t need a baby sitter. For goodness’ sakes, Father, I’m practically grown up!” He could see her face, the smooth curve of her cheek, the roundness of her slender neck... Looking at his daughter from the open door, Ed had felt an urge to go back and kiss her goodbye, to tell her how much he loved her. All the rest of his life he would have that deep regret...

“Why did he kill her? What did he tell you?” Ed asked with slow pain.

Steve Parkson looked far up into the opaque and empty sky as though he too searched for an answer. “He talked to me today,” he said. “He never told the police anything except that he killed her. He told me that he loved her. Nobody could ever understand how much. She wouldn’t be true to him, he said. She wanted to date other fellows.”

“She was just a youngster, just past sixteen!” Ed Crossman cried.

“He says he saw you and Ellie leave and he went over to talk to Joanie. That was all he meant to do, just talk. They had quite an argument about it. Finally Joanie told Carl to leave. He says that’s when he — well, then something snapped. She looked so pretty when she was mad, with her eyes full of sparks and her cheeks all pink. He tried to kiss her. He told her if he couldn’t have her nobody else would either. She pushed him away and ran into the kitchen. She tried to get out the back door. Next thing the boy knew, he was standing over her with a kitchen knife in his hand and Joanie was on the floor... and blood over everything.”

Ed Crossman closed his eyes. They had come home early, driven by his unrest. It had been a night of brilliant full moon, clear pale light, and velvet shadows. He had been putting the car into the garage when Ellie had begun to scream. Rushing up the walk, he had found her kneeling over Joanie’s body. Bright red blood on the black and white tiles of the kitchen floor.

The unbelievable nightmare had begun then and it would never end. It would never end for Steve and Alice either. All their lives were caught up in this one senseless, maniacal act.

It was hard, hard not to hate. Ed drew in a deep breath and put his hand on his friend’s thin shoulder. “I’m sorry for all of us,” he said. “Most of all for Joanie. Her life would have been such a happy time. To her everything was wonderful. I know she wouldn’t even... even hate Carl for what he did to her. And because it wasn’t in her to hate, I can’t either — not and be fair to her. I’ll do what I can for your boy, Steve. Taking his life isn’t going to bring back Joanie. Maybe I can help. I’ll do what I can.”

Along the back fence a row of bronze chrysanthemums bloomed in bright defiance of the coming winter. The dying sun touched the top flowers and they glowed bright gold. Like Joanie’s hair, Ed Crossman thought with a quick stab that tightened his throat.

Parkson touched his arm almost timidly. “Thanks, Ed,” he said. “There aren’t many guys in the world would say what you just did.”

“We’ve been friends and neighbors — thirteen years, isn’t it, since you moved in here?”

“The fall of forty-eight.” Parkson hesitated a moment then asked, “How’s Ellie?”

Ed Crossman rubbed his cheek. “She’s still feeling the effects of the shock, Steve. She and Joanie were very close. She’s upstairs in bed now.”

The big man stood up. The air was rapidly growing colder and pale mists were gathering in the still air. The bare trees along the street raised skeleton arms.

“I’ve got to go home, Steve.”

“I’d ask you in but Alice — she don’t feel so good either. She hasn’t slept since we heard about the boy. At night I feel her lying so stiff and full of pain beside me. I know she is thinking like I am — of all the things we did we shouldn’t and what we didn’t do we should have. She never cried, not even when I told her — she just stared at me. She keeps it all bottled up inside her. She won’t go to see the boy. She doesn’t even ask about him. It’s like he never was. You know what she does, Ed? She cleans house like it’s killing her. We’ve got the cleanest house this side of hell.”

The small man looked at Ed Crossman. “I’d like to ask you in but Alice, she says she don’t want to see anybody.”

“Sure, Steve. I understand.”

Their hands met and Ed Crossman turned away. He looked across the street and saw Ellie coming toward them through the chilly dusk. She had changed her black silk for a clean starched housedress and her soft, graying hair was brushed back neatly. She walked with a firm step and her grief-lined face was calm. She saw the men and came toward them.

“Hello, Steve,” she said and touched his shoulder. “Where’s Alice?”

Steve Parkson nodded toward the house. Ellie looked at her husband. “You were right, Ed,” she said. She leaned forward and her dry lips brushed his cheek. “I saw you and Steve sitting together, talking together, and I knew this can’t be the end of things for us. I belong with you.”

Ed Crossman looked at his wife and knew that he had never loved her more. She climbed the back stairs and let herself in the back door. She called, “Alice! Oh, Alice! It’s me, Ellie!”

The men heard the sound of women weeping.