A Cry in the Night

  “Let me think on it.” She wanted to ask Mark.

  Rooney came over at two. “Want to sew a little?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Placidly Rooney took a chair near the iron stove and got out the pieces she was working on.

  “Well, we’ll be seeing him soon,” Rooney commented.

  “Him?”

  “Erich, of course. You know that promise Caroline made that she’d always be here on his birthday. Since she died twenty-six years ago, Erich has been on this place on his birthday. Pretty much like you saw him last year. Just kind of wandering around as though he’s looking for something.”

  “And you believe he’ll be here this year?”

  “He never missed yet.”

  “Rooney, please help me, don’t remind anyone. . . . Not Clyde or anyone about that.”

  Seemingly pleased to be treated as a conspirator, Rooney nodded eagerly. “We’ll just wait for him, won’t we, Jen?”

  Jenny could not trust even Mark with the information. When he phoned to urge her to let the sheriff get help from the media, she declined. Finally she compromised. “Give it one week more, please, Mark.”

  The week would be up March 9. And Erich’s birthday was March 8.

  He would be here on the eighth. She was sure of it. If the sheriff and Mark suspected he was coming, they might insist on trying to hide some policemen around the farm. But Erich would know.

  If the girls were still alive, this was her last chance to get them back. Erich was losing whatever grip he had on reality.

  In the next week, Jenny moved in a near trance, her every thought a continuing prayer. Oh, Lord in mercy, spare them. She dug out the ivory case that held Nana’s rosary beads. Jenny closed her hand around the rosary. She could not concentrate on formal prayer. “Nana, come on, you say it for me.”

  The second . . . the third . . . the fourth . . . the fifth . . . the sixth . . . Don’t let it snow again. Don’t let the roads be impassable. The seventh. On the morning of the seventh the phone rang. A person-to-person call from New York.

  It was Mr. Hartley. “Jenny, so long since I talked to you. How are you, the girls?”

  “Fine, we’re fine.”

  “Jenny, I’m sorry, we’ve got a terrible problem. The Wellington Trust, remember they bought Minnesota Harvest and Spring on the Farm? Paid a lot of money, Jenny.”

  “Yes.”

  “They were having the paintings cleaned. And, Jenny, I’m sorry to tell you this but Erich forged his name to them. There’s another signature under his, Caroline Bonardi. I’m afraid there’s going to be a terrible scandal, Jenny. The Wellington people are having an emergency board meeting tomorrow afternoon. They’ve called a news conference after it. By tomorrow evening there will be a big news story.”

  “Stop them! You have to stop them!”

  “Stop them? Jenny, how can I? Art forgery is serious business. When you pay six figures for a new artist . . . When that artist wins the most prestigious awards in the field . . . You can’t keep quiet about a forger, Jenny. I’m sorry. It’s out of my hands. Right now they’re investigating to find out who Caroline Bonardi is. In friendship I wanted you to know.”

  “I’ll tell Erich. Thank you, Mr. Hartley.” Long after she put the phone down, Jenny sat staring at the receiver. There was no way to stop the story. Reporters would be here looking to talk to Erich. It wouldn’t take too much investigation to find that Caroline Bonardi was the daughter of the painter Everett Bonardi and the mother of Erich Krueger. Once they started examining the paintings carefully they’d be able to determine that all of them were over twenty-five years old.

  She went to bed early in the hope that Erich might be more likely to come in if the house was dark. She bathed as she had that first night, only this time she used a handful of pine crystals in the tub. The fragrance of the pine filled the room. She let her hair trail in the water so that it too absorbed the scent. Each morning she rinsed out the aqua gown. Now she put it on, slipped a dry cake of soap under the pillow and looked around the bedroom. Nothing must be out of place, nothing must disturb Erich’s sense of orderliness. The closet doors were closed. She moved the brush of the silver dressing set a half-inch nearer the nail buffer. The shades were drawn exactly even. She folded the cranberry brocade spread over the lace-edged sheets.

  At last she got into bed. The walkie-talkie the sheriff had given her that she carried in the pocket of her jeans made a outline under her pillow. She slipped it in the night-table drawer.

  Hour by hour she listened as the clock chimed the night away. Please, Erich, come, she thought. She willed him to come. Surely if he were in the house, if he crept down this hallway, the scent of pine would draw him in.

  But when the first light of the sun began to filter through the drawn shades, there was still no sign of his presence. Jenny stayed in bed until eight o’clock. The coming of the day only increased her terror. She had been so sure that during the night she would hear faint footsteps, that the door would start to move, that Erich would be there looking for her, looking for Caroline.

  Now she had only the hours until the evening news broadcast.

  The day was overcast, but when she turned on the radio, them was no forecast of snow. She was not sure how to dress. Erich was so suspicious. If he came upon her in anything other than slacks and a sweater, he might accuse her of expecting another man.

  She barely bothered to look in the mirror anymore. This morning she studied herself, saw with shock the prominent cheekbones, the haunted, staring look in her eyes, the way her hair had grown past her shoulders. With a clip, she caught it at the nape of her neck. She recalled the night she had looked in this mirror and, as she wiped away the steam, had seen Erich’s face, Erich’s outstretched hands holding the aqua gown. Her instincts had warned her about him that night but she hadn’t listened.

  Downstairs she scrutinized every detail of every room. She washed the surfaces of the kitchen counters and appliances. She’d barely used the kitchen for more than a can of soup these past weeks but Erich wanted everything mirror-bright. In the library, she ran a dustcloth over the bookshelves and noticed that the third shelf, fourth from the end, did have a vacancy, as Erich had said.

  How odd that she had resisted truth so long, refused to face the obvious, lost the baby and maybe the girls because she didn’t want to know what Erich was!

  Clouds darkened the house at noon; a wind began to blow at three, sending a moaning sound through the chimneys but driving the clouds back so that the late-afternoon sun burst out, shining on the snow-crusted fields, making them glisten as though with warmth. Jenny walked from window to window, watching the woods, watching the road that led to the riverbank, straining her eyes to see if anyone was lurking under the protective overhang of the barn.

  At four she watched the hired men begin to leave, men she’d never really gotten to know. Erich never let them near the house. She never went near them in the fields. The experience with Joe had been enough.

  At five o’clock she turned on the radio for the news. The briskly crisp voice of the commentator reported on new budget cuts, another summit meeting in Geneva, the attempted assassination of the new president of Iran. “And now here’s an item just in. . . . The Wellington Trust Fund has just announced a stunning art forgery. Prominent Minnesota artist Erich Krueger, who has been hailed as the most important American painter since Andrew Wyeth, has been forging his name to the work he has been representing as his own. The true artist is Caroline Bonardi. It has been determined that Caroline Bonardi was the daughter of the late, well-known portrait painter, Everett Bonardi, and the mother of Erich Krueger.”

  Jenny turned off the radio. Any minute the phone would start to ring. Within hours reporters would be swarming here. Erich would see them, would perhaps hear the broadcast, would know it was over. And he would take his final revenge on Jenny, if he hadn’t already.

  Blindly she stumbled out of the kitchen. What could she do? What c
ould she do? Without knowing where she was going, she walked into the parlor. The evening sun was streaming into the room, illuminating Caroline’s portrait. A bleak pity for the woman who had known this same bewildering helplessness made her study the painting: Caroline sitting on the porch, that dark green cape wrapped around her, the tiny tendrils of hair brushing her forehead. The sun setting, the small figure of the boy Erich running toward her.

  The figure running toward her. . . .

  The sun rays were diffused throughout the room. It would be a brilliant sunset, reds and oranges and purples and charcoal clouds streaked with diamond-tinted light.

  The figure running toward her. . . .

  Erich was out there somewhere in those woods. Jenny was sure of it. And there was only one way to force him to leave them.

  The shawl Rooney had made for her. . . . No, it wasn’t large enough, but if she wore something with it . . . The army blanket that had been Erich’s father’s in the cedar chest? That was almost the same color as Caroline’s cape.

  Racing up the two flights of stairs to the attic, she tore open the cedar chest, reached down into it, pushed aside the old World War Two uniforms. On the bottom was the army blanket, khaki-colored but not unlike the shade of the cape. A scissor? She had scissors in the sewing basket.

  The sun was getting lower. In a few minutes it would begin to sink. . . .

  Downstairs, with trembling hands she cut a hole in the middle of the blanket, a hole just large enough for her head, and drew it around her. Then she pulled the shawl over her shoulders. The blanket fell around her, draped capelike to the floor.

  Her hair. It was longer than Caroline’s now, but in the painting Caroline had it loosely drawn up into a Psyche knot. Jenny stood in front of the kitchen mirror, twisting her hair, curling small tendrils over her fingers, fastening it with the large barrette. Caroline inclined her head a little to one side; she held her hands in her lap, the right hand lying over the left. . . .

  Jenny stood at the west door of the porch. I am Caroline, she thought. I will walk like Caroline, sit like her. I am going to watch the sunset as she always did. I am going to watch my little boy come running toward me.

  She opened the door and unhurriedly stepped out into the sharp cold air. Closing the door she walked over to the swing, adjusted it so it directly faced the sunset and sat down.

  She remembered to shake the shawl so that it folded over the left arm of the swing, as it had in the painting. She tilted her head so that it was at a slight angle to the right. She folded her hands in her lap until the right hand lay encased in the left palm. Then, slowly, very slowly, she began to rock the swing.

  The sun slipped out from behind the last cloud. Now it was a fiery ball, low in the heavens, about to slip over the horizon, now it was going down, down, and the sky was diffused with color.

  Jenny continued to rock.

  Purples, and pinks and crimsons and oranges, and golds, and the occasional clouds billowing like gossamer, the wind just sharp enough to move the clouds, rustle the pines at the edge of the woods. . . .

  Rock, back and forth. Study the sunset. All that matters is the sunset. The little boy will soon run out from the woods to join his mother. . . . Come, little boy. Come, Erich.

  She heard a high wail, a wail that grew louder and shriller. “Aai . . . yee . . . devilll . . . devilll from the grave. . . . Go away. . . . Go away. . . .”

  A figure was stumbling from the woods. A figure holding a rifle. A figure draped in a dark green cape, with long black hair that the wind blew in matted tangles, a figure with staring eyes and a face caught in a grimace of fear. . . .

  Jenny stood up. The figure stopped, lifted the gun and aimed it.

  “Erich, don’t shoot!” She stumbled to the door, turned the handle. The door was locked. It had snapped locked behind her. Lifting the army blanket, trying not to stumble over its trailing ends, she began to run, zigzagging down the porch steps, across the field, while she heard the sound of shots following her. A burning sensation bit into her shoulder . . . warmth flooded her arm. She staggered, but there was no place to run.

  The strange screaming was behind her. “Devilll, devilll . . .” The dairy barn loomed to the right. Erich had never gone in there, not since Caroline died. Frantically she wrenched the door open, the door that led into the anteroom where the vats of milk were stored.

  He was close behind her. She rushed into the inner area, the barn itself. The cows were in from the pastures, had already been milked. They stood in their stalls, watching with mild interest, grazing at the straw in the troughs before them. She could hear footsteps close behind her.

  Blindly she ran to the end of the barn, as far as she could go. The stock tank was there, the pen for the new calves. The tank was dry. She turned to face Erich.

  He was only ten feet away. He stopped and began to laugh. He lifted the gun to his shoulder and took aim with the same precision he had shown when he shot Joe’s puppy. They stared at each other, mirror images with the dark green capes, the long dark hair. His hair too had been clumsily pinned up in a knot; his own blond curls escaping from under the wig gave the impression of tendrils on the forehead.

  “Devilll . . . devilll. . . .”

  She closed her eyes. “Oh, God. . . .”

  She heard the gun going off, then a shriek that gurgled into a moan. But not from her lips. She opened her eyes. It was Erich who was sinking to the ground, Erich who was bleeding from the nose and mouth, Erich whose eyes were glazing, whose wig was matted with blood.

  Behind him Rooney lowered a shotgun. “That’s for Arden,” she said quietly.

  Jenny sank on her knees. “Erich, the girls, are they alive?”

  His eyes were dim but he nodded. “Yes. . . . ”

  “Is someone with them?”

  “No. . . . Alone. . . .”

  “Erich, where are they?”

  His lips tried to form words. “They’re . . .” He reached up for her hand, twisted his fingers around her thumb. . . . “I’m sorry, Mommy. I’m sorry, Mommy . . . I didn’t mean . . . to . . . hurt . . . you.”

  His eyes closed. His body gave a last violent shudder and Jenny felt the pressure on her hand released.

  38

  The house was crowded but she saw everyone as vague shadows on a screen. Sheriff Gunderson, the people from the coroner’s office who chalked the outline of Erich’s body and took it away, the reporters who swarmed in after the news of the art forgery and stayed for the far bigger story. They’d arrived in time to snap pictures of Erich, the cape draped around him, the wig matted with blood, the curiously peaceful face of death.

  They’d been allowed to go to the cabin, to photograph and film Caroline’s beautiful paintings, Erich’s tortured canvases. “The greater the sense of urgency we give to the search, the more people will try to help,” Wendell Gunderson said.

  Mark was there. It was he who cut away the blanket and her blouse, bathed the wound, disinfected it, bandaged it. “That will hold it for the present. It’s only a flesh wound, thank God.”

  She shivered at the touch of those long, gentle fingers through all the burning pain. If there was help possible it would come through Mark.

  They found the car Erich had driven, found it hidden in one of the tractor paths on the farm. He’d rented the car in Duluth, six hours’ drive away. He’d left the children at least thirteen hours ago. Left them where?

  All through the evening the driveway was filled with cars. Maude and Joe Ekers came. Maude, her strong, capable bulk bending over Jenny. “I’m so sorry.” A few minutes later Jenny heard her at the stove. And then the smell of perking coffee.

  Pastor Barstrom came. “John Krueger worried so about Erich. But he never told me why. And then it seemed as though Erich was doing so well.”

  The weather report. “A storm is moving into Minnesota and the Dakotas.” A storm. Oh, God, are the girls warm enough?

  Clyde came to her. “Jenny, you gotta help me. They’r
e talking about committing Rooney to the hospital again.”

  At last she was startled out of her lethargy. “She saved my life. If she hadn’t shot Erich, he would have killed me.”

  “She told one of them reporters that she did it for Arden,” Clyde said. “Jenny, help me. If they lock her up, Rooney can’t take it. She needs me. I need her.”

  Jenny got up from the couch, steadied herself against the wall, went looking for the sheriff. He was on the phone. “Get more flyers. Tack them up in every supermarket, every gas station. Go over the border into Canada.”

  When he hung up, she said, “Sheriff, why are you trying to put Rooney in the hospital?”

  His voice was soothing. “Jenny, try to understand. Rooney intended to kill Erich. She was out there with a gun waiting for him.”

  “She was trying to protect me. She knew the danger I was in. She saved my life.”

  “All right, Jenny. Let me see what I can do.”

  Wordlessly, Jenny put her arms around Rooney. Rooney had loved Erich from the moment he’d been born. No matter what she said, she had not shot him because of Arden. She had shot him to save Jenny’s life. I couldn’t have killed him in cold blood, she thought. And neither could she.

  The night wore on. All the properties were being searched again. Dozens of false reports were coming in. Snow was starting to fall, swift, biting flakes.

  Maude made sandwiches. Jenny could not swallow. Finally she sipped consommé. At midnight Clyde took Rooney home. Maude and Joe left. The sheriff said, “I’ll be at my desk all night. I’ll call you if we hear anything.” Only Mark remained.

  “You must be tired. Go on home.”

  He didn’t answer her. Instead he went and got blankets and pillows. He made her lie down on the couch by the stove; he poked a new log on the fire. He stretched out on the big chair.

  In the dim light she stared at the cradle filled with wood, beside the chair. She had refused to pray after the baby died. She didn’t realize how bitter she’d been. Now . . . I accept his loss. But please let me have my girls.