The Murderer Vine (21 page)

Instead I went downstairs, got into the car, and leaned over to open the glove compartment. My head began to throb again and as I fished for the county map, I began to sense that something was unusual. I got the map, closed the compartment, put the palm of one hand on my forehead, and pressed hard. I guess I was trying to compress the headache into a smaller space. It did feel a little better. I took my hand away and then became aware of a little nagging tension at the base of my spine.

It took my white-mule-damaged brain a few seconds to realize the reason for that. The car was parked with both right-hand wheels on the curb. Either Ray or Joe Sam or Vince had done it. I began to remember that I had been dragged upstairs by two of them. I got out of the car. There were no dents or scratches. I got in again, spread the map over the steering wheel, and found Saw Mill Pond Road. It was fifteen miles north of Okalusa. It was a good county map; it showed property lines and owners.

Ryerson’s farm was only a quarter of a mile from an unpaved road that ran westward for eight miles. This road ended at the main highway from Memphis to Jackson. The Ryerson farm would be just about thirty miles north of Alexandria — thirty miles away from where the three boys had last been seen. It would be natural for searchers to prowl through the swamp near Alexandria. But all they would turn up would be frogs and water moccasins. Who would ever think of a remote farm thirty miles away?

I decided to account for my appearance. First I stopped at a roadside stand two miles away, drank a Coke, and taped the old black woman who ran the stand. Near the farm I found a utility lineman on a pole. He came down and gave me ten minutes.

Then I drove up to Ryerson’s place.

His house was halfway up a long, gentle slope. At the bottom lay a pond. A few plump Herefords were standing in the mud up to their hocks, drinking. They lifted their dripping muzzles to stare at my car.

Back of the house, and sweeping around to its left and down to the road, was a thick stand of long-leaf yellow pine. Halfway up from the road to the house was the watermelon patch. It was about a hundred and fifty feet down the slope from the house. Even from the road at the bottom I could see the big green cylinders of the melons.

I drove up the road to the house. A small gray-haired man with gold-rimmed glasses and worn blue denim coveralls stepped onto the porch.

“Good morning,” I said.

He stared at me coldly.

I was surprised. Up to now I had received only courtesy from Southerners. True, when they discovered my real purpose I expected that to end, but in the meantime — I shrugged.

“I’ve been taping people of Milliken County,” I began, but he cut me off.

“Saw you talkin’ to the ’lectric feller on the road. Talkin’ in that machine you got there on the back seat.”

“Yes, sir. I wonder if you’d mind talking into it. I pay five doll — ”

“Where you from, mister?”

“Canada, sir.”

“Lived onct up t’ Chicago. I hates No’th’ners. Runnin’ this way, runnin’ thataway like cow-critters. Don’t have sense enough to walk slow.”

“Well, Mr. Ryerson, I’m a Canadian. And I walk slow.”

He looked at me impassively. Then he grunted.

“Won’t talk. Talkin’s a waste.”

“All right, I hear you have good watermelons. How about selling me one?”

“I never turned away one o’ God’s images yet, even if they’s Yankees. An’ some on ’em is dreffel pore likenesses. You follow me, now.”

He stepped off the porch. I followed.

But he didn’t head for the patch. He walked toward the barn.

“How’d you hear about my melons, mister?”

“I ate one last night. The sheriff told me you grew it. I said to myself, I better get one all for myself and my wife, and when I was taping down the road, I suddenly remembered your place was here.”

“You the feller from Canada who married a Georgia girl?”

I admitted it. He seemed to soften. “I’ll git you a good one. Been aimin’ to sell these in town, an’ I’ll give you first crack.”

“Won’t we get fresher ones in the patch?”

“No, mister. They ain’t puffect yet. An’ you wouldn’t like to go in theah anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Theah’s plenty dry-lan’ moccasins come out of the piny woods an’ lie around under the vines waitin’ for frogs.”

I felt the back of my neck tingle.

“What’s a dry-land moccasin?”

“You fellers up No’th call ’em copperheads. Now you take a look at these here beauties.”

He slid open the door of the barn. He had backed in an old flatbed truck. He had spread straw over the bottom and set melons on it.

They were beautiful melons, if all I wanted out of life was a beautiful melon. I had thought he’d take me up to the melon patch, where I could amble around, rejecting this one and that one, finding another one somewhere else in the patch that I preferred, rejecting that one upon close examination, and finally picking one after I’d gone over the whole patch.

By then I’d have seen where there was any seriously disturbed ground.

It was a good plan, but that wasn’t the way it was working out. There was nothing wrong with the melons on the flatbed. If I were still to insist upon looking through the patch, he would get thoughtful. He would know damn well what he had planted up there besides melons.

I might have tried it and gotten away with it if I had built up a reputation for being an eccentric. If I had pushed the absent-minded professor bit, always demanding perfection from the gas-station attendant, demanding super-cleanliness from the landlord, super-service from the shops — I might have gotten away with the search for the super-melon.

But I had carefully built up a picture of myself as a real sweet, reasonable kind of guy. No. I would have to work out something else.

He cut out a hunk from one end of a melon and gave it to me. I ate it. It was superb. I bought the melon, paid him sixty cents, shook hands, and drove away. There was one consolation. There were no dogs around the house.

I drove home slowly working out my next step in the campaign. By the time I turned into my block, I had solved everything. I came upstairs whistling. Kirby was out shopping. I cut a big chunk off one end and put the melon in the refrigerator. It was still so big I had to cut it in three pieces to be able to slide them in.

I sat down and cut my end into one-inch-thick slices and began eating. They were warm and still oozing with the sweetest pink juice I had ever had in a melon. I spat out the black seeds into an empty plate. I spread out the
Okalusa Star-Clarion
and bypassed the editorials denouncing the invasion of the state by a gang of Northern long-haired radicals who had come down under the guise of bringing freedom to Mississippi Negroes.

At the bottom of the editorial column was a little box listing the moon phases, sunrise and sunset, moonrise and moonset. I studied them all carefully. I needed the information for some early morning navigation.

Sunrise was at 5:47. I put the paper down, ate some more melon, and studied some more. Moonrise was at 8:11. Moonset, 11:47.

Kirby came home twenty minutes later. I cut her a slice of melon and put the groceries away as she ate.

“Pack a small overnight bag for yourself,” I told her. “We’re leaving tonight for Jackson. You better go and tell the Garrisons you’re going to take in the sights in Jackson while I get my tape recorder fixed in New York.”

She went downstairs. I packed my big leather camera bag with the Leica, the special lenses, the tripod, and a bellows extension. The Leica was loaded with light-sensitive film. I packed a small bag with a couple of shirts, underwear, and socks. Kirby came upstairs and said, “All right, boss. What’s next?”

“Next is we’ll be leaving about nine tonight. I’m going to be up all night and so will you. We’d better catch a couple hours’ sleep.”

I took a shower, put on my pajamas, and lay down on the couch to try and grab three hours. I heard the water drumming for her shower, put the image of Kirby soaping herself out of my mind, set the alarm for 8:45
P.M.
, and fell asleep.

The alarm went off. I shut it off and padded into the bathroom for a quick shave. Kirby had heard the alarm, turned off the light in the bedroom, and had just as promptly fallen asleep. I kicked her mattress as I went by. She opened her eyes, smiled, and swung her long legs over the side of the bed.

She stretched her arms as far as they could reach, and then yawned. I was shaving and the door was open. The pale blue cotton of her nightgown was stretched tight across her nipples. She opened her eyes and looked at me.

She said very softly. “Well?”

I said curtly, “We won’t have time for coffee. We’ll eat on the road.” Then I closed the door and cut my chin shaving.

We went downstairs quietly. I carried the Kim. The Garrisons heard us coming down and came on the porch to wish us a nice vacation down in Jackson.

“Don’t know it they c’n fix that tape recorder in Jackson,” Garrison said.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I have a feeling I might have to take it to New York. At any rate, Mrs. Wilson can sightsee down there if I have to go to New York.”

They told her what to see in Jackson. A good conversation. He would remember it.

I stopped at a roadside restaurant south of Okalusa. We sat in a quiet corner booth. We ate country ham and black-eyed peas and grits. The ham was thick and succulent and had been fed on fallen nuts. It was nine-thirty. Over two hours to moonset.

Kirby told me of an uncle of hers who raised mash-fed hogs. He was a bachelor who collected empty thread spools and slipped them over nails hammered into a wall of his house. When he had filled the whole wall with spools over the nails, he set an old-fashioned sewing machine in front of them. The sewing machine was operated by a foot treadle.

He ran a cord from the machine in and out of those thousands of spools and led it back to the machine. Then he sat down and pumped the treadle. He was perfectly happy for hours as he watched all those spools revolve.

I told her my uncles were famous only for drinking up their paychecks on Friday nights. I told her that didn’t make anyone eccentric in my neighborhood; it made you normal.

She leaned back and laughed. She stopped short and came up to meet my mouth. I put a hand on her breast and she strained against me. If I would have had a couple drinks, I would have pushed her in the car and driven back fast. I probably would have torn off her blouse in the car and ripped off her skirt going up the stairs and we would hit her bed stripped.

Instead I took a deep breath and pushed her into her corner. I slid away and drank a glass of ice water. I filled up the glass again from the pitcher and drank again. Somewhere I had once read that any passion could be extinguished by quickly drinking five glasses of water. I was pouring out my third glass and beginning to see the truth of the proverb when she spoke.

“I had no idea I got you heated up so bad,” she said.

A little drop of blood was running across down her lower lip. As I watched, it fell onto her blouse. I had kissed her so hard that one of her upper teeth had cut into her lip. I dipped my napkin into the pitcher and reached across to rub out the bloodstain.

She took the napkin. “Better stay away, boy,” she said. “I don’t want you goin’ up in smoke.”

I crossed my arms and watched. I felt my face getting red. This blow hot, blow cold was not my style.

“What you goin’ to do now?”

I looked at my watch. Thank God, the moon would be setting in fifteen minutes.

“Let’s go.”

I paid the check while she got into the car. The waitress took the money and brought the change with that relaxed courtesy which always came as a pleasant shock after New York.

I came outside putting my wallet away just as the big gray Olds pulled in. I cursed under my breath. I walked straight ahead, not looking at it, hoping he wouldn’t notice me in the darkness. But he saw me. He was sharp.

“Want an escort to town?” he called out.

“And take you away from a cup of coffee? Not me.”

“Had my coffee. Saw your car and thought you might like an honor guard.”

“No, Sheriff. We’re going to Jackson.”

“Pretty late to be drivin’ a hundred sixty miles,” he observed genially.

“When I want to go somewhere,” Kirby said, “I
want
to go somewhere. Immediately if not sooner. I want to wake up in a nice air conditioned room. I want to sleep late. I don’t want to hear dishes bein’ rattled downstairs or hear a nice ol’ man clearin’ his throat an’ spittin’. Now, honestly, Sheriff, I do like the Garrisons, but they’re the
noisiest
damn people I ever did see. My husband thinks he’s back to N’York to repair that silly damn tape recorder of his, but he’s really givin’ me a two-day vacation jus’ sleepin’ late an’ eatin’ in a good French restaurant, which I hear Jackson has got.” She leaned over and nibbled at my ear.

“Mrs. Wilson, if I could work it, I sure wish we ’llowed ladies to come down to our club.”

“I’d be jus’ as pleased. But I’d be in the way there. I’d want to start scrubbin’ the filthy mess you men always make of housekeepin’, an’ then I’d order ever’one to start shavin’ and sayin’ ma’am to me. Honey,” she went on, turning to me, “I’m gettin’ so sleepy, I’m goin’ to curl up in the back seat. You drive careful, y’ hear?”

“She wears the pants,” I said. I waved goodbye to the sheriff while she got in the back seat. I pulled out and headed south, toward Jackson. And away from Ryerson.

I drove five miles, checking the rear-view mirror. No one was following. I pulled over, got out, took out the jack, and put it by the rear end in case anyone became curious. I took a dime from my pocket and loosened the screws holding the glass in place over the light above my rear license plate. I unscrewed the bulb just enough. I put everything back in place and got in. Kirby woke up as I was turning the car around.

“Something wrong?”

“No. I just want to tiptoe north. I think I’ll take a few side roads. I want to bypass that son of a bitch.”

“He’s a puffectly nice man,” she said.