The Old Buzzard Had It Coming (4 page)

“Are your husband’s good clothes ready, Miz Day?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. I’ll get his clean shirt.”

Alafair stood still until the woman had bustled out of the kitchen, then bent down close to examine the mysterious clot under Harley’s ear. She soaked her cloth and scrubbed vigorously. She stood up quickly when Mrs. Day came back into the kitchen.

“He ain’t got no regular pants,” Mrs. Day said. “Overalls will have to do, though I don’t expect Harley would care.”

Alafair dropped the cloth back into the bucket and rolled down her sleeves. “I’ll leave you to dress him. Do you need some help drawing them clothes on?”

“No, I’m plenty strong.”

Alafair nodded. “I’ll be right out on the porch with my husband when you’re done.”

Alafair left her and walked quickly through the house to the porch. Shaw was sitting in a cane-bottomed chair with one foot propped on the rail, playing cat’s cradle with a piece of string, to the vast amusement of the two little Day girls. He looked over at his wife when he heard the screen door, and assessed her expression at a glance. He leaned forward and eased the cat’s cradle over the pudgy fingers of the eldest girl. “You girls go on out in the yard and practice for a spell,” he instructed, and they scampered away. Shaw stood up. “What is it?” he asked Alafair.

“Where’s Scott?” she asked.

“He’s around to the side of the house looking the place over. For some reason he’s got his suspicions up. He can’t tell me why. I figure he’s been doing this depressing business too long.”

“I’d say he’s got the second sight.”

Shaw’s eyebrows went up. “Did the wife tell you something?”

“No. She’s so glad to be shet of the old sot that she doesn’t know if it’s day or night. But I think I found something that shows that he was helped out of this world.”

Shaw regarded her skeptically. “What?”

“There’s a bullet hole behind his ear.”

“A bullet hole!” Shaw echoed, loudly enough that Alafair shushed him. “I didn’t see no bullet hole in his head when he was laying out in the yard,” he added, more discreetly.

“It’s behind his ear, I told you, and it was all caked with blood and dirt. I didn’t see it either, at first.”

“Why wasn’t his head blowed off?” he insisted, unable to accept that a bullet hole in somebody’s head could get past him.

Alafair’s amusement at his attitude momentarily overcame her horror at her discovery. “Well, it would have to be a pretty small caliber bullet, wouldn’t it? I didn’t have time to check for powder burns around the wound. Go look for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

“Oh, I believe you know a gunshot wound when you see one,” Shaw conceded. “What I can’t believe is that me and Scott missed it.”

“You weren’t looking. The point is that Harley Day didn’t just freeze to death.”

“Which ear was this wound behind?”

“Left.”

Shaw’s gaze wandered into space as he visualized how the body had lain. “Well, he was on his right side. Could it be that somebody shot him while he was lying there drunk? He couldn’t have bled much.”

“It would have killed him instantly. And it was cold.”

Shaw nodded. “What does she have to say about it?”

“I didn’t say anything to her, though she may have seen the wound by now.”

“You expect she done him in?”

“No,” Alafair assured him firmly. “I don’t think she’s sorry he’s dead, that’s for sure. But she doesn’t act like somebody who just did an act of murder.”

“Well, now. If she was scared of him, and driven to desperation, I can see her doing it like this,” Shaw speculated thoughtfully. “Little gun, a woman’s gun. She gets him right in the head while he’s passed out in the mud like the pig he was.”

“Makes sense. I’d be tempted myself if I was in her situation. But it don’t feel right. She just don’t act like a woman with something to hide.”

Mrs. Day came out onto the porch, and they fell silent. The woman was white. “Mr. Tucker,” she began, “would you kindly come in here and have a look at something for me?”

Alafair and Shaw glanced at one another, then followed Mrs. Day into the house. She led them into the kitchen where Harley’s remains lay neatly washed, combed, and dressed in his cleanest overalls and least mended shirt. Mrs. Day put her hand on her late husband’s cheek, and with some effort, pushed his head over to the side. “What do you make of this?” she asked.

Shaw bent down for a close look. He examined the little wound carefully for a moment before he stood and looked down at Mrs. Day. “My wife was just telling me that she found a bullet wound, and that’s what it is, all right. The sheriff will have to know of this, ma’am.”

Mrs. Day, who for a few moments had looked as though she was going to bloom, now wilted before Alafair’s eyes. “You mean he was murdered,” she managed dully. Suddenly her unexpected gift of freedom had a price that would have to be paid.

“I’m sure Sheriff Tucker will get to the bottom of this right quick,” Alafair soothed, “and you can get on with your life. Shaw, maybe you’d better get Scott in here.”

***

Shaw left and Alafair and Mrs. Day went into the front room. The stove was out, and it was cold as a cave. One of the two narrow windows had been replaced by a raw-looking board. The glass in the other window was glazed with ice. The furniture in the room consisted of two homemade cane chairs, one bed and two pallets on the floor. Mrs. Day slumped down on the bed, and Alafair clutched her sweater around herself and sat down gingerly in one of the chairs. There was a moment of silence in which Alafair watched her breath mist in the air.

Scott came striding in purposefully from the kitchen with Shaw on his heels. He had obviously been enlightened, and he was all business as he approached Mrs. Day with his hat in his hand, polite and sympathetic, but firm. Shaw took up a post behind Alafair’s chair.

“Now, Miz Day,” Scott began, “I want you to tell me everything you can remember about the night your husband disappeared. It don’t matter if it was important or not. You just tell me everything in your own words, and I’ll decide what’s important.”

It took a few minutes for the poor woman to get up the energy to begin, but no one was inclined to rush her. “It wasn’t no different than a hundred other times,” she said. “He opened a jug late in the morning, and by noon he was blind drunk. I done something that riled him. I don’t remember what. Looked at him funny, I don’t know. He started clouting me. My oldest boy, John Lee, was home and took exception. He’s started doing that in the last couple of years. He pulls his daddy off me and Harley flies into a rage. John Lee leads him a chase out in the yard. It was drizzling a cold rain, and beginning to freeze and they both were slipping and sliding around. There was no way Harley could catch John Lee, drunk as he was. After a spell, Harley staggered off to the barn and John Lee come inside. Harley never came in that night, and the next morning we found the mule and saddle gone, too. He has rode off for days at a time before, so we didn’t think nothing of it.”

“What day was it this happened?” Scott asked.

“Wednesday. Had to have been. That’s when it rained and froze. Mr. Lang who owns the grain mill was supposed to come out and talk to John Lee about money Harley owed him, but he never made it. I remember me and John Lee talked about it. John Lee and Mr. Lang had worked out this plan to pay Mr. Lang back over time. John Lee figured something had come up in town and Mr. Lang got hung up. That was after John Lee and Harley got in to it. When I got up Thursday morning, there was a deep snow on the ground.”

“What time was it that Harley went out to the barn?”

“I don’t know. Before dinner. Must have been one or so.”

“And when did you notice the mule was gone?”

“Next morning early. Milking time.”

“So you saw the mule was gone when you went out to milk the cow?”

“My girl Naomi did. Naomi milks the cow. I was making breakfast when she come in and told me.”

“Did you go out to see?”

“I did go, after breakfast, about sunup. It wasn’t anything unusual, like I said.”

“Were there mule tracks in the snow?”

Mrs. Day shook her head. “I didn’t see any. But I wasn’t really looking.”

“So he must have rode off before the snow started. Did the mule ever come back?”

“No. Lord, I didn’t think of that. We’ll need that mule.”

Scott leaned back against the wall, relaxed but sharp-eyed. “How do you reckon Harley got back here and got himself shot in the head up next to the house in time to get covered up in a snow drift?”

Mrs. Day began to cry. “I don’t know. Lord Almighty.”

“Did you hear any shots in the night?”

“Not a one.”

“Such a small caliber pistol would be pretty hard to hear in the house, Scott,” Alafair offered.

Scott’s gaze shifted briefly to Alafair and back to Mrs. Day, but he didn’t acknowledge her comment. “Where’s your kids, now, Miz Day?”

“They’re with my sister-in-law, all but the two outside there.”

“John Lee, too?”

A look of terror passed over Mrs. Day’s face and she burst into sobs.

Scott leaned forward again. “Miz Day, where is John Lee?”

“I don’t know. I sent him into town to notify you, then he was supposed to go ask my sister-in-law to come get the kids. I know he did, ’cause she come, and said she talked to John Lee, too. I thought he was still at her place.”

“How did he get into town without the mule?”

“He borrowed a horse from the Tuckers.”

Scott glanced over his shoulder at Shaw, who was still leaning imperviously on the door sill. Neither Shaw nor Alafair changed expressions.

Mrs. Day stretched out both her hands toward the sheriff, imploring. “John Lee couldn’t have done it, Sheriff Tucker,” she wailed. “Not John Lee. I stood on the porch my own self and watched Harley chase him around ’til he forgot what he was doing and went to the barn. John Lee came back to the house, then. We all ate dinner, then did our chores, just like always. I never saw Harley again after that ’til we found him this morning. After we settled in, none of us went out again all night. I know it because we all slept in here that night to be close to the stove. It was cold. And that mule was sure gone the next morning. I saw with my own eyes.”

Scott didn’t argue with her, but the look in his eye was skeptical. He nodded. “Miz Day, if I was you, I’d be worried about John Lee. Somebody shot your husband and stole your mule and now John Lee is gone. If he shows up, or you hear word of him, you let me know right quick, you hear? Now, I got to go back into town, but I’ll be back as soon as I can to hear what Dr. Addison has to say. I want you to stay at home until I tell you otherwise, ma’am. You understand?”

She nodded, snuffling.

Scott turned around. “Shaw, can you or Alafair stay out here with Miz Day and the girls ’til I get back in a couple of hours?”

Alafair stood up. “One or the other of us will stay here, don’t you worry,” she said firmly, addressing herself to Mrs. Day. “We won’t abandon you.”

Scott walked out onto the porch with Shaw, and Alafair patted Mrs. Day on the back. “I’ll be right back,” she soothed. “Just going to have a word with the sheriff before he gets away.”

When she found the men at the end of the porch, she confronted Scott with her hands on her hips. “Scott Tucker!” she exclaimed in an angry whisper. “Did you have to be so rough with the poor woman? Ain’t she been through enough?”

“Murder’s been done, Alafair,” Scott answered.

Alafair puffed and looked out into the yard at the two little girls playing in front of the house, both red-cheeked and runny-nosed, apparently unaware of how cold it had gotten. Leave it to the men to be so legalistic, to completely remove the heart from a situation that was practically unbearable as it was. But it was no use to argue. One couldn’t explain light to the blind or sound to the deaf. Best to let them stomp around blind and deaf and take care of the seeing and hearing yourself.

“Did y’all loan John Lee a mount this morning?” Scott was asking.

“No,” Shaw assured him. “And none of my stock is missing, so none of the kids did, either.”

“He never even came by that I saw,” Alafair added.

“You really think he might have done it?”

“Oh, I suspect he done it,” Scott answered grimly.

For an instant, both Shaw and Alafair were stunned into silence by his pronouncement.

“Now, what makes you say that?” Shaw asked.

“Because he lied to me twice. His mama says he went to her sister-in-law’s place before he come to tell me about his father’s death, which he must have done, since she has already picked up the children. But when John Lee came to fetch me, he told me he hadn’t been to his aunt’s house yet. Said he’d be home directly after he talked to her, and he ain’t here yet. And, as I mentioned this morning, when John Lee came by the sheriff’s office this morning to tell me his daddy was dead, he was riding their mule.”

Chapter Four

Shaw and Alafair sat together glumly on the front porch of the Day place while Dr. Addison was inside with Mrs. Day and what was left of Harley. The two girls were in there, too, which distressed Alafair, but their mother wanted them, and there was nothing Alafair could do about it. She consoled herself with the thought that the two children were apparently quite unconcerned about finding themselves fatherless. She expected that Dr. Addison made the family wait in the parlor while he conducted the preliminary examination.

“Do you think John Lee killed the old scalawag?” Alafair asked Shaw, after a long silence.

Shaw shrugged. “Looks bad,” he admitted, “if he lied about the mule and then run off.”

“If he did, do you think Miz Day knows about it?”

Shaw looked over at her. “It would seem likely,” he admitted. “She said she stood on the porch and watched Harley and John Lee chase around in the yard. She could just as likely have stood there and watched the boy put a bullet in his daddy’s head.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Alafair said with a shudder. “It’s awful cold to shoot a man as he lies drunk, even if he deserves it. Of course, there was no love lost between Harley and his wife. If she watched her boy kill her man, I don’t doubt she’d do anything to protect him. I would.”

Shaw chuckled. “I know you would. You’d defy the Lord himself to protect one of yours.”

It was Alafair’s turn to shrug. “He’d expect me to. That’s what he put me here for.”

“So you think John Lee did it, too?”

“I don’t know, Shaw. I haven’t seen much of John Lee for five years. He and Phoebe used to be particular friends where they were little, and it looks like they are still. He was a nice little kid, polite and well-behaved. Biggest old brown eyes. It just doesn’t seem like he could have grown into somebody who would murder his own father.”

“Maybe he grew into somebody who would do anything to protect his mother,” Shaw pointed out.

“Oh, this is a terrible poser,” Alafair said. “Did the boy do the worst thing in the world for the best reason? I have to say, though, I suspect that Miz Day doesn’t know herself who killed her man. Why would she have called the sheriff if she was in on it? She seemed genuinely surprised to find a hole in the man’s head, didn’t she? If they conspired to help Harley keep his appointment with the Grim Reaper, then why didn’t they just bury the body in the woods and say that he run out on them? Nobody would have thought twice.” She leaned forward in her chair, her finger poking the air eagerly as she punctuated her argument. “And if John Lee did it, why did he go ahead on and tell Scott what had happened before he disappeared?”

There was a flash of white teeth under Shaw’s mustache as he smiled at Alafair’s enthusiasm for justice. “It’s early days, yet, darlin’. Things may come clear all by themselves as time goes on. We don’t even know what Doc Addison has to say about all this, yet.”

“Scott sure has his teeth into it,” Alafair observed.

“That’s his job. You know how he is. Easy going as the day is long until an injustice needs to be righted.”

Before Alafair could make another point, the screen creaked open and Dr. Addison came out onto the porch and walked over to them. Four doctors had set up practice in the booming town of Boynton in just the last five years, but Dr. Jasper Addison and his wife Dr. Ann had been practicing medicine around these parts since before most folks could remember. He was an imposing old fellow in his mid-seventies with flowing white hair and an equally flowing white beard. He had been doctoring since he was a surgeon’s assistant with the Union’s Fifteenth Arkansas Volunteers in the War Between the States, and he was by far the most educated man from Muskogee to Tulsa. Shaw stood when he came toward them.

Dr. Addison held up a tiny object between his thumb and forefinger for their inspection. “Twenty-two slug,” he said. “My guess is it was fired from a derringer—some small lady’s gun. Point blank into the mastoid.”

“So you think it is as it appears,” Alafair said. “Somebody put a gun to his head as he lay drunk and pulled the trigger.”

Dr. Addison sat down in the chair that Shaw had vacated and leaned back, crossing one leg over his knee elegantly. He slipped the distorted bullet into the inside breast pocket of his coat. “Obviously someone did just that, Alafair,” he replied. “The question is, is that what killed the man?”

A surprised sound escaped Shaw, and Alafair leaned toward the doctor, interested. “Do you mean that he was already dead when he was shot?” she asked.

The good doctor shrugged. “Who is to know, my dear? There are signs in the body that suggest that Mr. Harley Day froze to death, and was already speaking to his Maker when his would-be killer wasted his bullet.”

“So it wasn’t murder!” Alafair burst out, infinitely relieved.

“I didn’t say that,” Dr. Addison hastened to disabuse her. “All I can say for sure is that Mr. Day was already in the process of freezing when he was shot. I cannot tell which event ended his life. I can only tell that one occurrence followed hard upon the other.”

“Well, well,” Shaw mused. “I doubt if our gunman intended to make a simple empty gesture by purposely shooting a dead man in the head. Whether Harley was already dead or not, someone intended murder.”

“And it could be that murder was indeed done,” Dr. Addison admitted.

Alafair didn’t comment. Her moment of hope had flown.

***

The rest of the day proceeded in spite of Alafair’s disappointment. Scott returned from town and received Dr. Addison’s report. As Shaw had predicted, Scott was little troubled by the question of when the bullet entered Harley’s skull. Alafair desperately wanted to stay and watch as the investigation continued, but duty intervened. Shaw took her home, and together they did the afternoon milking before he drove off to pick up the children from their various pursuits and she brought in the laundry and began supper.

To supplement the leftovers from Sunday’s dinner, Alafair prepared the brace of rabbits that Gee Dub had shot a couple of days before. She had taken them down earlier from the eaves off the back porch, where they had been hanging, and cleaned them over a tin washtub, and now she washed them and cut them into joints. She dipped them into beaten egg and flour, sprinkled them with a little salt and pepper, and fried them in a mixture of butter and lard in her cast iron skillet.

It didn’t escape Alafair’s notice that while the other children spent the entire evening in excited speculation about the intriguing end of their neighbor, Phoebe withdrew into a troubled silence. As far as Alafair could tell, only Alice seemed to notice her twin’s mood, but uncharacteristically refrained from teasing her about it.

The girls were well drilled in their after-supper duties. Alice and Ruth drew the water from the pump by the back door while Mary brought up the fire in the stove to heat the dishwater. Martha hauled out the dishpan from the pantry, and Phoebe led the younger girls, Blanche and Sophronia, in clearing the table. Alafair seated herself in a chair by the kitchen door with her mending in her lap, presiding over the cleanup.

“You haven’t had much to say this evening,” Alafair observed to Phoebe. Phoebe shot her mother a surprised and wary glance. How do they know, her expression said, these mothers, when something is on your mind? “I’m feeling a little draggy, Ma,” Phoebe managed.

Alafair eyed her. “Are you feeling poorly? Come over here.”

Obediently, Phoebe let her mother feel her forehead and cheeks. “No fever,” Alafair pronounced.

Phoebe straightened. Her eyes wouldn’t meet her mother’s. “I’m not sick, Mama. It’s just that time of the month. I’m a bit wan.”

“You feel like you need to lie down? Fronie, stop that.” Her eyes returned to Phoebe’s face after her brief aside to Sophronia.

“No, Mama,” Phoebe assured her. “I can finish clearing.”

Alafair studied Phoebe in silence as the girl made several trips to hand dishes to Mary.

“You haven’t said anything about Mr. Day,” Alafair finally noted.

Phoebe gave her a furtive glance. “I don’t know what to say, Ma. It’s an awful thing.”

Alafair considered this comment. It was very much in character for Phoebe, who was by far the tenderest of all of Alafair’s brood. “It’s beginning to look like John Lee may be in trouble,” Alafair finally said, in her best conversational tone. “He shouldn’t have run off. Should have stayed around and explained himself. It’d look a whole lot less suspicious.”

Phoebe had finished clearing the table. Blanche and Sophronia had scampered off somewhere and the other girls were still involved in the kitchen. There was a lot of noise. Phoebe sat down. “Maybe he felt like he had to run off, Ma. He had fought with his daddy and all.”

“I can see where he might want to hide in the first heat of things, but if he’d thought about it, he’d have seen it looks bad.”

For an instant, Phoebe looked as if she might cry. “Things always are bad for him,” she said. “I don’t think he’d expect much different.”

Phoebe’s response took Alafair by surprise, and she swallowed hard, touched. “Well, honey,” she finally said, “if it makes you feel any better, I’ve been thinking about it, and it seems unlikely to me that that poor boy did it. If he did shoot his father, it wouldn’t be very smart of him to hang around home for three days waiting for a thaw.”

Phoebe bit her lip and nodded, but didn’t answer.

“You want me to make you some chamomile tea?” Alafair asked, falling back on a practical action she often took for her daughters’ discomforts, physical and emotional.

Phoebe smiled. “Thank you, Mama.” She hesitated, then continued, “You think it would be all right if I made up a pallet and slept here in the kitchen for a couple of nights?”

Alafair didn’t think that a particularly odd request. The family’s normal sleeping arrangements had the parents in the smaller north bedroom, the boys on cots in the parlor, and the girls in the larger south bedroom. Martha and Mary shared a bed, as did Alice and Phoebe. The younger girls shared cots that trundled under the big beds during the day. Often, when one of the kids was sick, Alafair allowed her the luxury of privacy by fixing up a makeshift bed by the stove in the kitchen.

“I think that would be all right,” Alafair decided. Not that any of the sisters would mind. Ruth, Blanche, and Sophronia would immediately take advantage of the vacancy by jumping into the big bed with Alice, who would spend most of the night devising story and deed to scare them silly and irritate the older girls with muffled shrieks and scuffles. “In fact,” Alafair continued, “I’ll be going out to the Day place tomorrow to take some food out to them. I don’t see anything wrong with your staying home and helping me, just for the day. Would you be willing to do that?”

A look a relief and gratitude passed over Phoebe’s face and she leaned over to give her mother a hug. “Thank you, Mama,” she said.

***

Later that evening, the family gathered in the parlor by the dim light of kerosene lamps to spend some time entertaining one another before bedtime.

Shaw melted a glob of butter in the bottom of one of Alafair’s soup pots and popped an enormous batch of popcorn on the pot belly stove. He and Charlie-boy took turns shaking the pan and shaking the pan until every last kernel of corn was popped. The popcorn was meted out in bowls, and while the family snacked, Martha and Mary alternated reading from a favorite book of poems.

Alafair sat in her rocker by the window, listening with one ear as Martha regaled the family with her tales of working for Mr. Bushyhead at the bank and Ruth picked out a couple of tunes on the old upright piano. She tried to observe Phoebe without being too conspicuous about it. The girl seemed as engrossed in Martha’s story as the rest of her siblings, and not overly nervous or upset. The idea that was niggling at Alafair, that Phoebe knew something she wasn’t telling about this whole Harley Day affair, must just be her imagination. Phoebe was not good at being devious. Not like Mary or Alice or Charlie, the imps.

Of course, love makes one bold.

Alafair stopped rocking. She urgently tried to remember what she had heard in the last year or two about John Lee Day in conjunction with Phoebe. In fact, she had heard little enough about John Lee at all since his father had forced him to quit school and work the farm. She and Shaw and their friends and neighbors had all known of and deplored the situation at the Day place, but it was not unheard of for a man to drink to excess, or to determine that work was more important than education for his children, or to keep his wife at home. It was no one else’s business, and none of the neighbors would have interfered. They would have helped any member of the family who asked, but no one had asked.

Shaw was playing his guitar now, and singing.

Little Sophronia, scandalized, cried, “Oh, Daddy!”

Alafair got up and began collecting popcorn bowls to carry back into the kitchen. It seemed increasingly obvious, she thought, that Phoebe had not only kept in touch with John Lee, but had developed a relationship with him. She couldn’t quite figure out how Phoebe had gone about it so thoroughly in secret. She wasn’t surprised, though. If she had learned anything in all her years of motherhood, it was that children have lives, inward or outward, of which their parents know nothing.