Keeping Secrets (51 page)

He sounded like a fresh convert, as, in a way, he was. “This book has given me courage to do what must be done … I don't have to be afraid anymore. The Lord loves me. He forgives me of all the bad things I've done, and He uses me to reach His own ends.” He put the Bible down again. I didn't see how this had much to do with what interested me. I wanted to get back to Cabot.

“You worked for Cabot a long time, and passed up the chance to go elsewhere. I could have gotten you a job at the bank, remember—”

He considered me for a few moments, and gradually his peaceful expression changed. His eyes narrowed, his lips hardened. In the shadows he had an almost demonic look. His voice was low. “You stupid little bitch … coming around me when I never wanted you, pestering me because of the way I live. Do you think a man would live like I do if he was free? Don't you recognize the devil incarnate when you run into him?”

“Who—you mean Cabot?”

“Of course, you little fool. The Bible says the devil will bring evil to our lives, but that with the power of Christ we can overcome him. And now I know that it's true.”

“But Cabot's not—”

“Oh, you think you know so much, but you don't,” he said. His eyes were little flames. “Electra knows. She wouldn't tell you, but she knows, and now I've freed her. She's safe and far away. He'll never be able to hurt her again.”

I started to tell him she was very much here in this house, but before I could he was talking again. “I'll bet you didn't know he beat her once. And if you could hear the horrible things he has said to her … oh, when I think of the times I've heard him lash out at her with his poisonous tongue, powerless to stop him. More than once I've felt the force so strongly I've crawled into a corner and covered my ears.”

I swallowed hard. “Well, if that's so, why didn't you interfere?”

“Because I couldn't. Much as I wanted to, I couldn't because he might have killed me, then no one would have been around to help her when the opportunity came. And if I was lucky to be quicker than he was, and kill him, nothing would be gained because I would still be subject to his will. Can't you see the devil emerging even as I tell you how he works?”

I sat still and quiet.

“The Lord promises those of us who suffer travail upon the earth shall find peace and happiness in heaven.… I don't have anything to fear anymore,” he said, and put his head back again. “You're not convinced, poor little lamb Camille.… It follows, though, because the devil has enormous powers of deception. I'll tell you something, will you believe me? Even after Electra left on the train today, he brought another of those harlots home with him tonight, brought her to this house Electra worked so hard to keep for him. She was trash, just like him. I heard them go up the stairs, talking and laughing. They're lying up there together now,” he said, glancing above, then across at me. His eyes were very bright for a moment. He looked down again and continued, “No one has ever known how much I could hear in this house, and Cabot himself caused the mistake that made it possible. He hurried me when I was working on it before we moved in, and I left a hollow wall without intending to. It was his fault, driving me to finish when I was so tired I could hardly stand up. He foiled himself, and because of that I was led to the Lord at last.”

“I don't understand.”

“If not for the desperation, knowing time was running out and I didn't know what to do, I would never have gone to a prayer meeting. I was nearly mad after he struck her, but I lacked the courage and the wisdom to defy the devil. But now I've done it. He can never hurt either of us again.”

I wanted very much to get him to the core, and it seemed that each time I came nearer he whirled off on his religious reel again, talking nonsense, thinking he was led by the Lord when he was spurred on by the liquor. His voice was becoming more and more slurred. If I could only get to the bottom of what he was talking about.…

Finally I said, “You were with Cabot for years before Electra came along. I still don't understand why you stayed, hating him as you did.”

He paused and blinked at me. I had the feeling he was not really aware of my presence any longer. He looked back toward the wall. “Cabot saw me kill them.”

26

I realized then Nathan was someone we all had miscalculated. At once I wished to be as far away from him as I could run, yet was seized with curiosity. I didn't dare ask a question. I could only hope he would continue to go steadily from that point on, and he did.

He became retrospective, and gazed up at the ceiling, as though it was with some relief he finally told what he had kept secret for years. “Sam Arnesty was big as a bull and strong. He had a ring of black hair around his head and dark, distrustful eyes. He took a shine to my mother as soon as he hit town and went to work as foreman of the mill. I didn't mind him. Mother said he made good money and if she married him she wouldn't have to sew for people anymore. And it wasn't bad at first. He'd take me with him on the buggy sometimes; when something broke that couldn't be fixed at the mill, he'd put it on the buggy and take it to Lufkin to the foundry there. And all along the way he'd talk about the mill and there wasn't anything I'd rather listen to.

“But then a few months after the wedding Mother got sick and Sam brought Doc Barnes to the house to look at her. He was the mill doctor. He said he didn't know, he'd have to run some tests and send them off. So when she felt a little better she went down to his office and he did the tests. When the results came back he said he wanted to send her to a big clinic in Baltimore where they'd do some more tests.

“Sam didn't like it much, said it was probably all her imagination when it came right down to it, but he sent her anyway. When she got back she told him she was real sick and would have to go to a big hospital for treatments. I don't know what she had. I was just a kid. No one would tell me anything. I think she had cancer, but she wouldn't talk to me about it.

“Sam got mad. He came home drunk one night and accused her of knowing she was sick before she married him, and using him to pay her doctor bills. At least he didn't hit her—even Sam Arnesty wasn't as brutal as Cabot—but he said awful things to her and made her cry. Then he left and didn't come home for a week.

“When he did, he apologized and said he just didn't have the money to send her to a fancy hospital, and was too ashamed to admit it at first. I heard her tell him that if he'd just promise to look after me after she was gone, and see that I grew up all right, that was all she'd ask. He agreed to that. We hardly ever saw him. He was always on call at the mill, and I think he stayed there even when he didn't have to.

“After she died—she was hardly cold in her grave—he brought Clove Sutcom in and told me he intended to marry her. Said she would be my stepmother. She was fat, with a little pig face and four chins. He'd known her up in another mill town where he worked before. I don't know how long he'd been carrying on with her before my mother died, but that was the first thing I thought of. My mother had very high morals, and Clove Sutcom wasn't anything more than a common night woman.” He paused, then as if in a trance continued:

“One day right after they married I got sick at school with a fever, and the teacher sent me home. When I walked in they were sitting at the table, talking about buying into the mill. Sam said he had several thousand dollars saved up. When I heard him bragging about that money I flew into him. I would have torn his guts out, but he flung me off so hard I hit the kitchen wall. He started toward me, but Clove pulled him back. She said they ought to put me to bed, and that she had a better idea than for Sam to beat me up.

“I don't know what went on for the next few days. I was delirious with fever, and all I remember is Clove giving me calomel. It seemed the room around me was swimming all the time. Then one night about the time I was beginning to be better, and thinking about how I was going to get back at Sam for lying to my mother about not having the money to save her life, the two of them came in together. Last thing I knew I had a wet towel slapped in my face. When I woke up I was on a train slumped down between them. Each of them had an arm around me. Sam said if I made a move toward the aisle, he'd make me wish I hadn't. Clove said I was a bad boy and would be better off in a school she knew about out in West Texas, and that was where I was headed.

“I was trapped in that place until I was seventeen, then I escaped. There was only one place I wanted to go, and that was Mill Springs. I got me a gun to kill Clove and Sam, and after that I was going to set that stinking mill afire, and every building connected to it.

“It took me three weeks to get there, and I sneaked down the little hill in back of the house one evening and waited till they sat down to supper in the kitchen. I shot her first, then watched him lunge toward her, then look toward the window where the shot came from. I let him see my face, then I shot him, and he fell over on her.”

“And Cabot saw this?”

He nodded. “I can still hear his voice. ‘Drop the gun,' he said. I looked around. He was sitting on a horse up on top of the hill, aiming his rifle at me. He guided the horse slowly down the hill, then came on over, leaned real close, and stared into my eyes. Then he straightened up and started telling me what to do. He made me go back in there and take all her jewelry and empty Sam's pockets, then bring everything back to him. When I got back he looked over each piece carefully and put it all in his saddlebags. Then he made me clean up all the blood from the table and chairs and the walls—oh, he was a monster if ever there was one—and bury Clove and Sam under the house. All the while he sat on his horse and watched me, and stood lookout to be sure no one saw.

“After that he sent me back to put their clothing in suitcases, so people would think they'd gone on a trip, and bury those things in another spot under the house. When I got through my nails were bleeding and my arms and legs were numb from bending under that house. I did not know what had come upon me. I didn't know there was anyone in the world that evil.

“We camped out in the woods that night. He asked me why I'd killed them, and I told him. He said no one would ever know about it, and made me sign a confession he'd written down on a piece of paper. He said the paper would be kept with all his legal papers that wouldn't be opened till his death, so if I ever killed him it would be found and the law would get me, that the evidence would be right there, buried just where it said on the paper.

“I asked him how he happened to come by there, and he smiled in that diabolical way of his and said, ‘Just lucky, I guess.'”

He paused for a few moments then. I didn't want to think that what he was saying of Cabot was true, but it had an undeniable ring of plausibility about it. Always quick to grasp an opportunity, Cabot had taken himself a slave.…

Soon Nathan continued, “He told me he could use me to keep his books, that he'd teach me how he wanted them done. So we came to San Antonio and he moved me with him into his apartment close by the district, and every night he went down in there and gambled and drank, and half the time brought one of those whores home with him to stay all night.

“He was lousy as one of those rats running free down in that hole where we stayed, but he didn't bother me as long as I kept up with who owed him what and made sure no one ever cheated him. Later on, when the government taxes started to get in his way, he made me cheat for him. I used to tell myself, if they catch him at least I'll have the chance to see him behind bars, and it will be worth something when he tells on me, just knowing he got at least part of what was coming to him.”

He leaned back in his chair again and closed his eyes. I thought he'd pass out then and I sat silently, watching to see what he'd do next. One eye was on the ledgers. If I could just get them.…

In a moment, though, he began to talk again. “But then Electra came, and everything changed. I was shocked he'd take up with someone as fine as her, and more surprised she'd take up with him. I know she wouldn't have except she had known him when he was younger, and probably not so mean. I figured she must have thought he was still that way, until after they married.

“At first when he brought her here, you'd have thought he really had changed into someone decent. He stayed real nice for a while. But then he began to abuse her, and I could see how frightened she was. She hated him just like I did, but she didn't know how to get away from him. Oh, the times I've seen her face when he's around.… She'd have run away before but she was always afraid he'd come after her.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“Certainly not. She's too much of a lady to tell anyone about her husband. She just put up with him. Before he had the wreck it was worse. I was nearly insane, wondering what to do. I knew he'd try to cheat on that cash deal he made down in the district, but the draft was hanging over my head, and I knew I'd probably be taken before he was found out, then what would become of Electra? There would be no one to watch her, and once they started digging into my past for my records, they'd likely discover what I had done.

“But then, thankfully, the Lord interceded, and started directing me. I watched her, and waited for Him to give me a sign. She didn't seem frightened for a while, but then last week, when Cabot came back to town, I knew it was happening again.”

“How?”

“When they went to that big party over at the Tetzels'. I didn't hear them argue and I don't know what it was about, but she was scared to death when they got into that car, and he stuck close by all the time, afraid she'd try to get away, see, so I knew I had to help her. And one afternoon the very next week I came home to find her cowering in the parlor, with the shades drawn. You see, the closer the time came, the more she was caught in the grips of fear. So just to be safe, I got her ticket for the train today. Just in case … She's down in Corpus Christi, knowing I helped her, and she won't ever have to go back to him.”