“What do you want me to do?”
The question took her aback. “Then you believe me?”
He frowned judiciously. “I’m not saying that. I’m saying I’m willing to listen to you.” He turned and caught Paul’s attention, then shouted, “Just a few minutes longer.”
Ellie squinted towards his friend and asked suspiciously, “Who’s he?”
“I told you: my friend from school, Paul Leeds.”
Again she showed no interest in Paul, a fine-looking fellow like that. Perhaps she was still too young. She stared at her brother. “They got rid of me, you see, sent me out for beer. Daddy was supposedly taking a bath. I never saw him at all. When I came back from the store, there was a lot of running upstairs and downstairs and funny noises in the bathroom. -When I got up there, Erie was on top of his body. They claimed they found him unconscious and underwater, and had to pull him out and try to revive him. But you couldn’t believe that if you were there.”
“But you still didn’t really see anything but Erie giving him artificial respiration? You didn’t hear Dad yell or anything?”
“How could he if he was unconscious?”
“Then you believe that part of the story, anyway? That he was unconscious.”
“But how did he get that way?”
“The fan fell and hit him in the head: she told me that on the phone.”
Ellie’s thin mouth was distorted in a sneer. “Things like that just don’t happen except in detective stories.”
Orrie shook his head. “There you’re wrong, El. If you found it in a book you wouldn’t accept it, but stuff like that happens a lot in reality. How about England during the war, when a German buzz-bomb hit a chapel full of English soldiers, just during the only hour in the week that anybody would have been in there?” This event was memorable because it had been influential in Orrie’s questioning whether God could exist and allow that to be done by the godless to the pious and in His house.
“She always hated him,” Ellie said. “But why’d she have to kill him? He’s the only father I had.”
She was beginning to cry. Orrie was embarrassed enough as it stood. Gena had got all the looks. What Ellie had going for her was intelligence and, until now, common sense. If he had to introduce her to Paul, he wished she could at least get herself under control and speak normally. “Have you mentioned this theory of yours to anyone else?”
“That man,” she said, “that man with the glasses on the lifesaving squad. I told him.”
“You didn’t go to the police?”
“Do you think they’d believe a girl?”
“Well,” said Orrie, “Gross knows about you. He just stopped and warned me, so it’s got farther than you are aware. An old pal of Dad’s, Joe Becker, told him.” He put an avuncular hand on Ellie’s thin shoulder cap. “You can be sued if you circulate accusations about people that you can’t prove.”
Ellie agitated her entire body. “So what was that big fan doing on that little shelf? It wasn’t ever there before. It was never used in the bathroom at all, ever. You don’t get that hot when you’re sitting in water, not even warm water. Think about it, Orrie!”
“Quiet down, will you please? Look, you’re really going to have to —”
“She’s already trying to get his Army insurance,” Ellie cried. “I heard her on the phone. Daddy was gone one day!”
“I guess she really needs the money. He’s got to be buried, you know. She never has had enough under normal circumstances.” Orrie always felt guilty when he thought about how his mother had to struggle to make ends meet on the small family allowance paid by the Army. He had done his best to help out, ever since he became old enough to caddy, but she had generously insisted he keep most of his earnings for college, no doubt foreseeing that even with a scholarship he would have extra costs to meet, and certainly he did, for his job as dining-room waiter covered only standard room and board, not a doughnut and coffee in the evening or a hotdog at the Saturday football game which he felt obliged to attend with the other freshmen, not to mention dates with girls, of which he however was yet to have the first.
“She’s got enough,” Ellie said hatefully. “What about Uncle Erie?”
Orrie too found that name distasteful, but he avoided as much as possible bringing it to mind. “All right, maybe she’s borrowed a little, but only when —”
Ellie interrupted. “It’s not exactly borrowing, is it? It’s payment for service rendered. Don’t you even know that? She’s a prosti—”
Orrie cut her off. “I’m warning you, Ellie. I’ll have to —”
“Do what?” Her face had gone even whiter, with defiance. “Hit me?”
He was embarrassed. “Come on, don’t talk that way.”
“I’m only waiting for the funeral,” said Ellie. “And then I’m getting out of here for good.”
She was really in a bad way, but he did not know what to do about her. “Would you be satisfied if I talked to the lifesaving guys? I guess I could also see the doctor who signed the death certificate. But wouldn’t these be the very people who would already have said something if anything looked fishy?”
“No!” Ellie said with heat. “They wouldn’t notice. They wouldn’t have any reason to suspect those two. I’m the only person in the world who knows about them. Well, maybe Gena does, if she’s alive.”
Gena was another subject he avoided thinking about. That she had never got in touch after leaving did not necessarily mean she had come to an unfortunate end. It was reasonable to assume that she had not been a big success, either. He had read that far and away most of the young girls who reached Hollywood each year never got close to being in a movie and ended up usually as car hops, usherettes, and so on, eventually returning home. Gena might be incommunicado because she was humiliated by the failure of her dream, but it was still possible she would come walking in the door one day.
“Gena hardly would be an authority on this matter,” he said now, and held his head at an angle as if he were miffed; “What about me? I was there until only a few weeks ago.”
Ellie grimaced. “You don’t know anything. You’re a boy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She lowered her eyes. “You better get back to your friend. It’s not right to make him wait so long.”
Orrie now took the opposing argument. “It hasn’t been that long.” But he walked over to Paul. “We’re having this complicated family discussion,” he said. “She’s pretty upset. She was closer to my dad than I was.”
“Don’t worry about me,” said Paul. He nodded at the playground. “If you’re going to be a while, maybe I’ll go over there and shoot baskets with those guys.” Two high-school boys were beneath the netless basket mounted on a standard at the far end. Paul was a college guy and more than six feet in height: he’d be readily accepted.
Orrie returned to his sister. She might be personally unkempt, but her looseleaf notebook and the two texts she carried, bound together by a somewhat old-fashioned strap and buckle, were in perfect condition. Of course, school had been in session now only since Labor Day, but already most other kids’ stuff would be showing wear and tear: Ellie’s would be good as new next June. Her handwriting resembled those penmanship examples hung over the blackboards in grade school, whereas his own was awful, sometimes undecipherable even by himself.
“Okay, so I’m a boy. Does that mean I’m stupid?”
“No, of course not.” She turned her head for an instant. Her spectacles had slid forward again.
“You mean I don’t have feminine intuition?” This nonce-phrase was known to him from radio and the movies.
Ellie brought her éyes up to his. “Forget it.”
“Come on, Ellie. What are you trying to pull?” Though the kids had gone by, in the habitual rapid exit of the homeward-bound, Orrie now lowered his voice as much in good taste as prudence. “You’re outspoken enough to accuse Mother and Erie of coldblooded murder, but you can’t t
ell me this thing?”
“Erie raped Gena,” Ellie said flatly, as if with no emotion. “In the car.”
“Uh-huh,” Orrie said. He could feel the blood rushing into his cheeks. Nothing pertaining however slightly to sex had ever been mentioned by either of them to the other. He found the subject impossibly repellent when it came to relatives, but it was even worse with female ones.
Except for the burning face, Orrie kept himself in order. “I’m sure the first time he tried something like that, Gena went right to Mother and told her what kind of man he was.”
“She did.”
“Because,” Orrie went on, using pomposity as a moral support, “she was a minor at the time, and that sort of thing is against the law. He could be sent to the penitentiary for that, no question about it.”
“Mother didn’t believe her.”
“Well, there you are,” said Orrie.
“She just called Gena a little whore.”
Ellie wasn’t letting up. He was outraged by her use of the word, though he had some familiarity with the charge. He had suffered a bloody nose once after he heard a larger boy make a like reference to Gena. Orrie got the worst of the fight, but won his point: with a victor’s generosity, the other apologized. “You ought to have your mouth washed out with soap,” he now told Ellie.
“You’re not listening, are you?” Ellie asked disdainfully. “That’s what I mean about being a boy. He got Gena pregnant finally, and Mother still wouldn’t believe anything against him. That’s when Gena ran away.”
“Come on,” Orrie said, but his voice seemed to be operated mechanically now, by someone else. “I was living right here myself. I would have known if it was happening, wouldn’t I? Gena wanted to go to Hollywood and become a movie star.”
“After she was gone,” Ellie said relentlessly, “Erie turned his attentions to me. But I was prepared. I stole that hunting knife of yours. I told him I’d cut him if he didn’t let me alone.”
“I wondered what became of that knife,” said Orrie. “I couldn’t find it anywhere.” He continued to mumble about the knife. He was scared of his sister now: either she knew too much about things too horrible for anybody but mature men, cops, physicians, soldiers, certainly for any female—or she was raving mad. A young girl like that, pulling a knife on someone: that was certainly crazy. He had to do something about her. He was now head of the family.
“You can’t go around threatening people,” he said. “You could be sent to reform school for that kind of thing.” She was looking at him with an expression that might be interpreted as growing contempt. That wasn’t right. She should respect her brother: he was male, and older. “Look.” He kicked at the asphalt with his crepe sole. “You want…” He really did not care to hear what she wanted him to do. He just wished none of this had ever happened, because the fact was that a kid of eighteen, without any money or connections, without even a father for four years, could not do anything about anything. “If it was true, Gena should have gone to the police instead of running away. Nothing can be done in her absence at this late date. And I want that knife back! You’ll just cut yourself with it…. And stop looking at me that way. I’m not saying I don’t believe you…. Look, if it ever happens again, you tell me right away, and I’ll take measures.”
“I’ll kill him,” Ellie said. “I won’t say anything at all. I’ll just cut his guts out.”
Orrie felt this threat in his own entrails. He spoke slowly. “I’m sorry, I’m taking a while, but my head’s still spinning. Nothing like this has ever come up before.”
“I can take care of myself,” said Ellie. “Don’t you worry any about me. What are you going to do about Daddy?”
Orrie winced. “That’s a completely different matter, as I see it. Whatever Erie might have done with Gena doesn’t mean he would be capable of murdering somebody.”
“Remember he had Mother’s help.”
There she went again! It got no more acceptable no matter how many times it was repeated. Ellie was crazy. No wonder she kept to herself all the time and had no friends. The sex stuff was unbelievable as Well. If she were interested in boys, it would take her mind off this morbidity. Basically she was a nice-looking girl, with fine features. She might even have a decent if slender figure underneath the ill-fitting clothes which seemed to be hand-me-downs from the more ample Gena, but of course that was not a brother’s business, and anyway his soul had not ceased to writhe in shame since hearing her personal charge against Erie. Underneath his superficial references to the knife, Gena, reform school, and even his self-pity, he had been occupied only with Erie’s advances to Ellie. What was so awful was that he believed her from the first but believed as well that he had a responsibility to pretend to disbelieve. She was too young to know that terrible things happened in life: they should therefore not be confirmed. He owed that to her! But he failed.
“When he did that to you, or tried to, you must have been only eleven or twelve.”
Ellie’s eyes changed. The subject seemed not as repugnant to her as to him, no doubt because she had not been overcome. “Yeah.”-
Orrie now gave way within. It was with a sense of loss, not triumph, that he said, “I’m going to get him.”
Ellie seized his hand. “Not for me, please. I’m not a victim. Do it for Gena. But do it most of all for Daddy. He didn’t have that coming.”
5
“I looked everywhere,” said Esther. “He wasn’t wearing any dog tags and he didn’t have any in his pockets or suitcase. He didn’t carry any kind of identification that gave his Army serial number. All he had in his wallet other than the return bus ticket and twelve dollars was that old expired driver’s license from here. I guess he didn’t have a car down there.”
E.G. and she were sitting decorously, across from each other, in the living room, keeping their distance. Neither had suggested going to bed together since the murder.
E.G. glanced around the room and moistened his lips with his tongue. He had two fresh shaving-cuts on his face. “They got him in a refrigerator now? I won’t get a good night’s sleep until he’s cremated. I’ll tell you that.”
This was not the first time he had made that statement. “What are you afraid of?” she asked. “That he’ll wake up and come gunning for us?”
E.G. winced. “How can we be sure the coroner won’t find bruises or something that won’t fit our story?”
She stared at him. “You said you didn’t choke him. I couldn’t see.”
“I don’t think I did. But it was hot and heavy there for a couple minutes.” He lifted his left hand. “I think I broke a finger. It still hurts.”
“That’s the one where you usually wear your signet ring!” she cried. “You didn’t scratch him with it, did you?”
“I’m certain I didn’t. I looked him over pretty carefully before the lifesaving squad got there.”
Esther returned to the matter of the insurance. “The Veterans Administration say they have to have a serial number before they can process the claim, and a legal death certificate, of course.” E.G. seemed distracted by his own worries, and she reminded him, “This is important. He let his civilian policy lapse, you know. This is all I’ve got coming, this ten thousand.”
E.G. did not react to the cue. Another thing they had not done since the murder was talk of their plans for the future. He got up now and went to look through the front window. “Orrie’s supposed to show up soon, isn’t he?”
“He’s hitchhiking, I guess. I knew he would refuse the money you sent.”
“Well, I keep trying,” he said sadly. “I wonder if he’ll change now?”
“He’ll come around eventually.”
He turned to her. “You’ve been saying that all his life.”
She did not want to get into that subject at the moment. “Maybe I should begin to worry about him. I begged him not to hitchhike: you never know who might be on the road nowadays.”
“He’s all right,” said E.G. “He
’s a pretty tough little egg, if you ask me.”
Esther was annoyed. “He’s not some roughneck!” She returned to practical problems. “How are we going to find out where this fiancée of Augie’s can be located? I hate to have it hanging over our head: eventually the girl is going to come looking for him. She might make trouble. Whereas if we could get it out of the way as soon as he’s cremated, we’ll have nothing to fear from her tracking him down later and catching us by surprise.”
“You can come up with the damnedest worries,” said E.G. “Who cares about this girl? She can’t do anything. You’re still his legal wife, aren’t you? She hasn’t got any rights! I’m concerned about the postmortem. I don’t think there’s anything to find, but you can’t really tell about doctors. If you’d just done it right in the beginning, he’d have been electrocuted once and for all, nice and clean.”
She freely admitted not having checked the length of the cord on the fan, but it was also a fact that while planning the murder it had never occurred to him that the body would entirely occupy that end of the tub so that anything falling from above would necessarily be diverted from the water by Augie’s upper parts. Things of that sort were.male matters: as a woman she could not be expected to deal with them.
“It doesn’t do any good to whine now. I want that insurance money!”
After a pause he said, “Get them to look him up by his name. There can’t have been many August E. Menckens in the Army. It’s not like Smith or Jones.”
“Meanwhile,” Esther said, “I’m in no position to pay for any of this.”
“Any of what?”
“Cremation, to start with! What do you think I meant?”
“Don’t raise your voice to me.”
She was not ready to get into a real quarrel. “I assumed you would know what we’ve been talking about.”