The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery (11 page)

This was the first time I had been in the
hayloft since Ralph had died. We had played basketball here
together and built forts in the hay bales. One time I had watched
as Ralph used a toy archery set to repeatedly shoot at one of the
pigeons that liked to roost on the rope under the peak of the roof
and drop white feces bombs onto the basketball court. It had taken
him a while, but he had slain the pigeon. Uncle Jeff had plucked
the feathers and roasted it. The pigeon was scrawny, and the meat
was tough and not very tasty.

Ralph had loved basketball as much as I did.
I wondered whether we should be playing on his court. Maybe it
should be left, undisturbed, as a shrine to him. However, Tom had
no such compunctions. He grabbed a ball and started shooting
baskets. He was a slightly smaller version of me—not quite as tall,
not quite as quick. But give him a couple of years.

“Let’s have a game,” Tom said, as Kate and Ed
took turns shooting with Tom.

Archie had already disappeared up into the
hay bales. The only fair way for the rest of us to play two on two
was for Kate and me to take on Tom and Ed. That was all right with
me, since it was just for fun. Actually, Kate was almost as tall as
Ed and looked a lot more like a basketball player than he did. And
she could shoot. It was too bad Carter didn’t have a girls’
basketball team.

Tom chose to guard Kate, which left Ed on me.
Ed played a bowling ball defense, which could be effective if I
didn’t keep out of his way, as fouls were rarely called in the
barn. But I was taller and quicker than he was and didn’t have any
problem getting shots. So I concentrated on feeding the ball to
Kate and setting picks, so that she could drive by Tom for easy
layups. Having a girl score on him would keep him from getting too
smug. On defense, Kate was all knees and elbows and gave Tom a hard
time, while I played Ed loosely because he couldn’t shoot worth a
damn.

Kate and I were the first to twenty. It was
obvious that Ed didn’t want to play anymore, so Tom took Kate up to
the top of the haystack and showed her how to slide down the steep
slope. I looked at Ed to see if he wanted to join them.

“Let’s go up in the hay bales,” Ed said.

I thought I had outgrown making forts out of
hay bales, but if that’s what he wanted to do. I led the way up the
bales to where Archie was busily dragging around the
hundred-pounders with great effort, using a hay hook he had found,
and creating a hideaway for himself.

“How do they get the bales in here?” Ed
asked.

I had watched it being done. “The other end
of the hayloft opens up,” I said, pointing to the end by the road.
The bales are brought up on a conveyor belt. Once they’re up here,
there’s an apparatus like a large fork that can pick up multiple
bales at one time. The fork is transported by a rope and pulley
system to this end of the barn where the bales are dropped. Then
they have to be stacked by hand.”

I pointed out the end of the rope that came
down from the peak of the barn and rested on top of the bales in
coils. Ralph and I had swung out over the basketball court on this
rope, but I didn’t consider it a safe thing to do, particularly for
Ed, who didn’t seem to be all that coordinated. I didn’t want to be
responsible for him getting hurt, so I didn’t mention the
possibility.

“And the loose hay?”

“Is brought up on a conveyor belt and dumped.
Although carting loose hay around is less efficient than baling it.
Once that pile is gone, I don’t think they’ll create any more. Then
the sliding days of Tom and Kate will be over.”

I added the last because I saw that Tom and
Kate were already going down the slide in tandem, Tom behind with
his arms around Kate. Did I feel a tinge of jealousy? I had never
been able to work that fast with a girl.

“When will all this hay be gone?”

“Most of it will be used this winter to feed
the cows on the next farm. The owner has the use of the barn and
farms the land also. Why this sudden interest in farming? Are you
thinking of taking it up?”

Ed smiled. “Yeah, I’d make a great farmer. If
I could only figure out which end of the cow to milk. No, I was
just wondering, because when the hay is gone, you could set up a
full-sized basketball court with a basket at each end.”

“By that time, I’ll be getting ready for
college.” And presumably be back living with my parents.

“Are those things heavy?” Ed asked
Archie.

Archie, who was sweating as much as we
basketball players, gave the hook to Ed, who tried to lift a
bale.

“Whew, they weigh a ton,” he said.

Another reason why he wasn’t cut out to be a
farmer.

“You wouldn’t be able to make a fort that was
very deep,” he continued.

“Not without a lot of work,” I said, from the
superior position of someone who had stacked hay bales five-high on
a wagon pulled behind a baling machine.

“I guess it would be impossible to dig down
to the floor right here,” he said, walking over to the wall that
the bales abutted.

I followed him. “That’s about the safest
statement you’ve made all day.” Archie couldn’t hear us if we kept
our voices low. “I wanted to ask you a couple more questions about
Ralph.”

Ed looked wary, but he didn’t say
anything.

Might as well get to the point. “Do you think
that anybody was on the balcony with Ralph when he…fell?”

Ed took a step backward, as if trying to ward
off the question. “I never said that.”

“But do you think it’s possible?”

“The police and the school officials don’t
think so.”

“I want to know what you think.”

Ed remained silent. I tried again. “You said
he and Ruth were breaking up. Do you think Ruth was with him?”

Ed shook his head.

“Let me give you a scenario,” I said. “Ralph
and Ruth were sitting together at the assembly. When it ended, they
started a discussion about their breakup. They stayed behind and
kept talking as the others left. Maybe the discussion became
heated. They got agitated. Ralph did a handstand to let off steam.
Ruth, in a fit of rage, gave him a—”

“No.” Ed shouted. “It didn’t happen like
that. Ruth didn’t have anything to do with Ralph’s death.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because…because we had the same class after
the assembly. English with Miss Wiggenstein. Wigs. And Ruth
attended class that day.”

“You’re absolutely—”

“Positive.” Ed nodded vigorously. “Besides,
Ruth is square as a bear. There’s not a wild bone in her body. She
wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t socially acceptable. Like kill
somebody.”

CHAPTER 13

Uncle Jeff and Aunt Dorothy listened to the
news on a small, vacuum-tube radio in the morning. We ate breakfast
sitting on plywood benches at the plywood table Uncle Jeff had
built to fit into the breakfast nook. On Monday, the start of my
second week at Carter High, I wasn’t really listening when the name
Michael Doran caught my ear.

The announcer was saying that Mr. Doran had
been fired from his job as chief editorial writer at the Buffalo
Express, apparently because of his communist sympathies, although
the paper denied that was the reason. He went on to talk about Mr.
Doran’s testimony before the Senate Internal Security
Subcommittee.

I hadn’t thought about Sylvia and her father
since my father had told me what was going to happen. I had been
too wrapped up in thinking about Ralph and my theory regarding his
demise that Ed had shot down. And my father hadn’t made Mr. Doran’s
firing sound imminent. He must have been fired over the weekend.
Somehow, the news services got hold of it. Bad news travels
fast.

“The Dorans live in Carter,” Uncle Jeff said
while chipping with a small silver spoon at the shell of the
soft-boiled egg he ate every morning in a silver eggcup.

“Their daughter, Sylvia, goes to Carter
High,” I said.

“This is going to be hard on her. Communism
is the current panic. Some folks see communists under every
rug.”

“And in some cases, the communists are
there,” Aunt Dorothy said, taking toast out of the toaster. “I
don’t want someone who is anti-American writing editorials for my
newspaper.”

Uncle Jeff looked as if he were going to say
something, but he took a bite of egg instead. I excused myself and
went to get ready for school. I had better get there early and see
if Sylvia was okay.

***

I opened my locker to take out the books I
needed for my morning classes. A loose piece of paper fell out. I
picked it up off the floor and saw that it was folded into
quarters. I didn’t remember placing it in my locker, so I jammed in
into my pocket. I dumped the books in my cafeteria homeroom and
went up the stairs to Sylvia’s homeroom. Only a handful of students
were there. Sylvia wasn’t among them. Natalie and her quarterback
were standing by the windows. She was running her hands over the
front of his sweater, as if he were a girl and she were feeling him
up.

I walked toward them and asked, “Is Sylvia in
yet?”

They turned to look at me. Natalie screwed up
her beautiful face into a look of hatred and said, “If she’s smart,
she’ll never set foot in this school again.”

I stared at her, speechless.

When I couldn’t get anything out of my mouth,
Natalie said, “Did you hear what happened to her father?”

I nodded, still unable to speak.

“He got what he deserved,” she said. “Commie
bastard.”

“But Sylvia didn’t do anything,” I managed to
blurt out.

“We don’t want any communists around this
school.”

I looked at Joe. Although known even less
than Natalie for his intellectual brilliance, he was nodding in
agreement with her. I stumbled out of the room and went to stand by
the entrance to the school used by students who drove their own
cars. I waited in vain as the few students who drove came drifting
through the doorway, but no Sylvia. At two minutes before the bell,
I went back to the cafeteria.

As our homeroom teacher went through the
ritual of taking attendance and reading messages from Dr. Graves
and others, I happened to stick my hand in my pocket, and felt the
piece of paper I had placed there earlier. I pulled it out and
unfolded it. It was white bond paper and the following was typed on
it:

“
A nosy young fellow named Gary

Looked into some things that were scary.

The death of his coz

Is the story that was,

But if he persists he’ll be very

S O R R Y”

I read it again, not believing what I was
seeing. The bell rang for first period. I slid it back into my
pocket and headed for class, wondering if this was some kind of a
joke. And then I forgot about it as something else captured my
attention.

The school was buzzing about Sylvia and her
father. And the buzz seemed to be overwhelmingly negative. How
could she go from being the most popular girl in the school to this
in one day? I wanted to yell at these people and tell them how
stupid they were to be led around blindly by a junior senator from
Wisconsin and his gang of thugs.

But I was too cowardly. I kept quiet and
wondered what I could do to help her. I didn’t have any classes
with her, but we did have the same lunch. By the time I went
through the lunch line, I was boiling inside. When I gave my
twenty-seven cents to Dolores, my hand accidentally brushed against
the bulge in her sweater, fulfilling my fantasy. Or was it
accidental? We made eye contact for a moment, and then she went on
to the next person in line. For some reason, this made me feel a
little better.

I walked into the cafeteria as the jukebox
played “Kiss of Fire,” sung by Georgia Gibbs, who was being burned
and turned into ashes by her lover’s kiss. A quick glance around
convinced me that Sylvia wasn’t here. Her blond hair made her easy
to spot. I saw Barney the brain sitting by himself and slid onto
the bench across the table from him, facing the lunch line, so that
if Sylvia did show up, I could spot her. We greeted each other,
briefly, and then were silent for a few minutes while we shoveled
the cafeteria slop into our mouths.

Near us, at the same table, several boys were
talking about communists in general and Sylvia in particular. It
wasn’t complimentary.

I glanced at Barney. He looked at them in
disgust and said, “Animals.”

I figured he knew more about what was going
on than I did. I said, “What’s happening here?”

“It’s the mob effect. When there’s danger,
it’s safer to be a faceless face in the crowd. Don’t raise your
head or it may be cut off.”

“So everyone’s scared?”

“Sure. Look what happened to Mr. Doran.”

“Do you think he deserved it?”

“I read the article in this morning’s
paper.”

That was more than I had done. “They put in
an article about how they fired him?”

“The article didn’t even mention that. It
just talked about his testimony. He testified that when he was in
college, he was idealistic, and he joined this communist group,
because he thought it was the answer to the world’s problems. When
he found out what Communism was really all about—enslaving people
and killing them, he quit. They asked him to implicate others who
they claim were in the same group. He took the fifth. I think
that’s what got him fired.”

“Because he wouldn’t incriminate his
friends.”

“Right. It looks to me as if those guys in
Washington are trampling on the constitution.”

“And his own newspaper is, too.”

“Newspapers rave about the importance of free
speech. I’d like to see how they explain what they did to Mr.
Doran.”

***

Sylvia lived on Main Street in the village of
Carter, an unincorporated center of population within the town of
Carter. The high school was a couple of miles west of there, also
on Main Street. I drove past Sylvia’s house each day on the way to
and from school. I had never actually looked at her house before,
and in fact, I didn’t know exactly which one it was, so I got the
number out of a telephone book before I left the school that
afternoon.