What the Dead Men Say (15 page)

    Dodds looked back at him and said, “It’s a little late for promises of any kind, son. We’re just gonna have to see what happens.”

    

    

    

    He stood beneath a dripping oak, feeling tired suddenly, older than he ever had.

    An early dusk gave the rain an even colder feel now, and put lights on in the windows of the small white houses on the small respectable street where Griff and his family lived.

    He could see Griff in the window now, bending to turn up the wick in a kerosene lamp. He wondered if Griff had any sense that his two companions were dead.

    Septemus Ryan hefted the Winchester and started walking down the block to where the alley began. Getting into Griff’s house would not be easy. Going in through the rear would probably be best.

    He passed picket fences and flower beds, neatly trimmed shrubs and tidy green lawns.

    Griff’s barn dominated the alley. The other buildings were small white garages. He did not have to worry about being seen because it had been raining so long and so steadily that nobody would be looking out the window. Or so he told himself.

    As he strode over the wet cinders of the alley, he heard the voices, faintly. There was Clarice, thanking him for his brave actions today. And then the chorus of dead men-relatives and friends who’d gone on before-telling him that they were waiting for him, that the other side was good and he would like it and there was nothing to fear.

    An uncle spoke to him, and then a brother dead early of consumption, and then a schoolmate killed in the war, and then an old muttonchopped mentor who’d advised him in the ways of business…

    All these people whispered to Septemus Ryan, and said that Clarice was with them, and that like them, she awaited sight of her father as he crossed over.

    And as he walked, there in the rain, the unrelenting hissing rain a curtain that lent everything a spectral cast, he had the sense that he was already walking the land of the dead, all humanity fading, fading behind the curtain of rain, alone in a curious and endless realm of phantoms and whispered voices.

    He reached the barn and went in through the back door. He stood in the center of the dark, dusty place smelling the hay and the lubricating oils Griff used on his buggies and the sweet tart tang of horseshit from the stall where they kept the gelding.

    He felt tired again, exhausted.

    He looked enviously at the gelding. He wanted to go over and lay down next to it in the straw and hay, share the colorful threadbare horse blanket, and sleep with his arm thrown across the fleshy warm side of the animal, the way he’d once slept with his wife.

    He went to the front sliding door and stood watching the rain fall in big silver drops from the roof. He could see nightcrawlers and worms swimming in the clear puddles around his feet; he could smell rusted iron tangy from the rain; he could see mist rising like ghosts from the slanting roof of the Griff house, and hear faintly, the way he once heard Clarice, the clear pure laughter of a little girl.

    
I remember you sleeping between your mother and I remember your soft pink cheeks so warm when you kissed me your eyes so lovely and blue how you made little snoring sounds in the middle of the night and kept your doll pulled so tight to you.

    He saw her in the window now, just her head, the little girl.

    He hefted his Winchester and started across the soggy grass.

    There was a screened-in back porch with chairs for sitting. He eased open the back door and went inside. He could smell dampness on the stone floor and dinner from the kitchen just behind the door. It smelled good and warm and he realized how hungry he was.

    There were no voices. From his glimpse in the window a minute ago he’d been able to see that the little girl was probably alone in the kitchen. That would make it easier.

    
We used to swing till dark in the summertime on the rope swing in the backyard, your hair shining gold even in the dusk and the firefly darkness and your mother calling lemonades ready, lemonade's ready and the way you'd giggle and writhe as I’d tickle you on the way inside and your mother and I reading to you in the lamp-glow of your room as you fell asleep.

    The door was open.

    He went up two steps and found himself in the kitchen. It was about what he’d expected, modest but quite orderly. A girl of six or seven stood at the sink, drying dishes and then stacking them neatly on the sideboard.

    He went straight up to her.

    Just as she heard him, just as she started to turn to see what the noise was, he brought his hand around to the front of her face and covered her mouth.

    With the other hand, he put the Winchester to her head.

    “I want you to call out for your papa, you understand?”

    Against the palm of his hand, he could feel the girl’s hot breath and her saliva and the tiny edges of her teeth.

    The girl nodded.

    “Go ahead now,” he said.

    Before she called out, the girl twisted her neck so she could get a quick glimpse of him.

    She looked terrified.

    She said, “Papa. It’s Eloise. Could you come out here, please?”

    “Couldn’t I finish my pipe first, hon?” he said.

    Ryan nudged the little girl.

    “I need you to come here now, Papa.”

    This time when she talked her voice broke with tension.

    This time her papa came right away.

    He came to the doorway of the kitchen and saw them.

    He surprised Ryan by not saying anything.

    He just stood there gawking, as if he could not believe it.

    Finally, Griff said, “She doesn’t have any part in this.”

    By now, his wife, apparently curious, came to the kitchen doorway, too.

    She immediately made a noise that resembled mewling. “Oh, Eloise,” she said.

    “She doesn’t have any part in this,” Griff said again.

    “My little girl didn’t have any part in your robbery, either.”

    “Please, mister, please let her go,” Griff’s wife said.

    Her mother’s tone was scaring the girl even more. She strained against Ryan’s hard grasp.

    “I’m taking her,” Ryan said.

    “Oh, no!” her mother said and tried to lunge through the door to take her daughter.

    Her husband put out a strong arm and stopped her. He said, “Go in the other room and make sure Tess is all right. I’ll take care of this.”

    “Why would he want Eloise?” the woman said. She was becoming so distraught she sounded crazed.

    “Go take care of Tess,” he said.

    Then, his wife gone, Griff said, “Take me, Ryan. You let Eloise walk over to me and you can take me anywhere you want. And do whatever you want. Just don’t take it out on my daughter, you understand?”

    
Helping you with your homework at the dining room table how you always had the tiny pink corner of your tongue sticking out of your mouth when you were stumped by a problem and how you always had ink stains on the index finger of your right hand and worried that boys wouldn't think you were pretty because of the stains.

    Ryan said, “I wanted you to know that I’m taking her. I wanted you to see it, Griff. To fear for it.”

    Eloise started crying.

    Griff said, “I’m sorry for what happened to your daughter, Ryan.”

    It was then that he dived across the small kitchen to try and snatch Eloise away from Ryan, and it was then that Ryan shot Griff-two quick explosions of the Winchester-directly in the arm and leg.

    

    

    Half a mile from town, the horse James and Dodds rode began to give out. He not only slowed, his legs were unsteady in the mud.

    Dodds reined him in at a tree and said, “We’d better go on foot from here.”

    In the rain the horse looked cold and sick, his hazel eyes glazed, ragged breath rocking his ribs every few seconds.

    Dodds saw how James was watching the horse over his shoulder as the two set off walking fast for town.

    “Don’t worry, son,” Dodds said. “He just has the same problem I do.”

    “What problem’s that?”

    “Same problem you’ll have and your own son’ll have. Age. He’s just old and the rain’s got him spooked a little. I’ll come back for him in a while and put him up in the livery and hay him and rub him down and he’ll be fine.”

    “He’s a nice horse.”

    “You get real attached to things, don’t you, son?”

    James shrugged, wiping rain from his face. He had been out in the downpour so long that he knew it would feel odd when the rain stopped. Human beings seemed to get used to things, even things they basically didn’t like. “I guess I do.”

    As they walked, Dodds looked over at him and said, “I want to tell you something.”

    “What?”

    “That I’ll do my best not to shoot him.”

    “I appreciate that, Sheriff.”

    “I just hope he doesn’t back me into a corner.”

    “People do that to you?”

    “All the time. They get distraught or they get drunk or they get heartbroke and then they do very foolish things and they don’t leave me much leeway.”

    “I’ll talk to Septemus. He’ll listen to me.”

    “I hope so, son. I hope so.”

    

    

    Dora got bandages and worked on her husband’s arm and leg. There was a lot of blood. The first thing the two girls had done was scream. The second thing they did was start crying. Now they were silent, just watching it, how their mother was on her knees patching up their father, how Ryan just stood there with his Winchester. “You shouldn’t have shot him, mister,” the wife said.

    “He shouldn’t have shot my daughter.”

    She just shook her head, looked at her husband’s wounds again. Griff had his eyes closed. He’d tried to stand up several times but his wife wouldn’t let him. He lay on the kitchen floor now with his head propped on three dishtowels she’d rolled up for a pillow. Tess, the youngest girl, said, “I don’t like you.”

    Ryan said, “Well, I like you. I like all little girls. Every single one of them.”

    “You hurt my papa.”

    “Well, he hurt somebody I cared about very much.”

    “Who?”

    “My own little girl.”

    “Tess get over here,” her mother said.

    “How come Eloise can’t come over with us?”

    Her mother said, “The man won’t let her.”

    “How come?”

    “Get over here, Tess.”

    “My papa didn’t hurt nobody,” Tess said, and then kind of ambled over to stand next to her mother.

    Ryan gripped Eloise’s shoulder tight again and said, “I’m going to walk out of here with her now, ma’m.”

    “No!”

    The woman jumped to her feet.

    Her husband’s eyes opened and the man tried to struggle to his feet. This time his wife didn’t stop him.

    Tess, sensing all the alarm, started sobbing. “What’s he going to do, Mama?”

    “Be quiet.” The woman glared at Ryan. “No matter what happened, mister, my daughter don’t deserve to be treated like this.”

    “Neither did my daughter.”

    “You let her go, you bad man,” Tess said.

    Griff had now managed to get himself upright. He was white from loss of blood and pasty-looking. His eyes didn’t quite focus.

    There was blood all over his clothes. “I told you, Ryan. Take me. I’m the one you want.”

    “No, Griff. This will be worse. Taking your daughter. Then you’ll know what I’ve been going through.”

    And with that, he picked the girl up and tucked her under his arm. He was strong enough to hold her even when she wriggled. He backed out of the kitchen to the stairs.

    To the woman he said, “I’m sorry about this, ma’m. But it’s the only way.”

    Eloise started screaming.

    Ryan got one step down the back stairs and then two steps and then he moved quickly out the door.

    

    

    By the time James and Dodds reached the alley that ran behind the Griff house, they could hear shouts and screams even above the rain.

    “He’s there,” Dodds said, pulling his Navy Colt from his holster. “You said you weren’t going to shoot him,” James said, panic filling his chest.

    “Son, I said I’d try not to shoot him. But I didn’t say I’d be foolish. He’ll be armed and so will I.” He nodded to a small garage to their left. “You could always go in there and stay till it’s over.”

    “I want to go with you. I want to talk to him.”

    “All right,” Dodds said, “c’mon, then.”

    They went up the alley. Even the cinders were squishy underfoot. A hundred feet away they saw Septemus come into the alley, Eloise Griff pulled close to him, the Winchester not far from her head.

    Dodds shouted, “Stop right there, Ryan.”

    Dodds and James started running toward the man and the little girl.

    Around the corner of the barn came Mrs. Griff and her husband.

    Griff was crudely bandaged; blood soaked through several places in his shirt and trousers. He looked as if he were about ready to collapse.

    Mrs. Griff was slowly, painfully pleading with Ryan to let her little girl go.

    When Dodds and James reached them, Dodds walked as close to Ryan as Septemus would let him.

    Ryan put the muzzle of the Winchester directly against Eloise’s head. “I’m going to kill her, Sheriff. Stand back.”