Rainbow’s End

6

We went in, and Mom said: “Well, thank God it’ll soon be over, and then the sun will come up. Won’t it?”

“Well? It generally does.”

She had plumped herself down on the sofa and looked at me kind of funny as though what I said wasn’t quite what she expected to hear. But before she could say what that was, a car turned in to our lane from the main highway and pulled up in front of the house — a cream-colored truck with the letters on the side of the TV station we have across the Ohio from Marietta at Parkersburg, West Virginia. Then a woman was ringing the bell and guys were getting out. She wanted to come in and take pictures of me and Mom, and I said OK — “but the real star of the show was that girl, Jill Kreeger’s her name, who rode that parachute down, and held Shaw off somehow until I had a chance to plug him.”

“Oh, but we have her already.”

It seemed that Jill was hardly in her hospital room before they were there too, “and shot her in her nightie, the short one the hospital gave her, which wasn’t much of a costume, but a lot they’ll care tonight, when the tape goes on TV. That’s a mighty pretty girl, and the tribute she pays you, Mr. Howell, is really something to hear.”

Mom didn’t say anything.

They set their camera up at the end of the room, next to the arch, and the woman put me on the sofa, using the low table, the one in front of the fireplace, to sit on herself. Then she began asking questions. I answered as well as I could, though there wasn’t much to say, and I felt she was disappointed. I strung it out as well as I could, how I carried Jill to the house, “got her into a hot bath, to stop her teeth from chattering, and then called the sheriff’s office.” After a while she seemed satisfied, then decided to work on Mom. That made me nervous, for some reason, but when she’d put Mom on the sofa in the place where I’d been sitting and stayed where she had been, there on the low table, it began to go all right. Mom really gave out with it, all about her “doing my best, to get it through his head what would happen to him if he dast to kill that girl.” You’d have thought Mom was the star of the show, and the woman was suddenly delighted. Then Mom blurted out: “But my boy is the one — except he didn’t tell it right. We’re mountain, and we don’t brag about what we do. But when the time comes to do it, we do it — as he done.”

You could tell how pleased the woman was, and I was doubly pleased, from having my worry eased. Then she and her crew left, and Mom kept asking: “Was I all right?” I told her she was and patted her cheek, but right away I wished I hadn’t. She grabbed my hand and kissed inside the palm in that sticky way that she had. But the sound truck was hardly gone when a little Chevy showed up with three reporters in it — one from the Marietta Times, one from a Chicago paper, and one from some news service, maybe the Associated Press. They had cameras with them and took our pictures. Then they began asking questions, one of them with a recorder, so we had to start all over. By now Mom was doing it big and this time gave out with all kinds of stuff about how she’d looked for the money, “and pretty near drowned out there, when that johnboat all but tipped over — because I don’t swim, not a stroke.” Then they left, and once more I felt relieved, though what about I didn’t quite know.

Then some people came in with a ham all cooked up, potato salad, baked beans in a casserole, and a can of shrimp — “as we know how busy you must be, and some lunch will come in handy.” But what they really meant was they wanted to hear about it. The radio had carried the news, at least that I’d killed Shaw, so the girl was safe. They were from a couple of miles upriver. At that time of year, nobody lived very near us. There were houses on both sides of the river, but of summer people who locked up their places in winter and hauled their boats out on trestles. So I put out some of the ham, beans, and salad, and Mom told it again, this time about finding the chute. But right in the middle of it, around one o’clock I would say, the phone rang. When I answered, it was a lawyer I know whose car I had gassed often and who seemed to like me. Fact of the matter, I thought he was responsible for me being picked to follow Mr. Holt as manager of the station soon as he leaves for California next summer when he retires. Bledsoe was his name. I knew from the tone of his voice he had something on his mind.

“Dave?” he asked very sharp. “Are you alone? Are you free to talk?” I told him: “Not right now, I’m not. Can I call you back?”

“Make it quick, Dave.”

He gave me his home number, and the people who could hear got the point and left. When I called him back, he said: “Dave, I heard something just now that may mean nothing at all, but on the other hand, it may mean plenty. But first, how do things stand with Edgren?”

“Well, he was out — he and a deputy named Mantle. That’s his righthand man, apparently. He told us to stand by, that’s all.”

“For what?”

“Further questioning.”

“Yes, but when?”

“Later on today — five o’clock he thought. If the girl is able to travel.”

“Yeah, the girl. She’s what I’m calling about. Dave, I had a call just now from Rich Duncan, a client whose car was stolen, or so he thought. He’d reported the theft to the sheriff’s office. Then when he found his daughter had taken the car for a weekend with the boyfriend at a motel over in McConnelsville, he called me about what to do. So I told him get in there fast, to sign whatever papers they had, so the girl wouldn’t get picked up and land in the middle of something. Which he did, so, of course, the sheriff’s clerk was on the phone, and Rich suddenly realized what the call was about — you, the dough, and that girl. The clerk kept repeating over and over again, to the prosecutor apparently: ‘Mantle knows her from way back and wouldn’t believe anything she said on a whole stack of Bibles.’ He kept saying it over and over, and then wound up: ‘Mantle, he can’t shake off the idea there’s something funny about it.’ So, Dave, here’s what I’m getting at: I want to be there — today — when the questioning resumes. Don’t worry; I won’t charge you a cent. I owe you something, the whole county does, for what you did today. Besides that, you’ve been damned nice to me. So—?”

I told him, “OK, and thanks,” real quick, to cut it off, because the thing of it was, of course, that who Mantle had known wasn’t Jill but Mom. We set it up that he should come around 4:00, “so we can check it over,” as he said, “what we’re going to say, so at least we all say the same thing.”

“What was that all about?” Mom asked when I’d put down the phone.

“Lawyer I know named Bledsoe. He offered to come out, and I let him.”

“What do we want with a lawyer?”

“Just to be on the safe side.”

“You’re keeping something from me.” In some ways, Mom resembled a bobcat more than a human being, because a bobcat knows just by looking at you what you’re thinking.

I said: “I’m not keeping anything from you. He told me: ‘After all, you shot a guy, and you can’t be sure what Edgren’s going to do.’ ”

“I don’t like that Edgren, and I don’t like that Mantle.”

“Yeah, him.”

“I don’t like him at all.”

“What happened with him in Fairmont?”

“Nothing.”

“He was on the case of the guy you bit. What other case was he on? And where did you come in?”

“You want the story of my life?”

I kept at it and pieced it together: in the place where she worked, another girl had accused her of stealing her tips, and the manager had called the police. Mantle at that time was on the Fairmont force. Nothing was done, and she got on the bus for Marietta. This took me an hour to find out and didn’t tell me much, but at least it explained Mantle and what he thought about her.

I washed up the dishes after the lunch I’d given our visitors. Mom helped but bumped me quite a lot over and beyond the call of duty. It was nearly 4:00 when a car pulled up outside, a Chevy, but nobody got out. When I went out, Jill was on the front seat, dressed in nurse’s clothes, but without a nurse’s cap. A nurse was on the back seat and a guy was at the wheel who I’d never seen before. Jill introduced me to the nurse and to the man, Mr. York, who, it turned out, was with the airline Jill worked for. He had been rushed on a plane by the airline president within a half hour of her phone call and had hustled down here with money and whatever else she might need — like this car he’d rented for her, “as long as I want it — I never felt so important in my life.”

“Baby,” he told her, “you’re the heroine of the year. Maybe Mr. Howell saved you, but you saved 28 lives. We don’t speak of a multimillion dollar plane. That was due to break apart in the next air pocket unless that door could be closed. You pushed him out, thank God. I hope you feel as important as we think you are.”

“Well, who am I to say no?”

“Anyhow, come in. All of you.”

“David, until the officers get here, I’d rather wait in the car.”

“Why?”

“I have a reason.”

It wasn’t hard to guess what the reason was, and I didn’t argue much but stood by the side of the car, talking through the window, with the nurse leaning forward to hear and Mr. York speaking up now and then. In a minute or two another car drove up and Mr. Bledsoe got out. I introduced him, and he took off his hat politely and said: “Let’s go inside.”

“When the officers come,” said Jill. “If you want to go in Mr. Bledsoe, please do, but we’re staying here—”

“I said, let’s go in,” Bledsoe snapped. “They’ll be here any minute, and we have to talk — now!”

“Well, who are you,” snapped York, “to be telling this girl what she does?”

“James J. Bledsoe, attorney at law, representing Mr. Howell. I suggest that Miss Kreeger accept me as counsel too. She’s in trouble and time is running short.”

“Trouble?” said York. “Trouble? Here she’s the heroine of the year and you try to say she’s in trouble.”

“If Mantle says so, she is.”

Jill drew a blank, looking first at me and then at York. “Who’s Mantle?” he asked.

“I think she knows.”

“What’s this about?” snapped Jill. “What in the hell’s it about? I never heard of Mantle.”

By that time I was nudging Bledsoe who was staring at Jill. I took him aside and whispered: “She’s not the one Mantle knows.” Suddenly he backed water, apologizing as hard as he knew how, but insisting all over again that Jill “could be in trouble” and begging her to come in, “so we can get together on what we tell the police when they come.”

Jill looked at me. When I nodded, York saw me do it. He whispered something to her and she said: “OK.” But she flinched when she put her weight on her feet, and once more I carried her. She put her right arm around my neck.