Letter From Home (23 page)

The farther they walked from the town square, the quieter it was. When Gretchen climbed into the editor's dusty black coupe and the engine rumbled, they drove away from the ugly murmurs, but over and over Gretchen remembered the sheriff's bleak voice:
. . . rot in jail . . . rot in jail . . .
If the sheriff found out about Grandmother, what would happen? Would he put Grandmother in jail? Make her go into one of those concrete cells and slam shut the iron bars? She'd seen the cells when she went to the sheriff's office. The words ballooned in her mind, pressing until she felt her head would burst.

“. . . Gretchen?” In the light from the dashboard, Mr. Dennis looked gray and tired.

She jerked toward him. “Yes?”

“Are you all right?” His face furrowed in concern as he braked in front of her house.

“Yes, sir.” But she wasn't. She could scarcely keep from flinging open the door and running to the Purdy cabin. She had to hurry. . . .

“You're tired. You worked all day. And there was the funeral.” He pulled his pipe from his pocket, poked it in his tobacco pouch. “Don't come in tomorrow. Enjoy your mom's visit. I'll do the story on the crowd.”

As she opened the door, Gretchen held tight to her sheaf of copy paper. She had good notes: Reverend Byars jostling his way through the crowd with a petition calling for the padlocking of the Blue Light; the grocer, Mr. Hudson, telling about Clyde working for him when he was in high school and how Clyde found a bald eagle chick whose mother had been shot and Clyde raised the chick with scraps of fish and how he set the eagle free when it was able to fly; Mr. Salk, who lived eight miles out of town, claiming he saw Clyde in the early morning mist Friday near Hunter Lake; Mrs. Gordon saying somebody broke into her barn and took fishing tackle; the Whittle sisters on Colson Road demanding police protection, saying old women living alone shouldn't be at the mercy of fugitives; the high school football players volunteering to make up a search party. . . .

Gretchen shut the car door, leaned in the open window. “I'm okay.” She could write a good story. The lead was coming clear in her mind:

“I'll come in early. I know where the key is. I'll get the story done before Mother and—before she comes.” Before Mother and the man arrived. Maybe she didn't even care if she got home before her mother arrived.

The porch light was on. Mr. Dennis didn't drive away until she opened the front door and turned and waved. She stepped inside, closed the door, carefully placed her notes on the stand below the mirror. The notes would be there in the morning.

Tomorrow. It seemed far away. Because tonight there was much she must do. She tiptoed down the hall, trying to be quiet, but the wooden floor creaked. Grandmother's bedside light flashed on.

Gretchen stopped at her bedroom door. “I'm home,” she called softly.

Grandmother struggled to sit up.

Gretchen hurried across the floor. “It's all right. Go back to sleep.”

“The meeting . . .” Grandmother's voice was dull and very faint.

“I'll tell you about it tomorrow. Nothing really happened” (
. . . rot in jail . . . rot in jail . . . rot in jail . . .
) “But people are frightened.” Gretchen looked at Grandmother's lined face, so gray, so quiet on the pillow. “Don't worry. Everything will be all right.” She patted a heavily veined hand, reached up, clicked off the lamp. “Good night.”

As she stepped into the hall, Gretchen drew Grandmother's door almost shut. Once in her room, alert for any sound from the hall, Gretchen changed into shorts and a top and loafers, grabbed Jimmy's gun and the flashlight from their hiding place beneath a stack of underwear in her top dresser drawer, quietly eased open the screen of her window, and dropped softly to the ground.

Heavy clouds obscured the moon. The night was hot and still. Faraway lightning crackled. In the brief flicker of gold, the sky looked like ridges of black lava tinged with pearl. Gretchen walked fast to Maguire Road. She kept to the edge of the narrow road, but there wasn't any traffic. The Turner dogs yelped as she passed by. Gretchen reached the faint path that angled into the woods. The woods loomed ahead of her, dark and forbidding. When she edged onto the trail, darkness pressed against her like a black blanket. Tucking Jimmy's .22 under one arm, she cupped her hand over the flashlight lens, using just enough light to find her way. Occasionally, she stopped, her breath shallow, and listened to the crackle of leaves, the movement of branches, the shriek of cicadas. Gnats and mosquitos swarmed around her and she wished she'd worn a long-sleeve blouse and jeans despite the heat. Once she jerked the full beam of the flash to her right, stared into a mass of shrubbery and vines and ferns. She knew coyotes and bobcats moved soft-footed through the night. She glimpsed—or did she?—a patch of tawny fur. She pointed the pistol, waited, her heart thudding. The woods were alive with sound, the shadows with movement. Finally, she forced her leaden legs to move. She crept through the night, burdened by fear. She'd not felt this way before when she'd come to the cabin. Maybe she was tired. Maybe it was the terrible worry that Grandmother might be found out. If the sheriff knocked on their door, his rock-hard face in a glower, Grandmother would be frightened to death.

Death . . . Gretchen pushed away her memory of Faye Tatum, sprawled on the floor of a room where she'd laughed and cried, a room where she'd lived and died.

Gretchen was shaking when she reached the overgrown clearing and the dark cabin. She flicked off the flashlight and stared, seeking even the barest hint of light from the gloom-shrouded shanty.

Nothing. No light. No sense of life or occupancy, simply darkness and an overwhelming sense of danger. She wanted to turn and run. Slowly, every step an effort of will, she walked across the humpy ground, flicking aside the tendrils of waist-high grass, hating the buzz of insects, the pricks against her skin, and the darkness, the terrible, heavy, inimical darkness. The steps creaked as she climbed. She froze, head bent forward. Behind her grasses rustled.

Gretchen whirled. The circle of woods was darker than the overgrown clearing. Anything might be hidden in the trees. She had a feeling of a watchful presence, malevolent, hurtful, malignant. She couldn't bear it. She snapped on the flashlight, swung it back and forth, the beam sliding across the trees and wild grasses and tangled ferns. Nothing moved and now there were only sounds of the night, the whirr and rasp of insects, the chitter of disturbed squirrels, the eerie moan of owls.

She yanked the flash toward the cabin. The spear of light swept past the closed door—the unmoving door—and illuminated the open window, the sash raised halfway. The door remained shut. Her quick breaths slowed. Clyde Tatum surely would have seen her light if he were here. She walked across the porch. She held the flashlight in her left hand, the .22 in her right.

“Mr. Tatum? It's Gretchen Gilman.” Her words fell into silence. Awkwardly, gripping the flashlight in her thumb and forefinger, she curved the rest of her hand around the door handle, turned it. She pushed and the door swung in. She stepped slowly into the cabin, the tongue of light flicking in every direction, picking out the gilt of the discarded harp, the stacked boxes and broken furniture, the scarred wooden table, the dingy green of the lantern. Her nose wrinkled. The smell of kerosene cloyed the air. An old wooden crate, the splintered top agape, served as a garbage pail. Ants crawled in a thin dark line over a sodden lump of newspaper.

She didn't close the door behind her. She glanced toward the window. The blanket used to hide light from outside lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. She wondered if he rigged up the blanket only when he used the lantern. That made sense. The window was open, ready if a breeze came.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. It might storm or it might not, but the thunder urged her to hurry. She was half glad Clyde Tatum was gone, half sorry. She'd intended to tell him what the sheriff said and beg him to protect Grandmother. He'd promised Grandmother he wouldn't tell anyone she'd helped him, but he needed to know how much his silence mattered. She didn't have any paper with her, but it didn't matter. She didn't dare leave a note behind. What if the police chief or sheriff came here? No, she couldn't leave a note. She had to hope Clyde would keep his promise.

Lightning flashed, pouring blue light across the jumbled mass of junk. Gretchen turned her light to the kitchen counter, the top of the range, across the uneven, worn wooden tabletop. She moved the beam slowly and stopped. There's where the picnic basket—Grandmother's picnic basket with her fingerprints on it and her name, Pfizer, burned in clear black letters into the wooden handle—had sat when Gretchen last saw it. Clyde Tatum's big hand had flipped open the lid. He'd grabbed a chicken leg and eaten and talked. Now there was only the tabletop with scraps of brown paper on it.

She came closer. The paper was torn from crumpled old grocery sacks. Had Clyde Tatum found the sacks in someone's garbage, brought them here to record his search for his wife's murderer? A big, thick leaded pencil lay near the pieces of paper. There were names printed, five or six, on one piece. Gretchen scarcely glanced at the scraps. She had to find the picnic basket.

The room was stifling, not a breath of breeze through the open window. No wonder he'd let the blanket drop. Sweat beaded her face, slid down her back and legs, sucked her clothes against her skin. She forced herself to move slowly. She stood on tiptoe, bent low, looked up and down and around, on the counters, behind boxes, beneath tables. She was on her hands and knees, poking at a lopsided bucket, when she found the basket, wedged beneath a rickety table. Gretchen grabbed the wooden handles, tugged it free. She opened the basket. Yes, there was the plate and napkin, cutlery, everything. She felt relief so overwhelming, she was almost dizzy. She dropped the gun inside and closed the lid. Would he notice that the basket was gone? It didn't matter. Nothing mattered but protecting Grandmother. She hurried through the door, pulled it shut behind her. Lightning flickered over the trees to the south.

She was at the steps, the light from the flash dancing across the grass-choked clearing, when fear washed over her again. She held tight to the basket, looked out at the dark mass of trees. Was he coming? There was someone near. There was danger—evil—close to her.

Panic swept her. She flicked off the flashlight and jumped from the porch. She ran lightly to a big shrub, waited, darted from one shadow to another. When she reached the woods, she slipped onto the path, trusting to her night vision, quiet as a fox. She eased open the picnic basket, dropped the flashlight inside. She yanked out the gun, held it tightly in her hand.

One stealthy step, another and another, she crept on and on through the sultry hot night with the occasional burst of lightning high in the sky, the gun hard in her hand, fear searing her soul. Once beyond the woods, she clung to the dark edge of the road, walked fast, glancing behind, startled by every crackle and rustle. She reached Archer Street. She was almost home. She began to run, pounding as if hounds yipped at her heels. She made no effort to be quiet but the midnight street lay empty and no one heard her feet crunch against the gravel.

At the house, she leaned against the wall and struggled for breath, staring back the way she had come. Chief Fraser . . . she had to call . . . something bad . . . something awful . . . a sense of incipient doom pressed against her. But first, the basket. She gulped air into her burning lungs and darted toward the back steps. On her flight away from the dark cabin, she'd held so tight to the wooden handles that her hand ached. She put the basket on the steps. She took out the flashlight. Grandmother would find the basket in the morning. She would be puzzled, but she would believe Clyde Tatum had left it. Whatever happened, Grandmother was safe now. There was nothing to link her to the cabin, that dreadful, silent place.

Thunder crashed nearby. Gretchen ran to her bedroom window. She eased open the screen, held the pistol carefully, and climbed inside. For the first moment since she'd fled the clearing, she felt safe. She walked to the dresser, placed the gun and flashlight in the top drawer. She didn't want to think about the fear that had blazed within her on the uneven, worn porch of the cabin, hot and destructive and terrifying as flames leaping out of control in a tinder-dry forest. No matter how hard she tried, the memory clung to her even though nothing scary had occurred at the cabin or on the path. Nonetheless, deep inside, the fear remained. In Sunday school several years ago, Mrs. Burris, who was thin and diffident and easily confused, spoke very firmly, telling them that you didn't have to prove God existed, that there were truths your soul knew without question or doubt if only you listened. Was evil as clear? Gretchen knew she'd come close to something unutterably dark and dangerous. She couldn't prove this, but she knew. She should call Chief Fraser. . . . Could she tell him about the cabin without endangering Grandmother?

Gretchen sat on the edge of her bed, her hands clasped tightly together. Slowly the peace of her room eased her tight muscles and the dreadful fear began to seep away. Her eyes ached with fatigue. Her legs felt heavy as logs. What had frightened her? That's what she needed to know. She hadn't seen anyone, but she had felt that someone watched her. Who? Clyde Tatum? Who else? No one knew Clyde was hiding in the cabin except Gretchen and Grandmother—oh, wait—the woman who called to tell Grandmother that he was at the Purdy cabin. She could have told someone else Clyde was there. Maybe somebody had come looking for him and then Gretchen arrived. Maybe the watcher was scared. Maybe that fear triggered her fear. Or the silent observer could have been Clyde Tatum. He surely would be frightened if anyone approached the cabin. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that Clyde had heard her coming and fled to the woods. She'd been silly, thinking she was in danger. Nothing bad had happened. Maybe a fox had watched her, cold yellow eyes alert and inimical. Relief buoyed Gretchen like a fluffy, soft cloud.