After Eli (29 page)

* * *

Michael opened the barn door carefully and studied the darkened house. There would be no chance that anyone would be awake, but he would not be a bumbler, giving away himself by a careless step. He closed his eyes and read the script of his plan a final time in his memory. He could hear the dying mumbling of the Chautauqua audience and the restless shifting in their seats as they braced to watch and listen. He felt a rush of excitement speeding through him like heat. He breathed deeply in an exercise of calming his eagerness, and then he stepped out
of the barn—from the wings of his stage—and walked hurriedly to where Owen waited beneath the window.

“Owen,” he whispered gladly, kneeling beside Owen and grasping him by the shoulders. “I knew you’d come. I been waitin’, hopin’ you’d not change your mind and leave me to go off alone. But I knew you wouldn’t. I knew it.”

“I—I didn’t know what time it was,” Owen stammered.

“Close to midnight. Couldn’t be better.”

“Are—are you ready?”

“I am. Got everythin’ packed away in my knapsack,” Michael answered. He turned Owen toward the north. “Look at that night,” he exclaimed in a hushed voice. “It’s a night for travelin’. Two hours from now, we’ll be lost up near North Carolina, and you’ll feel the weight of it all droppin’ off you like water. Come on, let’s go inside and get the things.”

Owen crouched down and followed Michael along the front of the barn to the door. Michael pulled Owen inside and eased the door closed. There was no light in the barn and Michael struck a match and gestured for Owen to follow him to his room. In the room, he lit a candle on the floor beside his bed. Owen stood in the middle of the room, holding his sack, waiting.

“Don’t worry none about the light,” Michael whispered, crossing the room and closing the door leading into the barn. “The window’s away from the house and it’s not enough to show through anyway.” He caught Owen by the shoulders and smiled broadly. “Didn’t I tell you?” he said. “There was nothin’ in that house to frighten you. Nothin’. And you’re here as proof of it.”

“When—when we leavin’?” Owen asked.

“In a few minutes. Give you time to catch up to yourself. Come on, sit down.”

Michael led Owen to the chair and gently pushed him into it, then he stepped to the bed and sat on the edge of it.

“Here’s my belongin’s,” he said proudly, patting the stuffed
knapsack beside the bed. “Got the whole of my life in it, and like I told you in the jail, it’s not worth much. Just some things I’ve gathered along the way.”

Owen stared at the knapsack.

“Got plenty for both,” Michael continued. “I been puttin’ away food for a couple of days, and we’ll have enough, what with the things we find in the woods. And we can take our time, Owen, lad. I was in town today. Told the doctor how you’d run off south. Even showed him the way you went. There’ll be nobody chasin’ after us.”

“You see Tolly Wakefield?” Owen asked quietly.

“They was out, all of them. The doctor said they’d been in the night before and lit out again this mornin’. Said they’d looked the ridges and along the river and were goin’ over Yale Mountain today.”

“We better go,” Owen said suddenly.

Michael stood and walked around the room. He said cheerfully, “It’s a good room I’m leavin’, Owen. A good room. I need to drink in the memory of it.” He turned in the middle of the room. “I used to do this when I was on the circuit, Owen,” he added. “After every show, every place we’d pack up and leave, I’d go to the stage and walk it, keepin’ the memory of it in my own way.”

Owen sat stiffly in the chair, staring at Michael as though hypnotized.

“I told you about my actin’ days, didn’t I, Owen?”

Owen did not answer.

“Ah, it was a good time,” Michael continued easily. “I was good at it. Yes, I was. No place in the world like a stage. You can be anythin’ you want on a stage. There’s all kinds of plays, Owen, all kinds. Once I played Iago.” He looked at Owen and smiled. “Iago, Owen, Iago. It’s from Shakespeare, from a play called
Othello.
I could hear the handclappin’ for a week. You know what it’s like? It’s—it’s like hearin’ them tiny bamboo sticks tapping together in the wind. The Chinese wind chime,
that’s what. Music, but not music. Clacking little sounds. Ah, it’s somethin’, Owen. It’s somethin’.”

“We better go,” Owen said again.

“We will,” Michael replied. “In a minute.” He walked to the bed and sat on it. He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “The newspapers said I’d been the best Iago ever, Owen. Said Iago was the best role out of all of Shakespeare, and I’d done it better than anybody they’d ever seen.” The smile faded. “I used to have that clippin’,” he said. “I lost it.”

Owen moved in his chair and the chair legs scraped like a yelp on the barn floor. He looked at Michael. Michael was staring into the ceiling and into the distance of another time. Then his eyes closed and he stood beside the bed and bowed gracefully before Owen. A smile locked across his face. He dropped his head suddenly, like a weight, and his arms spread in wings at his sides. He turned the palms of his hands up. The applause of his remembered audience fell around him like flung roses, and the song of their cheers rang in a deafening crescendo. Then his audience faded, dropped from the sight and hearing of his mind, and the seizure of his memory disappeared. He rose slowly, his body stiffening at his waist. His hands came together in front of his chest and he looked at Owen.

“It’s a thing to remember,” he whispered. “It is.”

“It’s—it’s late,” Owen said.

Michael nodded.

“We’ll be goin’. In a minute,” he mumbled. “In a minute.” He stared into the light of the candle and the bronze tip of the flame blazed in his eyes. “It’s been a long time since I thought about that play,” he said softly. “There’s a role you could’ve played, Owen. Cassio. He was wronged. Like you.” He turned to Owen and laughed easily. “It’s true. Be damned if it’s not.”

Owen shifted again in his chair. He pulled the sack of provisions in his lap. He tried to avoid Michael’s eyes.

“Did you kill that young couple, Owen?” Michael asked evenly. “Did you?”

“N-n-n—no,” Owen stammered.

“I know it, Owen. You were wronged, like Cassio.”

“I didn’t do nothin’.”

Michael took a step forward. He stood over Owen and stared calmly at him.

“Them men that’s lookin’ for you, they’d be heroes if they found you,” he said. “They would. The whole town’s waitin’. They’re takin’ bets on who it’ll be. Man that finds you, he’ll get the treatment, he will. Drinks on the house. Him tellin’ about it, over and over. People slappin’ him on the back, sayin’ how he made up for that young couple bein’ knifed. You know that, Owen? Do you know that?”

“I didn’t—didn’t kill nobody.”

Michael shook his head sadly. He clucked his tongue.

“But you come in here, wavin’ the knife, sayin’ you’d be splittin’ the throat of those good women asleep in the house if you didn’t get Eli’s money.”

“No—no, I didn’t.” Owen’s voice was a whine.

“You shouldn’t’ve done that, Owen. Not with all the help I’ve been to you.”

“No. No—”

Michael reached for the knife sheathed at his leg.

“All this time I been trustin’ you, Owen. Never dreamin’ you’d be turnin’ on me.”

Owen’s face trembled. The sack of provisions slipped from his hands and fell to the floor. He stood up from the chair and began to back away toward the door.

“Here, Owen, here’s your knife,” Michael whispered. He tossed the knife at Owen’s feet, against the door. “Now you’ve got me helpless, and there’s nothin’ I can do but look for somethin’ to defend myself with.” He whirled and scrambled across the room. His voice became higher and his accent thickened: “Me lookin’ frantic-like for somethin’, not knowin’ what to do, beggin’ ‘Don’t kill me, Owen, don’t kill me.’” He stopped at the foot of the bed and reached to the floor and
turned back to Owen. “And luck would have it—blind Irish luck—but I find a pitchfork I’d been mendin’.” He held the pitchfork before him.

Owen stood frozen against the door. His heart quivered. His tongue felt wadded in his mouth. His arms raised helplessly, automatically, above his head. His right foot touched the knife on the floor.

“Yes,” Michael began to whisper. “Yes, yes, yes.” He could feel the perspiration oozing from his palms. The music began faintly in his mind and he could see vague dots of faces in his audience, people squirming, shoving against the space separating them from the power of his presence.

“Plea—please,” Owen begged.

Michael stepped into the full light of the candle. He held the pitchfork before him, like a lance.

“I’d like to be helpin’ you,” he said soothingly. “I’d like to, but what could I do? You comin’ in here like this, wavin’ your knife—likely the one that’s cut the throat of that young couple—vowin’ to do in them poor ladies asleep in the house. You shouldn’t’ve done that, Owen. Makin’ me do this.”

Owen’s face turned to the door. He closed his eyes and locked his trembling knees and pushed up on his toes.

Michael was breathing hard. He heard his audience gasp, heard their great collective “No!”, heard the concert of their horror spilling in panic as they grabbed one another like victims of an executioner’s gun. The music soared in him and the searing eye of an imagined spotlight covered him with its heat. He raised the pitchfork and leaped across the floor, driving it hard into Owen’s throat, pinning him against the door.

Owen’s eyes snapped open in surprise. His tongue rolled in his opened mouth and a stream of blood spurted over his lips and down his chin and dripped across his chest. The face of his mother flew into the silver shell of his mind. He felt her fingers on him. His head swiveled back against the door and he died.

Michael stood, pushing with his weight against the pitchfork. Through the handle he could feel Owen’s body convulse and
then relax as his life left him. A blinding white heat sliced through Michael’s brain like a whiplash and he shook his head to clear it. Then he stepped tentatively away. The pitchfork held Owen to the door like a limp bundle.

Michael stared at the dead man before him. The room was quiet. There was no audience. No music. No light. No sound. He closed his eyes to bring his audience back before him, to hear their applause. There was nothing.

He reached for the knife on the floor beside Owen. A drop of blood had splattered like a thick raindrop across the handle. He wiped the handle dry on the left sleeve of his shirt.

He turned from the body and walked to the bed and methodically smoothed the bedcovering. He then sat on the edge of the bed and took his knife and cut a thin line in his flannel shirt, above the left elbow. He pulled the tip of the blade across his arm, leaving a small slit, like a clean scratch.

He looked across the room at Owen as the blood seeped down his arm and into his shirt. A sudden confusion pumped in him: Why had he killed Owen? Was it because of Eli’s money? Or was it something in his imagination? Owen was part of a drama that had been written for him from the moment he saw the house where Lester and Mary Caufield lived, and he could not change it. Yes, he thought, that was why. He had killed Owen because it was predestined; it was beyond his control.

He stood at the bed and crossed the room and gently opened the door with Owen’s body on it. He walked rapidly through the barn, across the yard, and to the house. He stood at the front door kneading his arm, forcing the blood to flow. He lifted his face and listened again for his audience. He could hear nothing. He began kicking at the door with his shoe.

“Rachel, Rachel,” he screamed. “For God’s sake, Rachel, open the door. I think I’ve killed the boy.”

* * *

At the house where Lester and Mary Caufield had been murdered, Tolly Wakefield knelt in the corner of the dark, bare
living room and held the bones of the chicken that Owen had eaten. He sniffed the bones as a dog would sniff them and then he walked outside the house and stood on the stoop of the back porch. He had been right about the house and Owen. He could feel a chill, like the presence of an apparition, on his face. But it was not the ghost of Lester or Mary Caufield. Owen Benton was dead. Tolly could feel it.

TOLLY SAW THE LIGHTS of the Pettit house from a half-mile away, on the road leading back to Deepstep Creek. The lights were two small orange spots on a level line in front of the house. He looked at his pocket watch. It was three o’clock. He had decided against returning to the bridge at Deepstep Creek through the woods; he had no reason to hurry, and the road was easier walked, if longer. He stared at the lights in the house and his head began to ache again with the premonition of Owen’s death.

“Dammit,” he muttered.

He reached the house quickly. Through the front window, he saw Michael sitting forward in a chair, his head bowed. Rachel and Dora, wearing heavy gowns, stood near him. Sarah sat in the rocker, near the fireplace. She sat very erect, not moving. Tolly could not see her face, only her body.

He looked around the yard and saw the opened barn door. He stepped to the porch of the house.

“Rachel,” he called.

He saw the figures in the house stiffen as their faces whipped toward the window and the voice.

“Rachel, it’s Tolly Wakefield,” he said in a strong voice.

He saw Michael move from his chair and to the door. The door opened and Michael stepped onto the porch, followed by Rachel and Dora.