Fadeaway Girl (36 page)

—forced on you by your sainted wife, Rose Devereau? What did she do?

I almost set my feet on the floor to go up and talk to Aurora again. Only Aurora wouldn't know; she'd just be guessing.

But there was one person who would know: Ben Queen himself. And Ben Queen might still be holed up at the Devereau place.

It was worth the walk. But I would have to think about it. I didn't much like the idea of the Devereau house.

I thought about the poem I was carrying around and that I'd read so many times I could say it off by heart:

No. It was something more meant than luck, but not as much meant as God.

A
fter a double helping of pasta gruyère (my mother's upmarket version of macaroni and cheese), I went out to sit on the far end of the front porch. There I rocked and thought and made a cat's cradle of a piece of dirty string and wondered if I had the nerve to walk to Spirit Lake and pass the dock and the water where I'd almost drowned.

I watched the light filtering through the big oaks and determined there should be another couple of hours of it and decided, yes, I had enough nerve without rounding up Mr. Root and the Woods (and anyone else with a gun, like the Sheriff or Dwayne).

I went down the steps and around to the road that ran beside the Pink Elephant and, farther down, along the big vegetable garden. There were times I truly marveled at the size of the Hotel Paradise grounds, as if this were a little world all of its own, and I guess in many ways it was. I wondered if I would still marvel when I was old, like thirty or thirty-five, or if the marveling was just a kid's thing.

Walking the half mile or so to the lake, I couldn't help but look over my shoulder a few times to see if anyone or anything happened to be following. I don't know what or who I thought it would be.

I reached the near end of the lake, and skirted it as far as the wooden boardwalk that stretched out to the dock. I would not walk out to the dock itself. This I couldn't do. I continued on between clumps of vegetation growing so thickly on each side of the road, it nearly met in the center. I was walking toward the spring.

Here was the alcove where the tin cup was kept for drinking spring water. I was of two minds about the cup: On the one hand, it was kind of romantic to think of all of us, strangers to one another, drinking from the same cup. I know Father Freeman would say it was highly spiritual.

But what my other mind wanted to concentrate on was more the disease element, for who knew what state the people had been in who drank from this cup. So if I wanted water, I just put my hands under the pipe the water flowed from. I wasn't too enthusiastic about the pipe, either, as it looked pretty rusty.

I sat down and watched the woods lose light as the lake seemed to drink more in. Its surface was glassy with it. I could see a corner of the Devereau house in the distance and thought about how I'd last seen Ben Queen.

I got up from the low wall and made my way into the woods.

 

Ben Queen came around the corner of the house in his long light coat, the kind I'd seen in Westerns at the Orion movie house, his big-brimmed hat pulled down. He was carrying a rifle or a shotgun, I didn't know, except it looked like the gun he'd used to shoot Isabel Devereau when she was forcing me to stay in the rowboat and drown.

“Hello, Emma.”

He broke the shotgun he was carrying over his forearm, as if he'd just decided not to shoot me.

“The Sheriff was looking for you.” For small talk, that would have to do.

“He always is, ain't he? Does he know I'm here?”

I shook my head. “I'm surprised you still are.”

“Good a place as any.” He was holding open the screen door at the side of the house. “Care to come in for a bit?”

I went in and looked around this living room as the screen door stuttered shut behind me. The same record was on the turntable, the same music on the piano bench. I would have sworn these were the same motes of dust hanging in the vanishing light.

I sank into an armchair too big for me. I looked younger and smaller, dwarfed, when I wanted to appear older and bigger. “They arrested Morris Slade.”

He had set the gun in a corner and was looking at the photographs on the wall. “Yeah, that figures.” He put his finger to one of the Devereau sisters, as if he meant to straighten out or silence them. He was not saying anything about Morris Slade.

“The gun they found was only a little handgun; it wasn't the one that killed Ralph Diggs. That one was a shotgun or a rifle.” I turned to look at the one standing in the corner. “Like yours.”

Ben Queen turned from the photograph and gave an abrupt laugh. “Not ‘like' mine. It was mine.”

I didn't bother pretending to be shocked. “Why?”

“Because the damned kid was going to shoot Morris Slade. Morris didn't have no gun.”

I waited. My questions came slowly because I wasn't sure I wanted the answers. When I found out the answers, would I have to write
The End
? “But why were you there?”

“Because I thought there'd be trouble. Morris came to see me over in the Junction. He told me they were meeting. I told him maybe it'd be better not to.”

“Morris Slade was his father, wasn't he?”

He was standing at a window now, looking over the lake. I wondered if it looked like winter to him too. “Yeah.”

“Ralph Diggs must have found out who his parents were and what had happened.”

Ben Queen turned, angry, not at me but at everything. “What old man Woodruff and that damnable daughter of his did was terrible, and the guilt of it got put off on Morris Slade, though he had nothing to do with it. Leaving a baby out somewhere in the woods to expire . . . That's what that bellboy that worked at the Belle Ruin was supposed to do. Leave it or drown it or whatever.” He shook his head and turned back to the window. “Can you imagine?”

I didn't have to. Moses in the bulrushes, Mary-Evelyn Devereau. And me. Almost me. I didn't have to imagine it. “He was a scapegoat.” I had meant Morris Slade, but it could as easily have been Ralph Diggs. It was certainly Ben Queen, who'd been blamed for two murders he didn't do.

Ben Queen smiled slightly. “You remember that story.”

I nodded, then said, with some accusation in my voice: They were all scapegoats. “Why did you leave Brokedown House?”

“We both left. In my truck.”

“You should have—” something. I didn't know what.

“Should have what? Morris wanted me out of the picture. He said he owed me.”

“For saving his life?”

“Not just that.”

None of this was my business to ask, but I had to. Always. I came as close to it as I could, saying in a scrappy tone, as if I were on the school yard with my friends, tittle-tattling, “Imogen Woodruff wasn't his mother, I bet.”

“No, she wasn't.” He wouldn't go any closer.

“Are you going to do anything?”

“About Morris? I already have.” He stood up as if he meant to do it that minute.

Of course, I wondered what he meant, but if he wasn't inclined to say, I wouldn't ask.

“Are you okay for walking home before it gets dark? I could give you a lift, but the thing is, we can't drive except to go up that old road back there.” He tilted his head toward the back of the house. “It'd make it a long way, a really roundabout way to get to the hotel.”

I couldn't help but smile at that, thinking of my roundabout ways. “I'm okay.” I wasn't. But I got up and walked with him to the door.

He put his fingers to his hat, said, “Well, good-bye, Emma. Nice talking to you. It always is. I'm going back to my truck.” He collected his gun.

We both walked out and stood for a minute as if we didn't know what to do.

He hoisted the shotgun, still broken, said, “I'll see you, then, Emma.” He walked back around the corner until the woods swallowed him up the way the lake had swallowed the light.

“Good-bye,” I called, and thought I heard my good-bye echo, or maybe it was him, saying good-bye on the edge of the dark.

A
s soon as I could get away from the dining room that morning, I'd borne Delbert's chatter on the way into La Porte and was out of the taxi almost before it stopped. I didn't tip him.

If it hadn't been for Donny, I would have gone to the courthouse. But I didn't want to try and talk to the Sheriff with Donny around. I only hoped that Maureen had told the Sheriff about Donny telling me “police business.” If she hadn't, I would.

Maud came back and, though it was only 10:00 A.M., offered me some chili. I was eating a vanilla iced doughnut as a kind of breakfast dessert and thanked her, but said no, holding up my doughnut by way of explanation.

As she slid into the booth she said, “Did you hear what happened?”

“I never hear anything.”

“Ben Queen went in to see Sam this morning. He gave himself up, I guess you'd say.”

I guessed I knew that was going to happen from what he'd told me the night before. But he'd said he'd “already” done something about it. What? That must have been why Donny already knew something, or maybe Donny was just guessing.

I set my doughnut down. It was all so unfair. Ben Queen, Morris Slade, and even Ralph Diggs were being punished for what others had done.

“You don't seem surprised.”

I was so sad, I'd forgotten to be surprised. I tried to patch over my lack of it. “Donny as much as told me Ben Queen did the shooting.”

She frowned. “Donny did? He shouldn't be talking about police business.”

“Just what Maureen said. She was trying to call the Sheriff and tell him. Anyway, yes, I was surprised. Do you know what went on that night?”

Lighting up a cigarette, she shook her head. “Sam didn't tell me.”

“There were two guns, I know that. The one they found belonged to—guess who?”

Maud just frowned. She hated “guess who's” and “guess what's.”

“Aurora Paradise.”

Her mouth fell open; the cigarette stopped halfway to it. “You're kidding. What in God's name—?”

“It was just a small gun, a revolver, I think, she's had from when she was really alive.”

Maud laughed. “That's more frightening than ever Ben Queen would be. But how—?”

“She crazily loaned it to Will for their murder-mystery play. Well, it wasn't loaded, of course. Until Ralph Diggs found it.”

“Dear God.” Then she turned to lean across the seat and look at the door. “Sam said he'd be here around now.” She looked at her wristwatch, in a worried way, then leaned over the seat again to look toward the door. “Here he is.”

He was wearing his cap, which he removed to hang on one of the metal hooks at the top of the booth. He was carrying a coffee mug that advertised Sinclair oil.

I didn't waste any time. “So you're going to send him to prison.”

“Who? Ben Queen?” He looked from me to Maud and back. “I'm going to? I wrote the laws?”

“Is he down for murder?” asked Maud.

“Not first-degree, I don't think. Manslaughter, probably. But I don't know. The thing is, he went to that house with a shotgun, which I'm sure would be construed as premeditation by any prosecutor.”

I said, “He always carries it around. I would too if I was him.”

The Sheriff sipped his coffee. “Always? Just how many times have you seen Ben Queen?'”

“You mean besides the time he saved my life?” I tried to make my tone acid, but I wasn't sure what that sounded like. “No times,” I lied. “His brother George told me. Anyway, he was only trying to protect Morris Slade.”

The coffee mug made a serious thud on the table. “You always seem to have more information than I do. Just what do you know about this?”

I should have said, “Only what Donny told me,” but I wasn't stooping to pettiness, at least not yet. “It's obvious, isn't it? The other gun was brought there by Ralph Diggs. He went to use it. I mean, he would have, except Ben Queen stopped him. And it's ridiculous to say Ben Queen went there to kill Morris Slade, if that's what you're thinking. He could have done that in Cold Flat—” I stopped. Only Ben Queen could have told me he'd actually talked to Morris Slade in Cold Flat Junction.

The Sheriff leaned toward me. “Cold Flat Junction? What's that about? What've you—?”

Maud groaned with irritation. “Sam, stop it! Ben Queen turned himself in. He did the shooting; that's it.”

I said, or more whined, “But why would he shoot Ralph Diggs except to save Morris Slade? He didn't have any reason to.”

The Sheriff went sort of quiet. “He had a reason.”

I have heard people saying they blanched, their face whitened. I blanched inside.

Maud raised her eyebrows. “Well, what?”

The Sheriff was holding his mug, swirling the coffee. When he said her name, he sounded meditative. “Rose.”

“Rose? Rose Queen?”

Quickly I said, and knew it was to stop him from saying more, “This is all unfair. Where's the justice in it?”

He looked at me. “I've only got the law to go by, Emma.” He set the mug down hard on the table, as if he were mad at the coffee, or the Rainbow, or us. Or not us, but everything. “I guess justice has to be left to God.” He rose and took his cap from the hook. “Sorry. I'm not in the best mood. I've got to talk to the Diggses.”