The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery (30 page)

Everybody had made it to the top of the bales
now. I heard my father telling the women to take off their
stockings. My father and Uncle Jeff fired questions at me about
whether I could break through the window. I assured them that I
could. But could I do it fast enough? Looking back across the
hayloft, I saw tongues of flame lapping up the sides of the
haystack. The smoke became thicker every second.

I thrust the pitchfork at the frame of the
window several times, being careful not to do it so violently that
I would fall or lose my grip on the fork. I made a break in the
frame and worked on enlarging it enough for us to get through. I
also knocked out all six panes of glass in the half-window to keep
us from cutting ourselves.

“That should do it,” Uncle Jeff called from
below. “There isn’t time for neatness.”

He had carried a section of the rope that
hung from the rafters over to the ladder. He climbed the ladder,
holding the rope between his body and the wall. I handed the
pitchfork down to my father and reached my hand down to take the
rope from Uncle Jeff. I had to shove the rope through the gap in
the window and then keep threading it until the end of the rope
that was resting on the bales in an untidy coil went through the
window and dropped down toward the ground.

It would have been easier to start threading
with the end of the rope instead of somewhere in the middle, but
the end was buried in the tangled coil on the bales and we didn’t
have time to untangle it. By threading it from the middle, we would
eventually come to the end as the rope uncoiled.

That was the theory. In practice, when I
shoved a length of the rope through the window, the weight of the
rope below and above it pulled it back into the barn. Uncle Jeff
saw what was happening. He stood on the ladder just below me and
held a length of rope up with one hand, so that most of the
downward pull was eliminated.

This enabled me to shove a section of rope
through the hole and hold it there with the pressure of my body
while I let go with my hand and grabbed it again a foot lower. Then
I shoved the next section through. It wasn’t fast, and it certainly
wasn’t elegant, but we were making progress.

After a number of thrusts, enough of the rope
was hanging out the window so that its weight kept it from being
pulled back inside. But the rope was still a long way above the
ground, as I could see when I stuck my head through the hole and
looked down. And below the window I saw tall weeds growing, the
kind that have protective spines sticking out of the stalks.

No time to think about that now. The smoke
had reached me and was billowing out the window. I started
coughing, and everybody below me was coughing, too. We had to get
out of the barn, or we would be overcome by smoke inhalation.

I sped up the process, grabbing the rope at a
point below the window and shoving it through. Since I didn’t have
to hold it while I grabbed the next section, I fed it through the
window faster and faster.

I was doing this without looking down, so I
was surprised when the last few feet of the rope were pulled
through the window by the weight of the rope outside. I looked out
the window again and saw that the rope was fully extended downward
but didn’t reach the ground. I couldn’t tell exactly how far above
the ground it stopped, but it was definitely above the nettles.

I reported this to Uncle Jeff, who was still
standing on the ladder just below me.

“That’s the best we can do,” he said. “We
have to get out now. Gary, you go first and prepare to catch the
others as they come down.”

He said this in the voice he would use if I
were going down a slide at a playground, although his face looked
harried, and he was coughing while trying to hang onto the ladder.
I was about to argue that the women should go first. I was
especially afraid that my mother and Aunt Dorothy wouldn’t make it
out. But then I realized that they would have a better chance if
someone were below to help them. And I think my biggest fear was
that I would be the only one to get out.

But there wasn’t even time for Uncle Jeff and
me to climb down the ladder to let somebody else go first. I wasn’t
ready for what came next, but I would never be. I grabbed the rope
and pulled, making sure it was anchored firmly from above. Then I
climbed to the top rung of the ladder, holding on to the remains of
the window frame.

I looked down. The height now appeared
dizzying, since I was about to have only a rope to keep me from
falling. I wouldn’t look down again. The situation was awkward,
because I had to grab the rope with both hands while making sure
that I didn’t swing inward toward the fire instead of outward. I
hooked a leg over the window ledge to hold myself, and then, with
as tight a grip as I could manage on the rope, swung the other leg
over.

I was hanging on the rope by my hands, pushed
against the side of the barn. I frantically wrapped one foot around
the rope and pressed against my foot and the rope with the sole of
my other foot. Now I could lower myself slowly, hand over hand,
while my feet helped hold my weight. But could the others do
that?

I bumped against the side of the barn as I
slid down the rope, but that was a minor irritation. And then my
feet ran out of rope. I looked down. I was just above the nettles.
I lowered myself using only my hands for another yard, pushed
myself away from the barn with my feet, and let go of the rope. The
pain as I fell through the nettles was astonishing. I cried out as
I hit the ground.

“Are you all right?”

It was Kate’s voice, calling from above.
Shaking off the pain, I stood up, getting my face, arms, and legs
scratched more and more in the process, and said, “I’m okay. Wrap
one leg around the rope and hold it with your other leg.”

Kate came down the rope fast—maybe too fast.
I braced myself as she dropped the last few feet, knocking me down.
She screamed from the shock of the nettles tearing into her, but I
wasn’t feeling the pain anymore. She rolled off me, and I stood up
again.

Archie was coming down the rope. He had taken
gymnastics classes, and he had no trouble with the rope at all. He
barely needed our help for the final drop, and he didn’t get
scratched much because we had knocked most of the nettles that were
directly under the rope out of the way.

Tom was already halfway down the rope. He,
too, didn’t need much help and landed almost gracefully. I looked
up and saw that my mother was next. She was clearly terrified. Her
skirt was rolled up, but that was the least of her problems. She
probably hadn’t done anything like this for twenty-five years.

She was sitting astride the windowsill. The
broken pieces of the frame must be cutting into her backside. She
was holding onto the rope but afraid to move. I saw Uncle Jeff’s
head. He must be standing at the top of the ladder, and he was
coaching her, talking calmly and soothingly. It was amazing that he
could be so cool when the smoke was now pouring out of the window
around them.

He got my mother to twist around, so that
both of her legs dangled out the window. She was still more or less
sitting on the ledge and was clinging to the rope. Uncle Jeff
talked her into positioning her legs on the rope before she left
the safety of the ledge.

Then she shoved off from the ledge. The back
of her head hit the ledge as she slid past, but I don’t think she
even noticed that. At first she came down slowly, her legs locked
together, holding her weight. She shifted her feet to make herself
slide faster, but then she slid too fast. She came shooting down
the rope, which must be burning her hands and legs, screaming as
she came.

The four of us all stood underneath and
received her full weight as she fell on top of us. We were all
shouting and groaning. I hurt all over, but I tried to roll my
mother out of the way because Aunt Dorothy was now coming down. Her
descent was a little more graceful, but the ones of us who could
still move tried to catch her as she dropped off the end of the
rope. We ended up in a pile on the ground again.

I looked up and saw that both Uncle Jeff and
my father were on the rope. Time had run out, with the smoke
pouring out of the broken window. Both of them were in relatively
good shape and had been athletes in their time. We didn’t try to
catch them at the bottom; they would have crushed us. Instead, we
tried to get out of their way. They landed with a minimum of
groaning. The nettles were now gone from the drop zone.

The men were still coughing as they tried to
stand up. I looked at the others. Everybody was conscious, at
least, although various ones of us had injuries, ranging from
nettle scratches to rope burns to perhaps sprained ankles or
worse.

“You saved us, Gary,” my father said, between
coughs.

This was the first time I had heard him say
something complimentary to me in the past few weeks. I started to
bask in his approval when something else occurred to me. I pulled
myself to my feet and started limping toward the side of the barn
where the outside door was located.

“Where are you going?” my father asked.

“To get Ed,” I said. “If he’s hurt, he needs
help.”

Kate trotted along beside me. Then she passed
me since I was hobbled by a variety of injuries. By the time I
reached the door to the barn, she had already opened it and was
inside. Not much smoke had reached the lower part of the barn yet.
I could see Kate bending over Ed, who was lying on the concrete
floor near the ladder.

“He’s hurt,” she said, urgently.

And indeed, he had blood on his head where it
had apparently hit the hard floor. But his eyes were open, and he
was semi-conscious.

“We have to get you out of here, Ed,” I said
to him, lifting him by the shoulders.

Kate tried to lift his legs, but he yelled
when she did. I could see that one leg looked twisted, even through
his pants.

“I think his leg is broken,” I told Kate.

Broken leg or not, we still had to get him
out of the barn, because I was afraid the ceiling above us, which
also served as the floor of the hayloft, was going to collapse.
Kate and I dragged Ed toward the door, even though he screamed all
the way. Perhaps I even received some kind of grim satisfaction
from his screams. We pulled him through the doorway and well onto
the grass and away from the barn.

Then I collapsed on the lawn. Kate knelt
beside Ed, frantically telling him that everything was going to be
all right, as if she were trying to convince herself. Our eyes met.
Hers had a look of shock and disbelief.

CHAPTER 32

“When my dad called me out of the room, it
was to tell me that he had arranged for my return to Atherton High
School.”

Sylvia caught her breath and stared at me.
She was looking mighty pretty in a shimmery green dress that
matched her green eyes, with her short blond hair waved just right.
In the background, the hired band played “Stranger in Paradise”
from
Kismet
, as the band members harmonized their voices to
the words.

Autumn leaves adorned the walls of the high
school gymnasium, as if there weren’t already enough outside, and
young couples glided around the dance floor with greater or lesser
proficiency, the boys wearing suits and the girls wearing
calf-length dresses much like Sylvia’s. But she was the prettiest
one there, even including Natalie, who had her arms wrapped around
Joe in apparent bliss.

I had asked Sylvia if we could sit this one
out, so that I could bring her up to date without Tom and Kate
being there. They were dancing together; Tom was in heaven, and
Kate looked as if she were having fun. I hoped so. She had been
through a lot in the past week.

“I told him I wanted to stay at Carter.”

Sylvia started breathing again. It was
terrible of me to do this to her. I had been experimenting with my
newfound power ever since I had been declared a hero by the Buffalo
Express in a front-page article. Now I had to come back down to
earth.

The first thing I had done was to figure out
how I could take Sylvia to the autumn dance. My father was no
longer in any position to object. I had won over other key players.
Aunt Dorothy wouldn’t be reporting my misdeeds to him any longer
and Dr. Graves had even asked me to take over as editor of the
Carter school paper.

Convincing Tom to take Kate to the dance was
a piece of cake. I thought the hardest part would be to convince
Kate that I wasn’t standing her up. It turned out that what upset
her most was the fear that everybody would turn against her because
of what Ed had done. I got Kate and Tom talking on the phone. Tom’s
obvious liking for her helped put her world back together.

Barney said he could find another date, which
left Sylvia free to go with me. In fact, at this very moment,
Barney was dancing with Ruth Allen, the girl he had brought. Maybe
there was something to her other than her body. After all, Barney
was an intellectual. But then, he had been hot for Natalie, too.
Even intellectuals had their urges.

I picked up Sylvia and Kate, in that order.
Sylvia’s parents congratulated me for being a hero. Kate’s parents
were strangely absent when I called for her. We all drove to
Atherton to collect Tom. I introduced Sylvia to my parents while we
were there. They were very cordial to her. My father turned on his
politician’s campaign personality with her. And then he took me
aside.

I related to Sylvia what he had said. “He
said he had talked to the Atherton principal who would accept me
back. Even the mother of the girl I libeled agreed to drop any
plans for a lawsuit.”

“So why aren’t you going? After all, you’ve
only been here a month.”

“For a minute I considered it. I would be
returning as the conquering hero. But then I thought it was more
likely that I would be returning as the prodigal son. There seemed
to be a hint of condescension in what my father was doing, as if he
were saying, ‘You done wrong, but you have atoned for it, and we
forgive you.’ Sylvia, I’m not looking for forgiveness.”