Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 6. Whole No. 283, June 1967

A Game Played in the Twilight by Gerald Kersh

We have often wondered how many different types of short story Gerald Kersh has written — we doubt if there is any type at all that he hasn’t put his special literary mark on. EQMM has been proud to publish a wide variety of Gerald Kersh’s short stories — but here is one that is different from all the others...

Hearing frenzied footsteps and a hooting of predatory boys, the old lady came out of her quiet little house, leaning on a light hickory stick with a silver band under the handle. She could detect one boy running nimbly ahead of the rest and knew, by his breathing, that he was in some distress.

So she waited until the hunted boy was in the shadow of her porch and his pursuers were given voice. She paused listening; then smiled; and came into the open, brandishing her stick and calling the boys by name almost playfully as she struck at them, “Oh, your back, Charlie Lygoe — your back, your back! Oh, poor Jack Sparrow — your legs, your legs! Oh your arm, John Cotton, your poor arm!”

They fled, terrified. Her stick stung, but her voice bit deep; and there was something especially frightening in the way the pale-eyed gentlewoman called her blows.

Now she turned to the boy who had been running away.

“What did you run away for?”

“They wanted this pie, ma’am.”

“So you ran?”

“Yes’m—” he was urgent in his own defense “—I can run rings around ’em. I did not run for fear. I had this pie to bring to you. I figured I might wind Charlie Lygoe and the others, then fight it through, ma’am, and save this pie.”

“Good boy. And what would you’ve done if they had caught you, eh?”

“Ate some of the pie, slapped the rest in Jack Sparrow’s face, and run again.”

“And what about Charlie Lygoe?”

“Oh, he’d be down, and then there would be only one by the time Jack Sparrow got the pie out of his eye. So I would have tackled John Cotton, and anyone can handle him.”

“Good. I like you. You will go far, lad.”

The boy asked, breathless again, “Are you telling my fortune, ma’am?”

“Fortunes cut two ways,” said the old lady, laughing. “Everybody goes far, don’t you see — up to heaven or down to t’other place.”

“Yes’m.”

It would have been inaccurate to call this old woman tender in her manner — tenderized is the word for her, as for strong flesh rendered soft by hard knocks and the passage of time. She was much feared in Troy Grove, Illinois, because it was believed that Mama Fixum, as she was called, had the gift of second sight. She looked as if through a film of skimmed milk, yet you sensed that she was aware of your every movement, even of your change of expression. Certainly, for a blind woman, Mama Fixum was fantastically perceptive.

She was supposed to go abroad at night when she should have been sleeping and not walking; but if she was, as rumor had it, a witch, her magic was of the white sort that heals but does not hurt and lays no curses; and for her blessings she made no charge to rich and poor alike.

Still, to be on the safe side, the housewives of Troy Grove used to send her cakes and jars of preserves with their compliments and kindest regards, while their husbands raised their hats to her in the street. At all events, they said, old Mama Fixum is a lady.

All the same, they crossed their fingers behind her back when she passed, tapping with her little stick; because hers had been no ordinary life.

She knew every one of the children of the neighborhood — even if they did not speak — by the way they moved, so that now, when the awkward boy came into her house with the pumpkin pie, Mama Fixum dilated her nostrils, delicately sniffing its aroma, and extending a bony but sensitive hand explored the boy’s head.

“Aye, aye,” she muttered, “many a girl would give more than she ought for that cornsilk hair and cheeks like warm peaches! Set you down, little Jimmy, and I’ll give you a glass of rhubarb wine and some of my own little cakes. And thanks very kindly for the pie. I’ll give you a jug of my old elderberry wine to take home to your good people because it is a specific for the fever.”

The boy shrank back a little — there was something frightening in the smooth face of the old lady and in the knowledgeable touch of her fingertips. He had an awful vision of something older than Time — a brain activated by ten eyes at the ends of stalks.

Swallowing fright, he asked, boldly, “I wonder what it feels like to be blind?”

“It depends on what a person means by seeing,” said Mama Fixum, with a little laugh. “I’ve been well nigh blind near on to sixty years. Now you have lived all of ten years, Jimmy, with the full use of your eyes. Look at me, sweetheart, and tell me what you see. Do, now! And I’ll wager that I can see more of you blind than you can see of me with your bright eyes. Now then! What do you see?”

Jimmy did not know how to answer, so he asked, “If you please, ma’am, why do they call you Mama Fixum?”

She laughed. “Well done, child. When at a loss to answer a question, ask another and play for time. My real name, boy, is Phoebe Fiscombe; but names get altered according to the convenience of the vulgar. It is easier to say Fixum than Fiscombe. Thus Cholmondeley is pronounced Chumley, and Featherstonhaugh is pronounced Fanshaw. My grandfather was Sir Charles Fiscombe, child, who came to this country in 1758 from Devonshire in England. That was nearly a hundred years ago — if, as you should, you know your additions and subtractions — this being the year of Our Lord 1850. Playing and fighting were my grandfather’s ruin.”

The boy said gravely, “I like playing. Mama Fixum, but they won’t let me play with them. And I’m not afraid to fight, you know, only they laugh at me because I’ve got thin wrists—”

“Bah! Do you think I am talking of playing for marbles or whatnot, or fighting with your knees and elbows in the dust? Mercy, no! I speak of the cards and the dice — écarté, faro, ombre, piquet, and poque or, as they call it now, poker; and with the dice, hazard and the game of seven. Fighting was with the sword or pistol. The stakes were gold on the table, or blood in the field.

“They were men, child, men! But thank God you are half a girl, by the touch of you, and may one day be a minister; because gamblers die in poverty, and he who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword.”

“I don’t want to be any pasty-faced minister,” the boy said.

“You hush now, little Jimmy! My grand-uncle Amyas, my grandfather’s youngest brother, was vicar of Fiscombe, and they tell me there never was a heartier man nor a harder rider to hounds in the whole of the country of Devon; and if he could not bring a parishoner to grace with soft words, my grand-uncle Amyas took him by the scruff of the neck and beat the fear of the Lord into him with a stout stick — and drank his four bottles of wine at dinner. Pasty-faced, indeed!”

“Mama Fixum, tell me about your grandfather. And is it true you shot an outlaw? And is it right what they say, you were stolen by the Injuns? And can you really read fortunes—”

“All that and more, child, all that and more,” replied the old lady, laughing. “But one thing at a time. My grandfather, Sir Charles Fiscombe, was a fine man, but gaming was his downfall — high play and quick temper. They don’t mix. So he fought a duel with young Lord Millis Hills, the son of the Earl, over a disputed hand at cards, and shot him dead in the dawn; therefore, he left England. For it was a saying, d’you see, that a Fiscombe never needed to fire twice at the same man, on account of a trick so simple that a born baby knows it... But these are not matters for little ears, so run along with you, boy Jimmy.”

“What was the trick, Mama Fixum? Please tell me, please do!”

“Hm! You have a charm to unlock my tongue and steal my brains away, I see. Watch me clever and close — maybe this trick will stand you in good stead one of these cool evenings. Who can tell? Now, child, poor blind me, I can see little more than your outline. But where is my finger pointing?”

“At my breast, Mama Fixum.”

“So! Now, you point your forefinger at something in this room; hold that finger steady — don’t move, now — and take a sight down that finger. Well, what have you drawn a bead on?”

“That candlestick, ma’am.”

“Imagine, now, that your index finger was the barrel of a pistol and your middle finger was the trigger finger. Your thumb, d’you see, holds the hammer back at full cock while your middle finger has the trigger down as far as it will go. The pointing finger is doing the aiming, so all you want to do is lift your thumb, keeping right steady, and your ball will go exactly where the finger points, even in the half dark.

“That was my grandfather’s trick, and he died, rest his soul, of over-reliance on it, for after a game of faro he challenged a Spanish gentleman in Virginia. The challenged party has choice of weapons. The Spanish gentleman chose swords and ran my grandfather through at the second pass; for it takes an eye to be a swordsman — whereas anyone can shoot like poor blind me — and all my family were weak in the eyes. Take another cake and run along.”

“And what about your father and how you were captured by the Injuns? And how did you shoot the outlaw?”

“Well, my grandfather died middling prosperous, and my dear father inherited the property, including four cases of pistols and the Fiscombe Curse which was a passion for play, whether with cards or dice. Sweetheart, better be born in a ditch with nothing, than in a palace with a lust to gamble! My mother was a Wyndham and she brought him twenty thousand dollars, but it all went — and so did he go.

“Died in a duel, pistols across a handkerchief, shot by a gentleman named Scudder. Witnesses opined that Scudder pulled his trigger a little too soon, but it was too late to argue. My honored father fired his shot while he was down on his knees and, as I told you, a Fiscombe never shoots twice at the same target if it be human. Both perished simultaneously. Let this be a lesson to you.”

“And can you really read the future, Mama Fixum?”

“Good gracious, yes, my dear! Did you ever carry keys in your pocket?”

“Yes’m.”

“You know by the feel which key opened what door?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“The key carried its own future with it, then, didn’t it now?”

“Yes, Mama Fixum. How did you kill the outlaw, you being... not very well able to see?”

“Why, Jimmy, that person murdered my husband and there was nobody in all the world to hunt him down. They called him Wild Bull Chase and he was a bad man. He shot my husband in the back with a rifle, having lost a thousand dollars to him. For my husband — oh, dear me, how long ago! — was also a Fiscombe, because he was my cousin three times removed. But all the world was afraid of Wild Bull Chase. Wild Bull by name, and wild bull by nature. He was the man that shot Bad Al Kohler and Red Ned Kelly. Our men were out after the Injuns mostly, in those days.”

“But I heard, Mama Fixum, that you lived years and years with the Injuns.”

“Ah, child, there’s not much you miss! Time of the Massacre I was a little girl and, surely enough, the Injuns did carry me away.”

“Did they torture you?” the boy asked eagerly.

“Torture me? Bless your heart, not they! You see — I won’t give you the right words for it, because that would take half the day, and it’s high time you were home — there was a kind of politics. The Injuns let some white prisoners live while we let some Injun prisoners live. Diplomacy, it is called. It was in case both sides wanted to make a peaceful exchange of prisoners, one against the other. So it came to pass I lived five years with the Injun women. And many a thing they taught me of herbs and medicines. One thing above all I learned—”

“Tell me how you killed that Wild Bull Chase, Mama Fixum.”

“By learning what I’m trying to tell you, young fellow. By learning two of the hardest things in the world — namely, how to keep dead quiet and how to keep dead still. The fools that were about in my time used to think the Injuns were devils. Nothing of the sort, child. The Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, it’s true, but the lamb must have his nose to the wind, because the Lord helps those that help themselves.

“Watch sun and wind, Jimmy, and you can see to kill through milk; aye, though you can’t read your Bible at twelve inches, guard your position and you’ll be deadly against an eagle. The whole trick of invisibility, Jimmy, is to keep your head down, get close to something pretty nigh your own color, and let every bone in your body go limp and stay limp. For this reason panthers were made with spots, and some insects like unto leaves.

“If it ain’t a bird you are fighting, bear this in mind, and keep your back plumb in the eye of the sun. A good target, you say? So you are, if the other man knows how to hood his eyes. But then he is at a disadvantage, because you can see him a sight clearer than he can see you, and the chances are five to two he’ll miss you by a foot. Then he is at your mercy.

“He must fire again, so play Injun — keep still until he begins to reload, and while his eyes are down on his charge, edge closer; then, when he’s aiming to sight a hundred paces behind you, spring up and confront him, and let him have it. But never forget, Jimmy honey, the forefinger along the barrel, the hammer back, and the trigger pulled with the middle finger. Let your thumb go and no human speed will match the fall of the hammer with the snick of the spring. Now be off home with you.”

The child persisted, “I want to know how you killed Wild Bull Chase, Mama Fixum.”

“You take back that little jug of elderberry wine for the fever, child. You can have another cake, if you like. And don’t go sipping my elderberry on the way home, because it is not for boys — only for ladies with the fever. Two nice big glasses at bedtime also cures the nightmare.”

She shook her head and said to herself, “Any excuse is better than none for the poor dears; put whiskey in a medicine glass and they’d drink thirty ounces a day for their stomachs and blame the hiccups on their husbands.”

“Yes,” said the boy, “but you didn’t tell me how you killed Wild Bull Chase.”

“Oh, bless the child! You don’t know that you open a sore old wound, silky-haired little Jimmy. But Lord lend us patience! It happened like this. My good husband Digby, when the game of cards reached its end, put down a pair of aces and a pair of eights against Wild Bull Chase’s aces and threes, and thereby legitimately won a thousand dollars. Wild Bull Chase got up in a huff and walked out of the Grove Tavern.

“It was a warm night and the door was open and my husband, they told me, was sitting with his back to the door. He wanted, you see, the benefit of the extra moonlight on his cards, being near-sighted like all us Fiscombes. Digby said good night to the other players and — he being never a man to come home, bless his heart, at a given time — sat in his place dealing himself imaginary hands; with the lamplight over him and the moonlight white on his back.

“Then, all of a sudden, my husband went forward as if a sledgehammer had struck him and fell on the table with a bullet in his back. A second or so later, people heard the sounds of the shot that had killed him. Oh, for your health’s sake, Jimmy, never sit down with your back to an open door!

“If somebody had robbed my poor husband, suspicion might have fallen on Wild Bull Chase; then, no doubt, a few men would have taken out after him and searched him for money, and hanged him up if they had found it. But here was no occasion to rouse the town without evidence. Chase was known, everybody said, as a hand-gun fighter and not a rifleman. There was no evidence against Wild Bull Chase, man-killer though he was. Also, there was not much law in the land, then, and Chase had an elegant horse and a decent start.

“When they brought my man home, looking so quiet, whom everybody praised now in his death who had disliked him so much in his lifetime because they feared him, I put my hand on his marble forehead, and swore to his cold clay, ‘Digby, lie still and rest; you shall be avenged!’

“The women here said I was unnatural because I did not cry. Poor girls, I had learned in a bitterer school than they. Work first, then cry; and let your face go to pieces before strangers? No. Grief is yours alone. I left Digby decently covered with a sheet and looked over the terrain where he had been shot. There was a dark mark on the floor and a lead ball only half buried in the table, where there were some scattered cards.

“Now, remembering what I knew of angles and woodcraft, it seemed to me that the shot must have been fired from Soo Hill, three hundred yards away as the crow flies; whoever shot my husband Digby must have been acting out of pure meanness, giving way to the temptation Digby’s fine broad back must have offered in the lamplight and the moonlight.

“‘I will find that man and he shall die in his tracks,’ I vowed, and I went back home.

“And here was waiting a committee of ladies and gentlemen to commiserate with me, but I begged them to be gone and leave me alone, for pity’s sake, with my dead. We used to have two house servants. One was a Negro slave called Tarheel — a fine carpenter and cabinet-maker; the other was a white bondswoman called Vidler.

“When everyone else was gone, Tarheel said to me, ‘Miz Fixum, I was up on Soo Hill huntin’ for rabbit, and I distinkly seen that bad Wild Bull genamum draw a bead on Massa Fixum, framed like a picture-painting in the doorway. There weren’t no way to stop ’im, me being so high up the hill, but I’d ’a throwed a rock at his hoss if I’d found one to hand.

“‘And before I could even cotch a breff to yell, he was gone. But I seen which way he headin’.’ And this Negro, weeping, says, ‘I am not by law ’lowed to bear testimony ’gainst no white man, but I sure is ’lowed by law to hang by the neck. And I will surely, with yo’ leave, follow that Wild Bull Chase to the end of the world for the sake o’ Massa Fixum!’

“At this, containing myself, I said, ‘Thank you, I take the will for the deed. And for this piece of bravery, Tarheel, you shall have your freedom and your own carpenter’s shop. Load me the long English pistols and I’m after Wild Bull Chase, alone. Load me the pair, choose the balls well, and let them be right, or I’ll switch you with a hickory branch until it is bare of twigs!’

“Well, then, I changed my skirts for trousers and my shoes for moccasins; for what I had to do was not work for petticoats. But now the bondswoman Vidler must have her say. And she says, ‘Nay, mistress, but I’ll not let thee. Have I not two strong hands and two good legs and a pair of sharp eyes? While thee, poor lady, has but weak eyes. And thee must not kill, nor bear arms even. Nay, mistress, let me find him and bring the good folk to judge him and spare thee the sin of—’

“I told her, ‘Watch your dead master, but for what you have this minute felt, you shall have freedom from bond and a dowry to marry a good husband. And mark you, you two,’ says I, looking to my pistols and putting them into my sash, ‘do you not see that Wild Bull Chase’s benefit is also my advantage? He has the eye of a wolf, while I see only in a milky twilight. He must be traveling westwards; and I shall follow him this night and tomorrow — at a distance — until the evening comes down. Then we will see who stands on stronger ground! This is a game played in the twilight — and woe betide the man who meets a Fiscombe on his own terms!’

“Tarheel said, ‘Massa Chase surely was headin’ westward, Mix Fixum — on a right good hoss.’

“I told him, and here’s the truth, ‘There never was a living horse could run down man or woman in distance; it is the brain that counts; otherwise, how could a tame horse loaded with man and saddle round up wild horses?’

“Then, weeping, ‘Let me get thee some food to pack and a bottle of cold tea,’ says Vidler, but I tell her that neither bite nor sup do I touch until Wild Bull Chase is dead—”

“Mama Fixum, oughtn’t you to have took something to eat and drink?” the boy interjected.

“No, because I had vowed my vow in another place, and I would eat lead and drink smoke before I broke that vow. So I kept the eye of the sun, when it rose, at my back and held it there — until it was overhead — while I picked up tracks of man and horse, circling then, when the trail led to Thompson’s Creek which lay close by Pick’s Woods.

“It had to be so, of course, because Wild Bull Chase was a fugitive — only from his conscience — and even if the townfolks had been after him he must have seen their horses miles away on these prairies. That is why I was surer and safer alone, and on foot; though Chase was well mounted and armed with a rifle. With this rifle, if I had been on horseback, he could have brought me down at five hundred paces. But I bided my time afoot, knowing where he had to go, which was to the water and wondering by what miracle the sun seemed to stand still in the sky — because if ever a morning and an afternoon lasted the whole six days of creation, this was it.

“You must understand, Jimmy boy, that I had to measure my light and my darkness in grains, like so much powder to carry a certain shot. There are two very hard shooting lights. Clear sunlight is a tricky one, but most treacherous of all is when the day marries the night; I mean, evening. Twilight is my light, yet I had to gauge how much light Wild Bull Chase needed to see by.

“So I crawled after him, knee and elbow, until he reached the creek. He thought he was alone, but I was only a hundred paces away. Wild Bull Chase lit no fire, but I could make out the figure of his horse. So I Injun-crawled to a dead locust tree, and with the pack thread I always kept in my pocket, lashed one of my pistols to a limb and bit the thread off short. Then I tied a fresh end to the trigger, cocked the pistol, and, ever so carefully crawled away, looping the thread in my hand around a smooth young sapling, until all the thread was paid out. And now I was no more than ten rods from Wild Bull Chase, with the evening sun going down and the thread in my hand.

“Here, naturally, was the time to draw Chase’s fire because, don’t you see, a flash gives a man no time to look, so there had to be light enough for him to see the curl of the smoke. Therefore, I pulled on my thread and the tied pistol went off with a bang that sent the birds screaming. The ball must have passed close enough to whine, for Wild Bull Chase was down behind his horse in an instant, and he sent his rifle bullet right in the direction of where my pistol was.

“Then he looked to his own pistols and reloaded his rifle — always with his eyes in the direction from which that shot had come — while I was twenty yards closer to him before he had that ball rammed home. Now here, Lord forgive me, here was something I never have stopped being proud of, for I had been moving so like an Injun that my hand closed on the scruff of the neck of a sleeping hare. There is moving quietly for you!

“I pitched that poor hare in Wild Bull Chase’s line of vision, and she was away into the lengthening shadows in three bounds. But Chase fired at the sound and the shadow, while I crept nearer and nearer as he reloaded once again.

“I will do him this justice — he was not a coward. He tried to make himself small and crawled not backwards but forwards, little knowing that I was now less than fifteen paces behind him. But the wind changed suddenly and his horse caught my scent and whinnied, so Chase turned with his rifle at his hip.

“Then I came up into sight, out of the grass, and said, ‘Wild Bull Chase, I am the wife of the man you wantonly murdered. You have a cocked and loaded rifle in your hands and I have this pistol. Face to face, Chase, fire!’

“‘Are you all alone?’ he asked.

“‘Yes,’ said I.

“‘I don’t fight women,’ he said.

“But I knew by his false voice that his finger was on the trigger, and I threw myself sideways. He fired.

“His ball grazed my shoulder, but mine took him in the forehead, so that he fell down dead,” said the old lady.

The boy asked avidly, “And what did you do then, Mama Fixum?”

“I turned him over with my foot and said to myself, ‘Now I may weep for my husband.’ And so I sat on the ground and I did. Then I mounted Wild Bull Chase’s horse, because all the spirit had gone out of me, and rode back home, where I shamed them all by telling them that a half-blind young woman had hunted down and killed in fair fight this famous bad man. And there is the whole story, child, Take the jug and be off with you home.”

“Mama Fixum, could I hold one of those pistols?”

“You may, child — indeed, there is only one left of that pair, the one I tied the thread to. The other I had buried with my husband. But it all seems a thousand years away... And this pistol here shall be buried with me, and much I care if they say it’s the Injun in me!”

The boy hefted the weapon and then reluctantly hung it back up again over the fireplace.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll come and cut your grass, Mama Fixum.”

“Do, and I’ll bake you a treat,” the old lady said.

“Mama Fixum, will you read my future before I go?” the boy begged.

“Reading futures is for old women, child. Making futures is for young men. Give you advice, though — live by the gun and you’ll die by the gun, live by the cards and you’ll die by the cards, and never sit with your back to an open door. Now be off with you once and for all, for I’m tired of talking.”

A number of other boys in various stages of ferocity were waiting for Jimmy when he came out in the hard-baked street. Their ringleader was fourteen years old and the biggest boy of his age in Troy Grove. He pulled Jimmy’s long silken hair and, with an odiously awkward swagger and jeer, asked, “What’s in that there jug, Jimmy boy?”

With a curious faraway look Jimmy dosed the last three fingers of his right hand extended the forefinger, and cocked the thumb, saying, “If you ever do that again, Balfour Paltz, I’ll kill you.”

Unaccountably, the big boy was quelled — there was something stirring in the other’s face that made all his flesh go cold.

“See here, Jimmy boy—” he began.

“You know my name. I’ll thank you to call me by it.” His mind was moving rapidly; he liked the nickname Wild Bull, but he did not want to be called after a murderer who fired on blind women. Clearing his throat, he said, “My name is James Hickok, but from now on my personal friends may call me ‘Wild Bill.’”

So the young Bill Hickok went home unmolested, carrying the jug of elderberry wine in his left hand. With the index finger of his right he pointed at an imaginary enemy and said, “Bang! You’re dead!” With one eye shut and the other half open he saw, as it might be framed in the sharp V of a gunsight, an acrid and smoky sector of a thunderous and bloody destiny.