After Eli (2 page)

Lester nodded. “Creatures ain’t bothered by things,” he said philosophically. “May be why they make sense.”

“True enough,” agreed Michael. “I’ve thought the same myself, many’s the time.” He pointed with his hand toward the woods. “See that squirrel nest in that oak? About halfway up.”

“Yeah. They all over the place,” Lester answered.

“I’ve been lookin’ at them for the last few days,” Michael confessed. “Think about squirrels. They build and stay put. Most of the men I’ve known, they wander all over.” He looked at the whiskey jar in his hand and swallowed again. “You’re a good man, Lester Caufield,” he whispered. “A good man. You and your Mary. Takin’ in a stranger to feed and bed in hard times. Not many you’ll find in the mountains who’d do such. I know. I’m a travelin’ man who’s been on the ups and downs. You’re good people, you are.”

“My daddy always told me don’t never open the door to somebody you don’t know,” Lester admitted, “but it seems right to me to be neighborly.”

“No, I’ll be havin’ none of that,” argued Michael. “It’s more’n bein’ neighborly. You’re out of the ordinary. You’re what the Irish would call righteous.”

Lester laughed.

“Somebody ought to tell the preacher that,” he replied lightly. “Don’t reckon the preacher thinks so. Especially about me. The wife, she’s a churchgoer.” He leaned his chair close to Michael and whispered, “Reason she ain’t out here. She don’t take to drinkin’. Says it’s first-rate sin. But this jar was give to me by my cousin as a weddin’ present and I couldn’t just drain it out. Reckon I knew somebody’d come along to help with it.” He leaned back and looked up into the night. “Well, hell, she ain’t no more’n a girl yet,” he mused. “Me and her been wed a month now, I reckon. She ain’t used to takin’ me, if you know what I mean, especially when I have me a drink or two. She’s scared to death I’m gonna get up for a hunk and split her wide open.”

Michael did not answer. He lit a short-stemmed pipe and smiled and nodded and continued to stare into the darkness. He could hear Mary in the kitchen. He thought of Lester pushing
himself into her and his body tensed. He remembered watching her from the mountain and the frost color of her slip.

“Matter of fact, you pass along that jar and I’ll take me a sip right now,” Lester again whispered. “Don’t make a damn to me what she says. I’m feelin’ good for the first time in days, and tomorrow’s Saturday and I ain’t goin’ to work. I don’t take a drink while you around, ain’t no way I’ll get to. She’s started throwing a fit if I do it by myself.”

Michael handed him the jar and Lester wiped his sleeve across the mouth and turned it up to his lips. He swallowed twice.

“Good, ain’t it?” Lester said proudly.

“True enough, it is.”

Michael could feel the music flowing inside him and the soprano voices ringing in his head. And then the night rushed through him like a ghost and he could sense the singing of small night animals and the cooling, green perfume of grasses and trees breaking through the membrane of early spring. He breathed deeply, suddenly, filling his lungs. The house seemed to rise and yawn and enfold him. The voices were becoming a scream.

“Know what I been sittin’ here thinkin’ about?” Lester asked easily. “Come to me at supper, out of the blue. I been thinkin’ how you seem like a fellow who used to live around here.”

The screaming in Michael stopped abruptly.

“Another Irishman in these parts?” he asked lightly.

“Wadn’t no Irishman, far as I know, though I reckon there’s the blood around,” answered Lester. “He was reared around here. I recall him from when I was a boy, and I heard tell a lot about him since. He used to be somethin’. Told some good tales. I reckon he left for good seven, eight years ago. Some say he’s dead. Some say he ain’t.”

“A wanderin’ man, he was?”

Lester nodded and swallowed again from the whiskey.

“I reckon he was more’n that, you get right down to it,” he
replied. “From what I hear tell, ol’ Eli was about anythin’ you could think of. He was a charmer, all right, but meaner’n the Devil hisself, if he had to be.”

“Fact is, I’ve been called the same,” Michael said brightly.

“Well, I be damn,” exclaimed Lester. “Sounds like I’m callin’ you names, don’t it? Don’t mean it that way. I mean Eli was a talker, made people feel right. That’s what I mean. Same way you do. And he was always smilin’, same as you. You ask anybody around here, they’ll tell you. Way I remember him, he even had the same kind of easy look you got.” He laughed. “Hell, down in Yale they’d probably throw you in jail for bein’ like Eli.”

“Then I’ll stay out of Yale, wherever it is,” Michael replied.

Lester giggled. He toyed with the jar of whiskey.

“Just goin’ on with you,” he said. “Don’t make no difference what Eli done, he was a man to listen to.” He paused. “Ain’t thought about him in years,” he added.

“Well, no offense taken, friend,” Michael said. “It’s true enough, I’m a talker. Proud of it, if you twist the fact out of me. It’s the way I’ve made my way, everythin’ from readin’ Milton to little ladies on the tent Chautauqua to—”

“What’s that?” Lester asked innocently.

“The tent Chautauqua. It was like a travelin’ show. Music and actors doin’ plays and readin’s. Died out about ten years ago, I’d say, what with radio and the Depression. But it was somethin’ to see, Lester Caufield. Somethin’, all right. Me, I’d be readin’ from some good Irish poet, or actin’ in a play, and the ladies would be swoonin’ and the nights were lovely, they were. Not been the same since. Little left that I can find but some carnival barkin’ at the circus.”

“Never run across it,” Lester confessed. “Only thing around here’s some revivals, and when that ain’t on, some drinkin’ done down at Pullen’s, down in town.”

“Times change,” Michael said simply. “Maybe your friend took off on some tent circuit of his own likin’.”

“Eli? Don’t nobody know, I reckon. He wadn’t Irish, I reckon, but he had him a streak. Tale around the hills is he come back home last time with a whole suitcase of money he stole somewheres. Hid it on that farm of his—down the road five or six miles—and then he lit out again. But that was some time ago, like I said. He ain’t come back since.”

Michael shifted his weight, leaning forward from the doorjamb. He folded his arms around his knees and locked his right hand over his left wrist. His eyes sparkled quickly and played across Lester’s face.

“Ah, a buried treasure, it is?” he said. His voice had the exuberance of a child’s question.

Lester nodded and returned a child’s smile. He glanced over Michael’s shoulder through the screen door, then motioned Michael closer with his head and whispered, “Them Pettit women say it ain’t so, but ain’t nobody believes ’em. They’s been some snoopin’ around, times bein’ what they are, but ain’t nobody found nothin’. Harley Nixon tells around how he got shot at one night, thinkin’ they was gone, but them women don’t leave the place all at one time, not even goin’ to church.”

Michael returned the whisper: “Is it a goodly sum?” he asked.

“What they say. Ten thousand dollars, some say. Five thousand, according to others. Word is Eli took it from a bank up in Kentucky, but don’t nobody know for certain. Way he talked, he could’ve been lyin’ just for the hell of it. Eli loved to do his talkin’ and word is he told around that it was hid in his luck place. But that was the way Eli was.”

Michael could sense a drama moving in his mind. Flashes of a house he had never seen, of faces, of secret, hidden places. His heart pumped hard against the muscles of his throat and he could feel the palms of his hands warming.

“And the women?” asked Michael, forcing his voice low.

“Couldn’t call ’em all women, I reckon,” replied Lester. “I ain’t seen ’em in a while, but there’s Eli’s wife—Rachel, she’s
named. And there’s Sarah, the daughter. I expect she’s sixteen or seventeen now, a couple of years younger’n my Mary. Always been a little weak, like Mary.”

“Just the two of them?”

Lester shook his head and laughed sharply. He sipped from the whiskey, smacking and sighing as he swallowed.

“One more,” he said. “Dora. She’s the sister to Rachel. Old maid. Tale is, she’s the one you got to watch out for. Keeps a shotgun handy and damn well knows how to use it. Besides, she’s quaint, I hear tell.”

“Quaint?”

Lester shrugged his shoulders. He rolled the whiskey jar in his hands and thought about his answer.

“Well, maybe that ain’t the way to say it,” he replied. “She’s always starin’. Got a mean eye. Meaner’n Hell.” He laughed. “Reckon that’s the reason she never got no man. That’d be more’n a man could stomach, wakin’ up every mornin’ to some woman starin’ a hole through him.” He laughed again.

A chill ran through Michael. He could feel the glare of a woman’s face.

“But, hell, it wouldn’t be that I’d be scared of,” Lester added. “It’d be that damned ol’ shotgun. I’d be careful, I was you. You got to go by when you light out in the mornin’, if you goin’ on down to Hiawassee.” He snickered gleefully. “Don’t you go strayin’ none when you pass that house off
the road, say five or six miles on down. You’ll see it. Sets up on a little hill in a bunch of oaks. First farm down the road is Floyd Crider’s; next one is the Pettits’. Ol’ Floyd ain’t gonna do nothin’ more’n wave his hand. I ain’t givin’ you no promise on them women.” He snickered again.

Michael’s inner eye framed the image of three women, and his mind repeated their names—Rachel, Sarah, Dora. He said, “It’s a good thing there’s some fear in them, I’m thinkin’. Women livin’ alone could be in the Devil’s danger if they’re not careful what’s about them.”

“And them women could be what the Devil’s danger is,” Lester replied, snorting into the mouth of the jar. He shook his head lazily and stretched his shoulders against the hard brace of the chair. The whiskey had entered his mind and muscles and the night was becoming heavy. He rubbed his hands over his eyes and yawned. “Anyhow,” he added, “it’s somethin’ how much you put me in mind of Eli, what I recall of him.”

“Well, I take that as a compliment, all but the part about him bein’ a rogue, that is,” Michael replied. “That part I’ll leave to the next traveler down the road.”

Lester laughed suddenly. He hiccupped and his eyes floated sleepily to Michael.

“Yes?” Michael said.

“I was just thinkin’ how you was lucky to come walkin’ up here instead of up to the Pettits’ place,” Lester mumbled. “Dora might’ve blowed you to kingdom come before you got the chance to say hello.”

Michael pulled himself from the floor of the porch, smiling at the thought.

“Now that’s the truth,” he agreed. “That’s the truth. Maybe my luck’s changin’, and it’s luck I’ve been livin’ by all these long years, Lester Caufield. Pure luck.”

* * *

He did not have a watch, but Michael knew by the ticking of his patience that it was after midnight. He had planned carefully. It was time.

He rolled quietly from the cushion of straw and folded his bedding neatly and tied it beneath the top flap of his knapsack. He then pushed the straw back into the stack—a habit of erasing where he had been.

He stepped silently across the barn and slipped out of the door into the barnyard. There was only a rim of a moon, like a silver scratch. It was cold and dark, the kind of darkness he needed.

Luck, he thought. Yes, blessed luck, as he had said to Lester. There was no dog to worry about. Nothing for warning. That was first. And it was Friday. Being Friday would give him time. The rest would be simple. He had studied the door carefully; it would be no trouble. And there would be time to follow the stream and lose himself in the mountains before Monday morning and the truck of men.

He placed his knapsack and walking stick at the foot of the steps leading to the porch. He took the steps slowly, pushing his weight on the supports. Then he was across the porch and at the door. He reached for the knife scabbarded to his belt. He slipped the blade between the doorjamb and lock and pried gently. The door broke open without a sound.

He was inside, moving in a crouch, skimming the room with his fingers. The bedroom was before him, its door open. He could hear the heavy breathing of whiskey sleep rising from Lester. He wondered if Lester had taken his wife.

Michael smiled. A pleasing Irish melody rose in the back of his throat and the words flowed into his seeing like sheet music—“
I have loved you with poems… I have loved you with daisies… I have loved you with everything but love…
” The music was a serenade of joyful sadness and it filled Michael with memories. His skin tingled with a rush of excitement. He stood at the bedroom door and stepped lightly to the foot of the bed. Lester was asleep on his left side, his right arm tucked against his chest. Mary lay beside. She was awake. She stared at Michael in horror, unable to move or to make a sound. Michael winked and warned her with a low, hissing “Shhhhh.” He bent to Lester, catching him on the shoulder with his left hand, rolling him quickly, the knife in his right hand flashing in one clean stroke through Lester’s throat. Lester’s body quivered. The blood gurgled and spewed as Michael rolled him onto the floor. He turned to Mary, whose open mouth was frozen in a mute scream, and the Irish melody in his own throat escaped in a hum.

“Well, now, you’re a lovely sight, close up, you are,” Michael said softly, easing onto the bed with his knees. “Young as the mornin’, you are. Just the thing a man would be needin’ before he’s up and off.”