THE MEN OF YALE sat in Pullen’s Café into the night and early morning and saluted Michael’s stand before Frank Benton with their drinking and their attention and their loosened praise. But there was a giddiness, a wonder, in their words.
“He could have had his head blowed off.”
“Could have, damned right.”
“0l’ Frank looked crazy-like in the face. You see it?”
“Like he was took. Wild in the eyes.”
“Got it from his daddy, I reckon, but, by God, he wadn’t that way growin’ up. It just come on him.”
“Happened after his wife passed. I heard tell he tried to raise her, like his daddy used to try to do.”
“By God, the Irishman didn’t flinch none.”
“Not a hair.”
“Ask me, it was callin’ the boy out that done it.”
“Ain’t no question. Throwed Frank off.”
“Looked to me like Frank wanted Curtis to shoot him.”
“Curtis would’ve done it. I seen that Miller fellow after Curtis shot him. Blowed a hole in him the size of a door.”
“Boy looked like he’d been beat bad.”
“He was tellin’ the truth. He ain’t done nothin’, like the Irishman said.”
“See how the Irishman just stood there, smilin’, like it was all a big joke?”
“Looked kind of crazy hisself, you ask me.”
Michael listened to the murmuring swirling about him, from Teague and Bailey and Job, and from men he had never before seen but who had been summoned from their homes by the air of rumor and celebration. He sat at a table against the wall, leaning back on the two rear chair legs, accepting the babble around him like an amused hero. The doctor sat close beside him and served him as an emissary who inspected the offerings of awe from the men who squeezed their way through the crowded room to acknowledge him. The doctor was tired from the weight of the day and the ungiving pressure of his years, and he had been drinking heavily. He was clinging to Michael and Michael could feel him tugging for recognition.
“It was the doc who showed nerve,” Michael said again and again, feeding Garnett’s need. “It was the doc who stepped up first and had the say.”
And Garnett waved with his hat at Michael’s words, waved with a beckoning motion that fanned the praise, like air, into his flushed face.
In the night’s frenzy Michael became certain of one thing: When he needed them—if he needed them—the doctor and the men of Pullen’s Café would listen to him and believe. When he needed them he would push his words into the fertile heat of their brains, and his words would swell and sprout and grow wild in the fields of their imaginations. They would listen to him and they would believe.
He breathed deeply of the thick room air and accepted a drink thrust into his hand by the doctor. He smiled cockily. The three women would tell him of Eli’s fortune, if he asked them. Sarah, especially. If Sarah knew. It would be that easy. Yet there was something about Owen that he could not put aside. There was a role for Owen to play in all of it. He shifted restlessly in his chair, scrubbing his shoulders into the chair back. And then a chill ran into his shoulders and up his neck and trembled in his lips.
“What’s the matter, Irishman?” Garnett asked.
“Not a thing, Doc. Not a thing.”
Michael swallowed from the whiskey. He was content.
* * *
In his bed, in the colorless night of his barn room, Michael felt the energy of Pullen’s Café seeping away in an aura of pale gray, and the ceiling above him separated ethereally in his mind into the wide mouth of a great stage. He saw the players gathered silently behind bastard flats in the dim wings, poised shyly like museum mannequins in drab costumes. Principals and walk-ons, their roles painted on their faces with dabs of rouge and thick lines of black pencil. And center stage, bowed in the cross arrows of a white light, Owen Benton waited, lifting his head in the slow mime of a final scene. A quick exhilaration, like a sweet pain, tickled across Michael’s body. The time was very near; he could sense it. He wondered where he would go when he left, what he would do. He closed his eyes and the stage in the ceiling above him faded away.
* * *
At lunch on Sunday, Michael related the story of Frank Benton to Rachel and Sarah and Dora. He told it as a bystander would tell it. He did not talk of his own role in the drama.
“It’s a sad thing to see,” he said. “Sad to see a man accuse his own flesh of such crimes. There’s stories about that Frank’s father believed he could raise the dead and there’s some kind of ghost inside Frank, like a worm inside his head, swallowin’ up his good senses.”
“I remember when his daddy was alive,” Dora said. “He started a church up in the hills, had a half-dozen families goin’ regular and there was talk about him tryin’ to raise the dead. Some said he used to use the children for a layin’ on of the hands on the dead. Frank would’ve been one of them, I guess. Seems to me, everybody moved away after Frank’s daddy died. Frank was the only one who stayed. He’s got a brother over in Chattanooga.”
“So they said,” Michael agreed. “There’s talk of sendin’ him word, so he can come for the smaller ones in the family. Seems Frank’s been beatin’ on them ever since his wife died and he couldn’t bring her back.”
“I’d heard that from Floyd,” Rachel said. “I wish somebody’d take the younger ones. But maybe it’s all over now. Maybe he’ll leave the boy alone.”
Michael nodded thoughtfully.
“Maybe,” he replied. “But I’ve got a feelin’ we’ve not seen the last of this. I’ve a feelin’ we’ve all missed seein’ somethin’ plain as day, right in front of our noses.”
“What?” asked Sarah.
“Sarah, child, I don’t know,” answered Michael. “It could be nothin’. There’s somethin’ you’d need to know about the Irish to understand what I’m sayin’. We’ve a habit of payin’ attention to our own imaginations as much as to the fact of the matter.” He pushed away from the table and stood. “Now, if you’ll be excusin’ me, I think I’ll spend some time on the fence. Way it’s goin’, Miss Dora, I’ll be retirin’ to a ripe old age before I get that wire strung.”
Dora blushed and looked away.
“Don’t work on the fence,” begged Rachel. “It’s Sunday. You’re bound to be tired. Rest.”
“Believe it or not, doin’ a little work’s what I need, Rachel. Just to shake off the cobwebs. Work’s good for makin’ a man think things out.”
He stepped to the door and turned back to the three women.
“There’s somethin’ more to happen,” he said. “I can feel it.”
* * *
In the following week the tension that had been released in Pullen’s Café began to build again and a premonition of fear rested over Yale like a gloom. Curtis stayed at the jail each day with George and into the night with Michael, guarding Owen. And when he was not with his patients, Garnett was also there, playing listless games of checkers with Curtis or George, or, late at night, walking with Michael and Owen outside the jail, by the river, to assure that Owen exercised his healing body. Curtis, Garnett, George, the townspeople who stood at their street windows—all were waiting for Frank Benton to reappear. But nothing happened, and on Saturday afternoon, a week following Frank’s challenge for Owen, Curtis drove to the Benton farm. He returned at night and called Garnett and Michael outside the jail. Frank was sitting inside his home, Curtis reported, holding a Bible in his lap, staring blankly into the fireplace.
“Expectin” some kind of sign, I reckon,” Curtis said. “He wouldn’t say nothin’ to me. The girl—Shirley—told me he’d been that way. Hadn’t said hardly a word.”
“Has he taken the whip to any of them?” asked Michael.
Curtis shook his head.
“Looked to me like he was sick,” he replied.
“Maybe I’d better go up there tomorrow and check on him,” Garnett mumbled wearily. “Could be his whole behavior’s caused by something physical. A tumor, maybe. Pressure gets on the brain, it can play havoc.”
“I’ll go with you,” Curtis said. He looked solemnly at Garnett. “You hear me, Doc,” he added quietly. “Don’t you go near that place unless I’m with you.”
Garnett laughed. He pushed his hat back off his forehead.
“It’s damn good to be worried about,” he said. “Tomorrow, then. Town’ll be closed. Won’t attract as much attention.”
Curtis nodded agreement.
“You’ll need to be here, Irishman,” Garnett added. “Hate to say it, but I don’t want to leave George alone with the boy, the way George feels.”
“I’ll be here,” Michael promised.
* * *
It was one o’clock in the morning when the sheriff left the jail. Michael stood outside in the cool August air and watched him drive away. The moon was at quarter, with its underbelly spoon of gold precariously balancing the shadowy bubble of the full globe like a cosmic trick. He could hear the monotonous swirl of the Naheela River and the night cries of night creatures. He looked down the street toward Pullen’s Café and saw Teague’s truck and, through the windows of the café, a dull light. Soon Teague would stumble out of the cafe with his friends. They would be drunk and would pile comically into the truck and roar away into the mountains, and John Pullen would close his café-tavern and slowly climb the outside steps of the building to his living quarters upstairs. Michael thought of John Pullen, whose entire life was linked by a set of stairs between his sleeping and working. He tried to remember the sound of John Pullen’s voice, but could not; he could not remember ever hearing John Pullen speak.
He went inside the jail and locked the heavy wooden door with its slip-bar. He walked to the cell where Owen slept on his cot. The rhythms of his body quickened and pumped through him in harmony and he knew it was time for the tragedian to awaken and accept his role.
“Owen,” he said quietly. “Owen, wake up.”
Owen stirred on the cot.
“Owen, wake up,” Michael repeated. “We need to talk.”
Owen lifted his head and peered sleepily toward Michael.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Shhhhh, quietly,” Michael replied. “We need to talk.”
Owen sat on the cot, pulling his legs beneath him. He looked around the jail, confused. The only light was from a table lamp on the rolltop desk.
“What’s the matter?” he whispered.
Michael lifted his hand for silence. He removed the key from the desk and opened the steel door to the cell and pulled the chair in the cell close beside Owen’s cot. Owen watched him carefully.
“You remember when we talked before?” began Michael. “I asked for your trust. You remember that, Owen?”
“Yes,” Owen replied. “I remember it.”
“Now’s the time for it. Do you still mean it?”
“Yes.”
“There’s talk,” Michael said.
“Talk? What kind of talk?”
“About a trial.”
Owen’s face opened in fear.
“It’s bein’ kept quiet,” Michael added quickly. “Nobody knows about it but the sheriff and the doctor and me. The sheriff went up to talk to your father. Seems there’s somebody—I don’t know his name—claimin’ he saw you up near that farm the day that young couple was murdered.”
“I—I wadn’t,” Owen stammered. “The sheriff asked me about that. Asked me where I was. I was at home. I told him that.”
Michael waved down Owen’s protest with his hands. He pulled the chair closer to Owen and leaned to him.
“I know it’s the truth you’re tellin’,” he whispered. “But the sheriff’s caught between what he believes and his duty as a peace officer. You’re not supposed to know about it, and I’d have my tongue ripped out for sayin’ it, but the sheriff and the doctor are plannin’ on goin’ back tomorrow for some more questions, to ask your family to try and remember where you might’ve been durin’ that time. And they’ll be lookin’ over your things for a knife.”
Owen began to shake his head. He tried to speak but there was no sound in him.
“You’re not to be afraid,” Michael assured him. “We’ll work it out. I’ve made you my own promise that nothin’ll happen, and I’m a man of my word, as I’m hopin’ you know.” He paused and rubbed his hands together. Then he said, “Answer me somethin’, Owen. Is there a knife? Somewhere in your things, is there a knife?”
Owen nodded slowly. “My—my pocket knife,” he said weakly. “Used to be my daddy’s. He give it to me when he got him a new one.”
Michael leaned heavily against the back of the chair. He stared at his hands as if in deep thought.
“I was afraid of it,” he said. “And that could be enough, along with somebody’s lyin’, to make a case. It could, at that, and that’s the damnin’ part of it. Everybody’s got a knife, who’s a man. For God’s sake, I’ve got a knife, long as a sword and sharp as a Turk’s razor. Keep it with me everywhere I go, strapped to my side or my leg.” He pulled up the right leg of his trousers. The sheath of the long hunting knife was tied to the calf of his leg by a strip of canvas, with its point tucked into his sock. “A knife’s a thing a man needs, off in the woods, travelin’ about,” he added. He pulled the knife free and held it up for Owen to see. Its fine cutting edge caught the dull light of the table lamp on the rolltop desk and flashed in Owen’s widened eyes like a silver scratch.
Michael rolled the knife once in his hand, as he would play with a toy, and slipped it back into its sheath. He said, “But it’ll not matter much, if there’s wildfire gossip when it gets out. There’ll be people willin’ to believe anythin’ told by anybody.”
“I didn’t do nothin’. I didn’t,” Owen mumbled.
“True. You did not,” Michael said. He touched Owen’s arm. “I know it, in my heart. And that’s why I’m takin’ you away with me, as my travelin’ partner.” He squeezed Owen’s arm. “You’ll like it, Owen, believe me. We’ll follow the circus and I’ll show you sights your mind’s eye could never see. Buildin’s as high as these mountains, people as fancy as lace. Ah, Owen, it’ll be a wonder for you, a true wonder.”
Owen said nothing. He bowed his head and crossed his arms tight against his body.
“Owen,” Michael said gently, “I’m runnin’ off with my stories again, not mindin’ what you’d be feelin’. It’s like I said before, leavin’s not easy. It never is. Sometimes you have to do it. You have to take it on yourself to put aside all those things that’s been a part of you, cut it off like an arm, and go on livin’ the best way you can. But leavin’s not the endin’. It’s the beginnin’. People can’t see that. They may not like what they’ve lived in, or the way they’ve lived, but it’s what they know, and bad as it may be, it’s a warm tit to be pullin’ on, even if there’s a dry bag at the nipple. Take you: You stay here and face the threat of a murderer’s trial and they could put you to death for somethin’ you’ve never done. Or, worse, you could live with all the chains of your surroundin’s hangin’ on you forever. And that I can’t let you do. Not and live right with myself.”
Owen sat very still, his head down, thinking. Then he said, “When we goin’?”
“Tonight. Now.”
Owen looked up with surprise.
“How?” he asked. “We—we just walk out?”
Michael shook his head.
“It’d be too risky that way,” he answered. “We’ll stage it—like it was a play we were doin’. You makin’ off, leavin’ me lookin’ dumbstruck by what happened, and then I’ll put them that search for you on the wrong track and we’ll meet up in a day or so and go off in the opposite way.”
“What if they don’t believe you?” Owen asked. His voice trembled.
“I’m trustin’ they will, Owen,” answered Michael. “I’m trustin’ they will. Mind you, it’s not somethin’ I like doin’, the kind way I’ve been treated here, but I’m the only one to do it, me bein’ a stranger. The sheriff would do the same if he could, but he’s born to this place; he can’t. The doctor would—I’m sure of it—but he’s put in too many years carin’ for all the people around and he’s needed, no matter how he feels. And that leaves me, a stranger, and much as I dislike it, I’ve seen too much wrong done in the name of the law to take the chance with any man’s life.”
“What—what are we gonna do?”
Michael again leaned close to Owen and spoke in a whisper. “I’ll take you outside, to stretch your legs like we’ve been doin’ with the doc—the sheriff’ll go along with that—and then you’ll take off and I’ll jump in the river and say you pushed me in and started runnin’ off south, into the woods. But it’ll not be south you’ll be goin’; it’ll be north.”
“It’ll make me show up like I done what they said,” Owen whined.
“It will, yes. For the time bein’. When we’re clear away, someplace like Chicago, I’ll write the doctor and explain the truth, tell him it was my doin’. More’n likely he’ll understand, though it’s a chance we’ll be takin’. But you won’t be dead, Owen, and that’s the chance you’re takin’ now.”
Owen nodded. He looked around the cell. He rose from the cot and moved absently to the cell bars. He stood, with his arms still crossed tight to his body, and leaned his forehead against the cold steel of the bars.
“Owen, you tell me no and I’ll drop it,” Michael said evenly. “Maybe I’m wrong about it all. Maybe there’s nothin’ to it. Maybe I’m thinkin’ of too many other times. It’s you that has to give the answer.”
Owen rolled his head against the bars.
“No,” he replied. “I’ll do what you say. It don’t matter. Not no more.”
* * *
They moved quietly outside, staying in the shadows beside the jail, until they reached the cluster of scrub trees growing on the bank of the river. They sat beside the river under the trees and listened to the lusty bellowing of treefrogs and the shrieking of crickets and to the rushing of water. After a few minutes, they heard laughter and then the roar of Teague’s truck sputtering out of town, and then there was quiet.
“It’s time,” Michael whispered. He reached for his leg and pulled his knife from its sheath. “Take this,” he said. “You may be needin’ it.”
Owen looked at the knife in horror.
“Take it,” Michael said bluntly. “They’ll not know, and you’ll be needin’ it.” He shoved the knife into Owen’s hand.
“Now this is what you’re to do,” Michael continued. “Follow by the river, goin’ north. Cut off by the creek road, leadin’ up by the Pettit place. There’s a patch of small pines nearby the road cuttin’ up to the house, with a big rock in the center. I’ve put a sack of things there—provisions—in case I’d ever be needin’ to leave quick. I change out the food every few days when the ladies are busy, just to be sure. It’s under some limbs and pine straw. Take it with you.”
“Where’m I goin’?” Owen asked nervously.
Michael moved closer to Owen and stared deep into his face.
“A place where they’ll never look, and I know it’ll make you a bit queasy, but it’s the best place around,” he said.
“Where?”
“That old house, where the young couple lived.”
“That—?”
“That house,” Michael repeated firmly. “It’s been closed up. I took a walk up there not long back and looked it over. You can pry out a board on the back door and get in.”
“I—I can’t go there,” Owen stuttered. “Not where they was killed.”
“Dammit, man, it’s the best place,” Michael insisted. “Believe me, I’ve been around these things before. I know what they’re bound to do.”
“I ain’t—I—”
“What?”
“I ain’t never been in a killin’ house.”
“It’s the place,” Michael said. “You stay there, hid, and I’ll come for you in a day or two, and then we’ll make our way out, after I’ve got things goin’ the other way.”
Owen breathed hard. His heart was pounding. He wanted to run, to be in the cell, protected, but he was afraid.
“Listen. Listen, Owen,” Michael said gently. “It’ll only be for a short time. And there’s nothin’ there. Nothin’. Just a place where you’ll not be found. Now go. Be gone, and keep out of sight. I’ll give you time to clear town before I give the signal.”
Owen stumbled backward in his crouched position. He looked quizzically at Michael.
“Go!” Michael hissed.
Owen turned and slipped away, along the river, behind the row of buildings. Michael sat on the ground and watched until he disappeared, then he stood and began humming. He strolled to the river and waded into the cold water. He shuddered at the chill, then rolled his body beneath the water. The water covered him like ice and he lifted his head from its surface and gulped the night air. He swam to the shoreline and waded to the river bank. His body jerked with cold and he began to massage his arms with his hands. He stretched and shook his body like an animal. He opened his mouth and lifted his face to the sky and let the water run into his lips. It was time, he thought. It was working, all of it. Timed perfectly. He smiled broadly.
* * *
The doctor’s house was on a knoll at the end of town. It was a majestic frame house, painted white like a great shell. There were four brick columns across the front porch and the shrubbery that surrounded the home like a fur wrapping was trimmed to a sculptured perfection.
Michael stood in the driveway and studied the house. A thought amused him: The doctor had never invited him into his house. He wondered if the doctor had ever been married. No one had ever mentioned a wife. Probably not, he decided. The doctor was the kind of man who would take whores like a prescription medicine.
Time, Michael thought. It was time.
He broke into a run and bounded up the front steps and began beating heavily on the front door.
“Doc, wake up,” he yelled. “Wake up.”
He continued pounding on the door as he saw lights pop on in the house. He could hear the doctor stumbling through rooms.
The door opened suddenly and Garnett stood in the doorway. He had pulled a tattered robe around him and his face was red.
“Goddamnit, what’s the matter?” he snapped. “You’re tearing the door off its hinges.”
Then the doctor’s eyes focused on Michael, dripping with water, shaking uncontrollably.
“God Almighty, what happened?” he said in astonishment.
“The—the boy got away,” Michael stammered. “He—he shoved me in the river and run off.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“He went south, out of town.”
“God Almighty,” Garnett muttered. “Come in. Come in,” he added quickly. “Get out of the cold.”
“Doc, I—” Michael swallowed the words and kicked hard against the doorjamb.
“What’s the matter?”
“Doc, he—he got my knife.”
“Jesus Christ. Jesus.”