Night My Friend (25 page)

Uncle Charlie was one of those rare figures that appears all too briefly in every boy’s life. He was the youngest of the three brothers, and younger than my Aunt Mary too. In my earlier days I’d often thought of him in dashing pirate garb, sailing out of New Orleans to plunder the vast Spanish Main—which was down there somewhere. Now, vaguely aware that he was only some sort of warehouse supervisor, I still treasured my ideal. After all, perhaps he was only a pirate on weekends.

“David! David, my boy! Where are you?”

He was calling to me, searching the landscape for some sign of me. And all at once I didn’t want to hide any more. Here was Uncle Charlie, my one friend in all the world, filling the void left by Uncle Ben’s going, the void that even my own father had never quite been able to comprehend.

“Here, Uncle Charlie,” I called out, standing up and brushing the bits of dead grass from my knees.

“Were you hiding from your old Uncle?” he asked when he’d joined me atop the hill. He was puffing with the uncommon exertion, but his wild red hair was as dashing and youthful as I remembered.

“No. I was just sick of it.”

“You shouldn’t be,” he said, gripping me about the shoulders with his bear-like arms. “I know it’s not much fun for a ten-year-old boy, but your Uncle Ben only dies once and he’s entitled to a little respect.”

“I liked him,” I admitted. “But not as much as you, Uncle Charlie. Why don’t you come more often?”

“New Orleans is a good distance away, boy, I can’t be coming up here every month, much as I’d like to. Come on now—tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself.”

“Not much,” I admitted a bit guiltily. With Uncle Charlie you always had to be doing something, because he was. “I flew my kite a bit.”

“Ah, there’s a sport.” He was down on the grass and pulled me with him. “Did I ever tell you about kite-flying down in Trinidad? No? Well, they sure do take it serious down there. Grown men fly them, and they try to cut the strings on other kites and capture them. Sometimes they put slivers of glass in the tails of their kites, or glue ground glass to the kite string itself, so it cuts through the other strings. Men have been killed flying kites in Trinidad. I even hear that it’s illegal now, but then all the really great sports are illegal now.”

“You know everything, Uncle Charlie.”

“I get around a lot, boy. And I keep my eyes and ears open. That’s how you learn in this here world. Ben and Mary and your Dad stayed here, close to home, but I went south to see a little of this world. I guess that’s really been the difference between us all these years.”

“Did you like Uncle Ben?” I asked, for no special reason.

Uncle Charlie shrugged. “He was my brother.” He lit a cigarette and stared out at the changing sky for a time. Then, all at once, he was on his feet. “Come on, kid. Let’s go back to the house.”

“What for?”

“What for? Well, because your Mom and Dad will be wondering about you, that’s what for. Come on.”

He took my hand and pulled me along, and I went because it was Uncle Charlie.

But at the base of the hill we were met by a tall, slender woman of about Uncle Charlie’s age. It was Thelma Brook, a landmark in the town, editor of its weekly newspaper, keeper of its conscience. She’d always been around, and though she couldn’t have been over forty she seemed to me like a hundred. “Hello, Charlie,” she said, ignoring me as she did all children.

“Hello, Thelma. Still at the old grind?”

“Yes, if you mean the paper. And I’ve got a deadline Monday noon.”

“So?”

“Sheriff Yates just told me your brother was murdered, Charlie. Have you got anything to say about it? For publication?”

We found the sheriff holding court under an apple tree, a broad hat brim shielding his face from the sun. My father was already there, and so was Aunt Mary. They were listening to the lawman’s words with expressions of disbelief mingled with fear. Suddenly the day seemed very hot.

“Murdered,” Sheriff Yates repeated. “I’m sure of it. I was at a political dinner in the next county Thursday night, so I didn’t get to see the body or the area till yesterday. But a couple of things struck me as awfully odd right away. Ben was a good man with a tractor, not likely to fall off. Besides, what would a stone that size be doing in a plowed field? Ben would have carted it off before he started working with the tractor. Another thing—the cows were all milked, so he must have gone out in the field after supper. Did you ever know Ben to do his plowing after supper?”

They had to admit they didn’t. “He couldn’t have finished the field before dark,” David’s father said.

“That’s right,” Yates agreed, warming to his role of sleuth. “He never believed in plowing by his headlights. Besides, go out and look over the field. Part of it’s already plowed, but nothing’s been done where the tractor is. In fact the plow isn’t even hooked up to the tractor. Why would he take the tractor out in the middle of the field just before dark? The answer is that he wouldn’t. It was moved there by the killer to make the thing look like an accident.”

“I don’t know,” my father mumbled. “Who’d want to kill him?”

“I have my ideas about that too,” the sheriff said. “But I need a little more evidence.”

Thelma Brook had joined the little group with pencil poised, and there was a general movement to break up. Uncle Charlie steered me into the house behind my father and Aunt Mary, before I could break away for the safety of the hills. Mother was in the kitchen with some of the other ladies, preparing a light supper for those who had stayed through the day, and Aunt Mary clucked a few words to indicate her willingness to assist at the task. The men wandered together into the sitting room to continue their discussion.

I stayed in the kitchen, because the food was there and I was beginning to get hungry. Nibbling on a plate of cold sandwiches when nobody was looking, I heard my Aunt Mary say, “You know where that boy of yours was all afternoon? Up on the hill with Charlie.”

My mother frowned at me from across the kitchen. “Were you, David?”

Before I could reply, Aunt Mary was talking again. “It hardly seems to me that Charlie is fit company for a growing boy. He’s my own brother, but heaven knows I’ve never missed him since he went South. You know that wild talk of his. It’s bad for a growing boy.”

“I like Uncle Charlie,” I answered defensively. “I like him better than anyone else in the world.”

“What’s going on here?” my father asked, coming into the room behind me.

“Charlie,” my mother said with a sigh, as if that explained everything.

“Haven’t we got enough trouble without getting into a fight over Charlie, for God’s sake? Ben was his brother too, and he has every right to be here.”

I saw my opportunity and I took it, running through the open screen door to the freedom of the fields once more. My father called to me but I kept running until I saw Uncle Charlie ahead, strolling toward the line of cars with Mike Simpson from the next farm.

“I never enter a dry county without coming prepared,” Uncle Charlie was saying. “I’ve got a bottle in my car.”

“Moonshine?” Simpson asked.

“You fooling?” Uncle Charlie seemed insulted at the suggestion. “It’s bonded rye whiskey, up from New Orleans. The stuff they serve in the finest clubs.”

They sat in the car with the door open and I saw Uncle Charlie pass him the bottle. “It’s good stuff, all right,” Mike Simpson admitted reluctantly. “You know how to live, Charlie. You always did.”

“I knew enough to get out of this town, at least. But tell me—what’s the story on my brother?”

“How do you mean?”

“Did someone really kill him?”

“No. That Yates is crazy. Ben didn’t have an enemy in the world, and no money to speak of. Why would anyone kill him?”

“Was anybody else around the farm Thursday night?”

“Not a soul! I seen him working around, plowing in the afternoon, milking the cows—like he always did ever since his wife died. After supper he took the tractor out in the field for something.”

“To plow?”

“The plow wasn’t attached.”

“Why else would he go out there in the evening with the tractor?”

“How should I know? Anyway, he went, and a lot later—after dark—I heard the motor of the tractor still running. Naturally I was worried, because he didn’t have the tractor lights on or anything. I climbed over the fence and walked out to it and I found him dead. He’d fallen off and hit his head on that big rock.”

“What did you do then?”

“I turned off the tractor and ran back to the house to phone. I called the sheriff first but he was out of town.”

“Why’d you stop to turn off the tractor?”

“I don’t’ know. I just did.” He took another drink from the bottle. “What difference does it make?”

“None, I suppose,” Uncle Charlie said. He brushed a hand through his long red hair and beckoned to me. “David, my boy, let’s us walk a bit.”

We left Mike Simpson in the car with the bottle. He was happy there.

“It might rain before morning,” my uncle told me as we walked. “See those clouds in the west?”

I saw them, but I had other things on my mind. “You think Uncle Ben was really murdered like the sheriff said?”

“I don’t know, boy.” There was a breeze coming up, and he cupped his hands to light a cigarette. “Let’s take a look at that tractor ourselves.”

It sat where I’d last seen it, next to the fatal rock, a great smooth thing that seemed almost the size of a man. The rock had been there for many years, but Uncle Ben had never before plowed over that far. Perhaps he hadn’t planned to this year either. “Can you start the tractor?” I asked.

He turned the switch and ground the starter into life, but it died almost immediately. “Out of gas.” Hopping from the driver’s seat, he noticed some stains on the earth and bent to investigate.

“What is it?” I asked. “Sheriff Yates was out looking at it yesterday too.”

“Gasoline, I think. Soaked into the earth, but there are still traces left.”

“Why?”

“A good question. Always a good question, my boy. Granting that Ben would have no reason for letting the gas out of his tank, that means someone else did. A murderer, perhaps?”

“I don’t like it here, Uncle Charlie. Let’s walk.”

It was getting toward dusk, but we walked a long way, back across fields I hadn’t visited that summer, through woods that were only vague playgrounds in my memory. We talked of many things as we strolled, of the time when Uncle Charlie had been running rum across the waters from Cuba, of the time when he’d flown a battered biplane for revolutionary forces in Central America. I think I believed him then, every word he said. I think I still believe him.

“There’s the sugar shack,” he said at last. “We’ve walked a long way.”

I remembered the sugar shack, with its tin roof and corrugated walls. In my summers on the farm it had always been my secret place. “Let’s go in, Uncle Charlie.”

“It’s getting dark.”

“Just for a minute.”

“All right.”

But even the secret place was not as I remembered it. The great metal tubs had given way to a maze of serpentine tubes I’d never seen before. “It’s all changed!” I told Uncle Charlie.

“I see that it is. Were you up here for the syrup season in the spring?” He was inspecting the new arrangements with a great deal of care.

“Sure. That was the last time. In April before Easter.”

There was a crinkling sound behind us, and I whirled in frightened anticipation of a bear or some other beast. But it was Sheriff Yates, ducking his head to enter through the low doorway. The revolver on his hip caught the last reflections of the dying sun and then he was with us in the gloom. “What have we here?” he asked, not really addressing either of us.

“I don’t know,” Uncle Charlie said in reply, trying to look casual. “Sugar shack, I guess.”

“But not for maple syrup,” the sheriff observed. He reached under a table and pulled a battered kerosene lantern into view. After a moment’s fumbling to light the wick, he held it up for a better view of the sugar shack. “It’s a still—for moonshine. And I think that gives us our motive for the murder.”

The next day was Sunday, and I was bundled off to church before I’d had time to fully digest the events of the preceding day. When I’d been taken home, Uncle Charlie and Sheriff Yates were deep in conversation about the discovery of the still, but I had no idea just what it all meant. Did they think that Uncle Ben had been a moonshiner? My mother was tired and father was cross so I mentioned nothing to either of them about the discovery. There’d be time enough for that tomorrow.

But after church and a hurried breakfast I was lectured about staying away from Uncle Charlie. Then we all hustled back to the wake with a guilty air of tardy school kids. Already the house was crowded with local farm families who’d been unwilling or unable to come on a weekday, and over everything hung an air of mourning mixed with muffled merriment. Old friends greeted each other, children were shown off to half-forgotten relatives, and reminiscences were exchanged amidst only slightly suppressed gaiety.

Aunt Mary cornered my father almost immediately, pinning him in the corner with her bulk. “Sheriff Yates wants us all to stay around tonight. He says his investigation’s just about complete and he wants to talk to us.”

“More about Ben being murdered? I’m still not convinced. All Yates is doing is giving a couple of pages of gossip to Thelma Brook’s newspaper.”

As if on cue, Thelma Brook materialized above me, notebook in hand. “Did I hear my name mentioned?” she asked sweetly.

I glanced around for Uncle Charlie, but he was nowhere to be seen. I knew he’d been staying at the weather-beaten old building that served as a hotel in town, and perhaps he’d overslept. Or perhaps he was off somewhere with Sheriff Yates again.

It was not until mid-afternoon that he appeared, driving the familiar car up the long rutted driveway. “How are you, boy?” he shouted, and I dropped the stick I’d been playing with to run and greet him.

“I missed you, Uncle Charlie. Where’ve you been?”

“Around. Talking to people.”

“To the sheriff?”