Out of Their Minds (9 page)

And that would be the way of it, I knew. That was the lure and the pull of a place like Pilot Knob—the comfortable feeling that you knew what other people were thinking and were able to join with them in a comfortable sort of talk, to sit around the spittle-scarred stove in the store and talk about when the northern flight would be coming through, or about how the fish had started to bite down in Proctor's Slough, or how the last rain had helped the corn or how the violent storm of the night before had put down all the oats and barley. There had been a chair around that stove, I remembered, for my father—a chair held at once by right and privilege. I wondered, as I walked through the lilac-haunted evening, if there'd be a chair for me.

“Here we are,” said Kathy, turning into a walk that led up to a large, white, two-story house, all but smothered in trees and shrubbery. I stopped and stared at it, trying to place it, to bring it out of memory.

“The Forsythe place,” she said. “The banker Forsythe place. I've boarded here ever since I started teaching here, three years ago.”

“But the banker …”

“Yes, he's gone. Dead a dozen years or more, I guess. But his widow still lives here. An old, old woman now. Half blind and gets around with a cane. Says she gets lonesome in the big house all alone. That's why she took me in.”

“You'll be leaving when?”

“In a day or two. I'm driving back and there is no big hurry. Not a thing to do all summer. Last year I went to summer school, but this year I decided to skip it.”

“I may see you again, then, before you leave?” Because for some reason which I didn't try to figure out, I knew that I wanted to see her again.

“Why, I don't know. I'll be busy …”

“Tomorrow night, perhaps. Have dinner with me, please. There must be someplace we can drive to. A good dinner and a drink.”

“That might be fun,” she said.

“I'll call for you,” I said. “Will seven be too early?”

“It'll be quite all right,” she said, “and thanks for seeing me home.”

It was a dismissal, but I hesitated. “Can you get in?” I asked, rather stupidly. “Have you got a key?”

She laughed at me. “I have a key, but there'll be no need to use it. She's waiting for me and watching us right now.”

“She?”

“Mrs. Forsythe, of course. Half blind as she is, she knows all that's going on and keeps close watch of me. No harm will ever come to me as long as she's around.”

I felt amused and a little angry and upset. I had forgotten, of course—forgotten that you could go nowhere, nor do anything, without someone watching you and knowing and then passing on the information to everyone in Pilot Knob.

“Tomorrow evening,” I said a little stiffly, conscious of those eyes watching through the window.

I stood and watched her go up the steps and across the vine-hung porch and before she reached the door, it came open and a flood of light spilled out. Kathy had been right. Mrs. Forsythe had been watching.

I turned about and went through the gate and down the street. The moon had risen over the great bluff to the east of the town, the Pilot Knob which had been a landmark used by pilots in the old steamboating days and which had given the town its name. The moonlight, shining through the massive elm trees which lined the street, made a checkered pattern on the sidewalk and the air was tinged with the smell of lilacs blooming in the yards.

When I came to the schoolhouse corner, I turned down the road that led to the river. Here the village dwindled out and the trees, climbing up the high slope of the bluff, grew thicker, muffling the moonlight.

I had walked only a few feet into this deeper shadow when they jumped me. I'll say this for them—it was a complete surprise. A hurtling body slammed into my legs and bowled me over and when I was going down something else lashed out and struck me in the ribs. I hit the ground and rolled to get out of the way and in the road I heard the sound of feet. I got my knees under me and was halfway up when I saw the shadowy outline of the man in front of me and sensed (not really seeing, just glimpsing a flash of motion) the foot hitting out at me. I twisted to one side and the foot caught me a glancing blow on the arms instead of in the chest, where it apparently had been aimed.

I knew that there were more than one of them, for I had heard the sound of a number of feet out there in the road, and I knew that if I stayed down, they all would rush in, kicking. So I made a great effort to get on my feet and made it, although my stance was shaky. I backed away in an effort to get my feet more squarely under me and I backed into something hard and knew, from the feel of the bark against my back, that I was against a tree.

There were three of them, I saw, poised out in the shadows, darker than the shadows.

The three, I wondered, who had stood against the wall, making fun of me because I was an outsider and fair game. And then lying in wait for me after I'd taken Kathy home.

“All right, you little bastards,” I said, “come on in and get it.”

They came, all three of them. If I'd had the sense to keep my fool mouth shut, they might not have done it, but at my taunt they did.

I got in just one good lick. I put my fist squarely into the face of the one in the center. The punch I threw was a good one and he was rushing me. The sound of the fist hitting his face was like the sound a sharp axe makes when it hits a frosty tree.

Then fists were hitting me from every side and I felt myself going over and as I fell, they left off with their fists, but they used their feet, I rolled, or tried to roll, up into a ball and protect myself as best I could. It went on for quite a while and I guess I was fairly dizzy, or maybe I passed out for a short while.

The next I remember I was sitting up and the road was empty. I was alone and I was one vast ache, with a few places where the pain had localized a bit. I got to my feet and staggered down the road, reeling a little at first from the dizziness, but finally getting so I could navigate on an even keel.

I reached the motel and got to my room and went into the bathroom, turning on the light. I was far from a pretty sight. The flesh around one eye was fairly well puffed out and beginning to darken. My face was smeared with blood from half a dozen cuts. Gingerly, I washed off the blood and inspected the cuts and they were not too bad. For several days, of course, I'd have a beauty of an eye.

I think it was my dignity that was hurt worse than the rest of me. Come back to the old home town a minor celebrity from being seen on television and heard on radio and then, one's first evening home, to be beaten up by a gang of rural punks because I had outbid them for the teacher's basket.

Christ, I thought, if this story ever got known in Washington or New York, I'd never hear the last of it.

I felt over my body and I had some bruises here and there, but nothing serious. I'd be sore for a day or two, but that would be the end of it. I'd have to put in a lot of fishing in the next few days, I told myself. Stay out on the river and out of the sight of as many people as I could manage until the swelling around the eye went down. Although, I knew, there was no hope of keeping the story from the good folks of Pilot Knob. And there was my date with Kathy—what would I do about that?

I went to the door and stepped outside to have a last look at the night. The moon now was high over the frowning bluff of Pilot Knob. A slight breeze stirred the trees and set up a furtive rustling of the leaves and suddenly I heard the sound, the far-off cry of many dogs, baying out their hearts.

I caught just a snatch of it, a piece of sound that had been caught and wafted by the wind so that I could hear it, but it now was gone. I stiffened to attention, listening, remembering what Linda Bailey had told me of the were-pack that ran in Lonesome Hollow.

The sound came again, the wild, insistent, heart-chilling clamor of a pack closing in upon its prey. Then the wind shifted once again and the sound was gone.

9

It had been a good day. Not so good for fishing, for I had only four bass on my stringer, but good for being outdoors on the river, good for the chance to renew acquaintance with the river world, for recapturing some of the nuances of a half-forgotten boyhood. Mrs. Streeter had packed a lunch for me and had asked about the black eye and I had been evasive, managing a feeble joke. Then I'd fled to the river and had stayed all day. Not fishing all the time, but exploring as well, poking the canoe into tangled backwaters and little twisting sloughs, looking over an island or two. I told myself that I was smelling out good fishing spots, but I was doing more than that. I was exploring this stretch of water I had dreamed about for years, seeking out the texture of it and the mood, trying to fit myself into this strange world of flowing water, of forested island, of barren and shifting sandbar, and the wooded shores.

Now, with the shadows returning, I headed for the motel, hugging the shore, fighting the current with awkward paddle strokes.

I was a couple of hundred yards from the dock when I heard someone call my name—a whisper that carried across the water.

I lifted my paddle and held it poised. Looking at the shore. The current began to carry the canoe slowly down the river.

“In here,” the whisper said and I caught a flash of color at the mouth of a tiny backwater that ran into the shore. I dipped my paddle and drove the canoe into the backwater and there, standing on a log that slanted down the bank with one end anchored in the water, was Kathy Adams. I urged the canoe over until it bumped against the log.

“Jump in,” I said. “I'll take you for a cruise.”

She stared at me. “That eye!” she said.

I grinned at her. “I ran into a bit of trouble.”

“I heard you were in a fight,” she said. “I think you are in trouble.”

“I'm usually in trouble,” I told her, “Of one sort or another.”

“I mean real trouble this time. They think you killed a man.”

“I can easily prove …”

“Justin Ballard,” she said. “They found his body just an hour or so ago. You fought with him last night.”

I nodded. “I think so. It was dark. There were three of them, but I never got a good look at them. The one I hit may have been this Ballard boy. I only hit one of them. After that the other two were all over me.”

“It was Justin Ballard you fought with last night,” she said. “And the other two. They were bragging around town this morning about it and Justin's face was all smashed up.”

“Well, then; that let's me out,” I said. “I've been on the river all day long …”

And then my words ran out. There was no way to prove I'd been on the river. I'd not seen a soul and probably had been seen by no one.

“I don't understand,” I said.

“They were around this morning, bragging about what they'd done to you and they said they were going to hunt you up and finish the job. Then someone found Justin dead and the other two have disappeared.”

“They don't think I killed all three?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I don't know what they think about it. The village is shook up. A bunch of them were going to come down here and get you, but George Duncan talked them out of it. He said they shouldn't try to take the law into their own hands. He pointed out there was no proof you'd done it, but the village thinks you did. George called the motel and found you were out fishing. He said for everyone to leave you alone and he called the sheriff. He figured it would be best to let the sheriff handle it.”

“But you?” I asked. “You came out to warn me …”

“You bought my basket and you walked me home and we made a date,” she said. “It sort of seemed to me I should be on your side. I didn't want them to catch you by surprise.”

“I'm afraid the date is canceled,” I said. “I am very sorry. I had been looking forward to it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I'll have to think about it.”

“You haven't got much time.”

“I know that. I suppose the only thing is to paddle in and sit and wait for them.”

“But they may not wait for the sheriff,” she warned.

I shook my head. “There's something in my unit that I have to get. There is something strange about all this.”

And there was something strange about it. There had been the rattlesnakes and now, less than twenty hours later, a farm boy dead. Or was it a farm boy dead? Was anybody dead?

“You can't come in now,” she told me. “You have to stay out fishing at least until the sheriff gets here. That's why I came to warn you. If there's something in your unit, I can get it for you.”

“No,” I said.

“There is a back door to all the units,” she said, “off the patio that faces on the river. Do you know if that back door is unlocked?”

“I suppose it is,” I said.

“I could slip in the back and get …”

“Kathy,” I said, “I can't …”

“You can't come in,” she said. “Not for a while, at least.”

“You think you could get into the unit?”

“I'm sure I could.”

“A big manila envelope,” I said. “With a Washington postmark and a thick bunch of papers inside. Just get the envelope and then clear out. Keep out of the entire business once you have that envelope.”

“This envelope?”

“Nothing incriminating,” I said. “Nothing illegal. Just something that must not be seen, information that no one should have.”

“It's important?”

“I think it's important, but I can't let you get involved. It wouldn't be …”

“I'm already involved,” she said. “I've warned you and I suppose that's not very law-abiding, but I couldn't let you just come stumbling into them. You get back on that river and stay there …”

“Kathy,” I said, “I'm going to tell you something that will shock you. If you're sure you want to take a chance with that envelope.”