“Now you’re taking a nap?” Flint asked indignantly. “Just a minute ago you were supposedly looking at this shotgun.” He put a finger between his forehead and the inner band of his felt hat and scratched. “Which was it, nap or shotgun?”
“I guess I fell asleep after looking at the gun.”
“Okay, you didn’t know Erie G. Mencken from Adam, this guy who was a member of your family and around there all the time—in fact, he more or less lived there, didn’t he?”
“He had his own apartment in the city.”
“All right, so much for him at the moment. You not only did not recognize him, you emptied one barrel into him, point-blank. But then what about your mother? You didn’t know who she was either? So you nearly blew her apart with the other barrel.”
The chief thought Flint was being too hard on Orrie, though it was pretty obvious the boy was not telling the whole truth.
“There is no excuse for what I did,” Orrie said quietly. “I want to be sent to the electric chair.”
Dick Flint got off the desk and strolled behind Orrie. “More grandstanding,” he said to the back of the boy’s head. “It won’t be you but a judge and jury who will decide what punishment you get, and insofar as you killed both of them, that’s never been in doubt, so you haven’t told me anything yet. Why did you kill them? That’s all I want to know. Why?”
From behind the desk the chief said, “We just want to get to the truth. Was Erie beating your mother up for some reason?”
Orrie shook his entire trunk. “No. I guess they were just discussing something.”
“Then why was she screaming?”
“I’ve thought about that a lot.” He had not once shown any discomfort with the handcuffs, though wearing them must have been a unique experience. “She might have been laughing.”
Dick Flint, still behind Orrie, struck the back of the chair with a sharp blow of his hand. “You trying to make a monkey out of me, you little twerp? Laughing?”
“No, sir,” said Orrie. “I mean it. At least it’s a possibility. My mother didn’t laugh much, but when she did, once in a great while, it was really high-pitched.”
“You’re insulting my intelligence,” said the detective, and came around in front of the boy. “And you’ll be sorry for it.”
Chief Gross spoke in his usual calm tone. “Would there be anything to laugh about, though, Orrie? Your dad’s funeral was just that morning.”
“I know. I can’t explain it.”
Flint returned to the desk top, but he suddenly softened his manner. Leaning towards Orrie, he asked, almost sympathetically, “Erie wasn’t hitting your mom? Then why’d you shoot him?”
“I don’t know. I guess I thought this guy, whoever he was, was menacing her somehow, maybe holding a gun, a pistol on her. His back was turned to me when I came into the room.”
“He was hit in the left side.”
“He started to turn.”
Flint sucked on a tooth. “So much for E.G.” He closed his eyes to slits. “You dropped him with barrel one.” His voice began as almost a whisper, but became a shout as he finished the question. “Why did you proceed to empty the gun into your MOTHER?”
“She ran into the line of fire,” Orrie said levelly.
Gross asked, “You don’t mean she was trying to save Erie?”
Orrie closed his eyes.
Flint leaped off the edge of the desk and pushed his finger within an inch of the boy’s face. “Enough of this lying crap, you little punk. You killed them because they were having an affair, weren’t they? And you couldn’t stand it. You never liked it, but now with your father coming back and dying as he did, there was nothing in their way. Maybe they were having a lovers’ fight of some kind. Her face was covered with bruises. He was punching her, whatever you say. But that was just your excuse, and it won’t work, I’ll tell you why: nobody brings a loaded twelve-gauge to stop a fight unless they want to kill somebody. You were looking for just such an excuse to kill him. But what about your mother? Why’d you give her the other barrel?” Flint took away his finger and put his nose in its place. “Let me tell you: you hated her for screwing Erie, didn’t you?”
“That’s a dirty lie,” Orrie cried, at last struggling against his bonds. “You son of a bitch! I’ll kill you.”
Flint turned and smirked at Gross, who, right in front of Orrie, asked, “Aren’t you going a little too far, Dick?”
“He shot down two human beings point-blank,” said the detective. “Maybe he had cause. If so, he can make his case in court. He won’t be railroaded. This is the U.S.A.”
“You mean, try him as an adult?” Gross thought privately this would be a shame.
Flint shook his jowls, smoke drifting from his lips. “Look, I’m not speaking for myself. I’m just doing my job. But I’m pretty sure what Bernie will say: ‘He’s old enough to be in the service, killing Japs and Germans. Instead he’s home here, shooting down his family.’” He referred to the prosecuting attorney of the county, Bernard J. Furie, who was known as a hard man on lawbreakers.
7
“I’m Anthony Pollo. I’m your attorney.”
Orrie was at the county jail but in a room with a table and several chairs, and not in a cell. The guard had told him the sheriff decided he would be safer there till he was bailed out than with the other prisoners currently on hand, all of whom were larger, older, and seasoned criminals. If he needed the men’s room, he was supposed to knock on the door. It was expected that he would be bailed out soon, but Orrie had decided otherwise.
The lawyer chose a chair on the side of the table across from him.
Orrie said, “I don’t have any money.”
“Your friend Paul Leeds hired me,” Pollo said in a tone of reason and authority. Orrie started to protest, but the attorney stopped him with an upthrust hand. “I know you refused to let him put up bail, but I want you to rescind that decision right now.”
“It’s no business of yours.”
“Come on, stop acting like a smart-aleck and thank God for having such a friend as Paul and such a devoted sister as Ellie. And this town is full of people who are on your side. Can’t you see you’re letting them all down if you won’t accept any help?”
The unfair argument did serve to evoke from Orrie another emotion than that which had occupied him exclusively for as long as he now could remember. He was astonished to discover that he could feel indignation. “It’s nobody’s business any more, not even Ellie’s. It’s no longer a family matter, in the sense of a living family, which is why I don’t have anything to say to Ellie. It’s between me and those I killed, you see.” He was sure nobody would ever understand, but he was closer now to Erie than he had ever been in life. He and his mother and Erie were intimates. He had hated the living Erie but felt a kind of affinity with the dead one, for whom he was responsible. Outsiders could never understand that. If he tried to tell them, they would think him deranged. As to his mother, he believed that if he was faithful to the principles she had taught him, he might finally earn her forgiveness. He could never now live to be a doctor, but at least he could die as a man, taking what he had coming. Killing Erie was no mistake, and he was not ashamed of the deed. Had Erie been the only victim, Orrie would have defended himself with every resource at his command. It was against his mother that he had committed the crime. Who among the living could have understood that it was all the worse for being an accident?
The lawyer pushed the chair back and got to his feet. He was a heavy man, but his paunch was no thicker than his chest. He paced the floor on his side of the table. “Once you pulled the triggers—which I gather you admit doing—it was no longer private. Society has to stick its nose in when somebody dies even of natural causes: the state always requires a doctor’s certification.” He halted and looked down at Orrie. “Ever think of this? You can usually live more privately than you can die.” He resumed his pacing. “Here’s something to consider in this case: unless you tell
what you know to be the truth, people are pretty likely to have their own theories. It might be your privilege not to care what happens to yourself, but it’s not fair to those who can’t tell their own stories.”
Pollo came around to Orrie’s side of the table and loomed over him. “You owe it to your mother, and you know it.” The lawyer moved away when Orrie began to weep. The tears were not those of grief: he had other ways of mourning. It appeared that any serious effort he made towards atonement would be opposed by the world—and for the best reasons, kindness, sympathy, understanding, just what he could not bear. The inevitable truth was that he should do away with himself, but how to do so without further obscuring the point was beyond him at this moment, hence his access of self-hatred. He was guilty of course, but in quite a different way from what would be inferred upon his suicide. He was guilty of having done nothing in the matter of Erie before shooting him to death. He was guilty of having panicked, losing control, using a man’s weapon without a man’s authority to wield it. His father had undoubtedly tried to teach him about apprenticeship, but he ran away, refusing to listen, rejecting instruction in manhood, horrified at the death of the pheasant, a wild creature that lived by Nature’s law and expected to be prey of any creature larger and not of its own blood.
Pollo returned to him after a while and said, “Let’s get you bailed out. Whatever your situation, insofar as I see it, staying here will not help. Think of it: you’re a smart fellow, I hear. And you should remember this: you can tell me anything and it won’t go further if you don’t want it to. I’m not allowed to tell anyone else. This is an even more useful system than Confession, because I won’t ask you for penance. I’m obliged to defend you, notwithstanding what you did or what you’re charged with—which incidentally are usually two different things even with professional criminals.” He touched Orrie’s shoulder. “Frankly, I suspect at this point you yourself might not be absolutely certain what happened or why.”
But the lawyer had now gone too far. He was being patronizing, and while Orrie saw no alternative but to accept his immediate suggestion, he could not really trust him.
8
The money that Paul Leeds spent to help Orrie was not his own but rather his father’s, and with the lawyer’s large retainer (Pollo was renowned in his field), it exceeded the sum he would have gone through had he been normally profligate, and he did not dare to tell his old man where it went, though the irony was that for the first time in his life he was doing something other than serve his own proximate pleasures, something in which he could take pride, and furthermore, he knew he was doing it well, for the person for whom he cared most had told him so.
The recognition that he was in love with Ellie took some time because though at twenty he had had experience with women, it was only of the kind associated with being handsome, well-born, and affluent and for his part had little to do with feelings much deeper than the generic sexual urge. What he felt for Ellie was foreign to sensuality. She was an ethereal young girl, a saint in her selfless regard for her brother, and with so delicate a physical presence that she seemed to exist on air rather than food, and she had no personal interest in him whatever, which seemed only right, for otherwise he would have felt like a creep, given the difference in their ages. It was good of her to commend him for the help he was providing Orrie.
“I hope you understand it’s easier for me to thank you than for Orrie. Please don’t think he’s not grateful.”
The fact was that as the weeks went by Orrie had tended more and more to avoid his friend, and when he could not, he was frequently all but disagreeable. Ellie’s implication concerned her brother’s pride—and she was always worth listening to—but Paul had begun to wonder whether her devotion made her altogether blind to what he had begun to suspect was an unattractive element in Orrie’s character, a tendency first to reject offered assistance and next to accept it with reluctance and then finally resent those who gave it. Paul still felt sorry for his friend, but by now the main reason he continued to adhere so loyally to his cause had more to do with maintaining Ellie’s respect than serving his original friendship, for which after all he had done more than a bit, to the degree that he stayed away from college and, after his father had consequently cut off his funds, went so far as to take the first job he had ever experienced, namely, that of temporary clerk for the holiday mail, at the big main post office in the city (parking on the street all day, collecting tickets and losing hubcaps and antenna), which he discovered was no means to wealth. He had never been so admirable a person in all his life, but it was a fact that neither had he ever been so uncomfortable and lonely, for everyone seemed to assume he had limitless funds and concerns of greater magnitude than what they saw him doing, neither of which was the case, but he did not dare reveal the truth even to Ellie, lest it cause her to reflect unfavorably on his value if he no longer had money.
Owing to his financial state, his quarters were necessarily mean and therefore could not be in the immediate area lest he be embarrassed. He still kept the car he had rented from the garage man upstate, who had known him only when he was prosperous and had not yet questioned his credit. He drove to one of the neighboring towns and got the off-season rate for a little room and bathroom privileges in a tourist home operated by a widow in her fifties, who usually did not have paying guests in the cooler months when nobody came to swim in the lake, and was therefore unaware of how inadequately that area of the house was heated. After a few weeks of this and meals at a lunch counter whose bill of fare never changed, Paul no longer believed (if he ever had) that living modestly was any more “real” than having the wherewithal for the pampering of oneself, yet his resolve to stick to his mission was firmer than ever, for though he might by now have been tempted to abandon Orrie, he had this fealty to Ellie, by which he could continue to rise above himself.
Both Orrie and Ellie were living with the Terwillens, under a temporary legal guardianship arranged by Anthony Pollo. Paul would greatly have enjoyed being a welcome guest in this house that usually smelled of Mrs. Terwillen’s no doubt delicious cooking, but when he came to see his friends, he had yet to be invited even to enter the living room from the little vestibule just inside the front door. He always asked for Orrie, but invariably nowadays it was Ellie who came out to say that her brother was indisposed, a state of affairs Paul would not have deplored had he been able to spend the time with her, but with one or both Terwillens circulating nearby, he was reluctant to suggest going elsewhere should it sound like making a date. He suspected their coolness towards him took its source in an assumption that a guy his age (furthermore, one with money) could have only one intention when frequenting a penniless female orphan—and in all fairness, they would have been right if dealing with an earlier Paul, who had always found girls from more humble circumstances than his own more sexually attractive than those of his own milieu.
Christmas promised to be an exceptionally bleak time for him. He might even have found his father briefly bearable had he not alienated the man forever by his apparent failure at still another school. Even his landlady would be out of town, visiting a daughter in the Midwest, and his only comfort in remaining alone in the house was that he could control the thermostat. The local eating places would all be closed on the twenty-fifth. To feed in public he would have to find some hotel dining room in the city. The alternative would be canned soup and sardines in the widow’s otherwise empty kitchen.
After paying his rent, he had had just enough left from the money he had earned sorting letters at the P.O. to buy gifts for Ellie and her brother, and on Christmas morning he went to deliver them, which, so as to avoid anyone’s embarrassment, he decided to do discreetly, putting the packages on the doormat, ringing the bell, and leaving before the summons was answered. But in putting the plan into action, making too hasty a departure, he slipped on the icy sidewalk and had just got to his feet when the door opened and Mrs. Terwillen appeared.
“Why, Paul,” she said
, in a much warmer tone than usual, perhaps because of the holiday. “Merry Christmas. Did you hurt yourself?”
“It was nothing.”
She picked up the two little packages, which he had wrapped himself, no doubt awkwardly, but he had never done such a thing before. He had even remembered to attach little cards for the recipients’ names. “Well, won’t the children be happy.” Her smile grew warmer. “Come in and have some coffee. Bobby’s out delivering the church baskets to the needy, but everybody else is here.”
“Thanks, but I got to be going,” he said for his pride’s sake, but by the time he reached the car, Ellie had come out and was shouting to him.
“Merry Christmas to you, too,” he cried in return.
“I said, can’t you come in?”
Now he accepted the invitation. The Terwillens had what looked like a really pleasant house, with everything flowered, walls and slipcovers and pictures and even little figurines. Ellie led him into a solarium off the living room, where the windows of many small panes were continuous. Mrs. Terwillen brought a plateful of pastries and asked him whether he drank coffee: suddenly she seemed to think him younger than he was.
When they were alone Ellie thanked him for the present, which, still wrapped, lay beside her on the flowered sofa.
“Maybe you’d better open it. I don’t really know what you like or don’t like. I’ll change it for something else if it isn’t right.” Her hair was brushed to glisten today, with a bow-shaped barrette at each ear, a well-fitting burgundy-colored dress of velvet, and what looked like new plastic-framed eyeglasses. He suspected Mrs. Terwillen was responsible for the changes, which may have gone too far, Paul preferring the Ellie he had known.
She lowered her head between rising shoulders, as young girls do when admitting their deficiencies, and said, “I don’t have anything for you, and I’m sure Orrie doesn’t either.”