Murder in Little Egypt (16 page)

Dale never confessed to what he had done, and the other men never exposed him. Somehow Bob Davenport got blamed, but Pat Sullivan knew that the incident had Dale Cavaness written all over it. Sullivan went through a few days of apoplexy trying to figure out how he could prove Dale’s responsibility and stick him with several thousand dollars’ worth of damages; but Pat tried to see the humor in the situation. He would write off the losses. He guessed that it was the price you paid for having such a brilliant, eccentric friend. And after all, Dale never sent the Sullivans a bill for any medical services. They felt lucky to have him around, a first-class physician in a depressed and poverty-stricken area.

In an obscure way that neither could fully articulate, both Marian and Pat Sullivan felt sorry for Dale, the feisty little guy who had always been tough to tackle and who still had the need to prove himself. Pat was out hunting with Dale one November afternoon when Dale fell in a creek bed and broke his arm. The break, on or near the elbow, was obvious, you could see the splintered bone. Pat wondered how Dale could keep from fainting from the pain.

“I’ll get you to the hospital,” Pat said. Dale insisted on driving himself.

“What’s the matter with you?” Pat protested. “I’ll drive. You might pass out.”

“The hell I will.”

When Dale reached town, pale and sweating, he did not head for the hospital, pulling up instead in front of his father’s house.

“Got to let the dogs off,” Dale said. “And they’re hungry. Better feed them before we go over and get this damn arm fixed.”

Pat telephoned Marian and told her that it looked as if Dale was out of his mind with the pain. Here he was with a broken elbow and he was feeding the dogs. Marian said that she would get things ready at the hospital, but that if the break was as bad as Pat said it was, she ought to drive Dale to St. Louis to see an orthosurgeon.

“I’ll bet Dale won’t hear of that,” Pat said. “He’ll try to fix it himself.”

At the hospital Dale gave orders, refused a preparatory anesthetic, and passed out. When he came to after the operation, he went into convulsions. Both the surgery and the anesthetic had been botched. Marian thought he was going to die. The elbow never healed properly; and he was never again able to extend his left arm fully.

In retrospect Marian wondered whether Dale’s brain had been permanently affected by the convulsions, but there were so many other incidents involving his bullheadedness and pride in enduring pain that any one of them seemed enough to have deranged an ordinary man. And there was no talking to him. He would never admit that he was carrying the idea of bravery and guts to absurdity.

Marian remembered waking up one morning to find Dale next to her with his throat bandaged from ear to ear. He had been out playing poker the night before. She had not heard him come in. The doorbell rang. It was one of Dale’s buddies, asking if he was all right. Hadn’t Marian heard? Dale had almost been killed. Was he doing okay?

There were conflicting versions of what had happened the previous night, but none differed on the essentials. Dale had gone to play poker with some of his cronies at Kemo Golish’s Amusement Company. The Golish brothers for years had supplied and maintained all the pinball machines in Saline County, and their ware-house outside of Harrisburg on Route 13, formerly the building where Charlie Birger had processed and stored some of his liquor, was a kind of speakeasy, most of Saline County being dry in those days.

One of the poker players was a barber named Huck Gee, a big, ornery fellow who had a reputation as a troublemaker. The game had been going along for several hours when Huck Gee finally went bust. He accused Dale of cheating, or Dale accused Huck Gee of shorting the pot: Either way, Huck Gee left the game vowing that he was going to get Dale Cavaness.

When the game finally ended, Dale stepped outside to find the big barber waiting for him, holding a broken bottle. Huck Gee lunged for Dale’s throat and got him, twisting the bottle, slashing him from one side to the other. Dale went down, blood pouring from his neck. Huck Gee ran off down the highway.

Dale was not through. He was up like a jumping jack and after the barber. He caught him fifty yards down the road, knocked him to the ground with a football tackle, rolled on top of him and grabbed him around the throat. It was quite a sight, everyone said, Dale’s old speed coming to the fore, blood pouring from his throat, catching his man and downing him, squeezing and strangling him and pounding his big bald head against the pavement. Somebody called the police; the other poker players pried Dale off Huck Gee just as the cops arrived. The barber went to jail, the doctor to the hospital.

The doctor who sewed up Dale’s throat at the Harrisburg hospital said that Huck Gee had come within one millimeter of severing Dale’s jugular vein.

What Marian remembered more than anything, other than her terror and revulsion at the entire incident, was Dale’s attitude as he sat in his chair in the family room that morning receiving well-wishers, friends, nurses and employees from the hospital and the office. He could not talk, but he was grinning like a kid. He was David who had whipped Goliath. He was the scrapper who would never quit. He was indomitable, the man who could take anything and give worse than he got, a winner. When he was asked in the next week whether he wanted to press attempted-murder charges against Huck Gee, he refused. Huck Gee had learned his lesson, Dale said. He would never mess with Dale Cavaness again.

The story became a local legend and was written up in the papers. Marian wondered whether she was the only one who thought the whole business disgusting and frightening. Everybody else seemed to consider Dale a hero. She was glad her husband could defend himself, but she wondered whether he was courting death.

Even as Marian ruminated about Dale’s behavior over the years, she still tried to convince herself that his affair with Martha was just a fling. Late one evening in 1967 she was lying alone in her bed, staring at the ceiling, when she heard the garage door open and a car drive in. Dale came upstairs, stripped to his shorts and crawled into bed with her. He had not been there beside her for more than a year.

They lay side by side, not touching, silent. He smelled of whiskey. Marian turned her back and hugged the side of the bed. She wondered what on earth his presence meant. She was torn between asking him to get out and waiting to see what he had to say.

A car started honking in the street, short beeps and then a continuous blare. Dale did not move. Marian went to the window.

“It’s Martha,” Marian said. “What in hell does she think she’s doing?”

“Let her honk,” Dale said. “Let her get picked up by the cops. She’s drunk. Let her go to hell.”

Martha gave up and drove off. Marian permitted herself to hope that the two had finally broken up. She did not appreciate Dale’s coming back like this, with no explanations, no apologies, but there he was.

Dale left for work the next morning as if everything were back to normal, saying good-bye to the boys, even asking them a few perfunctory questions about school. Sean, who had just started kindergarten and was the most openly affectionate of the children, clung to his father, not wanting to let him go. Dale had to shake Sean loose.

But Dale did not return that night. He and Martha had merely had a tiff, Marian realized bitterly, a lovely little boozed-up lovers’ quarrel.

Dale’s coming home like that, never intending to stay, using the house and her bed as an escape from that woman—it was worse than violence, insulting and cruel and beyond Marian’s comprehension. What had she done to deserve this? What would she tell the boys?

By the summer of the next year Marian’s checks had begun to bounce. She still had credit at the grocery store and elsewhere, but she was sickened at the prospect of losing face with local merchants, people with whom she had enjoyed trading for years. Her bank statement showed an overdraft.

She telephoned Dale at the hospital and at his office; he did not return her calls. In desperation she made an appointment to see him.

Dale admitted her to his private office and closed the door. Marian was struck by his seedy appearance. He had gained at least twenty pounds, he was sweaty with hair unbrushed and greasy. And he was not wearing one of his fine suits but a pair of cheap green polyester pants. Instead of asking him about money, she found herself telling him that he looked terrible. What was he doing to himself? Why wouldn’t he admit that he had made a mistake and come back? What about the children?

“What are you here for?” was all Dale said. “You know I don’t like to be interrupted during office hours.” He was icy.

Marian explained that she had to have some money. She did not know what his finances were, but surely he understood that he had a family to support. There was no money in her account. He would have to start giving her regular payments of some kind.

“I don’t have any money,” he said. “There isn’t any money. I’m broke. What are you doing, sitting in the house? You better get off your butt and get yourself some kind of a job. With your clothes and your tastes. It isn’t going to come so easy anymore, I can tell you. Now leave me alone. I’m busy.”

Marian began looking for work.

10

MARIAN HAD NO WAY OF KNOWING WHETHER OR TO WHAT extent Dale was lying when he told her that he was broke. She gathered from the Sullivans and others that his cattle operations were not doing well and that other investments were going sour. But unless she went to a lawyer, filed for divorce, and got the court to require an accounting, she would be in the dark about his finances. She hesitated to take those steps for several reasons. Dale had all the advantages in any legal battle in Saline County. She doubted that she could find any lawyer who would be willing or able to stand up to him, or for that matter any judge. She knew Dale well enough to believe that he would stop at nothing to win, especially with Martha urging him on, and would probably be able to hide whatever assets he had. Nor did she like the idea of dragging her children into open warfare with their father: It might come to that, but Marian did not wish to make the first move. On top of these considerations, in spite of the mounting evidence of Dale’s intransigence and disaffection, she still harbored hopes that he would return to her. Seeing how rotten he looked at his office encouraged her to believe that eventually he would tire of living that way and come to his senses. Her hopes were by now less than bright, but they persisted; she still could not see how she could possibly go it alone with the four boys.

Pat Sullivan had tried to warn Dale for years about some of his business errors. Pat had let Dale in as an investor in a company formed to construct dormitories at Southern Illinois University and had lived to regret it. Dale was constantly demanding unnecessary meetings and coming up with absurd ideas to cut costs and improve profits. He was so vehement about his crackbrained construction theories, and he was taking up so much time with his meetings, that Pat was finally able to trade him a horse farm in Hamilton County for his interest. Pat watched with amusement as Dale suddenly began wearing cowboy boots and talking as if he were about to establish another King Ranch.

As Pat Sullivan understood them, Dale’s problems were similar to those of many physicians who were inept with their investments. They had all this cash on hand, and they mistook their competence in earning money as doctors for business sense. Instead of putting their money into conservative stocks or government securities, they got involved in hands-on businesses, the kind—like cattle breeding—that require constant personal attention to make them profitable. Doctors often got bored with the routines of their practices and sought the excitement of business risks, without understanding that they were in over their heads.

But if Dale’s business mistakes were common to doctors, he seemed compelled to commit them in the biggest possible way; and his apparently limitless bravado led him into one disaster after another. His choice of exotic European cattle breeds, for instance, was based on scientific knowledge but ignored practical experience. By the mid-sixties breeders all over the country were beginning to discover that bigger was not necessarily better. These huge breeds had a disproportionate ratio of bone to meat, making them less valuable per pound on the market; and their enormous, increasing birth weights meant a higher death rate for both calves and mothers.

But Dale was determined to prove himself a master of business as of medicine. He was the same about everything, from bridge to golf to shooting. He would not try something unless he could be the best. Everyone who knew him well called him Napoleon, though not to his face. He was Napoleon in Little Egypt.

Pat Sullivan was especially pessimistic about the future of Dale’s investments in catfish farming at both the Galatia and Hickory Handle properties. It was not only the expense of the ponds and hatcheries; it was another example of Dale’s obsession with the scientific side of production and his ignoring of basic business sense. When Dale began construction of the processing plant at the Handle, Pat asked him whether he had taken marketing into consideration:

“Who’s going to buy these fish, Dale? Have you contracted to sell them? There sure aren’t enough people around here to eat them. They can get all they need from the river. I mean, have you contacted the Bird’s-Eye people or some frozen-food outfit?”

“I’m not worried about that,” Dale brushed him off. “It’s a gold mine. All over the country.”

“Well, I’m telling you,” Pat said, marveling at the extent of the operation, “you’re going to be up to your ass in catfish.”

Even Pat Sullivan with all his common sense and friendly concern could not know every dark corner of Dale’s business follies. Marian’s uncle Eddie Bell, who had had some success investing in the stock market, got a telephone call from Dale one day asking for advice. He had some cash on hand, Dale said, and needed a promising stock. Eddie Bell recommended Curtiss-Wright, which at the time was selling at about forty dollars a share. Dale said that he would take the advice.