Orrie's Story (23 page)

Ellie had to steel herself to go back into the house. Now that Orrie was not at hand to take care of, she had no distraction. But it was necessary for her to demonstrate to a skeptical Police Chief Gross and the detective how she shot down her mother and second cousin, for that was what Erie had been legally.

The chief had brought along the unloaded shotgun. She had already, at the police station, revealed her ignorance of how the shells were inserted into it. But she insisted that it had been already fully loaded when she found it in the attic and brought it down to her room to use should Erie make any more attempts to molest her.

“That's why you shot him?” the detective asked, smoking another of the cigarettes he had been sucking on since he showed up that morning. She could taste smoke in her throat.

“How many times do I have to tell you I shot them both for murdering my father?” Ellie cried. “I'm just explaining why I happened to have a weapon in my possession.” She tried to use as much official jargon as possible, but thus far had not succeeded in getting the superior smirk off the detective's ugly face.

Chief Gross was more sober, but gave her no reason to believe he found her account credible. “Now, Ellie,” he said patiently, “you know you never had any evidence your dad's death was anything but an accident. And you're fibbing about what happened to your mother and Erie. You're trying to cover up for your brother, aren't you?”

“I keep telling you that Orrie wasn't even there.”

“And
I
keep telling
you
that the neighbors saw him looking out the window not long before the shootings.”

“I don't mean he wasn't in the house at all. But he was upstairs in the attic.”

She had demanded to be taken to the scene so she could reenact the events of the day before. But there was another reason why she wanted to get back to the house, which the police had locked up: in the haste to save Orrie, which after all had to take precedence, she had left her father's ashes behind.

“Okay, little lady,” said the smoking detective, who was keeping his gray hat on indoors. He handed Ellie the shotgun, which seemed even heavier here than it had at the station. “Show us what you say you did.”

With an effort she hoisted the weapon waist-high and felt for the trigger. There turned out to be two triggers, and she got her finger wedged between them, but finally managed to get it free and pull one, which produced a click.

“You just fired the second barrel first,” said the grinning detective.

“Honey,” said Chief Gross, who had kept his cop's hat on too, “your story isn't holding up.”

She lowered the heavy gun to the carpet. Just beyond the muzzle began one of the extensive dark patches of blood, not all of which looked quite dry. “What difference would it make that one side fired before the other?” she asked.

“See, what you don't know,” said the chief, “is that one barrel is what they call more choked than the other, meaning narrower at the end, so the cluster of shot will travel further before falling apart. That's because when you're shooting at a flying duck or whatnot, the animal is further from you by the time you fire the second barrel. The shot's got greater concentrated force, so it travels further all bunched together. Take my word for it your mother was shot second, with the second barrel.”

The subject could not have been more painful. One of the few things she had shared with her mother was a detestation of the firearms that were so attractive to the male sex, with the exception of a few special people like her brother. That it was he who had done this killing was absurd, perverse, unbearable by any standard: that fact must be concealed forever. She simply had to do a better job with her imposture.

“What I do today doesn't have to be exactly what I did yesterday. I was all upset then, all worked up. I don't remember exactly which trigger I pulled. They were laughing about killing my dad, you see, and I couldn't stand to hear it. So I just ran up to get the gun, and came back down and shot it at them.”

“You didn't aim?” asked the detective, with the usual implicit derision.

“I just wanted them to stop!”

“Your mom was standing where?” the chief asked, and now finally he took off his cap. Ellie told him. “And E.G., where was he?”

She pointed with her left hand.

“Honey,” said the chief, “give me the gun.” He tucked it under his heavy arm as if it were weightless. “Let's call an end to this foolishness. Not only didn't you shoot them. You probably didn't even see them shot. Now just tell us where your brother is. We're not going to hurt him.”

“Please,” Ellie said, “can I go up to my room and get my father's ashes? You can come along if you want: I'm not going to try to escape.”

“Go ahead,” the chief said. “We trust you.”

She came down with the cardboard box. “All right, I'm ready to go to jail.”

The detective snorted. Chief Gross said, “Go back up and pack a suitcase with the clothes you'll need for the next couple of days. You'll be staying on at my house. Later on, the court will decide where you'll live.”

“I want to stay at the Terwillens',” she said. “They invited us.”

The chief returned the cap to his graying head. “But wasn't it nice last night, bunking in with my daughters? I know they'll be glad to have you stay on for a while longer.”

The Gross girls had already gone to sleep in their twin beds by the time she was led to the empty cot in the corner of their room, and in the morning she had got out of there before they were up and waited on the screened-in porch.

She stubbornly repeated her previous statement.

“You sure it would be okay with Bobby and May?”

“You just ask them.”

The Terwillen house was altogether different from either that Ellie had lived in, with a well-trimmed lawn in front and neat flower beds on both sides. Mrs. Terwillen, wearing a frilly green-and-buff apron, asked the chief to stay for coffee and doughnuts, but he declined with thanks and the excuse that he had to watch his weight.

Ellie too, having no appetite, turned down the version of the refreshments offered her, which included chocolate milk. Mrs. Terwillen led her to a room on the second floor. Everything in it, bedspread, little round rugs, and curtains, was flowered, and on the bed, its head on the fluffed-up pillow, was a flaxen-haired doll dressed in a long, old-fashioned dress made of flowered fabric.

Ellie knew from the sudden hush that came over Mrs. Terwillen that the room was supposed to evoke an expression of surprised pleasure and therefore she did what she could, so as not to be rude to this kind person.

“This is as nice as can be.”

Mrs. Terwillen touched her shouldercap lightly. “It's always been waiting for someone just like you.”

At home, finding a trip to the attic unbearable at present, Ellie had not been able to find anything in which to transport her clothing but an old paper shopping bag from Gena's end of the closet, which turned out to be full of dirty underwear, after four years. She put the bag on the bed. Mrs. Terwillen immediately removed it to the flowered chair in the corner.

Orrie could not recognize his surroundings. He lay fully dressed, including shoes, on a narrow bed of which the unoccupied twin was less than three feet away. Sunlight came through a dusty screen onto a rag rug between the beds. The door to the room was only a step or two beyond his feet. On one wall hung a calendar: the picture above the name of the funeral parlor it advertised showed a trio of kittens. A narrow waist-high chest of drawers stood so close to the entrance that the door probably could not be opened flat, and on top of it was a variegated-blue enameled bowl with a matching pitcher inside it. A bar of soap, worn away to half its normal thickness, lay melting in a wet saucer. No towel was visible.

He swung his feet to the floor, which was bare wood except for the tiny rug. For a moment he had no memory of anything though he had the sense of sleeping for some time…but without rest. It was as if he had been unconscious through not his own doing but rather that of an assailant who had left him for dead.

The door opened and Paul entered, carrying a paper bag. “You're awake finally,” he said, frowning at Orrie. “I was getting worried.” He looked impatiently around the tiny room and could find no place to put the bag but, pushing the bowl-and-pitcher back, on top of the dresser. “What a dump! It was the only thing I could find the other night. It got late, and we were out in the middle of nowhere. Then you slept all the next day, and I didn't want to wake you up. This morning I was getting worried.” He opened the bag. “I got coffee and doughnuts from a beanery in a little town a couple of miles away. I wanted something more substantial, seeing you haven't had any food for all this while, but they wouldn't make orders of bacon and eggs to go because they would have had to put them on their regular dishes, not having any paper plates, and even though I offered to buy the dishes, they wouldn't do it. It was just that cheap restaurant china. Damn hicks! Who would have thought things could be so backward only sixty-some miles from the city, wherever we are exactly. I got lost. I don't have a map.”

“I slept a whole day?”

“Yeah.” Paul looked at the bowl-and-pitcher. “We don't even have running water. Got to go to the office for hot water, which is in this guy's kitchen.” He reached into the bulging pocket of his jacket. “I got a toothbrush and a razor for you. There's an old-fashioned general store in town.” He deposited those items next to the paper bag. “The toilet here's an outhouse in the back yard. And they've got the nerve to call it a tourist court.”

“Why are you doing this?” Orrie asked.

Paul flexed his shoulders and tried to make light of it. “It's exciting being a fugitive from justice.” He smiled sadly. “I hope this razor's okay with you.”

“I shave maybe twice a week,” Orrie said. “I'm not really a grownup.” He immediately regretted making the statement. He asked, desperately, “Do you think I'm a coward for running away?”

Paul did him the honor of not disparaging the question. “I'm doing what Ellie wants me to do.”

“Shows you what a state I'm in,” Orrie said. “My little sister is running things.”

“She's a fine person,” Paul said quickly.

“I always tried to look after her. My dad was never around. I wasn't that close to my older sister. Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I never liked her that much. I never liked my father, either. Well, ‘like' is probably the wrong word for what you feel about close relatives: it's not as it is with other people. Whatever your likes or dislikes, you've got the connection, you can't get away from it.” For the moment he was obsessed with stating the obvious. Perhaps by this means a temporary salvation could be found. It was imperative to gain time.

“Don't feel you've got to explain everything to me,” said Paul.

“I think I'm trying to figure it out for myself. This might sound crazy, but right now I actually believe I could go back there and find everything back to normal. They”—he had momentarily forgotten their names—“all of them would be there, safe and sound and on good terms. You see, that's what did it: him hitting her, beating her up, but I could have jumped on him, you know, or just hit him with the gun, or just yelled something, but I didn't, I didn't utter a sound. For that matter, why'd I bring the gun along at all? I just heard screaming. It could have been anything at all, a fire or something, anything.” He frowned, in genuine bafflement. “I grabbed the gun and even loaded it, I guess while running downstairs. I wouldn't have thought I knew how to load a gun, just saw my dad do it many years ago. I hated hunting: I couldn't stand shooting living things.”

“How about drinking some of this coffee anyway?” Paul asked. “Before it gets any colder.” He poked in the bag. “I had one of these sinkers: I can't honestly recommend them.”

“Listen,” Orrie said, “I'm sorry about this whole thing. You shouldn't have been dragged into it. Now, Ellie”—he realized he was at the threshold of incoherence and forced himself to bring order to what he said. “My sister Ellie—I think you saw her the other day, she's just a kid in high school…wait a minute, yeah, we mentioned her earlier, didn't we?”

Paul put his hand into the bag. “These containers feel ice-cold already.”

“I wouldn't pay any attention to what Ellie says, if I were you: I mean, in case she's been talking about her theories. What I did…it wasn't because of anything she might have said. You know, that's the only time I ever saw him touch my mother? I mean it, never in my whole life. I never saw them even shake hands…. For that matter, I never saw him touch Gena, either, and he's supposed to have messed around with her, according to Ellie. But I tell you, I could have predicted that kind of thing would happen sooner or later with Gena, I mean, the way she went around.” He looked solemnly at Paul. “I oughtn't be saying these things, but look where my family is now. All the grownups are dead.” It occurred to him that grief was the most appropriate emotion, but he was still too confused to feel anything identifiable.

Paul put the bag down. He said, “Ellie is claiming she did it.”

“What?”

“She went and turned herself in to the police. I just talked to Mr. Terwillen on the phone.” Paul punched his fists together. “I promised her I'd hide you out, but I didn't know she'd do this. He said they don't believe her, but still.”

Orrie was on his feet. “My little sister! What kind of man am I? I killed my mother, and I'm going back to pay for it.”

Chief Gross was alone in the police station, which was too small to have even a one-cell jail. In the rare event he had to lock someone up, the chief used the county facilities, twelve miles away. Orrie came in just before noon.