The Luck Runs Out (22 page)

“I’ll do my best. He may be over at Harry Goulson’s. He said he’d promised to do some work on—”

“Arrgh!” said Svenson.

Shandy realized this was no time for conversation. Still traveling at a lively clip, he headed for Main Street.

Flackley was there. Shandy could see the van parked not at Goulson’s but in front of the Ruptured Duck, Balaclava Junction’s one feeble excuse for a restaurant. He went in and found the farrier perched on a stool at the counter, shoveling in an appalling mess of deep-fried objects that had perhaps started out as edible foodstuffs. Flackley waved his fork with easy friendliness.

“Hi, Professor, haul up a stool an’ set. Buy you a cup o’ coffee?”

“Er—no, thank you.”

Shandy lowered his voice. “The fact is, we’ve run into a—er—little problem up at the barns, and we need you right away.”

“Sure thing. Got time to finish my grub here? I never et no breakfast, an’ my guts was startin’ to growl.”

“You should have said so when you were at the house. My wife would have given you something other than beer and cheese.”

“You folks done enough for me already.”

Flackley bolted the rest of the loathsome agglomeration on his plate with frightening rapidity, tossed a bill on the counter, said, “Thanks, Mabel, see you later,” to the waitress and followed Shandy outdoors.

“Now, Professor,” he said as they climbed into the van, “what’s this little problem of yours?”

“Actually, it’s a big problem,” Shandy confessed, “and I’m hoping to God you can help us out. You see, the college owns a very large old wagon that we take to the Competition every year.”

“Oh yeah, Aunt Martha mentioned that. Didn’t my great-grandfather forge the hardware, or something?”

“Various Flackleys have worked on the wagon over the years. Anyway, President Svenson just went to check it over, and found that it’s been vandalized.”

“Jeez, that’s terrible! You folks sure have been havin’ a run of hard luck around here. When did it happen?”

“Sometime during the night, I expect. Actually, we’re not sure. With so many of us out hunting for the pig and the rest trying to fill in for them here, there, and everywhere, I doubt if anybody’s been into the wagon barns for the past couple of days. In any event, the Competition starts day after tomorrow, and we absolutely must have the big dray in shape to roll by then.”

“Sounds like the old days with Rudy,” Flackley grunted. “Don’t sweat it, Professor.”

He gunned the college van and got them to the barns in no time flat. President Svenson was still there, standing among the ruins like Samson at Gaza. Flackley hopped out and started poking about while they waited with bated breath, for his diagnosis.

At last the farrier, straightened up, wiped his hands on the seat of his pants, and pronounced his verdict.

“Well, I seen worse.”

“Never mind you seen,” said Svenson. “How about you fixed?”

“Lemme think a minute. You need the wagon first thing in the morning, day after tomorrow. Right?”

“Wrong. We need it tomorrow six
P.M.
We drive to the fairgrounds, six hours, rest the horses midnight to seven, feed and water, harness up, and we’re heading the parade at nine o’clock on the button.”

“That makes it tight. But don’t sweat it, Mr. President. I don’t get no sleep between now and then, that’s all. See, I was out checkin’ around the old smithy. There’s plenty to work with up there, even extry hoops for these here barrels. They part of the rig?”

“They’re what the band sits on,” Shandy explained. “You see, they screw into these iron flanges so they won’t tip and send the buglers tail over crupper into the drums, giving rise to general discord and bucolic ribaldry.”

“Yeah, well, they’re no great problem. Look, if you can find a towrope and a crew to raise the wagon so’s I can get this wheel back on, I’ll hitch’er to the van and get ’er back to the forge. Once I’m there, I think I can promise to have the wagon ready for the show. I won’t say it’ll be a real classy job, but she’ll hold together. That’s what counts, ain’t it? I expect you got some bunting or somethin’ you can drape around to hide the gouges. That’s what Rudy always done.”

“Oh yes,” Shandy assured him. “We’ve got a whole committee appointed to gussy the thing up. Now, let’s start on this wheel.”

“You mean you an’ him?”

“We’ve done messier jobs than this. Right, President?”

“Right.”

Thorkjeld bent double and hoisted the sagging corner of the enormous dray on his own back. “Make it snappy, Flackley. I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“Jeez,” said the farrier reverently. Then he got to work.

As he’d said himself, Flackley wasn’t fancy but he was certainly fast. Though he appeared somewhat shaken at having to use a college president for a jack, he got the wheel back on the axle and within half ah hour pronounced the wagon safe to travel.

Soon a little procession was winding its way toward Forgery Point: Flackley driving the college van, Svenson riding in the drag to keep an eye on the towropes or go down with his ship as the case might be, and Shandy following in his own car to guard the rear and pick up any pieces that fell off en route. The trip was maddeningly slow since they didn’t dare joggle the disabled wagon any more than was absolutely necessary, but they got there. Flackley jumped from the van and started to loosen the hitches.

“Okay, gents, if you’ll help me shove ’er around to the smithy, I’ll take ’er from here.”

“We’ll be glad to stay and pump the bellows, or whatever,” Shandy offered, but Flackley shook his head.

“Thanks, but to tell the truth, you’d only be in my way. Tell you what would be a big help, though. Could you bring the horses out here tomorrow night instead of me having to tow the wagon back? The Seven Forks is more or less on the way to the fairgrounds anyway, ain’t it? That’d shorten your trip some an’ give me a couple of extry hours if I need ’em.”

“President, I think Flackley has an excellent point there,” said Shandy. “We can bring the band this far by bus easily enough.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Flackley, “long as it ain’t too big a bus. That sure is an awful stretch of road between here an’ the Seven Forks. I was kind o’ worried about that ol’ wagon pitchin’ over them potholes, I don’t mind tellin’ you, even with no load aboard.”

“Right,” said Svenson. “Bounced like hell. Disgrace to the township. We’ll send ’em the whole way by bus.”

“That’d be a big load off my mind,” said Flackley. “So there’ll just be the handlers, eh? How many?”

“Damned if I know. Depends on who’s alive and out of jail. Two, three, maybe.”

“Great! Then I’ll be expectin’ you with the horses sometime around eight o’clock tomorrow night. If you want to come out anytime tomorrow to make sure we’re gettin’ along okay, I’ll be glad to have you. Right now I guess I better start firin’ up that old forge.”

Since Flackley was so obviously anxious to get rid of them, they went. As they got into Shandy’s car and started back, Svenson grunted.

“One off the list, anyway.”

“Two,” said Shandy. “Birgit’s talking again.”

He explained. Svenson heaved a sigh of relief that almost blew the windshield out.

“Yeepers creepers! And some yackasses go around wishing they could be young again. I knew that Gables kid would cause trouble sooner or later. Didn’t want to come here. Acted on principle. Bad business. Turns ’em ugly. Next thing you know, they’re putting bombs in baby carriages.”

“Oh, I doubt if Miss Gables would ever go that far,” said Shandy. “Anyway, if that agreeable young chap Lubbock has his way, I expect she’ll be—er—putting something else into a baby carriage one of these days.”

“Hope so. Usually it’s the brainy ones who don’t and the brainless who do. If Stott ran his piggery the way we humans run our race, I’d have given him the boot twenty years ago. Where the hell is that animal, Shandy?”

“President, when I find out you’ll be the first to know. I can tell you a few thousand places she’s not, if that’s any help.”

“No.”

They fell silent. Neither had eaten any lunch, and the afternoon was now far spent. Both were yearning to go home, have a drink and a snack, and take a snooze before dinner.

But Stott’s name, now that it had been uttered, lay in the air like a bomb in a baby carriage. When they got out to the Seven Forks, Shandy, stopped at the unsavory general store and used the pay phone. Then he swung the car toward the main highway that led to the county lockup.

When they got there, they were refused permission to see the prisoner. With some difficulty, Shandy managed to persuade Svenson not to wrench off the steel bars that prevented their gaining access to their colleague, and asked if Stott had been allowed to contact a lawyer. He was told Professor Stott did not want a lawyer. He could well believe it. Stott would think an honest man did not need a lawyer. The police would think Stott was a nut.

“Then just tell him Shandy and Svenson stopped in to say hello,” he told the man at the desk sadly, and they went away.

B
Y THE TIME SHANDY
got home, he was feeling lower than a snake’s garters. The sight of Iduna’s face didn’t cheer him any. She must, he thought, be coming down with something. Maybe he was, too. He took the drink Helen handed him and crouched close to the fireplace. The chill seemed to have got into his bones, even though some people had been making asinine remarks about spring in the air. How could they have spring, till Stott was sprung?

Although dinner was no doubt up to standard, Shandy didn’t enjoy it much. Timothy Ames dropped over for another round of cribbage afterward, and he didn’t particularly enjoy that, either. He felt as though they were all inept actors in a bad play, going through the motions without being able to put any zip into the performance.

As soon as Professor Ames was out the door, Iduna said dully, “If you folks don’t mind, I think I’ll go to bed.”

She looked as if she might be planning to cry herself to sleep, and Shandy was about ready to do the same. Before long, he and Helen followed her upstairs.

Sleep, however, eluded them both. They lay together, not in the mood for what they would normally have been in the mood for, hashing things over. Shandy had told her and Iduna all about the vandalized wagon at the dinner table, but he hadn’t dared mention the visit to the lockup for fear of opening the floodgates again. He told Helen now.

“And he won’t have a lawyer?” she yawned. “That’s understandable. His strength is as the strength of ten be cause his heart is pure.”

“Yes, but is purity going to bail him out?” said Shandy.

“Of course. Virtue always triumphs sooner or later. Look at Jane Eyre.”

“Why should I? What brought her into the conversation, anyway?”

“I was reading that biography of Charlotte Bronte this afternoon. Oh, by the way, I was wrong about the Bells.”

“What bells?”

“Currer, Ellis, and Acton, of course. Remember when we were having that shemozzle about the Buggins Collection and I said I thought six copies of their poems were sold? Actually, there were only two.”

“Gad, woman, you do think of the oddest things at the oddest times. How could there have been only two if a copy turned up at Balaclava a hundred and thirty years later?”

“Peter dearest, two copies sold doesn’t mean two books in circulation. Charlotte sent copies around to everybody she’d ever heard of, more or less, and they must have kept a few kicking around the house even after they’d sold the rest to that trunkmaker. Authors always do.”

“So?”

“So the most logical explanation is that Branwell lugged an armload down to the local pub one night when he was on the sauce and handed them out to the boys in the back room. Mr. Buggins happened to be passing through Haworth at the time—”

“Mr. Buggins of Balaclava County? Come on!”

“He was doing the Grand Tour. They did in those days. Spent a year abroad exploring the picturesque nooks and crannies of the old world and the rest of their lives boring people to death with their souvenirs.”

“Haworth wasn’t a picturesque nook or cranny.”

“Mr. Buggins wouldn’t know that, would he? He’d never been there before. Anyway, as I was trying to say, he was in the pub that night and Branwell gave him a book, which he added to his trunkful of mementos.”

“Um. What’s the second most logical explanation?”

“The trunkmaker, I should think. How do we know he used all the books lining trunks? Maybe his wife thought a few tastefully displayed volumes would add a touch of class to the front parlor. Maybe his—Aha, I have it! He had an apprentice, who was made to sleep on a straw pallet in the workroom, as apprentices invariably were. This apprentice swiped a sufficient number of books to put under his pallet and keep out the drafts from the floor. Paper is an excellent insulator, you know. Then a year or so later when
Jane Eyre
was published and became an overnight success, still under the name of Currer Bell, you must remember, and Ellis and Acton also got their novels printed, the apprentice realized he might be sleeping on something of value. So he fished the books out from under the pallet and peddled them to a secondhand bookseller.”

“To buy a noggin of rum,” said Shandy idly. Then suddenly he bounded out of bed and reached for his trousers. “By George, Helen, you’ve hit it on the noggin!” Before his wife could say, “Where are you going?” he was gone.

If Helen Shandy had not been so tired herself, she might have got up and followed. Instead, she fell asleep. She did not know that she spent the entire night alone. She did not know why her husband, looking exhausted but jubilant, made his way to Valhalla in the gray light of dawn to find Thorkjeld Svenson, wrapped in a bathrobe, scowling into a coffee mug the size of a washbasin. Nor did she know that when Peter left the mansion on the hill, Thorkjeld Svenson was already upstairs girding his loins for battle and bellowing an ancient Viking war chant.

“ ‘Down in a meady in a itty bitty pool fam fee itty fitties anna mama fitty too.’ Birgit, up! General assembly seven o’clock, all hands on deck; this means you. Sieglinde, breakfast! Much breakfast! This is a day that will live in infamy.”