You Live Once (18 page)

“Which one is that?” I asked.

“That there is Miss Skeeter, the oldest. Best of the lot, too, if anybody should want to ask me.”

She stopped beside my car and jumped out of the jeep. She wore beat-up khaki riding pants, a yellow sports shirt. Her brown hair had paler sun streaks. She looked as round, brown, healthy and uncomplicated as a young koala bear. “Hi, John. Hello, Mr. Sewell. John, I thought I’d give Simpy a run.”

“You’re out early, Miss Skeeter.”

“I went to church early. The rest were about ready to go by the time I got back to change. Dad will probably bring the rest of them out later on.”

“Mr. Sewell here was wanting to see where that fella hanged himself. I don’t have the time right now to take him over there.”

She looked at me dubiously. “If you really want to see it, I’ll show you where it is. Wait until I saddle up and then you can follow me in the jeep. Or maybe you’d like to ride too?”

“No thanks. The jeep will be fine.”

She trotted off toward the barns. I leaned against the jeep. Fidd went off. In about five minutes she came out on a big roan that was all stallion and half as high as a house. He felt like going sideways. She yanked some sense into him, touched him with a little crop and cantered up to the jeep.

“Once we get beyond that fence line there we’ll cut across country. Better put it in four wheel drive. Do you know how?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t follow Simpy too close. He gets nervous.”

She spun him and lifted him into a full run. There wasn’t any danger of my getting too close. I had enough trouble keeping him in sight. Far ahead of me she cut over toward a dirt road and swung to the ground. The far side of the road was lined with trees. I drove up and stopped and got out.

“This is the tree and that’s the limb there. See, he had the car right about here, so that the limb was about ten feet above the roof of the car and about five feet behind it. It was easy to throw the rope over the limb.”

“I wonder why he came out here?”

“They say he used to come out here a lot years ago. They used to ride out here. He didn’t really date Mary then. She was too young I guess.”

Simpy cropped grass steadily. Skeeter seemed anxious to get on him and be off. I wanted to get her talking, and I didn’t know exactly how to go about it.

“I guess they had to get a ladder to cut him down.”

“I guess so.”

“How do you feel about it, Skeeter?”

“What do you mean?”

“About Mary and Dodd Raymond.”

“I didn’t know him very well. Just to say hello to. I’m certainly not sorry he’s dead, Mr. Sewell. Everything seems so dull without Mary. She was wonderful. We loved her, my sisters and I. It was a terrible thing to do.”

“I guess it was, all right.”

“Simpy wants his run. You can leave the jeep back by the house.”

“How old are you, Skeeter?”

“Seventeen.”

“The last time I saw you was a week ago today.”

Her eyes seemed to change to a paler color. “I know. When you came up to the lake after throwing Mary’s body out in the bushes, acting up there like nothing had happened. I remember it very well, Mr. Sewell.”

“That was a mistake. It was bad judgment. I lost my head.”

“You looked calm enough up at the lake.”

“Skeeter, I was scared to death. Honestly.”

She weighed that carefully. “I guess maybe you had every right to be. But you did a bad thing.”

“I know that. I had that impressed on me … forcibly.”

“She was so alive.”

“I know.” I braced myself carefully, smiled and said, “A little too lively for her Uncle Willy, I guess.”

“I don’t think I know what you mean,” she said with young dignity, slamming the family gates.

“From things she told me, I gathered that your father didn’t care much for the way she led her life.”

“Mary told you that?”

“We talked a lot. Remember, I knew her pretty well, Skeeter.”

“Have you got a cigarette? I’m not allowed to smoke, so I can’t carry them.”

I gave her a cigarette, lighted hers and my own. She hitched her tight pants onto the flat surface of the front fender of the jeep. “She just about drove Daddy crazy. He’s awfully strict with us. He tried to be the same way with Mary, but it didn’t work because she was of age and had her own money. There wasn’t any way he could punish her or restrict her the way he does us.

“At Christmastime Daddy caught Jigger kissing a boy. Just kissing a boy! You’d think she was living in sin or something. Jigger didn’t get any allowance and she couldn’t have a date or even go to the movies for six whole weeks. After dinner she had to go right to her room and study until bedtime. And he restricted Dusty and me for two weeks because he’d caught Jigger. Honestly!”

“They must have fought then?”

“If you can call it fighting. Daddy was either yelling at her or not speaking to her. She never seemed to get mad. She acted as if it was some kind of a joke. I couldn’t ever figure out why she didn’t go and live alone where she could do as she pleased and Daddy wouldn’t know anything about it. That’s what I would have done. That’s what I will do, the minute I’m old enough. It sometimes seemed to me that she stayed with us just to needle Daddy. I think there was some legal reason why he
had to provide a home for her for as long as she wanted it.”

“She needled him?”

“I don’t know exactly how she’d do it, but she could sure raise hell with him. When he’d be having one of his bad spells over something she had done, or something he thought she’d done, she would find a chance to say something to him. She’d never let any of the rest of us hear what she said. It must have really been something, though. Sometimes Daddy would go and walk for hours after that happened. Or lock himself in his study and we could hear him in there reading the Bible out loud. You know I’ve always thought she … she told him about … men.”

She was blushing under her tan. “What?” I said.

“About men. Because Daddy has told me, gosh, dozens of times, not to let Mary talk dirty to me, and come and tell him right away if she did. She never did, of course. But that’s the way I think she must have talked to him. Daddy is strong and he has a terrible temper sometimes. Like the time he broke Dusty’s arm when …” She stopped abruptly. “That’s none of your business. I shouldn’t have said it.”

“You’ve said most of it. Maybe it would sound better if you explained it.”

“Actually she fell.”

“Pushed?”

“Well, yes. But he didn’t
mean
to break her arm. I guess I better tell you. I still don’t understand it. It was two years ago. Mary had come home from a trip. It was a warm day in early October and we went up to the lake, the six of us. I guess Dusty thought Daddy and Mother were up at the big house. Jigger and I were still in the water. Mary had gone to the girl’s shower room over the boat house. Dusty decided to sneak up into the men’s bunk room and look at some cartoons on the wall up there. We’re not supposed to look at them or even know they’re there. They aren’t really dirty, just kind of silly.”

“I’ve seen them.”

“Dusty sneaked up and Daddy was up there at the window with a pair of binoculars looking over toward the girls’ bunk room. He got angry and chased Dusty down the stairs and pushed her. She fell and broke her arm. She didn’t tell us about the binoculars until later. He could have been trying to see Mary get dressed, but that doesn’t make much sense. He’d hate anything like that. I’ve just never been able to figure out what he was doing. I even asked Mary about it one time. She looked startled and then she laughed and laughed. Tears ran down her cheeks she laughed so hard. She wouldn’t tell me what was so funny. At dinner that night she looked at Daddy and started laughing all over again. He got so mad he couldn’t eat. He left the table.”

I had almost all of it. Nearly everything I needed. The pattern was all too clear. I looked at the snub-nosed healthy girl and pitied her. But maybe she and her sisters would have the strength they would need. Maybe the blood of Myrna was strong enough, clear enough, sane enough. Yet probably nothing would ever keep this girl from hating me.

“It must be pretty tough on your father, with what happened to his sister, and now what’s happened to his niece. I understand your father and his sister were very close.”

“They were only a year apart. They were inseparable when they were young. I think he nearly died when they had to send her away. I was just a baby, of course. Mother still talks about how sick he was.”

“He looks pretty husky now.”

“Oh yes. He’s
very
healthy for a man his age. Do you know what he did last fall? All by himself, with an axe, a handsaw, a sledge and wedges, he cut down trees and sawed them up and split over fourteen cords of hardwood. There was so much more than we needed that John Fidd sold six cords in town for twelve dollars a cord.”

“He works out here a lot, I guess.”

“Oh, yes.”

I braced myself again and made it casual. “I suppose he was working here the last time I saw you up at the lake. Was your mother along?”

“Let me think. Yes, she was up there with us but went back early when Daddy phoned about Mary. Daddy doesn’t like us to go up alone, even though Mrs. Johannssen and Ruth are there. Mother isn’t as strict with us. Daddy stayed in town. I don’t know whether he stayed home or out here. Maybe here.”

“And nobody went up this weekend.”

“No, we all stayed in town.”

“Did your father stay out here Friday night?”

“No. He was out here on Friday, but he came home … why are you asking me that?”

“Just making conversation, I guess.”

She was looking dubious again. I made my smile as bland as possible. “You certainly stick to that horse nicely. He’d scare me.”

She slid off the fender. “He’s an old lamb. He’s a honey pie, old Simpy is.”

She caught him, mounted, waved and rode off. His hooves drummed the May earth. I looked at the tree. Dodd Raymond had hung there, night dew on his shoulders, on the wavy hair, two hundred pounds at the end of a tow rope, while dawn came and the birds awakened.

I drove the jeep back the way I had come, following my tire tracks in the pasture grass.

As Toni would say, it was none of my business. But you can’t leave a thing like that alone. Not when you’re nearly positive.

I waited a full hour before they arrived—Uncle Willy, Aunt Myrna and the other two girls. Skeeter came cantering back to the barn just as their car drove in. The girls got out, gave me a quick unconcerned glance and raced toward the barn. Willy halted them with one short bark. They came back meekly, took the two baskets of
food and carried them toward one of the cottages. Myrna Pryor stared at me and followed the girls.

Willy came over toward me. His polished boots gleamed black in the sun. His riding pants were crisp and fresh. His white shirt was unbuttoned, the tails knotted at the waist à la Mexican beach. His hair was almost impossibly white against the tan of him. He was a Hemingway, fifty, taut as drums, resilient, proud of his body.

“Hello, Sewell. Something I can do for you?”

The look of defeat he had worn in the jail cell was entirely gone. His eyes were clear, keen.

“Your eldest has been showing me the tree where Dodd was found.”

He frowned a little. “Did you arrange to meet her here, sir?”

“No. No. I just happened to get here at about the same time. Lovely girl.”

His face was unfriendly. “Yes, she is.”

“You have three fine daughters, Mr. Pryor.”

“Did you come out here to tell me that, Sewell? I might say that I have no particular urge to entertain the … companions of my late niece. It’s over and I want my daughters to forget about it as soon as possible. The whole thing was sordid and unfortunate.”

“Yes, it was.”

“Now if you wouldn’t mind leaving, we’re having a family picnic here today.”

“Under the same tree?”

He stared at me. “If that’s humor, Sewell, I find it a little strange. If it isn’t humor, you should know that I’m physically capable of throwing you into your automobile.”

“I guess you are, at that.”

“Please go, will you?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“There’s nothing I can conceive of that we can talk about.”

“I just wondered if another man could take over that
business opportunity Dodd mentioned to you, Mr. Pryor.”

He stood there, the sun on his face, looking at me, fists on his hips, brown arms flexed. I cannot say there was any physical change. I saw no change. But I sensed a change that went on inside. I sensed a shifting, a re-evaluation, a new poise of forces. A man might sit at a poker table with that same immobility, certain from the restrained betting that his was the winning hand, and then see a large bet made.

“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

“Dodd was going to speak to you. He told me he was. I understand you were going to finance him.”

“I’m not interested in new business ventures.”

“He said you were interested in his.”

“Then he lied to you, because I never heard any proposition from him. I thought he was satisfied with his job.”

“Maybe I should rephrase it. He said you couldn’t
help
but be interested in his proposition.”

“That’s a strange statement.”

“Isn’t it.”

“Are you trying to be cryptic? You’re talking way over my head, young man.”

“I don’t imagine it was the money that stopped you. I guess it was just having someone know. Or maybe you have that strange form of distorted honesty that saw it as one way to get me out of a jail where I didn’t belong. There was a good chance I might get electrocuted for killing her. You wouldn’t have liked that. Conscience is a funny thing, Mr. Pryor. Even your twisted one.”

“This is the damnedest nonsense I ever heard.”

I measured the distance between us and then said softly, “How did she look through the binoculars, Willy? Lush and desirable? You know when I mean. When you broke Dusty’s arm.”

“You must be quite mad.” He said it with discouraging calm.

“It’s the hot sun, Willy. I wonder how you fit your
conscience around another thing, though—that elastic conscience of yours. How …”