The Doomsters (19 page)

      I
SAW
the reason for Mildred’s delay when she appeared finally. She’d brushed her hair shining, changed to a black jersey dress which molded her figure
and challenged comparison with it, changed to heels which added three inches to her height. She stood in the doorway, holding out both her hands. Her smile was forced and brilliant:

“I’m so glad to see you, Miss Parish. Forgive me for keeping you waiting. I know how precious your time must be, with all your nursing duties.”

“I’m not a nurse.” Miss Parish was upset. For a moment she looked quite ugly, with her black brows pulled down and her lower lip pushed out.

“I’m sorry, did I make a mistake? I thought Carl mentioned you as one of his nurses. He has mentioned you, you know.”

Miss Parish rose rather awkwardly to the occasion. I gathered that the two young women had crossed swords or needles before. “It doesn’t matter, dear. I know you’ve had a bad day.”

“You’re so sympathetic, Rose. Carl thinks so, too. You don’t mind if I call you Rose? I’ve felt so close to you, through Carl.”

“I
want
you to call me Rose. I’d love nothing better than for you to regard me as a big sister, somebody you can lean on.”

Like other forthright people, Miss Parish got very phony when she got phony at all. I guessed that she’d come with some notion of mothering Mildred, the next best thing to mothering Mildred’s husband. Clumsily, she tried to embrace the smaller woman. Mildred evaded her:

“Won’t you sit down? I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

“Oh, no thanks.”

“You must take something. You’ve come such a long way. Let me get you something to eat.”

“Oh, no.”

“Why not?” Mildred stared frankly at the other woman’s body. “Are you dieting?”

“No. Perhaps I ought to.” Large and outwitted and rebuffed, Miss Parish sank into a chair. Its springs creaked satirically under her weight. She tried to look small. “Perhaps, if I could have a drink?”

“I’m sorry.” Mildred glanced at the bottle on the piano, and met the issue head-on. “There’s nothing in the house. My mother happens to drink too much. I try to keep it unavailable. I don’t always succeed, as you doubtless know. You hospital workers keep close tabs on the patients’ relatives, don’t you?”

“Oh, no,” Miss Parish said. “We don’t have the staff—”

“What a pity. But I can’t complain. You’ve made an exception for me. I think it’s marvelous of you. It makes me feel so looked-after.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way. I just came by to help in any way I could.”

“How thoughtful of you. I hate to disappoint you. My husband is not here.”

Miss Parish was being badly mauled. Although in a way she’d asked for it, I felt sorry for her.

“About that drink,” I said with faked cheerfulness. “I could use a drink, too. What do you say we surge out and find one, Rose?”

She looked up gratefully, from the detailed study she had been making of her fingernails. I noticed that they had been bitten short. Mildred said:

“Please don’t rush away. I could have a bottle sent in from the liquor store. Perhaps my mother will join you. We could have a party.”

“Lay off,” I said to her under my breath.

She answered with her brilliant smile: “I hate to appear inhospitable.”

The situation was getting nowhere except on my nerves. It was terminated abruptly by a scuffle of feet on the porch, a knock on the door. The two women followed
me to the door. It was Carmichael, the sheriff’s deputy. Behind him in the street, the sheriff’s car was pulling away from the curb.

“What is it?” Mildred said.

“We just got a radio report from the Highway Patrol. A man answering your husband’s description was sighted at the Red Barn drive-in. Sheriff Ostervelt thought you ought to be warned. Apparently he’s headed in this direction.”

“I’m glad if he is,” Mildred said.

Carmichael gave her an astonished look. “Just the same, I’ll keep guard on the house. Inside if you want.”

“It isn’t necessary. I’m not afraid of my husband.”

“Neither am I,” Miss Parish said behind her. “I know the man thoroughly. He isn’t dangerous.”

“A lot of people think different, ma’am.”

“I know Sheriff Ostervelt thinks different. What orders did he give you, concerning the use of your gun?”

“I use my own discretion if Hallman shows. Naturally I’m not going to shoot him if I don’t have to.”

“You’d be wise to stick to that, Mr. Carmichael.” Miss Parish’s voice had regained its authority. “Mr. Hallman is a suspect, not a convict. You don’t want to do something that you’ll regret to the end of your days.”

“She’s right,” I said. “Take him without gunfire if you can. He’s a sick man, remember.”

Carmichael’s mouth set stubbornly. I’d seen that expression on his face before, in the Hallman greenhouse. “His brother Jerry is sicker. We don’t want any more killings.”

“That’s my point exactly.”

Carmichael turned away, refusing to argue further. “Anyway,” he said from the steps, “I’m keeping guard on the house. Even if you don’t see me, I’ll be within call.”

The low augh of a distant siren rose to an ee. Mildred
shut the door on the sound, the voice of the treacherous night. Behind her freshly painted mask her face was haggard.

“They want to kill him, don’t they?”

“Nonsense,” Miss Parish said in her heartiest voice.

“I think we should try to get to him first,” I said.

Mildred leaned on the door. “I wonder—it’s barely possible he’s trying to reach Mrs. Hutchinson’s house. She lives directly across the highway from the Red Barn.”

“Who on earth is Mrs. Hutchinson?” Miss Parish said.

“My sister-in-law’s housekeeper. She has Zinnie’s little girl with her.”

“Why don’t you phone Mrs. Hutchinson?”

“She has no phone, or I’d have been in touch long ago. I’ve been worried about Martha. Mrs. Hutchinson means well, but she’s an old woman.”

Miss Parish gave her a swift, dark look. “You don’t seriously think there’s any danger to the child?”

“I don’t know.”

None of us knew. On a deeper level than I’d been willing to recognize till now, I experienced fear. Fear of the treacherous darkness around us and inside of us, fear of the blind destruction that had wiped out most of a family and threatened the rest.

“We could easily check on Martha,” I said, “or have the police check.”

“Let’s keep them out of it for now,” Miss Parish said. “What’s this Mrs. Hutchinson’s address?”

“Fourteen Chestnut Street. It’s a little white frame cottage between Elmwood and the highway.” Mildred opened the door and pointed down the street. “I can easily show you.”

“No. You better stay here, dear.”

Rose Parish’s face was dismal. She was afraid, too.

      M
RS
. H
UTCHINSON’S
cottage was the third of three similar houses built on narrow lots between Elmwood and the highway. Only one side of the short block was built up. The other side was vacant ground overgrown with scrub oaks. A dry creek, brimming with darkness, cut along the back of the empty lots. Beyond the continuous chain-lightning of the highway headlights, I could see the neon outline of the Red Barn, with cars clustered around it.

A softer light shone through lace curtains in Mrs. Hutchinson’s front window. When I knocked on the door, a heavy shadow moved across the light. The old woman spoke through the closed door:

“Who is that?”

“Archer. We talked this morning at the Hallman ranch.”

She opened the door cautiously and peered out. “What do you want?”

“Is Martha with you?”

“Sure she is. I put her to bed in my room. It looks like she’s spending the night.”

“Has anyone else been here?”

“The child’s mother was in and out. She didn’t waste much time on us, I can tell you. Mrs. Hallman has more important things on her mind than her little orphan daughter. But don’t let me get started on that or I’ll keep you standing on the steps all night.” She glanced inquiringly at Rose Parish. With the excessive respect for privacy of her class, she had avoided noticing her till now.

“This is Miss Parish, from the state hospital.”

“Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. You folks come inside, if you want. I’ll ask you to be as quiet as you can. Martha isn’t asleep yet. The poor child’s all keyed up.”

The door opened directly into the front room. The room was small and neat, warmed by rag rugs on the floor, an afghan on the couch. Embroidered mottoes on the plasterboard walls went with the character lines in the old woman’s face. A piece of wool with knitting needles in it lay on the arm of a chair. She picked it up and hid it in a drawer, as if it was evidence of criminal negligence in her housekeeping.

“Sit down, if you can find a place to sit. Did you say you were from the state hospital? They offered me a job there once, but I always liked private work better.”

Rose Parish sat beside me on the couch. “Are you a nurse, Mrs. Hutchinson?”

“A special nurse. I started to train for an R.N. but I never got my cap. Hutchinson wouldn’t wait. Would you be an R.N., Miss?”

“I’m a psychiatric social worker. I suppose that makes me a sort of nurse. Carl Hallman was one of my patients.”

“You wanted to ask me about him? Is that it? I say it’s a crying shame what happened to that boy. He used to be as nice as you could want. There in that house, I watched him change right in front of my eyes. I could see his mother’s trouble coming out in him like a family curse, and not one of them made a move to help him until it was too late.”

“Did you know his mother?” I said.

“Know her? I nursed her for over a year. Waited on her hand and foot, day and night. I should say I did know her. She was the saddest woman you ever want to see, specially toward the end there. She got the idea in her head that nobody loved her, nobody ever
did
love her. Her husband didn’t love her, her family didn’t love her, even her
poor dead parents didn’t love her when they were alive. It became worse when Carl went away to school. He was always her special darling, and she depended on him. After he left home, she acted like there was nothing for her in life except those pills she took.”

“What kind of pills?” Rose Parish said. “Barbiturates?”

“Them, or anything else she could get her hands on. She was addicted for many years. I guess she ran through every doctor in town, the old ones and then the new ones, ending up with Dr. Grantland. It isn’t for me to second-guess a doctor, but I used to think those pills he let her have were her main trouble. I got up my nerve and told him so, one day toward the end. He said that he was trying to limit her, but Mrs. Hallman would be worse off without them.”

“I doubt that,” Rose Parish said. “He should have committed her; he might have saved her life.”

“Did the question ever come up, Mrs. Hutchinson?”

“Between me and her it did, when doctor first sent me out there to look after her. I had to use
some
kind of leverage on her. She was a sad, spoiled woman, spoiled rotten all her life. She was always hiding her pills on me, and taking more than her dosage. When I bawled her out for it, she pulled out that little gun she kept under her pillow. I told her she’d have to give up those shenanigans, or the doctor would have to commit her. She said he better not. She said if he tried it on her, she’d kill herself and ruin him. As for me, I’d never get another job in this town. Oh, she could be a black devil when she was on the rampage.”

Breathing heavily with remembered anger, Mrs. Hutchinson looked up at the wall above her armchair. An embroidered motto there exhorted Christian charity. It calmed her visibly. She said:

“I don’t mean she was like that all the time, just when
she had a spell. Most of the time she wasn’t a bad sort of lady to have to deal with. I’ve dealt with worse. It’s a pity what had to happen to her. And not only her. You young people don’t read the Bible any more. I know that. There’s a line from the Word keeps running in my head since all this trouble today. ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’.”

“Right out of Freud,” Rose Parish said in a knowing undertone.

I thought she was putting the cart in front of the horse, but I didn’t bother arguing. The Old Testament words reverberated in my mind. I cut their echo short, and brought Mrs. Hutchinson back to the line of questioning I’d stumbled upon:

“It’s funny they’d let Mrs. Hallman have a gun.”

“All the ranch women have them, or used to have. It was a hangover from the old days when there were a lot of hoboes and outlaws wandering around in the west. Mrs. Hallman told me once her father sent her that gun, all the way from the old country—he was a great traveler. She took a pride in it, the way another kind of woman would take pride in a piece of jewelry. It was something like a gewgaw at that—a short-barreled little thing with a pearl handle set in filigree work. She used to spend a lot of time cleaning and polishing it. I remember the fuss she made when the Senator wanted to take it away from her.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t,” Rose Parish said. “We don’t even permit nailfiles or bottles on our closed wards.”

“I know that, and I told the Senator it was a danger to her. He was a hard man to understand in some ways. He couldn’t really admit to himself that there was anything the matter with her mind. It was the same with his son later. He believed that their troubles were just notions, that all they wanted was to attract some attention to themselves. He let her keep that gun in her room, and the
box of shells that went with it, right up to the day of her death. You’d almost think,” she added with the casual insight of the old, “you’d almost think he wanted her to do herself a harm. Or somebody else.”

“Somebody else?” I said.

Mrs. Hutchinson reddened and veiled her eyes. “I didn’t mean anything, I was only talking.”

“You said Mrs. Hallman had that gun right up to the day of her death. Do you know that for a fact?”