The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery (12 page)

I knew the house was located on the slant
where Main Street came down a hill into the village center. I
coasted halfway down the hill and stopped the car at the edge of
the road. Sylvia’s house was across the street, one of several that
sat on the hillside under large maple trees whose broad leaves were
in the process of dressing for autumn.

By checking numbers, I spotted the house—a
two-story, brown, clapboard affair that must have been forty or
fifty years old. Typical small-town America. Still, it wasn’t as
old as the farmhouse, which had been built in the 1870s.

I sat in the car for a while, staring at the
house. What was I doing here? Shouldn’t I stay out of this? Let
Sylvia fight her own battles. Yeah, but she had been nice to me and
she was being treated unfairly by the students. I wouldn’t get many
points for being her friend. But what did I care? I had already
decided that I wasn’t here to win any popularity contests.

A couple of times I almost started the car
and drove away. But I couldn’t do it. Finally, I took the keys out
of the ignition, opened the door, and got out. I waited for a break
in the light afternoon traffic and ran across the street. I went up
several steps to the front door of the house and stopped. My doubts
returned. What was I going to say to Sylvia?

I didn’t know any words that seemed adequate.
What could I do to help her? This miscarriage of justice was much
bigger than I was. And then I remembered that my father had told me
to stay away from Sylvia. By seeing her, I would be disobeying a
direct order. And I was usually obedient to my parents, in spite of
the trouble I had caused.

But when I tried to walk away, I found again
that I couldn’t. I couldn’t ring the doorbell, and I couldn’t
leave. I stood there for what seemed like several minutes,
nervously transferring my weight from one foot to the other, until
I started to feel conspicuous. In spite of the fact that nobody had
gone by on the sidewalk, and the people in cars probably didn’t
even see me, or if they did, it was only for a split second.

Well, Blanchard, shit or get off the pot. My
finger lunged at the doorbell, and I heard it ring inside. Now I
really wanted to run, but it was too late. There was nowhere to
hide. The door had a translucent window on it, and I could make out
an image through it as somebody approached. Somebody who looked
bigger than Sylvia.

I wasn’t prepared for this. The door opened,
and a man—obviously Mr. Doran—appeared. I should have known he’d be
here. After all, he didn’t have a job to go to. He was thin—almost
gaunt—but not tall. His light hair was sparse, and he had a haunted
expression on his face—or at least it seemed like that to me.

An involuntary shudder went through me, as if
I were face-to-face with a criminal. That reaction angered me. I
got a grip on myself and said, “I need to talk to Sylvia.” I
immediately realized how childish this was—making a demand before
even introducing myself. I was about to say something more when Mr.
Doran spoke.

“Sylvia doesn’t want to talk to anybody.”

He said it in a firm but not harsh voice and
immediately started closing the door.

“Wait,” I said in desperation. “I just want
to tell you how sorry I am about what happened. What you did was
very courageous.”

Mr. Doran hesitated with the door half shut
and looked at me. “Thank-you,” he said, softly.

“My name is Gary Blanchard, and I just moved
to Carter, but Sylvia has been kind to me,” I said, speaking
quickly.

“Gary Blanchard? Sylvia mentioned you. She
said you helped her and one of her friends. Natalie, I
believe.”

At the mention of Natalie’s name, the sour
taste came into my mouth—the taste you get just before you
vomit.

“Just a minute,” Mr. Doran said.

He left the door ajar and walked away. I
heard him calling Sylvia’s name. Then I could make out a few words
of his end of a conversation that he was carrying on in a subdued
shout. It sounded as if he were arguing. Then I heard his footsteps
returning.

He opened the door wide and said, “Sylvia is
upstairs in her room. Go on up.”

I thanked him and headed for the staircase
down the hall that made a right-angle turn partway up. A sturdy
wooden banister finished in dark wood protected the side away from
the wall, which was wallpapered in a flower pattern. It dawned on
me that I was being granted a rare privilege. It wasn’t often that
parents let teenagers of the opposite sex be alone together in a
bedroom.

As I stepped on the top landing, Sylvia came
out of a room at the front of the house. She was dressed in pedal
pushers and an old white shirt, not tucked in, that was too big for
her. It was the first time I had seen her not wearing a skirt or
dress. Her eyes were red, and her short hair was not brushed.

We said tentative hi’s, and she nodded over
her shoulder toward the room behind her. I followed her inside, and
she shut the door.

“Sorry it’s such a mess,” she said. “I wasn’t
expecting a visitor.”

My first impulse was to tell her that this
was nothing compared to my room, but I was actually a fairly neat
person and had been even neater since I had been a guest. There
were a few clothes and books scattered around, but at least her bed
was made. There was a picture of her and a boy in a cardboard frame
on the dresser. A book was open, upside down, on the bed. Several
stuffed animals inhabited a corner. I smiled and shrugged.

“Sit here,” she said, scooping some
undergarments off a wooden rocking chair and stuffing them into a
dresser drawer in such a way that I didn’t get a good look at
them.

I sat down in the chair. Sylvia more or less
fell onto the bed and bounced.

She said, “I saw you cross the street.”

Her window faced the street and was low
enough so that she could see across it while sitting on the bed.
White lace curtains prevented outsiders from looking in.

“I wanted to make sure you were all
right.”

“At first, I didn’t want to see you. I hoped
you’d go. Then, when you didn’t ring the bell right away, I was
afraid that you
would
go. I’m glad you’re here.”

“Thanks.” There was an awkward pause. “So,
are you okay?”

“Better than Dad. He’s taking it hard. It’s a
good thing I was home today to be with him. Mother’s a nurse, and
she just started a new job today.”

“Are you going back to school tomorrow?”

Sylvia looked out the window for a few
seconds. “My mother needs a car for work, so I have to start taking
the bus again. And do you know what’s funny? I can’t picture myself
getting on the bus. I’m one of the last ones—it’s standing room
only when I get on. All those kids will be staring at me—and
talking. They are talking about me, aren’t they?”

I wasn’t going to lie to her. I said,
“They’re fools—scared fools.”

“But they’re my friends. And have been—in
some cases for twelve years.”

“That doesn’t give them the right to talk
about you behind your back.”

“That’s what people do, Gary. That’s human
nature.”

“That doesn’t make it right. I’ll tell you
what I’ll do. I’ll pick you up and drive you to school. You’re on
my way, anyway.”

“You can’t do that. Think about your
reputation if you’re seen with the daughter of a communist.”

“My reputation?” I laughed. “Let me tell you
about my reputation. Let me tell you the reason I got kicked out of
Atherton.”

“You got kicked out?” Sylvia was wide-eyed.
“I thought…”

“Yes. I’m tired of keeping it a secret. I was
editor of the Atherton school paper last year and this year. It’s a
good job, and I enjoyed it. I like to write. But I wanted to do
something more—I wanted to leave high school with a bang. So I
wrote a high school version of
Confidential Magazine
.”

“That’s the magazine that tells all the dirt
about actors and actresses—like who’s sleeping with whom.”

“Right. I had access to the duplicating
equipment at the school. So I typed it up on stencils, ran off
copies, and distributed them throughout the school early in the
morning, before the teachers got there.”

Sylvia gasped. “What happened?”

“All hell broke loose. All the copies were
confiscated. A boy who was caught with a copy later received thirty
days’ detention.”

“My God.”

“Although I didn’t put my name on the paper,
there was never any doubt about who did it. When the principal saw
me in the hall, he almost casually told me to drop by his office at
my convenience. When I went to his office, he wasn’t so calm, and
he still had a copy. For example, he pointed to a place where I
referred to sports fans as ‘athletic supporters,’ and he said, his
voice shaking, ‘Do you know what that means?’”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Uh uh. And he didn’t like a piece I wrote
making fun of some of the school rules, which he took as criticism
of himself. For my punishment, I was kicked out of the National
Honor Society and given thirty days’ detention.”

“Didn’t the students support you?”

“Some did. The president of the student
council—your counterpart—told me he would have helped me put the
paper together if I had asked him. That would have gone over like a
lead balloon.”

“This sounds like a first amendment issue.
Freedom of the press and all that”

“Maybe, except for one thing.”

“So you weren’t expelled right away.”

“That’s what I’m coming to. You see, I
libeled a sweet, innocent freshman girl.”

“Libeled?”

“Yeah. I said false things about her, like
that she was a call girl.”

Sylvia tried to suppress a smile. “You were
really naughty.”

“I was. And I regret it now. Anyway, her
mother threatened to sue me and the school, and for all I know,
President Eisenhower if I remained at Atherton, even though all
copies of the magazine had been destroyed by that time. I took a
quick course in what constitutes libel and found out that it has to
be malicious. I wasn’t trying to be malicious—it was all in fun—so
I might have won. But my parents and the principal weren’t willing
to find out.”

Sylvia jerked her thumb. “So you were
gone.”

“Right. But here I am. Ready to transport you
to school, perhaps not in the style in which you’d like to become
accustomed, but at least the radio and heater work.”

I suddenly remembered the piece of paper with
the limerick on it. I felt a desire to show it to Sylvia. I pulled
it out of my pocket and handed it to her without explanation. I
waited for her reaction.

She read it, quickly. “Did you write
this?”

“No, I found it in my locker this
morning.”

“Who wrote it?”

“Somebody who writes bad limericks.”

“How many people at school know that you
write limericks?”

“You and Natalie.”

“I couldn’t write a limerick if you held me
over a pit of boiling oil. Neither could Natalie.”

“Wait. Dr. Graves knows. The first day I was
here he mentioned it. My father or my aunt must have told him. I
wrote a limerick for him.”

“Do you really think Dr. Graves wrote
this?”

“Who else could have done it? Mr. White must
have told him about our conversation.”

“Mr. White, as in the janitor who found
Ralph?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Graves used to be an English teacher.
This looks like a threat to me. Gary, he doesn’t want you nosing
around into how Ralph died.”

“But why not?”

“Because if Ralph has been murdered, that
would be bad publicity for the school. Or, in the worst case—”

“Dr. Graves murdered Ralph, himself.”

We looked at each other for a while, not
talking. Finally, I said, “What should I do?”

“Take it to the police.”

I shook my head. “I can’t. Everything we’ve
said just now is pure speculation. If I start accusing Dr. Graves,
what is for sure is that he would kick me out of Carter faster than
you can walk.”

“There might be fingerprints…”

“I can’t take a chance. Whether or not his
prints are on here, the result is the same for me. I’m out.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Hang on to this. Place it in a folder and
not touch it, anymore, in case there are prints on it. See if I can
prove that Dr. Graves wrote it.”

“And watch your ass.”

“And watch my ass.”

Sylvia stood up from the bed and said, “I
need a hug.”

CHAPTER 14

I drove Sylvia to school early, before the
crowds arrived, and walked her to her homeroom. Nobody was there.
She said she had work to do to make up for yesterday and that it
was all right for me to leave her by herself. I think she was still
trying to protect my reputation, what was left of it. She said she
could handle Natalie and the others.

The route to my homeroom in the cafeteria
went past the administration area. As I walked by, I glanced
through the glass door to see if anybody was in there. The place
looked empty. I couldn’t see into the office of Dr. Graves from the
corridor. I tentatively tried the door. It was locked. What I
wanted to do was to type something on the typewriter in his office
and compare it to the type of the limerick. I would have to try
another time.

As I turned away from the door, I saw Carol,
the administrative secretary, coming down the corridor. She smiled
at me and said, “Hi, Gary. Are you looking for Dr. Graves?”

I smiled back. “Hi, Carol. Yes. But I can
come back later.”

“He won’t be in this morning. He’s got a
meeting offsite.” She took a key out of her purse, unlocked the
door, and opened it. “Would you like to leave him a message?”

I had an idea. “It’s a little bit
complicated. May I type it on his typewriter?”

If she thought that was an odd request, she
didn’t show it. I was glad I had been nice to her before.