Wrack and Rune (4 page)

*
James Russell Lowell.

†
Fred Allen.

‡
The Luck Runs Out

S
HAKING HIS ORANGE FUZZ,
the human haystack walked back the way he’d come. Shandy gazed after Fergy’s tattered rear elevation with narrowed eyes.

“Does that man make any sort of living with that junk business of his?”

“Enough to buy himself a new pair of coveralls, you mean?” Nobody could accuse Cronkite Swope of being slow on the uptake. “I’d say he does a lot better for himself than you might think. Fergy just has a notion he can skin the suckers easier—I mean more easily—if he puts on that hick-from-the-sticks routine, and I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s right. He doesn’t kill himself working and he goes to Florida every winter in his trailer. Claims he eats out every night down there for three months in a row. Of course, he can’t very well stay here because there’s no heat in that barn of his except a wood stove, and I expect the eating out is a hamburger plate and six or eight beers in some greasy-spoon joint, but it does sound kind of classy and glamorous,” Cronkite finished wistfully.

Shandy grunted. “Fair amount of traffic along this road, is there?”

“Oh yes, quite a lot. It’s a shortcut to the state line. Folks around here are apt to go up to New Hampshire a lot. Something to do with the state liquor tax, or so I’ve heard.”

“M’yes, we’ve all heard rumors, haven’t we, Mr. Swope? Has this Fergy chap a wife?”

“Off and on as you might say. Though why any woman would look at him twice is more than I can imagine.”

Cronkite smiled a secret, inscrutable smile, thinking of the dash he himself was going to cut in his brand-new three-piece light beige polyester suit when he covered the Miss Balaclava Beauty Pageant a fortnight hence. He thought also of Miss Lumpkin Corners, whom he planned to photograph with the paper’s official Polaroid camera for conspicuous display on the front page of the
Fane and Pennon,
unless Miss Balaclava Junction or Miss West Hoddersville proved more complaisant with regard to attending the Grand Annual Pea-shucking and Salmon Bake in his company after the votes were in and the calories no longer had to be counted.

Cronkite, be it said, was no roué. He simply hadn’t yet made up his mind which of the ladies he was in love with should become the official recipient of his plighted troth. Furthermore, he had a sneaking hunch that somewhere might be blooming a still fairer rose who wouldn’t mind being plucked by a rising young journalist.

He could have been right, at that, for Cronkite was a comely youth who operated on the same alternating current of breezy self-confidence and boyish gaucherie that had, though he didn’t, know it, made the late Canute Lumpkin so irresistible to Miss Hilda Horsefall some eighty years before. He would no doubt have charmed Helen Shandy insofar as a happily married woman admits of being charmed by anybody other than her own spouse.

Peter Shandy, however, saw Cronkite only as a source of possibly useful information and a bit of a pest because the lad was so obviously waiting for him to rare back and haul off a miracle and Shandy as yet had nothing to haul with. He was glad when the local GP and the local constabulary arrived together, having both been at the scene of a traffic accident when summoned by radio. Some thrifty folk returning from New Hampshire had been sampling their purchases en route.

The doctor found, as Shandy had expected, that Spurge Lumpkin had died of quicklime burns to the face causing blockage of the air passages and either suffocation or heart failure, whichever came first, not that it mattered because both sure as hell would have and he hoped he wouldn’t have another day like this in a hurry. The police chief decided, too precipitately in Shandy’s judgment, that death should be labeled misadventure due either to Henny’s using the wrong kind of lime or else a prank that had got out of hand because the victim didn’t know enough to stay away from the dern stuff once it started to bubble and therefore brought it on himself, poor bugger.

“I fail to see the force of your argument,” Shandy protested. “Mr. Horsefall tells me he’s been subjected to a series of these so-called pranks during the past three months, and each has been worse than the one before.”

“Cripes, you know how these old codgers are,” snorted the chief. “Henny’s got hardening of the arteries and softening of the brain, like as not. Wind blows a limb or two off his apple trees, he gets riled at the kids next door for smashing up his orchard. He forgets to shut up the hen run, a dog or a coon gets in and kills a few hens, so he comes yelling to me about vandalism. What am I supposed to do, send a posse out here to guard the place night and day? I’m shorthanded as it is. Can’t get Town Meeting to vote me the price of new mufflers for my cruisers, let alone salaries for extra men. You didn’t happen to be a witness, did you?”

“No. As far as I know, Lumpkin was alone when he got burned. As Swope here has already told you, he and Miss Horsefall were over behind the swale when they heard Lumpkin screaming with pain. Swope came running, but Lumpkin was past help by the time he got here. My friend and colleague Professor Ames happened to be out on the cultivator with Mr. Horsefall. When they found out about Spurge, they sent immediately for you. Then Ames phoned my house in Balaclava Junction and asked me to come over. My name is Peter Shandy, by the way.”

“Oh yeah. Fred Ottermole told me about you.”

Shandy could imagine what he’d told. Ottermole and Shandy didn’t get along. Ottermole, who was Balaclava Junction’s police chief, thought Shandy tried to make a fool of him. Shandy thought nature had already taken care of the matter. The Lumpkinton chief was clearly on Ottermole’s side.

“Well, Professor Shandy, I don’t see there’s anything you can do here except maybe try to talk some sense into Henny Horsefall and that old aunt of his. Pair of ’em ought to be in an old folks’ home by rights. I don’t know why the family haven’t done something about it already. Suppose I’ll have to step in myself one of these days, though I can’t say I relish the prospect.”

“Naturally you wouldn’t,” Shandy replied. “Once Horsefall has to call it quits, I expect this will become just another parcel of prime farmland fallen into the hands of the developers. That’s the worst kind of crime that ever happens around here, don’t you think?”

The police chief, who was a smallish, middle-aged man, took off his uniform cap and wiped the crown of his bald head. “I better get a move on. Care to give me a hand with the remains, since you came to help out? Can’t leave him head down in the spreader. Guess I don’t have to tell you to watch what you touch.”

Cronkite Swope, anxious to demonstrate that he was no poltroon despite his unruly stomach, helped Shandy roll what was left of Spurge Lumpkin onto a plank, cover him with a horse blanket, and carry him into the barn while the chief did the heavy looking on.

“That’s it, you two, lay the plank right over them sawhorses. Now, Professor, you can tell Henny I’m sending Jack Strath over for the body, if you don’t mind.”

“
I
believe he’s already made arrangements with Harry Goulson,” Shandy answered.

“The college is taking care of the funeral out of the Agricultural Laborers’ Assistance Fund,” Cronkite added. “Isn’t that right, Professor Shandy?”

Shandy couldn’t remember what he’d said, so he felt it safest to nod. “Unless Lumpkin’s next of kin prefer to handle that matter themselves. I understand there’s a cousin over in Lumpkin Center.”

The chief shrugged. “Yep, runs the antique shop. You won’t hear no objections out of little Nutie if it’s a case of getting something for nothing. How much is this fund good for, Professor?”

“Not enough to sue for damages, if that’s what you mean. It’s merely a—er—small private bequest. I expect it will cover the cost of the coffin and Goulson’s fee, though he’s generous about donating his services in needy cases. There must be a Lumpkin family plot around here Spurge could be buried in, isn’t there?”

“Three or four of ’em, I expect. Ask over at Town Hall. I got to get back on over to the station.” He climbed into the cruiser.

“Say, Chief,” Cronkite interrupted as he was about to start, “do you know anything about that runestone over in the oak grove?”

“Runestone?” The lawman stalled his engine and said a bucolic word. “What’s a—oh, I know. Seems to me somebody asked me that same question not long ago. Wasn’t there an article about runestones in
Yankee Magazine
some time back? Why don’t you go ask Janet over at the library?”

“You don’t remember who else besides me was asking?”

“Can’t say as I do.” A sputter came over the car’s police radio. The chief managed to get his engine started again and tore off in a cloud of blue smoke. Town Meeting had better vote him a ring job, too.

“I must go see if I can get hold of Goulson,” Shandy observed. “Are you coming to the house, Swope, or do you have to rush off and tear out the front page?”

As the
Fane and Pennon
didn’t go to press for another two days, Cronkite did not really have to rush anywhere. He was greatly tempted to spend another while basking in the reflected glory of Professors Ames and Shandy. Then he realized he was still in possession of Miss Horsefall’s hedge clippers, and a brilliant thought surged through his mind. A good reporter was a good investigator. It said so in Lesson Three of the Great Journalists’ Correspondence Course.

“I’ll see you later, Professor,” he replied. “Right now there’s something I have to see about.”

“Good hunting, then.”

Shandy ambled off, thinking of the police chief’s sudden attack of uninterest and wondering which of the man’s relatives was trying to get hold of the Horsefalls’ ancestral acres. He found Tim and Henny seated at the kitchen table drinking coffee out of crazed white ironstone mugs that had their glazes worn away around the rims from the lips of many a long-gone farmhand, Spurge Lumpkin among them, poor devil. Miss Horsefall was at the black iron stove dropping bits of raw bread dough into hot fat and frying them up into golden puffs the men were eating with home-churned butter and home-canned strawberry preserves. Shandy needed little urging to sit down and dig in.

The boiled coffee was delicious, the fried doughboys sublime. Old folks’ home, his left eyeball! Miss Horsefall was good for another quarter-century or so, from the look of her. Henny was still somewhat green around the gills, but that wasn’t anything to write home about. Any farmer who was half human would naturally be shaken up by the death of his hired hand, especially when it happened as suddenly and horribly as Spurge Lumpkin’s. Shandy decided perhaps he’d better not eat any more of Miss Hilda’s fried doughboys.

“Tell me, Mr. Horsefall,” he asked, “who’s been trying to buy up your land lately?”

Henny let the knife fall back into the butter dish. “How’d you know that?”

“See, Henny,” said Tim with his mouth full, “I told you Pete would know what this is all about.”

“As the moment I’m only taking what you might call an educated guess,” Shandy demurred. “The most logical explanation I can think of for these so-called practical jokes your chief of police is trying to brush off so lightly is that somebody wants to get you angry enough or scared enough to sell out. Have you been approached about your land since the vandalism began?”

“I sure as hell have,” said Horsefall grimly. “That dratted Loretta Fescue for one, she’s been pesterin’ the livin’ daylights out o’ me. I bet she’s brought six different customers around here, all with ready cash bulgin’ out o’ their pockets, or so she claims. Keeps givin’ me an’ Aunt Hilda a big song an’ dance about how much better off we’d be in a nice retirement home out in California with the earthquakes an’ the volcanoes an’ the mud slides an’ them painted hussies traipsin’ around with one piece o’ rag tied over their tits an’ another—”

“Henny,” snapped his aunt, and just in time, for the nephew was starting to get a contemplative gleam in his one reliable eye. “I’ll have none o’ that filthy talk in my kitchen, thank you kindly. Anyways, all you ever done was talk. If you’d had anything but wind in your britches you’d o’ married Effie Evers when you had the chance an’ riz six or eight good, strapping sons that would o’—”

“Gone off an’ went to work in the soap factory same as Bill Lewis’s done. Effie snored in ’er sleep like a goddamn billy goat. I wasn’t goin’ to listen to that the rest o’ my life.”

“How’d you know Effie snored?”

Henny leered. “How the gol-dern blazes do you think I know? Furthermore, her feet was always colder’n a dead mackerel.” He picked up the butter knife again and began slathering another piece of fried bread.

Shandy rather hated to interrupt this interesting vein of reminiscence, but he did want to return to Helen sometime or other. “Er—getting back to this Loretta Fescue. I gather she’s a real estate agent. May I take it that she’s related in some way to your local police chief, the chap who was just here?”

“Godfrey mighty, Tim, he’s as good as them TV programs,” cried Henny with his mouth full. “She sure as hell is, Professor. His own sister, if you want to know. Married Jim Fescue that drunk hisself to death, as who wouldn’t bein’ married to a human gramophone like Loretta? Cripes, she’s a nagger. Worse’n Aunt Hilda an’ that’s goin’ some, I can tell you. She’d argue the left hind leg off n a deaf mule.”

“Is Mrs. Fescue dependent on her real estate business for a living?”

“Is, was, an’ always will be for all the help she’s ever had,” snorted Aunt Hilda. “Loretta had to work from the day she married that good-for-nothin’ Jim Fescue, which she should o’ known better in the first place. Henny can run Loretta down all he’s o’ mind to but he can’t say she ain’t a worker. She put them two girls o’ theirs through college all on ’er ownsome after Jim died. She’d o’ done the same for the son if she could o’ got ’im to go, but he’s no dern good an’ never was. Spittin’ image of ’is father an’ he’ll wind up the same way, you mark my words. Workin’ for Gunder Gaffson last I heard. Diggin’ ditches, I wouldn’t doubt. That’s about all he’s fit for.”