You Live Once (19 page)

“Why don’t you leave before I throw you off my land?”

“How do you adjust to what happened to your sister? You did that, you know. You killed the father and then watched the father’s blood come out in the daughter. You framed the beloved sister Nadine.”

Again it was the poker table. He had matched the large bet. Now the stranger’s cards were turned over. He looked beyond me. His mouth moved and was still. His eyes saw nothing.

“There’ll be more,” I said. “Somebody else will figure it out next. Maybe one of your own girls. Maybe your wife. Or maybe she half suspects already. There aren’t any secrets, Mr. Pryor. Not about a thing like this.”

There was something reminiscent of a bull in the set of his shoulders, in the hump of muscle at the nape of his neck. He came at me with the wild sudden fury of a bull. I had driven him a little bit too far. There was no room in his brain for cold plans and projects. There was room for nothing but fury, a very desperate fury.

I had destroyed his world and I must in turn be destroyed. A fist like a sledge numbed my left arm. I struck back once and a second blow thumped my ribs and he was on me. His arms locked around me, head driving against my chin, knuckles in the small of my back. I tripped and fell heavily and he was on top of me, smashing the wind out of me as he fell. I was young and reasonably husky, but you can’t fight that sort of fury. You can’t even survive that kind of fury. He got a blocky knee on my stomach and husky brown hands locked around my throat. I tensed my throat muscles and tried to get hold of a finger to pry it back and loosen his grip. My hands were sweaty and I could not get a grip. The last bit of air rasped in my throat and then his hands closed the air passage. My chest convulsed. The sun swam and darkened and I slapped weakly at his face with hands
made of balsa and paper, like the frail drifting wings of toy gliders.

He was taken off me. I sat up, retching and coughing, and color came back into the world. I saw Pryor stagger and then make what must have been a second or third charge at Paul France, trying to get his hands on him. He hit Pryor three times as Pryor came at him, moved almost casually to the side and hit him twice more as Pryor went by. The last blow was decisive. Pryor’s legs worked for three more strides before he went down on his face. The four Pryor females came running down from the cottage, one of them emitting short sharp screams with each stride. John Fidd appeared with a shotgun.

I got to my feet. A lot of little white dots whirred around like so many bees and slowly faded away. France said, “Your girl said to find you and keep an eye on you, bub.”

“Thanks.”

He touched a red mark on his chin and said, speculatively, “Think nothing of it. Nothing at all.”

“Get back,” Fidd snarled. “Get back against that car, both of you.”

France walked directly toward him, took the shotgun, wrenched it away from him, murmuring softly, “Easy, Dad. Easy now.”

The girls had rolled their father over onto his back. Mrs. Pryor was demanding to know what had happened.

I said to France, “I’ve heard a citizen can arrest another citizen. Is that the truth?”

“It’s legal. What have you got on him?”

“He murdered Rolph Olan, Mary Olan and Dodd Raymond.”

Skeeter flew at me like a fat brown robin—a robin with claws. “That’s a damn lie!” she screamed. “You’re a big liar!”

Willy Pryor hadn’t opened his eyes or moved. He opened his mouth and said, “It isn’t a lie. It’s the truth.” He got up slowly and steadily, brushed his women aside
and walked toward us. “Which car do you want me in?”

France opened the door of his grey sedan. “Right in here, please.”

I followed the grey car. The Pryor car, with the four females and John Fidd, followed me. It was a bright Sunday and seventeen miles to Warren, with the first part of it through lovely farmland. We went by with our load of heartbreak. The cows didn’t care. The bees didn’t care. The birds didn’t give a damn. It was May with summer coming up.

Kruslov let me sit in on it. He acted like a man who had been hit sharply over the head. He kept staring at Pryor and shaking his head, almost imperceptibly. It was Sunday and it took a little time to gather the official cast.

Willis Pryor sat stolidly, dominating the small room with a sort of sad force and dignity, waiting, motionless, grave. He seemed like the chairman of the board awaiting tardy members with iron patience.

The pasty-faced stenographer uncapped a huge prehistoric fountain pen of a peculiarly poisonous shade of orange. I sat where I could see dark bruises on the left side of Willis Pryor’s jaw.

“I guess we’re ready, Mr. Pryor,” Kruslov said apologetically.

“Shall I tell this all as it happened?”

“Please, sir.”

“My sister Nadine married Rolph Olan. Shortly after marriage he began to make her life a hell on earth. She confided in me, we were always close. I spoke to Rolph several times during the years. He ignored me. He seemed amused by me. His infidelities were becoming notorious. It was no life for my sister. On the day of his death I phoned him at his office. I said I had to speak to him. I insisted. I had prayed for guidance. I wanted to give him one last chance. He picked me up on the corner I mentioned. I said we could talk at his house. I hoped to
bring Nadine into the conversation. Nadine was resting. We talked quietly in the study. He told me that Nadine was as tasteless to him as weak tea. He said he would not spend his life chained to the living dead. He said he had decided to divorce her. That was his answer. I excused myself saying I wanted to get a drink of water. I brought the knife back from the kitchen. He had gone into the front hall, to go up the stairs and wake her and tell her his decision. I struck him with the knife. He looked down at it and raised his hand and touched the handle and tried to say something and fell. I went out through the back of the house.

“It never occurred to me that Nadine would be suspected. I hoped the police would suspect some prowler, or some business enemy. After her mind started to go, I told her that I had done it. I told her why. I couldn’t reach her, she didn’t understand what I was saying. I had done that to her. Once I knew she was incurable there seemed little point in confessing. I had my own wife to think about, an infant daughter, another child on the way. I contemplated suicide. I was mentally sick and physically sick for a long time. Eventually I recovered. Had it not been for Rolph’s evil actions, Nadine would not have lost her mind. Once I had decided that, I was able to regain my physical and mental health.”

He was silent for a long time. Kruslov stirred in his chair but did not speak. Pryor’s face was still, and he was far away in old memories.

Pryor looked up with a little start. “Rolph’s death and Nadine’s collapse left me with the responsibility for the school child, Mary, and the infant, John. I had never had any trouble with John. He is brilliant, devious, and of a metaphysical turn of mind. But his mind is stronger than his body. He has never evidenced the weaknesses of the flesh. Mary was a different problem. I have thought about her a great deal. She was born old. She was born with a knowledge of evil. Often as I beat her, I could never subdue the evil in her. Once she became of age
and began to receive her own income, I no longer had any hold over her. She hated me. She hated me because of the punishments I had inflicted for her own good. With the devilish wisdom of her black heart, she began to punish me in turn. She decided to debauch me and my daughters.

“She told me of her physical affairs. She flaunted her body at me. She laughed at me and tried to create in me a desire for her flesh. She spoke of my sister, her mother, and inferred that the relationship between us had been diseased, unnatural. I knelt on sharp stones for hours at a time, praying for guidance. I had begun to desire her and I could not cut that evil longing out of my heart.”

In the beginning he had spoken tersely, factually. Now his voice had deepened and there was almost a biblical cadence in his words.

“When she would go away I would begin to heal myself, but on her return I would turn again to paths of error. At last she taunted me with the affair she was having with a married man, Dodd Raymond, son of old friends. She taunted me with that as she had taunted me with vile details of her affair with young Yeagger. She wished to punish me for the fancied cruelties I had practiced on her when she was younger. She spoke of a rented place where she would meet Raymond. I saw that she would spend her life spreading her own kind of evil. I told her her father had been evil and he had died. She looked at me then with a special kind of recognition. Maybe my face had shown her too much. I knew that she had begun to suspect me. I knew then that she would have to die also. Once I had decided it, I felt cleansed.

“When my family went to the lake a week ago last Saturday, a week ago yesterday, I parked near the Locust Ridge Club and followed her in her car when she left. I thought she was with Raymond. I thought they would go to the rented place she spoke of. I followed them until they turned into a driveway in the old part of the
city. To make certain, I turned around and went back and turned into the driveway. My headlights were on them and I saw them clearly in carnal embrace. I returned to my home to wait for her. I expected her to be very late. She came sooner than I expected. As with her father, I mercifully decided to give her a last chance. I told her I wished to talk to her.

“She listened for a long time, quite patiently. I told her how she had to combat the evil she had inherited. I spoke calmly to her. When I was through she laughed at me. She jeered at me and said unforgivable things to me. I walked away from the car, trembling. I went in the house and took a sock from my bedroom and went out and filled the toe with coarse dirt. When she came walking toward the house, humming to herself, I struck her as hard as I could, caught her as she fell and put her back in the car.

“I thought for a long time. Raymond had broken vows. I found a strange key in her purse. I drove back to the apartment, left her in the car. The key opened the door. I went in and found him in bed, breathing heavily, smelling of drink. I struck him twice, as hard as I could, to prevent his awakening. In the darkness his head was clearly visible on the pillow. His breathing changed and that was all. I carried her into the dark apartment. She seemed to have no weight at all. I placed her in the closet. I lighted a match and saw a belt hanging there. I placed it around her neck and drew it tight. I knelt in the closet doorway in the darkness. I could hear a faint whistle of breathing. I tightened the belt a bit more and I could hear nothing.

“I waited a long time and began to tremble. I thrust her further back into the closet, closed the door, closed the outside door and drove away. I did not sleep that night. Early in the morning I called my wife at the lake and said that Mary had not come home and I was worried. Myrna drove down from the lake. It was minutes before she arrived that I happened to see Mary’s purse
near the edge of the drive where I had struck her …”

“The car, her car,” Kruslov said softly.

“I drove her car from Sewell’s driveway and abandoned it near Highland. I walked two miles to the farm and drove back to my home in one of the jeeps. I rubbed my hands on the parts of her car I had touched, to smear my fingerprints. I hid her purse and the key in my bureau. After my wife returned from the lake and we phoned Stine, I waited for Raymond to be found with the body in that apartment. We told Stine that Mary had been at the club with the Raymonds. But it turned out I had struck Sewell. When the body was not found, I guessed that Sewell had taken it away somehow. I did not want Sewell punished. I suspected that he and Mary had been intimate, but I had no proof.

“I wanted to talk to Sewell, to find out if he too should be punished. I waited one night near his apartment, the night Mary’s body had been found. He drove in with Yeagger. I was behind a tree. They came close to me and fought. I got a tire iron from my car. Yeagger was choking Sewell. I struck him from behind. I thought I had killed him. Sewell still breathed. I left.

“Sewell’s arrest troubled me. I visited him in his cell. He seemed honest. He disclaimed carnal knowledge of my niece. I was afraid that once again, as with Nadine, the innocent would be punished. I began to think of confession and suicide. I was the instrument of the vengeance of the Lord, but He did not want me to punish the innocent.

“When Raymond phoned me to set a place to speak to me in private, I had no idea what he wanted. I had him meet me at the farm on Friday night. He spoke cautiously. Suddenly I realized what he wanted. Mary had hinted of her suspicions that perhaps I had killed her father. She had told him of the relationship between herself and me. Raymond had a business venture in mind. I would furnish funds. He said he could insure a good return. Otherwise he would go to the police with his
suspicions, and he felt there would be enough to warrant reopening the investigation. I told him I would have to think it over. I told him to wait there. He showed me the gun he was carrying.

“I went back to my home and recovered Mary’s purse from its hiding place and took it back out there with me. The sock heavy with dirt had worked so well that I used it another time. It did not take long to catch him off guard. I spoke of large sums of money and his greed diluted his caution. He was a heavy man, but as when I carried Mary, he seemed astonishingly light. I removed my shoes so as not to leave telltale marks on the roof of his car. The most difficult part was holding him upright while I knotted the tow line around his neck. He began to recover consciousness as I held him upright. I put the purse in one side pocket and the key in the other.

“I pushed him off the car. He caught at the rope over his head with his hands and when he swung back he scrabbled at the car roof with his feet but he could not get a purchase. On the second swing he did not come close enough. He held his weight with his hands, swinging and turning slowly. I had used a flashlight to locate the proper limb and judge the throw. I turned the light on him. He swung, turning slowly, looking at me with a terrible face. I turned off the light. I put my shoes on and stood by the car in the darkness. Soon I heard the sounds of his dying. I walked back to the farm and drove home. I knew it was all over. Sewell would be freed. The guilty had been punished. I felt clean again, as in the moment when I decided to kill my niece.