The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed (7 page)

I slid behind the wheel. “Otherwise they’d have killed you the first chance you gave them. Did you think of that?”

He gave me a half smile. “Yes. I thought of it.”

I met his eyes and I saw that he didn’t care. I saw what he meant when he said he’d taken the jump into darkness. He was no longer responsible for his own life. I got a chilly, crawly feeling. I could only think that in not caring about his own, he couldn’t possibly care about the lives of others. Especially mine.

I looked out through the windshield. “Curt, I … can’t give you Struble’s key.”

“I … understand.”

“No … no you don’t. I can’t help you, I can’t get involved. Maybe I sympathize with you. I think you’re doing something great. But I’ve got a husband, a daughter. I can’t get mixed up in it. Please don’t get me mixed up in it.”

He nodded gravely. “If that’s the way you want it.”

“I do.” I turned the switch and started the car. Curt leaned against the window.

“Just one question, Velda. When Marston got killed on the tractor, why did he go into the ravine twenty feet from the end of the row? Was he drunk? Did he fall asleep? Why didn’t he jump clear?”

I stared at him with my mouth open. I could feel the blood drain from my face. “How did you know?”

“I’ve got reports on every death in the county for the last twenty years. Indexed and cross-indexed. If you’d like to see—”

“No, no! Curt, you promised—”

“Okay. But think about it, will you? Did Marston have any enemies? Could somebody have knocked him out and set the thing up? And Ethel’s husband, why didn’t he jump out of his stalled car when the train was coming? He could see two hundred yards in both directions. He had no record of heart trouble, he didn’t drink. Think of Don Carroll, who accidentally shot himself on his front porch? And Harold Simpson, who supposedly committed suicide in his house. Why would he leave his tractor out in the middle of the field, the way you do when you have a visitor you know won’t be long? Think about those things, Velda. Picture a guy who’s killed … eight-ten people in the last twenty years. A guy who knows that if you watch and wait long enough, you’ll be able to make it look like an accident. Think of him watching you, waiting for his chance….”

I drove off, squirming inside. The day had turned overcast, with an icy wind. It fitted my mood.

The empty house did nothing to ease my mind. I took a warm bath, but it failed to induce my usual somnolent, lazy mood. I darkened the studio and played the piano, and my thoughts drifted to Marston….

Mart was a big, open-faced, good-humored lout who’d been my brother’s best friend. He’d teased and pinched and tickled me all through my youth, and the teasing had evolved gradually into caresses, then love. That last spring he’d worked on the farm where we planned to live after we were married. I always packed his lunch and ate with him on the grassy bank beside a stream. That last afternoon, we’d finished lunch and were smoking a lazy cigaret. Mart was saying he had to get back to work, and I was saying of course, and both of us knew we’d make love first because we did every day…. Later, lying on the blanket beneath the branches of a box-elder tree, I held his weight and pressed my fingers into his back; I felt his warm breath against my neck, and noted how the leaves overhead were green and glossy on top, pale and fuzzy beneath. My mind was sunk deep within my body, following the slow surge of sweet sensation—Something flickered at the edge of my vision. “Mart!” I said.

He raised his head. His pupils were pinpointed.

“Mart, something flashed in that grove of trees on the hill.”

Abruptly I was alone, bereft and exposed. I sat up and pulled my dress down over my legs, Mart was standing, hooking his overalls with angry haste. I watched him leap across the stream and scramble up the bank. He loped toward the trees and disappeared behind them. Five minutes later he returned, red-faced and sweating.

“Some kid,” he panted. “I just got a glimpse.”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes, and I knew he’d lied about something. “You didn’t see who it was?”

“No,” he said too quickly. “You better go now.”

I left, feeling a sour emptiness inside me. How could those evil spying eyes spoil the happiness I’d felt? But they had; I felt dirty, sinful and sneaky. I visualized how I’d looked to those eyes: Sprawled and impaled by a hulking, hunching animal with greasy overalls pushed down to his knees. I had a feeling I’d never enjoy sex with Mart again….

And I never had, because he’d been found dead that afternoon. The shock had erased all memory of the prying eyes until Curt had brought up Mart’s death. Now I wondered: Could the flash have been binoculars? Not many kids had binoculars. And if a man, wouldn’t he fear that he’d been recognized, and couldn’t he have knocked Mart out somehow, laid him in the ditch, and turned the tractor over on him?

Sixteen years, I thought. What clues survive after sixteen years? Long ago there might have been a chance; now it was pointless, hopeless speculation….

Sharon came home at five, breathless and excited. She’d met Gabrielle in town and they’d had a coke together and talked. Now Sharon had sworn off dates and resolved to spend her nights studying shorthand and typing. She planned to go to Chicago and become a career woman just like Gaby….

Lou called from Connersville at five-thirty and said there was a new road going in and he thought he’d stay and bid on the dirtwork since he had a couple of idle bulldozers. Sharon and I ate alone, then watched television and went to bed. I took a Seconal tablet, which I rarely do….

zzzzt … zzzzt …
zzzzt
… ZZZZT … ZZZZT!

The ringing dragged me struggling from an ocean of sleep. I shot upright with thoughts of disaster exploding in my mind. The illuminated alarm clock said twelve-fifteen. Lou was asleep, stretched out like a corpse with his nose aimed at the ceiling.

The phone broke off its staccato message. I jumped out of bed and raced for the kitchen with my nightgown streaming out behind me. I lifted the receiver and heard the operator’s shrill voice:

“… pronounced them dead on the spot. The three oldest will live but—”

“Who, Sally?” I shouted over a babble of voices.
“Who died?”

“George Bennett’s house burned down an hour ago. Sandy died in the fire along with her baby—”

My stomach lurched. I dropped the receiver into its cradle and pressed my hands to my head.
He doesn’t care,
I thought,
He doesn’t care who he kills, women or babies….

My husband’s snore echoed softly through the silent house. I walked into Sharon’s room. She was asleep, her full lips pouting, the covers kicked down around her feet. Her pajama top was twisted, and a round, womanized breast peeped through. Sharon made me feel vulnerable and exposed. I pulled the blanket over her and walked to the window. The darkness hovered outside like a threat. I pictured a pair of loathsome, inhuman eyes looking on, watching—and I knew I couldn’t sit on the sidelines.

I pulled the drapes and went back to the phone. To the operator I said: “Give me the residence of Curt Friedland.”

Curt’s phone hadn’t been connected. I hung up the receiver with a feeling of loneliness I couldn’t quite understand. What could Curt have given me? Reassurance that it wasn’t murder? Confirmation of my own horrible dread that it was?

I wasn’t sure, but still I wanted to talk to him. I pushed open the back door and stepped out. The chill air penetrated my thin nightgown and tingled on the flesh beneath. I went back in the bedroom and got my housecoat; Lou still lay corpselike, his snoring unbroken. I slipped on my house-shoes and walked back outside. Lou’s red pickup gleamed in half-moonlight just a couple of yards from the back door. I brushed my hand over the cool metal of the hood and smelled the faint odor of gas. I started toward the garage where my car was parked—

“Velda, what’s the matter?”

I turned and saw Lou in the door in his pajamas. There was my husband; I should go to his arms and be comforted, instead of chasing off in the middle of the night to see a man I hardly knew.

I walked back and told him: “There was a line ring. Sandy Matthews … Bennett was burned up in their house. Her little baby too.”

Lou sucked in his breath. “Poor George. How’d it happen?”

“I don’t know.”

He was gone from the door. I heard him in the kitchen ringing the operator, then talking. Muffled fragments of conversation came to me: “… totally destroyed? Yes … sure, something will have to be done for them. Get me Harley Grove. Harley? Listen, you know about the Bennetts? Yes. The kids can stay with Mrs. Thompson, I’ll make sure it’s okay. No, George didn’t have any insurance … I held the mortgage … Sure, insured to the extent of the mortgage but it’s a total loss to George … get a collection rolling … I’m good for five hundred, well, hell, but it’s all we can do….”

I tuned out his voice. This is the way it’s done, I thought. Smooth over death with normal activity, samaritan gestures; forget the charred bodies and the monster who lurks in the night….

Lou was behind me again. “Well, I’ve done what I can.” I resented the smugness in his voice.
Lou, death
is
not a husking bee….

“Better come to bed, Velda.”

“I will … in a minute.”

His arms went around my waist, his hands slid between the lapels of my housecoat and pressed against my bare stomach. His breath blew warm on my neck. “I’m pretty sure of getting this road job, Velda. Then I’ll be working hard …”

I understood then. My husband’s sexual enthusiasm waxed and waned according to no rhythm I could figure; not the moon, not the seasons, not the rise and fall of his business fortunes. Lately he’d gone through a virile phase; now he was serving notice that we approached a period of celibacy. To him Sandy’s death was a community event; it had nothing to do with us.

“Lou, I couldn’t tonight … really.”

His hands squeezed, then trailed away. Only a painful after-tingle told me that he’d squeezed hard; that he was angry with me. “Good night, Velda,” he said.

I couldn’t go to Curt now. Lou would sleep lightly for at least an hour. I went into the bedroom and lay down without speaking to Lou. I remember smoking my fourth cigaret, then it was daylight and Lou’s bed was empty….

I drove to town earlier than usual and asked Ethel to take over the store again. I had to bear her rheumatic complaints and her lament for poor Sandy, who was somehow related to Ethel. She agreed finally, but I could see I’d have trouble with her later.

At first I thought Curt’s place was deserted; Heine Wentz wasn’t there, and Curt’s car was gone. Then I saw Gil’s black Chrysler convertible parked behind the house. Gaby and Gil stood on top of the hill, at the archery range. Gaby looked gay and windblown in a halter and white short shorts; she
did
have a figure, that girl, and the shorts did nothing but accent the sharp thrust of her buttocks. Gil wore a red shirt and tan slacks; he was obviously not dressed for working today. I felt a tingle of annoyance as I approached them; they stood too close together, and I thought that Gaby should be told about Gil’s reputation. Somehow learning that Gil had tried to seduce Bernice had altered my opinion of him. I watched Gil’s arrow hit the target several rings out from the bull’s-eye, and I wondered if he was using Curt’s bow. (I already felt possessive about Curt’s things, even his wife.) They were laughing when I went up, but when Gaby saw me, her face turned sober.

“Where’s Curt?” I asked her.

Her face became wary. “I think he went to town.”

“I just came from there,” I said. “He isn’t there.”

She was looking at me with the question in her eyes:
What do you want with him?
She had a right to it, I guess. Any girl coming back to her husband’s home town would wonder: What was this woman to my husband in the past? How well did they know each other? Who do I have to watch and who can I ignore?

If we had been alone, I would have explained it all to her; now I only said:

“He asked me to do something for him yesterday. I told him no. I want to tell him I’ve changed my mind.”

“Oh.” Her wary expression didn’t lift; her eyes slid over to Gil’s and then back to mine. “You … could check where the house burned clown. He might have gone there.”

I should have thought of that first. The Bennetts lived on the river bottom just a half mile from town. George worked at the lumberyard; his land was water-logged gumbo which rarely produced anything but fifteen-foot-high horseweeds. A dozen cars were parked along the lane which led to the house; a crowd of sightseers trampled around the ruins. It had been an old wooden house, with imitation brick siding made of tar paper; it must have burned like a torch. A pall of smoke still hung over the area. I saw two blackened, twisted iron bedsteads, a refrigerator shining blue-gray where the enamel had flaked off, a cookstove and heating stove. Only these items stood erect; all else was a foot-deep layer of smoking rubble inside the foundation walls. I searched the crowd for a familiar face. By the sheriff’s car, in the center of the largest group of people, stood George Bennett. He wore no shirt, and his sleeveless undershirt was full of charred holes. Soot blackened his heavy face. I moved closer. Beside him stood a boy of about eight, George’s oldest boy, looking wide-eyed at the sheriff while his father talked in a flat grating monotone:

“—You can put it down to that, Sheriff, if you got to have a reason. That goddam kerosene stove. I could kill myself for not fixing it.”

“What was wrong with the stove?” asked the sheriff.

“Got a tank on the back, you know. There was a little drip right where the tubing connected to the tank. Time went on, it soaked the floor behind the stove. Last night was a little chilly, so I had the stove lit. I reckon that’s where it started.”

“Why couldn’t your wife get out?”

Heads turned to see who had asked the question, but I didn’t have to look. I recognized Curt’s voice. He didn’t look as though he’d gotten any sleep last night either. His trousers and sweatshirt were wrinkled, and a faint blond stubble glistened in the sunlight. The sheriff saw Curt too, but for some reason chose not to call him by name.

“You folks out there shut up and let me ask the questions.” To George he said, “Why couldn’t Sandy get out?”

George looked down at his feet. “Well … she come in last night around ten-thirty. She’d been drinkin … quite a bit. I knew she’d left the house without a cent that morning so I tried to find out who bought her liquor. She went to sleep without tellin me. I jumped in the truck and went in to Stubb’s to find out who’d got her drunk. The tavern was closed. When I came back to the house the fire was shootin up higher’n them cottonwoods. My three oldest kids was in the yard. I couldn’t get closer’n thirty feet of the house. I … stood, and … watched the goddam roof fall in on … Sandy and the kid … Jesus Christ, that goddam stove …”

Sober faces watched George Bennett push through the crowd with his forearm over his eyes, then a voice said; “I know who got her drunk.”

I saw Johnny Drew, Anne’s ex-husband. I was surprised, because he’d left town a week ago saying he was going to work in Las Vegas. He was dressed in a checkered sport jacket and powder-blue slacks, and he looked garishly over-dressed in that austere rural gathering. There had been a time long ago when I’d thought he was handsome, as handsome as Johnny himself thought he was. But that had been before I noticed the finger waves he pressed in his waxy blond hair, before I saw the smallness of his eyes and how close set they were in a coarse peasant face. Since Anne’s death he’d drifted in and out of Sherman; he’d served a ten month sentence on a bad check charge and once he’d tried to hold up the Club 75 with a pistol. Lou had smoothed that one over, perhaps because Johnny was an ex-brother-in-law. He certainty hadn’t done it for me, because I had only contempt for Johnny. I noticed his red eyes and the lank strand of blond hair hanging over his eye and I knew he was half-drunk already Everybody else was looking at Johnny, including the sheriff, but nobody asked any questions. They knew Johnny didn’t have to be coaxed to tell everything he knew.

“He’s the one,” said Johnny, pointing a blunt finger at Curt. “I saw ‘em together last night in Stubb’s tavern.”

Curt frowned at Johnny, perhaps trying to place him. I heard mutters in the crowd.
Who’s that? Who got her drunk? Curt Friedland. When did he get back?
Behind it was a low murmur, like far distant thunder, with nothing in it of friendship or neighborliness. Johnny Drew must have felt the hostility too, because he took a step toward Curt with his fists doubled at his sides.

“I thought the country was rid of the Friedlands. Maybe you need another lesson.”

A faint flicker of a smile crossed Curt’s face. He neither moved forward nor backed away. I don’t think he expected Johnny to come for him, and I don’t think Johnny intended to—but suddenly the crowd parted and left a channel leading from Johnny to Curt. There was nothing for Johnny to do but lower his head and charge. But he stopped suddenly, confronting the massive gabardine-clad torso of the sheriff. The sheriff knew Johnny too; he didn’t even raise his hands in front of him. Suddenly there was Deputy Hoff behind Johnny, who cramped Johnny’s arm behind his back and marched him to the car. It didn’t look to me like Johnny was struggling; it all seemed to go off half-heartedly, like a stage production in which the actors aren’t enthusiastic about their parts.

The sheriff turned to Curt. “Now. Is it true what he said?”

“Partly.”

The sheriff sighed. He spoke for the crowd, not for Curt, in a tone of sweet reasonableness. “Why can’t you just say it? Did you get Sandy drunk or didn’t you?”

“I bought her a beer in the tavern. I left her at seven-ten. She wasn’t drunk then.”

“How do you know it was seven-ten when you left her?”

“I looked at a clock.”

The sheriff looked at him sadly a moment then turned to the crowd. “All right folks, let’s clear out of here. We all got work to do. Doc Chalmers says Sandy and the baby probably suffocated from smoke before the flames got to ‘em—”

“What about the man who got her drunk?” It was only a voice; I couldn’t see the face.

“I aim to look into that, but I’m afraid that’s between him and her husband. It’s no crime to buy an adult woman liquor.”

He started toward his car, and I was close enough to hear him tell Curt as he passed: “You seem to hang around trouble, boy. Be careful they don’t haul you out in a box.”

Then he got in his car and drove away, with Johnny Drew glaring at Curt from the safety of the back seat. I started toward Curt, but he was striding rapidly toward his car and people were watching him go and I … I was reluctant to put myself next to him. I was afraid of my reputation in the community, and ashamed of myself because I was concerned about that now. I hurried along a few paces behind him, and he was in his car and gone before I reached him. I told myself, Velda, you’d better stay out of this affair if you’re afraid of getting dirty….

I half-expected him to come in the store later, assuming that either Gaby or Gil had told him I wanted to see him. Bat he didn’t. I thought of going up to his place, but I’d already done that. By nine o’clock that evening I couldn’t wait any longer; I called and Gaby answered the phone. I almost hung up; I didn’t like to look like I was pursuing him. But I’d started it already, so I asked:

“Did … Curt come back?”

“He stopped in around four.”

Silence then. She was making me work for it. “I wonder … did you tell him—?”

“Yes.” Her voice still held the wariness I’d noticed earlier. “I said you’d changed your mind. He said he’d get in touch.”

That was it; that was all she could tell me. I wanted something else; my relationship with Gaby was extremely uncomfortable; I was like a business acquaintance and yet I had no business calling Curt. I was about to say something friendly, something which would get our mutual conversations off the exclusive subject of Curt when I heard a man’s muffled voice and Gaby’s equally muffled answer, as though she’d put her hand over the mouthpiece.

“Who’s with you?”

“Gil Sisk,” she said.

“Oh … well, goodby.” I hung up the phone, feeling resentful. Here I was ready to help Curt and …

Lou came home around ten and wanted to talk about the new job. He seemed in a bright, gay mood and I wondered why, until I figured out in my head that he’d made a couple thousand off the sale to Curt and probably stood to clear ten thousand on the road job.

Next morning the town prepared for the funeral; all the stores would close at noon, and services would be held at one p.m. I heard some resentful talk about Curt from those who knew he’d bought her that beer. They had nothing to go on, but I could feel their latent hostility. If a tornado wiped out the town they’d find a way to blame Curt Friedland because it happened while he was here. That’s the kind of reasoning you run into in Sherman….

About ten Curt strolled in with his face closed up tight, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his Levis. He wore a wide-brimmed felt hat, blue-denim jacket and lace-up boots: he looked as though he’d never left the Nation. I started to speak but he shook his head emphatically and asked for a can of Velvet. He handed me a bill with a note in it. I opened the cash register, spread the note out in the dollar-bill tray and read: MEET ME AT THE BOY SCOUT CABIN ON LAKE PILLYBAY AT ONE P.M. DESTROY THIS.