The Watchman (29 page)

foot, single and immeasurably gigantic, which now crutched its way forward with shambling, crippled will.

Cristi looked at the blue paper envelope in her hand. Inside it was the long, sectioned bus ticket. She could not think for a while where the bus was going to take her to, of what city she had named to Ort Dobey by the little Greyhound sign on the hotel desk. It would make no difference. This was a long ticket: that was enough. She had left no notes, no good-bys to anyone. It was not that she had nothing to say to anyone; it was rather as if there was not anyone to say it to. When she had heard them shouting Jill's death down on Lafayette and in the open doorways of the beer and pool halls she commenced packing at once. She left behind her radio, some books, a little vial of expensive perfume, some shoes and dresses. She did not even think of them when she closed the door behind her for the last time. Cristi was accustomed to closing doors. Long afterwards she frequently imagined the first astonishment and later pleasure when someone would come to open the doors and find the things she always left. It seemed to her a means of reaching back through the mile-ages of time and touching with her vanished fingers the faces of strangers. Beyond in the lobby the mortician's clock struck eleven o'clock; the hour to wait for the bus seemed unendurably long. She would have a long cry about Jill someday far away from now. And about her father. But she felt nothing much of anything now about either of them. She waited, and she listened disinterestedly to the groaning, gathering tramp behind the dark, and the talk of the three men in the lobby. In the couches and chairs before the long window sat Doctor Snedeker, Peace the Undertaker, and the gouty horse trader Jibbons.

Sounds as if they're all heading back up town, the Doctor said.

The horse trader grunted and seizing the tip of a fresh stogie between his gold and stained-ivory teeth bit it off as if it were something living.

By God, I'm proud to say I wasn't no part of it! he cried in a hoarse, emotional voice and cracked a match to flame on the tip of his shoe. I don't hold with no dirty mob vengeance. When the time come to kill her it should have been done up yonder in the chair in a decent. Christian way.

I heard they hanged her, said Thomas Peace, his brow aleady furrowed with the thought of the technical problems with which, before the morning, he might possibly be

faced. Hanged, he said. To a sycamore down in that grove of trees south of the old landing.

No, no, no, grumbled Jibbons. Shot. Pruney Wrinkle phoned me not fifteen minutes after it happened and he'd been there and seen it. Shot, Mister Peace. And with the very same murder gun she used to slay the boy. Not hanged. Shot.

In the head? Or did he say? asked the undertaker, anxiously.

Yes, said the horse trader. If my memory serves it was in the head, Mister Peace.

In the face? inquired the undertaker analytically.

Pruney never went into details, Mister Peace, said Jibbons. He was in a hurry to get back to the scene. It seems the girl had some sort of a watchdog—half-mastiff, half-German shepherd. It run amuck and bit several women and children seriously. Until, of course, they brought it down with a bullet, too.

Doctor Snedeker roused and leaned forward with a sour smile, the glittering stethoscope thrusting like ice tongs from the pocket of his coat.

Someone phoned my wife and told her that it was Chief Smitherman who fired the shots that finished her, he said.

Flick Smitherman hell, growled the horse trader. He wasn't even there. He wasn't even in town. It was the damned mob that done it—several of the boys had guns, I understand. Flick's in Pittsburgh. At a police chiefs' conference.

Did the girl put up much of a struggle? said the Doctor.

As I hear it, said Mister Jibbons, she got a round of shots into the crowd and caught a couple of old women in the legs. Pruney Wrinkle's wife Thorny for one. I think she was one of them. Thorny's lame with arthritis an)rways, you know. This will prpbably mean the end for Thorny. It's all a shame and a disgrace, gentlemen.

Yes, but it's more than that, said the Doctor. It's a loss, as well. I have always held that it was a major disgrace to the conscience of this county that in more than seventy years there has never been a Mound County murderer that a Mound County jury has had the guts, nor I judge the gumption, to send up yonder to the death house. The girl, without doubt, would have changed that tradition had she lived to stand trial.

Look yonder, said Peace the Undertaker. Clean down Lafayette by the Polack church.

What? said Jibbons, straining forward, glaring into the un-moving mists. Where, Mister Peace?

It's them, said the undertaker. Clean down on the corner by Tenth Street. By George, it appears like the better part of the town—by the size of the mob.

Well, by God, I'll not lower myself by going yonder into the street to watch them pass, said the horse trader with huffy loftiness. I'll set right here and see the fools. Fools!

Where's Matt Hood? smiled the Doctor quietly. Surely he's not among them. Surely not Matthew Hood with his strong opinions against folks free-lancing in his trade.

No, said the horse trader, with his infallible, authoritative incorrectness. Matt's upstairs in his room. I seen him directly after supper in the dining room. He's up there playing with his ropes, I reckon. Yes, playing with his ropes. That poor old soul sits up there on the edge of his bed fondling them old limp, useless ropes like a man without a prostate playing with himself.

Still and all, said the Doctor with a dry twinkle to his eyes. I'm rather surprised that Matthew Hood wouldn't prefer seeing her killed that way rather than have to sit by and watch our state electrician Mister Rudy Diaz do the honors.

No, Doc, said the horse trader sternly. Not Matt Hood. He's a stickler for all the pomp and process of orderly law, Matt is. I'll say that for him—he never got bitter enough to run with the pack. Matt Hood's queer but he's conservative and decent-minded when it comes to the law.

Look now, said Peace the Undertaker. They're nearly to the corner of Eighth and Lafayette. By God now, I never saw such a multitude. And who's that walking in front of them? And what's he carrying in his arms? Why, maybe it's the flag, boys. By George, there are times when you can't blame the people for moving on their own intuitions. After all, wasn't it a mob, gentlemen, who lynched the tyrants of perfidious Albion and laid the cornerstone of our God-willed Republic? And what is Justice, gentlemen, when you get right down to it, if it isn't the inspired vengeance of Christian vigilantes who have come at last to accept the slower rituals of order and due process? What would you say to that, Doc Snedeker?

Mister Peace, I am a businessman, said the Doctor, smiling faintly at the approaching shapes beyond Deke Virgin's Lunch. I'm a businessman and so are you and, in my judgment, theoretical chitchat like this is poor business and a

waste of time, as well. It means not one red penny more in the pockets of either of us and beyond that I think it's the sort of talk that's rather bad for the community. Your business takes up where mine leaves off but that doesn't make either of them any the less a business. If I bothered my conscience and laid awake sweating every night a patient died I'd have been in the Weston Asylum thirty years ago. When my business makes a mistake, Mister Peace, your business buries it. And for that sort of professional collaboration, sir, I extend to you my gratitude. It is the provident arrangement of the Almighty that no man shall live forever, Mister Peace, and if men did we'd both be fellows mighty less elegant than we are and be out there tonight, most likely, among the rag-tag-and-bobtail trash of that crowd of ignorant ruffians.

Now suddenly the door to the street flung open and the haggard, gray-flannel figure of the Reverend Doctor G. Robert Godd tripped gracelessly over the threshold, righted itself, and stood by the side of the three.

By Jove, now, smiled the Doctor into the crowds beyond the window. We scarcely mention the subject of business. Mister Peace, when our middle-man appears. Bob Godd, what brings you out tonight? I'd fancy you up in your parish praying for the mob. Or perhaps the girl? Which, sir? How does your mercy bend these days?

Gentlemen, I've got to find the Sheriff, whispered the Reverend. Has he been told what has happened? Has any of you seen him?

Sit down. Bob Godd, said the Doctor grimly. Forget about souls and think of your stomach and liver and heart a little. If you appeared in my office the way you look right now I'd order you into Glendale Hospital for a month. Your face is blue as Charley Waitman's was last month when he dropped dead in my waiting room with his second and last angina attack. Any pain in the left arm, Bob?

I've got to find the Sheriff! cried the minister. It's absolutely essential, gentlemen.

What for. Preacher? laughed the horse trader. Did you want to report a crime?

You all seem to think this is pretty funny! said the preacher. Please take me seriously! I've got to find Luther Alt.

Why, Bob Godd? smiled the Doctor.

Because I want to talk with him, said the preacher. I suppose that seems ridiculous to you? Yet, think, fellows! A man

in his hour of Gethsemane—a man at the lowest tide of his soul's endurance. He needs me, gentlemen. I've got to tell him something.

Or ask him something? observed the Doctor. Bob. I imagine Luther could tell you things tonight that would give you material for ten years of sermons.

Have a heart, Snedeker, said the minister. This is hardly a time for levity. Come on now. Has any of you seen him, gentlemen? It's absolutely essential that I find him—talk to him— tell him something.

Tell him what, Bob? asked the Doctor. Tell him why the world's a slaughterhouse? Always has been—always will be? Do you reckon he needs to be told that tonight?

In the darkened dining room Cristi, motionless as a stone figure throughout, suddenly sprang up and rushed round the counter to the stainless-steel sink beneath the dishwasher's spigots. She bent over it, swallowing hard and then gagging in little choking gasps, clutching the cold metal edge to support herself. She remained bowed there a moment, slavering a little, and racked with the subsiding heaves of her nausea. Her throat seemed contracted and tightened as if in a hangman's noose.

Ah, the hell with you, she whispered. The hell with you, Cris Alt! Can't take anything, can you?

She rested there a long time, still feeling the spasms, clinging to the sink edge, her eyes closed, feeling now the chill of cold-sick sweat spring across her forehead, its moistness in the fine, small strands of blond along her temples.

By God, look! bawled Jibbons the horse trader from the lobby. It's him out there in front! By God, I can't hardly believe my eyes. Look, Peace! Looky there, Doc. It's the Sheriff—and it's her he's got in his arms.

I can't see, said Thomas Peace. All I see is something bundled up in some sort of old horse blanket.

Didn't you see her dark hair dangling in the street light's gleam? cried the horse trader. Just then—in the light—a glimpse of her face. 1 seen it plain! Where in the hell are they alJ going?

Well, gentlemen, said Thomas Peace. I'd best be getting back to the Parlors. He's likely fetching her there.

Cristi ran to the window, leaned on Jill's old chair, looking out at the vast and strange procession. Luther was carrying the shawled dead in his arms. Beside him strutted Deputy Tzchak, his eyes flashing, his head held back in a grimace

of hopeful yet self-effacing piety. With a cry the Reverend Doctor G. Robert Godd hurled open the door, scurried down the stone steps and ran into the street by Luther's side. Cristi could hear nothing: she could only see the preacher's face, his eyes beseeching, mouth working as if in words which might have been either zealous consolation or desperate inquisition. It might have appeared to heretical and silly-minded onlookers as though the Man of the Cloth were begging from out of the ravaged and bankrupt lawman's face some single, consolatory word of unriddling, touchstone finality which would set at rest certain long-sought and torturing uncertainties among his own humdrum and rotarian theologies. Cristi looked through the hats and huddled shoulders of the shuffling, milling mob and, for the last time, saw the back of her father's upthrust head. Then, hearing the klaxon of the bus, she rose, caught up her suitcase and moved slowly into the dark of the back passage to the side door. The bus would be leaving soon; Cristi would wait on the pantry steps under the big sycamore behind the Mound Hotel, beyond the whispering fringe of the crowd, where no one would see her leave. She watched the nimbus of the gathering fog round the street lamps like the hovering smoke of old souvenirs, impetuously burned.

Luther walked slowly up Seventh, holding the rug-wrapped bodies of the girl and her strangled, small accompUce so Ughtly that it might have seemed that when life had left them all weight of substance went as well. He seemed mesmerized, wholly heedless of the deputy at one elbow or of the whispering, desperate minister at the other; heedless of the crowds behind him, oblivious even of the throngs that lined the pavement ahead, spilling out before the bulge and press of their neck-strained, nudging numbers, then falling away before him to make a clear and curious path of open, unobstructed leeway as his boots came on. Their eyes fixed upon him, intent upon his face, feeding upon its features for the slightest novelty of momentary alteration among its stiff arrangement of anguished fortitude: their mouths fallen open in moist, dark gaping, like the witnesses who appear suddenly at accidents, too busy with eyes to think of mouths. The naked and shameless fever of inquisitive fascination froze them in these masks and postures, though some other yeast-ing ferment seemed deep at work amid this helpless, morbid paralysis to move, to close those fallen mouths, to drag away these glassed, hot stares so pinned upon his face.

They watched to see what he would do; they looked to see what they had done: they waited, watching, for the end of it; standing like creatures in dreams, unable to move, dreading their dream should break off unfulfilled and leave them sweating with questions in the bed of night. His face, slow-moving past them, might have been a dark mirror, within whose scorched and blistered silvering they might hope to catch one wrinkled, fleeting image of themselves. Though none of them there, likely, dared reckon that in the SheritT's face they would find an answer: each would have been comforted enough to read a precise statement of his question.