This Side of Jordan (21 page)

“I ain't asking no one to pass the hat,” Alvin said, temper rising. He didn't care for folks feeling sorry him even when he was hid away in the sanitarium, and he surely didn't need no dumbbell's sympathy.

“Is that a fact?”

“You said it.”

The wind gusted hard, blowing wet leaves across the rainy night sky. The young bunch in the Ford runabout swung back out into the road and drove off, still singing like melon vendors. Alvin envied them, wished he'd been invited along.

The man said, “I guess you're a pretty tough egg, aren't you?”

Alvin frowned. “How's that?”

“You don't let nothing stir you up, do you?

“Well, I ain't no baby.”

“Oh yeah?” The man smirked. “Well, answer me this, sonny boy: who's buying your breakfast?”

 

The cabin door was ajar when Alvin came back from the roadside stand. He peeked through the window and saw Chester beside one of the camp cots with an electric lantern in hand. His suit was smudged with dirt, his felt hat dripping rainwater. When he noticed the farm boy on the stoop, he said, “I got a job for you boys.”

A damp gust of wind shook the walls of the small structure and hundreds of tiny flecks of rotted wood cascaded down from the ceiling.

Alvin shielded his eyes from the glow of the lantern. “What's that?”

“I'll show you outside.”

“Thunderstorm's coming,” Alvin noted after smelling the air. Farm life had taught him how to smell a storm on a night wind, hours before it arrived. It was a dandy skill, but didn't earn him much more than dry clothes on a rainy day.

“We don't have time to worry about rain,” Chester replied. “Too much work to do tonight.”

The dwarf rose from a dark corner of the cabin, suitcase in hand. Illuminated in lamplight, his eyes glowed yellow and his skin looked waxen and old, his hair white as corn silk. Chester directed the lamp toward him. “You can leave that here. You'll be coming back soon as you're done with the job.”

Rascal put down his suitcase. “All right.”

“Storm's coming up,” Alvin said, tucking his shirt in. “Be here soon. Maybe quicker.”

“I heard you the first time,” Chester said, bringing the electric lantern back toward Alvin, suspending it in front of his face. “I tell you, don't worry about it. Weather's got nothing to do with your job tonight. A little rain won't bother a thing.”

“Be more'n a little, I'd guess.”

“No matter, you've got plenty of work to do, rain or no rain.”

“There'll be rain,” Alvin assured him.

“Swell,” said Chester, losing patience. “I'll be waiting by the car. Hop to it.”

He walked out.

Alvin went to the cabin door where black droplets swirled about on the wind. Close on the heels of an electric flash in the east, thunder boomed across the dark. He took a hard look at the sky. Lightning could strike a man dead in an instant. On the farm, cows and horses got hit now and again. Fried to the bone, carcass smoking, even in Noah's rain. Alvin felt the dwarf beside him, also studying the clouds with a watchful eye.

“Won't pay to get hit by lightning,” the farm boy said, holding a hand out into the rain which was falling harder now. His shoes and socks felt soggy.

“I remember being terrified of it as a child,” the dwarf agreed. “Auntie had to close my windows and tie down the shades so that I couldn't see it flash. I'd hide under the bedcovers until the thunder stopped and Auntie told me it was safe to come out.”

Alvin shook his head. “That's dumb.”

“Oh?”

“Everyone knows you can't hide. If it's got your name, you're fixed, and that's all there is to it.”

The dwarf stared up into the dark, rain blowing about overhead. “I don't believe in that sort of silly superstition.”

“Don't matter if you believe it or not,” Alvin replied, watching sheets of rain drench the tourist camp. “It's a fact, just the same. If you doubt it, go on and take a walk out there. You don't need a lightning rod on your head, neither. Just remember: it's not in God's plan to have everybody check out in their sleep.”

He smiled, hoping he'd gotten under Rascal's skin a little, stirred him up some.

Another lightning strike lit the sky to the east. The dwarf counted by seconds to nine, then the thunder roared across the prairie. As the echo died away, Chester's voice followed from the automobile parked under a black oak by the road. “Hurry up, goddamn it!”

Standing just out of the rain beneath the big oak, Chester held the electric lantern over the rear seat of the Packard for Alvin to see inside. Pale lamplight made visible a youth's face partly wrapped in gunny cloth and shadows. His eyes were shut and his hands folded into the heavy overcoat that covered him up.

“He's out of the game,” Chester said, as if it weren't obvious.

Alvin's skin crawled. “You shot him?”

“He slipped on a banana peel and broke his neck.”

The dwarf slid quietly into the front seat on the driver's side for a better look.

Alvin stared at him, heart thumping. The boy wasn't much older than himself.

Chester spoke up. “He had more spirit than brains.”

“Huh?”

He handed the lantern over to the farm boy whose legs were trembling now.

“He had a set of keys I needed and didn't care to negotiate for them. He was a stubborn little sonofabitch.” Chester smiled. “I liked that.”

Alvin directed the lantern again toward the rear seat of the Packard. Chester had hiked the boy's collar up higher than normal to hide the bruising about the larynx, but the swelling showed still in his cheeks and eyelids. Alvin found himself transfixed by the boy, slumped in the seat, looking drunk and passed out, yet in fact deader than last November's turkey. The farm boy pressed his face to the glass and watched the dwarf climb into the rear seat beside the dead boy as if they were old friends out for a ride in a motorcar. Alvin shuddered as rain began to fall in earnest.

Chester said, “He's just some hick. Nobody to concern yourselves over. Go on, jump in and get acquainted. We need to beat it out of here before somebody sees him.”

“How come you brought him here, anyhow?”

“Well, I thought you boys could give him a swell send-off.”

 

Half a mile or so from the tourist camp, Chester pulled off the high way onto a narrow road that led east through a soggy wheat field to a dilapidated farmhouse and a sagging old barn. He parked next to the storm cellar behind the barn and got out. Both Alvin and the dwarf joined him there in the rain. Chester said, “Come on, get the kid out of the car.”

He took the electric lantern off the front seat of the Packard and switched it on. “Look here, boys, I have to be getting along. I've got an appointment in town tonight and it won't pay to be late. There's a shovel and a pickaxe in the cellar.” He handed the electric lantern to the farm boy. “When you're done putting this kid in the ground, go back to the camp and get some sleep, then meet me at the Methodist church in the morning. You remember it? That tall skinny white building with the steeple we passed by this afternoon. If you hurry along, it won't take you more than a couple hours. When you get there, don't go in until the service lets out, all right?”

With the rain pouring down harder, Alvin asked, “Where do you want us to bury him?”

“I don't care.”

Then Chester got back into the Packard and started the motor. A great cloudy fog of exhaust billowed out of the tailpipes. He told the farm boy, “Go on, get him out of there.”

Alvin gave the lamp to the dwarf, then reluctantly leaned inside the Packard and grabbed the dead boy by his shirt collar and pulled him up off the seat. The boy's corpse smelled like fresh shaving soap; Alvin figured it was still a few hours yet from stinking. He tugged it into the doorframe as the dwarf put the lantern down in the mud and took hold of the boy's legs and pulled. Together, they dragged the stiffening body out into the mud beside the rear wheel.

“All right, now close the door,” said Chester, lighting a cigarette. He switched on the automobile's headlamps. “I'll see you boys in the morning.”

They stepped back as Chester stuck the transmission into gear and rolled away from the barn, and watched as he drove quickly down toward the county road, honking once before he disappeared into the rainy dark. It was a mean and peculiar road they had been following since Hadleyville, Alvin thought, as that awful sinking in his heart began once again, mostly a lot of winding around and doubling back and traveling the old routes nobody else chose to drive. Tonight and tomorrow it'd be Iowa, and a week afterward Oklahoma, or maybe Nebraska again. All summer long, Chester had been sneaking in among these people like some dark angel on Judgment Day, cleansing the scrolls of those whose sad fortune had drawn them across his path. Alvin knew his own soul had been soiled by complicity and no apology made to the families of the murdered would redeem him. Sick in his heart for what he'd seen since Hadleyville, believing that retribution for the guilty was assured, he had ridden quietly these many miles and raised no conflict with Chester for any of it. Why not? If consumption had sealed his fate like the doctors whispered behind his back, how come he lacked the courage to meet God at the Gate of Virtue? What held him back? If he weren't so afraid of Chester, he would have gone to the police and told them everything. That'd fix him, all right. Sure, Alvin knew he'd probably wind up in jail himself, or get shot, but at least he wouldn't be stuck out in the middle of another wheat field, burying a dead body whose killing he didn't have any part of. Why couldn't he just go and do that? Why was he so goddamned yellow?

Alvin picked up the lamp and held it over the dead boy's face pelted now by rain as he lay in the mud. Wind blew open the boy's collar, exposing the fatal bruise to the lamplight. Feeling a sudden touch of nausea, he turned away and headed across the yard toward the storm cellar to get the shovel. One of the doors fell off its hinge as he raised it open. The cellar was black as tar. Nine steps led downward into the dark. Two of the boards were cracked through with splinters. These steps Alvin maneuvered past by clinging to the cellar walls, lamp suspended in front of him. Old webs clouded the stairwell. The floor of the cellar was damp and smelled horrible. Alvin ran the light back and forth, wall to wall. More webs, junk, boxes, tins and bottles. He spied rat droppings atop several of the boxes. Frenchy had been bitten once, hunting through a dank fruit cellar in the dark where he didn't belong. The howl he had made when a nesting rat bit him in the hand carried clear up to the house where Aunt Hattie was hanging out the laundry. His crazy screaming scared the daylights out of her and when she saw his hand and Alvin told her about the rat, she fainted dead away in the dust.

The cellar was leaking. Alvin's shoes sloshed in the mud as he directed the lamp here and there. A dead mouse floated inside a lidless fruit jar. Scores of eviscerated flies and moths lay in ragged webs suspended beneath the support beams. An odor of wet rot persisted even with the cellar door propped open to the storm. The lamp was mostly useless. Alvin kicked at the junk along the walls from one corner to the next until he finally located the shovel alongside a stack of boards. Holding the lantern with one hand, he slid the shovel out with the other, careful not to disturb whatever might be lurking beneath the lumber. He wondered how Chester knew about it. Maybe this was where he had murdered the boy. What had brought him out here? Was it just to kill the kid? Did he give the poor dope some line about bees and honey to string him along? Alvin decided Chester was the evilest fellow he'd ever met. He wished they'd never said hello. What on earth had persuaded him to cross the river with Chester that night? Was he so sick and lonely that he'd needed the company of a fellow who didn't know him from Adam but offered up a slice of pie if Alvin would walk out on his family? Having consumption clouded his judgment back on the farm, made him tie his shoes backwards and forget to water the chickens. Some days he'd walk out of doors with his fly open or leave the keys to Daddy's auto on the fencepost. He grew tired from hardly nothing at all and had to sit down until he got yelled at. All his decisions seemed confused. Then again, choosing right from wrong wasn't so easy when his fever spiked and he spewed blood with a cough. If Alvin hadn't gotten his relapse, he'd have never run off like he did. Now he had traveled so far from home, he doubted he'd ever get back. How could he? After all he'd seen and done, Chester wouldn't ever let him go; Alvin knew that for a fact. And if he snuck out one night? How would he know where to go that hadn't any spotters or gun mates of Chester's just waiting on him to show his face? How far could he get before one of them caught him in an alley somewhere and shot him in the head? He had no auto to drive, and not enough dough for a train ticket. Too sick to walk more than a few miles, too scared to seek help, Alvin felt caught in a trap of his own stupidity. He was doomed and he knew it. All that was left was to see how it played out, in what dark place or gallows he'd meet his just reward.

Rising from the cellar, shovel in hand, Alvin saw the dwarf sitting in the mud beside the dead body. A cold damp wind replaced the steady rainfall again as the storm drifted. The dwarf carefully refastened the boy's collar buttons, and gently combed his wet tussled hair with his fingers. Alvin's own hands were numb from the cold. Hurrying across the yard, he tossed the shovel into the mud beside the dwarf and seized the dead boy by one arm and heaved him upward. Startled by Alvin's urgency, the dwarf fell backward onto the seat of his pants, then scrambled to his feet.

“We ain't got all night, you know,” Alvin said, raising the boy halfway up to his feet. “He needs to be put down good in the ground before it really gets to storming. Otherwise, the rain'll wash him out.” He looked at the dwarf. “Come on, help me!”