Can't Wait to Get to Heaven (33 page)

What Had Happened

E
lner’s friend and old neighbor out at the farm, Louise Franks, had not had an easy life. She had worked hard for years, and had had her first and only child late in life. When her daughter, Polly, was born and they were told she was a Down syndrome baby, the news had been difficult for Louise, but it had been devastating for her husband. A year later she woke up one morning and he was gone. He left her the farm and a few thousand dollars in the bank, but that was it. It was just her and Polly from then on. Thank heavens, for the most part Polly was a happy child, and as long as she could sit and color in her coloring books she was content for hours, but even though at that time Polly was twelve years old, Louise usually did not leave her daughter alone in the house. However, on that one fateful day, Polly had been so preoccupied and busy coloring in her new Casper the Friendly Ghost coloring book that Louise had figured she could leave her while she ran into town and back, and Polly would be fine. She was a good child, and always minded her mother, and she promised not to leave the kitchen until she returned. It was a pretty fall afternoon when Louise walked out and told her hired man, who was chopping wood in the back, that she had to run into town to pick up a few things, and to watch the house while she was gone.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, tipping his hat. As had been his pattern on other farms, he had been waiting for this opportunity for weeks, and now was his chance. He continued chopping wood and watched until Louise’s car was out of sight, then he threw down the hatchet and headed into the house to find that girl. “She may be ugly,” he thought, “and older than most of the other little girls on the farms before, but she is too stupid to tell anybody anything.” Besides, he was ready to move on, and as usual, he would be long gone by the time the mother got back. He came up onto the porch and threw open the kitchen door. Polly was still sitting at the table coloring. “Come here, little girlie,” he said as he unbuckled his pants. “I’ve got something for you.”

When Louise drove up to the house, she thought it was odd that the hired man had not finished chopping the wood, but the second Louise walked in the door, she knew something terrible had just happened. The kitchen was in complete shambles, things knocked over, chairs and dishes broken and scattered everywhere. Polly was still sitting at the table coloring right where Louise had left her, with her face all wet and beaten up, rocking back and forth. Louise screamed, dropped her groceries, and ran over to her daughter. “Oh my God, what happened?” Polly only repeated over and over “Hurt, Momma” and then pointed across the room to over by the sink. Louise looked over to where she was pointing, and to her horror she saw a man naked from the waist down with a mop bucket on his head, sitting propped up against the wall. Louise was terrified and immediately grabbed Polly and pulled her up out of the chair and ran with her to the bedroom, and quickly locked the door behind them. She wanted to call someone for help but her only phone was in the kitchen, so she sat on the bed frozen with fear and prayed that he would not get up and break the door down.

At that very moment her closest neighbor and friend, Elner Shimfissle, drove up the driveway, completely unaware of what had just taken place. She was just stopping by to bring Louise and Polly a freshly made pecan pie, before she drove the other pies over to the church. Elner got out of the truck and opened the kitchen door, calling out, “Hey, girls, I’ve got a—” then stopping dead in her tracks. The first thing she spotted was the naked man sitting on the floor with the bucket on his head.

“Good Lord,” she said, dropping her pie. “What’s going on? Louise, Louise!”

Louise heard her and called out, “Oh, Elner. Help me, help me.” Then Elner ran past the man to the bedroom in the back. Louise let her in and Elner saw that Polly had blood on her face. Immediately Elner ran over and helped Louise take Polly into the bathroom to clean up the cuts on her head and her lip, and Elner tried to calm Louise down enough so she could tell her what had happened.

“Who’s that naked man?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s he doing with a mop bucket on his head?”

“I don’t know,” said a frantic Louise. “He was here when I came in…. I should have never left her, it’s all my fault.”

When Elner had sized up the situation, she said, “You stay here. I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t go in there!” screamed Louise. “He’s liable to kill you!”

“Not if I get to him first,” she said. “The very idea of him doing such a thing…”

She then looked around for something heavy, and picked up a lamp. “Lock the door behind me,” she said, and walked back into the kitchen, ready for a fight. But the naked man had not moved from where he had been. Still, Elner took no chances. She knew he could be playing possum and jump up at her, so she picked a rolling pin up off the counter. And now, armed with a lamp and a rolling pin, she walked over slowly, but the man did not move. She nudged him with her foot, and he fell over onto his side with the bucket still on his head and just lay there motionless. Satisfied it was safe, she then reached down and pulled the bucket off the man’s head and recognized him as Louise’s hired hand. He was not a pretty sight. No wonder Polly had put a bucket over his head. Elner walked over and pulled the tablecloth off the kitchen table; she did not care to look at a naked man dead or alive. After she had covered him up, she went back into the bedroom. Polly had evidently put up a pretty good fight, because she had not been raped, and other than being roughed up, she was not too badly hurt. After they got her into bed with her doll, Elner said in a calm, matter-of-fact tone of voice, “Louise, when you get her to sleep, could I see you in the kitchen for a minute?”

When Louise came back to the kitchen, she was still shaking all over. Elner was sitting at the kitchen table calmly drinking a cup of coffee and eating a piece of her own pecan pie.

“Is he still here?”

“Oh yes.” Elner nodded over at the man underneath the red and white tablecloth. “Polly may be retarded, but she’s a good shot, I’ll say that for her. Got him right between the eyes.”

“What?”

“That’s your hired hand over there.”

Louise looked over at the covered-up body. “Oh my God. Is he dead?”

“He sure is. As far as I can figure, he must have pulled a gun on her and she somehow got it away from him.” She indicated a gun lying on the table beside her. “I found it on the floor near the sink.”

Louise looked down at the gun, then gasped. “Elner, that’s my gun! Do you think he shot himself with it?”

“It’s not likely he could shoot himself between the eyes, throw the gun across the room, and then put a bucket on his head.”

“Then who shot him?”

Elner said, “I think it would be safe to say that it was Polly.”

“But how did she get the gun?”

“I don’t know. Where did you have it?”

She ran over to the door of the pantry. “I kept it in here.” When Louise opened the door, she saw that inside the pantry there were cans and broken jars strewn all over the floor. “I kept it right here, on the second shelf behind the beans,” she said, pointing.

Elner got up, walked over, and looked in at the mess. “Well, Louise, she must have run in here trying to get away from him, and it got knocked off the shelf, and she picked it up and pulled the trigger. She might have thought it was a cap pistol. I don’t know.”

“Oh my God. We have to call the police right away and let them know somebody’s been shot.”

Elner looked at her and said, “We could do that, but let’s take a minute before we do anything.”

“But what about him, I mean, don’t we have to call right away?”

“Oh, don’t worry about him, he’s not going anywhere.” Elner stepped inside the pantry with Louise, closed the door behind her, and said, “Now listen, Louise, I’ve been thinking. The fact that he’s shot between the eyes could be looked on by some people as a murder.”

“Murder!” Louise said loudly, then lowered her voice. “But he was trying to rape her. It was self-defense, an accident. She didn’t mean to kill him.”

“Self-defense or not, the police are going to have a lot of questions, there may even be a trial, and it would be in the newspapers. You don’t want poor little Polly dragged through that, it would scare her to death, she probably doesn’t even understand what happened yet.”

“You’re right, she would be terrified.” Louise started wringing her hands. “I know, I’ll just say I did it! I came in and saw what he was trying to do and I shot him.”

“Louise, honey, think. Again, no witnesses. I’ve seen this kind of thing on
Perry Mason,
and if something does go wrong, who will take care of Polly for the rest of her life? You don’t want her to wind up in that awful state institution, do you? Remember how awful it was when we went over there?”

“Yes, it was horrible, and I promised her she would never have to go.”

“Yes, and after what all you went through to get to keep her at home? I’m just afraid if they find out she shot a man, they could take her away from you, and put her out there for good.”

Louise burst into tears. “I’m so confused. I don’t know what to do.”

Elner cracked the door open a little and looked over at the large lump underneath the red and white checked tablecloth for a moment, then closed the door again and said to her friend, “You know, Louise, normally I’d say that everybody deserves a decent funeral, but any man that would try and rape a little retarded girl, well, that’s just a horse of a different color.”

“Oh, Elner. I just don’t know what to do.”

“I know you don’t, Louise, so listen to me. Nobody knows about this but us, and Polly’s not going to say anything. By the way, who is he, anyway?”

“Just a drifter looking for work, as far as I know. I don’t even know his last name.”

Elner looked out at him again. “Well, it’s not like he’s a family man and will be missed, and who’s to say he hasn’t done this before or what he might have done to some other poor girl in the future.”

“What are you saying?” asked Louise.

Elner closed the door. Twenty minutes later when the two women came out of the pantry, they had a plan.

As soon as the sun went down and Polly was sound asleep, they moved into action.

About ten minutes later Louise came back into the kitchen with all of the hired man’s things in a duffel bag.

“Did you get everything?”

“Yes.”

Elner then walked over and leaned down and picked the man up by his arms. She stood him up against the counter and then heaved him up over her shoulders. “Open the door, Louise.”

“Can you carry him all by yourself? Don’t you want me to help?”

“Honey, I’m a big strong farm woman, just open the door…and get the shovel.”

Louise looked over at the table. “Should we bury the gun with him?”

“Good Lord, no. If somebody does find him, we don’t want your gun to be with him. Leave it and I’ll get rid of it later.”

After Elner had thrown the hired hand into the back of her truck and they had driven him a good distance away, back to the very end of Louise’s property, Elner and Louise got out and dug the hole. When they finished, Elner heaved him over the side and they started filling it back up with the loose dirt.

“What if they catch us?” asked a nervous Louise. “What if somebody comes looking for him?”

“If anybody does, just say he left. You don’t have to say he left feet first.”

When they were driving back to the farmhouse, Elner said, “Just promise me one thing, Louise.”

“What?”

“Be careful about who you hire from now on. People may act nice, but you never know.”