The View from the Cherry Tree

  He stared at her, trembling all over now, and he thought sure she would have to see how upset he was if she were looking right at him. Instead she was already moving to see which of the wedding presents had been broken. With a supreme effort, choking on it, he brought his voice to a very low level, very soft, very quiet.

  “Mom, I’m not kidding, I’m not trying to be funny. Somebody is trying to . . .”

  He thought she was really going to hit him. Her hand started to move in the beginning motions, and then she spoke with a deadly coldness he had never known in her before. “All right. If that’s the way you want it. But I’m not going to put up with it, and nobody else will have to, either. You can stay in your room until you decide to behave yourself and apologize to Elsie.”

  She was gone, closing the door with considerable force, leaving him alone.

  The trembling was out of control, now; he had to sit down. He did so, on the edge of his own bed, and found that it was wet. Neddy had wet the bed.

  The tears came then, and he couldn’t stop them. Blinding, hot, angry tears. He wiped at them frantically, smearing his face. He got up, feeling the broken bits of the Constitution underfoot. He kicked at them, savagely.

  Somebody wanted to kill him. Didn’t they? Or did they? How could he know for sure? What should he do?

  Call the police, maybe. There was an extension phone in his mother’s room, if the place wasn’t full of people.

  He heard them in the hall, a bunch of feminine voices, and then they were moving away toward the stairs. “Someone’s got to be at the church and the reception hall,” he heard Teddi say clearly, and then her voice was lost in the clamor of the others. All the girl cousins, running around, looking at the bridal gown and the bridesmaids’ dresses and the blue, lacy garter and all the other junk.

  That was all that was important. Darcy’s wedding, and all the things that went with it. It didn’t matter if someone shot Rob, or dropped a pot on his head and knocked him cold.

  He opened the door and looked out. The last of them were vanishing down the stairs, ­giggling. He swallowed the painful lump in his throat and crossed the hall to where his parents’ door stood open.

  There were wedding signs here, too, in the tuxedo his father would wear, which was hanging from the top of the closet door, and his mother’s long dress to go with it. The bridesmaid dress that had been altered for Ellen Anderson lay across the bed, its folds carefully arranged so as not to muss the skirt. But the room was empty.

  Rob went in and closed the door behind him, shutting off the sounds from the lower part of the house.

  The police number was there on a red sticker on the base of the phone, along with the fire department, the ambulance, and the doctor’s phone numbers. He dialed it, willing his finger to stay steady.

  “City Police,” said a gruff voice.

  Rob cleared his throat. “I want to report . . . that somebody’s trying to kill me.”

  There was a brief silence. Then the voice, deeper than before, said, “Look, sonny, it’s against the law to play jokes like that with the police department. You can get in trouble.”

  “I’m already in trouble.” For a moment his eyes were so swimmy that the clothes hanging on the closet door shimmered and melted in front of him. “Please, I’m really in trouble.”

  “What’s your name?” the officer asked.

  “Robert Mallory.”

  “Do your folks know you’re using the telephone?”

  “No, I . . .” His throat ached so that it was hard to talk. “Nobody will listen to me. Look, somebody shot at me . . . at first I thought it was just some dumb kid shooting a .22 without paying attention where he shot, but then the pot fell out of the window almost on me . . .”

  “How old are you, son?”

  He didn’t see what difference that made to anything, but he told the man, anyway. “Eleven.”

  “Have you been taking something? Some pills, something somebody gave you?”

  “No!” Indignation rippled through him. “I’m not . . . not . . . it’s true! Someone tried to kill me! Twice!”

  “Did you get hold of something belongs to your mother, maybe? Something out of her purse, or out of the medicine cabinet?”

  He was shaking so badly now that he had to use both hands to hold the phone. “No.” He remembered to make his voice quiet, not yell. “No, I didn’t take anything. I saw this . . . this murder, and now somebody wants to kill me before I can tell . . .”

  “You like to watch television?” the man asked. “You like those horror shows?”

  “I’m not making it up, I didn’t get it from any television show! This old lady was killed, and I saw it, and now he wants to shut me up . . .”

  “Who? Who is he, this man who wants to kill you?”

  “I don’t know, I only saw his hands, but he killed her, and he must know I saw him . . .”

  “And he killed somebody?” There was no change in the voice, no indication that Rob was being taken seriously. “When was this?”

  “This morning! This morning, right next door!”

  “And he killed an old lady? Who was she?”

  Was the man beginning to believe him? He’d have to believe him, wouldn’t he, if he knew about Mrs. Calloway? Rob swallowed and firmed his voice. “Mrs. Calloway. Right next door.”

  “Calloway.” The man on the other end of the line turned his head from the receiver, speaking to someone else in the same room with him. “Hey, Joe, what was the name of that old gal Riley and Fritz brought in this morning, the one got hanged with her binocular strap? Was it Calloway?”

  The reply was quite loud; the other speaker must be very near the phone. “Yeah, that’s right. Fell out a window and the strap caught on a tree branch. Freak accident.”

  “Upstairs window, was it?”

  “Naw, first floor. They said her toes were only a foot or so off the ground. What’s up?”

  “Kid says he saw the old lady murdered. They send a crew out to investigate?”

  “Yeah, they checked it out. Accident, pure and simple. The old woman fell out a window and caught that strap on the tree. Who’d try to murder anybody, pushing ’em out a window six feet off the ground?”

  Slowly Rob replaced the receiver. It was no use. The police didn’t believe him either. Maybe they were right. It seemed so crazy, maybe he’d just made it all up in his head.

  There was a picture of his father on the dresser, on his mother’s side of the big bed. It had been taken a long time ago, when his father had more hair and less midsection, but it looked pretty much the way he did now. Calm, smiling, reasonable.

  Reasonable. His father was almost always reasonable. He’d be home pretty soon now, wouldn’t he? And he’d listen. Rob would make him listen. He wouldn’t yell or cry or do anything that turned people off, he’d just tell him the facts, and his father would listen, the way he always did.

  A few hours wouldn’t matter, would they? Whoever it was who’d shot at him, they couldn’t get at him here, in his own house. So he’d be perfectly safe until his father came home.

  Ten

  The afternoon passed slowly. Nobody came near him, although he heard voices coming and going outside his door. He knew when Teddi and Max and Derek came back from delivering the champagne. Derek left again to get his car fixed, then came back much later. One of the girl cousins fell downstairs and had to be carried into Teddi’s room, sobbing loudly. He heard her mother decide it was no more serious than a sprained ankle, and his mother offer the use of an ACE Bandage.

  Rob listened to his radio and tried to fix the Constitution, but it was a project so hopeless that he soon abandoned it and threw the remains in the waste basket. It was warm in the room. He opened both windows and sat for a time staring at the house next door. There were the same old-fashioned lace curtains on the second floor as on the
first, so that you couldn’t see into any of the rooms. He wondered if there was still someone over there, watching from behind the heavy curtains.

  So far as he knew, the police hadn’t locked up the house. The window downstairs, the one she’d fallen out of, was hidden by the foliage of the cherry tree, but he knew it was still open. Probably there were other open windows, too, so that anybody could get in if he wanted to. Anybody at all.

  In the movies there’s always a motive for a murder. It wasn’t hard to think of reasons why anybody would hate Mrs. Calloway. Everybody in town had some reason to dislike her.

  Like old Max. She’d called the cops on him because he ran over her stupid hose. Of course the cops hadn’t arrested him or anything like that, so it probably wasn’t a very strong motive. Still, sometimes people were killed for little things, like sixty-seven cents.

  Whoever was in there with her had been talking to her. She’d said crossly, “I will not,” as if he’d asked her to do something. Maybe it was something he wanted really bad. Maybe, he thought with a flash of insight, it was something like his Uncle Ray. Maybe the man had done something . . . stolen something . . . and wanted her to forget about it (if it was from her) or help him, the way Uncle Ray had asked his father to do. And then she’d said, “You must be out of your mind to think I’d agree to any such thing.”

  If his request had been as bad as all that, maybe he’d been really desperate. Desperate enough to want to kill her.

  But he couldn’t have thought pushing her out that first floor window would kill her.

  It all came back to that. His mind went around and around, in a circle.

  Maybe he hadn’t meant to kill her, but had pushed her in anger, and then when she died he realized someone had seen him. Even if he didn’t intend to murder her, he’d be guilty of something. If Rob told on him, he’d most likely go to jail or at least be disgraced when the story came out in the paper.

  So he had to shut Rob up before he told anyone.

  How could the man be sure it wasn’t already too late? How could he be sure Rob hadn’t already told everybody?

  He grimaced, kicking at a chair with the toe of one tennis shoe. If he came around this house, he’d soon realize nobody was listening to anything today.

  The telephone rang several times, but it was always answered downstairs. He couldn’t tell who it was. If his father called to say he wasn’t coming home . . . but he wouldn’t do that, no matter what was happening to Uncle Ray. His father had to be at the wedding rehearsal at 7:30, or he wouldn’t know what to do at the wedding tomorrow.

  Sonny appeared suddenly in one of the open windows. He frequently came and went this way, over the roof, up and down the surrounding trees.

  “Hi,” Rob greeted him. “Does your tail hurt?”

  The cat just looked superior, and then Rob saw why.

  “Hey, you brought home a friend!”

  The other cat almost stopped, putting one paw delicately on the windowsill, not stepping over it. Sonny leaped onto the other bed and began to wash himself.

  “Hey, you’re a beauty! Come on in,” Rob invited softly.

  The cat was a Siamese, as elegant as Sonny was tough.

  “Come on,” Rob coaxed. “Come on in, I won’t hurt you.”

  He backed away and stood still, so as not to frighten her. Sonny uttered a throaty sort of growl (also an invitation?) and the Siamese gathered courage and entered the room. Light on her feet, oh, very light . . . a beautiful cat. A valuable one. Somebody would be looking for her.

  It took a little time to get her to allow him to touch her. He had plenty of time. He stroked the silky fur and was pleased when she began to purr, not a loud rumble like Sonny but a refined, rolling murmur.

  Someone tapped at the door.

  Rob turned, waiting. “Come on in.”

  Nothing happened. After a moment he crossed the room and flung open the door.

  There was no one in the hallway, but there was a tray on the floor. A tray, with a bottle of pop and something covered with a dish towel.

  Well, they weren’t going to starve him, then, even if he was an outcast. He picked up the tray, glad that his mother had relented at least this much. He knew her well enough to be sure that when she found out the true story she would be very sorry and very apologetic. Still, that didn’t help a lot right now.

  He carried the tray over to his desk and took off the covering towel. Somebody’d been to the delicatessen, obviously. There was fried chicken, and some of his mother’s potato salad, and a couple of buttered rolls and some carrot sticks.

  For once he didn’t have an appetite; too much worry, he decided. But the pop was cold and he drank some of that and chewed on a carrot stick. The Siamese and Sonny were watching him.

  “It’s not cat food,” he informed them, but they kept right on watching until Sonny suddenly rose, stretching his muscles, and strolled to the window ledge. He gave Rob a nasty look and bounded out over the roof.

  The Siamese remained where she was, eyeing the dinner tray.

  “Are you really hungry?” Rob said. The cat emitted a plaintive sound, and he gave in. “Okay. Have a chicken leg. I don’t need all the chicken anyway. Maybe I’ll be sorry if I have to stay up here much longer, though, if this is all they bring me.”

  The cat ate daintily, stripping the meat off the bone, chewing with excellent manners, then washing her face.

  “Kitty!”

  Rob spun, lips tightening. Little Neddy stood in the doorway, one blond curl falling over his forehead. There was a purplish lump on his forehead, too, but Neddy wasn’t fussing over that anymore. He advanced into the room, arms extended toward the Siamese.

  “That’s my kitty.”

  “You better not touch it; it might scratch,” Rob told him. “And if it does, that will be my fault too, I suppose.”

  “It’s my kitty.” Neddy looked at him with defiance, reaching for the cat. Rob made a move to stop him, but Neddy had already scooped up the creature in both arms, holding it dangling from the middle. “It’s my kitty.”

  Seeing that the Siamese was evidently used to children and wasn’t going to cause any major injuries, Rob shrugged. “Okay. Go play somewhere else.”

  Contented, Neddy dragged the cat down the hall. Rob was still standing in the doorway watching him when the phone rang.

  He heard Teddi’s clear voice sing out from below, “Mom, it’s Dad! He wants to talk to you!”

  Rob tensed. He’d been expecting his father momentarily; did this mean there’d been another delay?

  He moved out to the head of the stairs, straining to hear at least his mother’s side of the conversation. He did, even over the low murmur of voices from the living room.

  “Oh, Wally, no! Why? Well, how are we going to manage if you don’t get back for the rehearsal? . . .”

  Rob missed a few words, struggling with his own emotions. His father had to get home tonight, he had to!

  “Well, I suppose so, but it seems to me that in a once-in-a-lifetime situation like this, the wedding should take precedence over anything else . . . why can’t you tell me what it’s all about?”

  He had to talk to his father. Rob began to run down the hall, pushing open the door to his parents’ room, snatching up the extension phone.

  “Dad . . . Dad, please, I’ve got to talk to you . . .”

  He’d kept on talking, even when he knew it was too late. The downstairs phone clicked off as soon as he picked it up; he heard his father hang up, too, out there wherever he was.

  Rob blinked hard against the sting in his eyes. He should have run to the other phone the minute it rang, he shouldn’t have waited until he knew for sure his father wasn’t coming home . . .

  He hung up, defeated. What if his father didn’t come home tonight at all? What was he going to do, stay hidden here in the
house forever? They’d be going to the rehearsal pretty soon, the rest of them . . . the ones that mattered, anyway. There was no point in trying to make any of his out-of-town relatives understand his predicament. Ever since he’d got stuck in that sewer pipe years ago, they’d acted like he had two heads and neither of them worked. Nobody would listen to him, or help him.

  His steps were slow, returning to his own room. He’d always liked the room and felt sort of lucky that he didn’t have to share it with some creep of a brother, like Paddy’s, who had a fit every time you dropped a sock on the floor. Only today it seemed like a prison.

  He guessed his father was still trying to do something to keep Uncle Ray out of prison. For the first time he really thought about what it would be like, to be in jail. He wouldn’t have a room like this one, either, with carpet on the floors and bright wallpaper and spreads and his own books and the tummy TV and radio-record player.

  For a time he imagined that he was in a prison, behind bars, walking on cold concrete floors. Imagined what the food would be like, the clothes, the other prisoners. He even went back further and imagined what he’d done to get into prison in the first place; not borrowing some money he thought he could pay back, but maybe for armed robbery. That meant with a gun, threatening somebody.

  Every once in a while there was a burst of laughter from downstairs, as if everyone else was having a heck of a good time. And under his windows, on the side lawn, the girl cousins were playing some silly game and giggling and giggling. He was glad he didn’t have any sisters that age.

  After a time the game of imagining himself in jail grew boring. He sat in front of one of the windows, welcoming the slight breeze, watching what he could see of the activity below.

  The grown-ups had moved outside now, probably because it was getting cooler, and little Neddy was there with the Siamese cat, dragging it around by its neck. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention until Max’s voice suddenly rose over the general hum of conversation.

  “Hey, what’s the matter with that cat?”

  Rob leaned forward to see better, but they were out of his line of vision. The girl cousins had stopped playing, though, and were looking toward the house. They weren’t laughing anymore. One of them had her mouth open.