Whipple's Castle (75 page)

“I'm taking my sister home now,” David said, and let the car move slowly forward. The men moved aside for him and he proceeded down the street and into the driveway. Other cars were parked down past the house—one he recognized as a town-police car. Faces glowed faintly from the brush across the street, from behind trees.

“We're surrounded, all right,” he said.

“Come in the house, Davy,” Kate said, noticing his hesitation.

“You go on in, Katie.” He unstrapped the flashlight from the steering column. An overwhelming revulsion had come over him, of being surrounded like this. He'd start shooting out of the windows and battlements at them. He'd pick the sons of bitches off with accurate shots to the neck.

The moon had gone down, and the stars, so bright and thick they seemed to define a solid black cover over the night, pressed down over the hill. The maples rustled overhead like witnesses. He saw Kate into the house and walked back, his flashlight on, toward the police car—the command post. This street he'd always lived on, that he'd traveled night and day with no danger but the vaguely believed ogres of childhood, now seemed even less dangerous. Those fake Indians behind the trees couldn't touch him. He knew who they were, most of them.

The police radio crackled and muttered. Kenny Clark stood there, wearing an Ike jacket and dungarees. When he saw David he let his lever-action deer rifle lean closely against his leg, as if to hide it.

“Tell me what happened,” David demanded. “I just got home and I don't know.”

“Well, Dave, it was Horace…” The saying of the name seemed to scare Kenny into silence.

“Just tell me what you know, Kenny.” Other men came up the hill to report, one speaking softly into a walkie-talkie, others among themselves. The state policeman lounged in his front seat.

What Kenny Clark had heard was that Horace had blown Gordon's head half off. He'd been seen and recognized by Mr. and Mrs. Ward, who caught him in their headlights as they came up their driveway. Mrs. Ward was in shock at Northlee Hospital. Horace had been seen once more, heading toward home.

“How come all the vigilantes, though?” David said. “How come the goddam army?”

“Well, Jeeze, Dave. We were all at the Legion Hall, you know. Atmon come in and told us what happened. Chief Tuttle was getting the state cops too. We just went home and got our guns, that's all.” Kenny was nearly whining in apology. “He's armed, Dave. Hey, Dave? I know you must feel awful bad about it.” Kenny began edging away, trying to look like duty. “Yeah, Dave. Gordon had a war record, you know. You know how the guys feel.”

“Yeah,” he said. He knew it too well. They'd all like a nice running shot, take a nice lead and squeeze, but it had little to do with Gordon Ward. He stared at Kenny Clark, that semi-dim friend of high school, at this organization of men in the middle of the night. Up the street was his father's house, his home, the big house standing above the maples, window lights fragmentary through branches and moving leaves. He and Horace had come home as babies to this street, that house.

Christ, he ought to know all these murderers because he was one himself. They all ought to be home with their wives, smoothing them down, making that mutual happy violence. But ah, the kill, the kill. Most of them considered their pricks to be guns, knives. Rape the bitch, feel the push. Candy Palmer's broad white ass in his hands.

He had to see Horace, to tell him something. He'd never told Horace what mattered. When he tried to teach him to drive he'd frozen with apprehension at what Horace might do to his precious truck. He must get to Horace before these men killed him. His little brother. In all his own fantasies he had been the one slipping stealthily through the bastards, the shits, knocking them off one by one. Never Horace, that poor gaumless child who always hurt himself. All Horace wanted was…sweet Susie Davis. Justice? He'd given it, and now he'd get it. Wood couldn't pay his fine this time. David turned to go back to the house. Unresolved surges of energy and resolve seemed to bloat his muscles, to convince him totally. Then those mirages of action boiled away, turned vague and impossible. If only he knew where Horace was, he could get through their lines and find him. First he would go to the house and get his gun. Which gun, and who would he use it on? He had no tools for this dilemma, no power.

Then came the shots, three shots from the hill above the house, quite far away through the trees and distance. It was a familiar sound to the hunters, though rarely heard in the dark of an August night.

“Holy Jesus, hear them shots!” The men listened, but heard only wind and the peepers in the underbrush.

“Come from up toward the reservoy!”

“Rifle. I can
tell”

“Shotgun.”

“Rifle—ain't so hollow, more of a crack, like.”

“Dumb shits probably shooting at each other.”

The one with the walkie-talkie, Keith Joubert, came running over to the state policeman. “They seen him! Atmon says they browned him a little!”

“Did they git him is what I want to know.” The state policeman reached out his big hand, which was not to be denied, and Keith Joubert surrendered his walkie-talkie. The policeman got out and stood beside his car, his Sam Browne belt, the leather holders and boxes attached to it, gleaming black. “McManus here. What happened up there?” He listened. “Okay. Over and out.” He handed the walkie-talkie to whoever was there to receive it and got back into his car.

“Did they git him?” someone asked.

“Think they nicked him a little.” David had turned away, but he had to hear them. “Got a couple number-four buck in him, anyways. Don't believe hell go too far.”

“See? I told you I can tell a shotgun!”

David walked steadily away from them, toward the lights and towers of the surrounded house.

 

They thought they had heard shots from the hill. Henrietta jumped in her chair as if she had been touched by them, and Kate held her as hard as she could. They were all frozen into a terrible surmise. No one said anything about the shots, but Peggy left Wood's side and closed the casement window beside the shallow frame of the chapel. Wood's face was calm, unmoving. Harvey was pale and sick; he couldn't sit down, but stood teetering on his canes, taking a few steps toward the hall, then back toward his oak table. Several times he seemed to decide to sit down, even reached for the back of his tall chair, then changed his mind. David came in and looked at each of them in turn. With each look his mouth grew narrower and tighter. He stood in the dining room as if fixed there by what he gained from each of their faces.

Suddenly Henrietta cried to him, “What are they doing? What are they all doing?”

David shook his head, unable to speak. The room rose up around them, around their silence, its heavy wood and carved paneling, up to the false balcony and beyond. The chandelier came down from the dim heights of the ceiling on its brass pole to light the oak table, the paper clips and adding machine, typewriter, pencils, ashtray, wire baskets full of papers. The business of the table was an unnatural island in the great space of the room. Its disarray seemed frivolous. The Whipples remained around the edges, almost in shadow, their stiff faces in control.

“I'm going to find him,” David said.

“No! No! They might shoot you!” Henrietta said.

“It's Horace out there!” David cried.

“David.” Wood's deep, whispery voice startled them. “Don't make your mother worry about you too.”

“Me?” David shouted at Wood. “I'm the one nobody has to worry about! Right?” He grew red, unlike David, terribly angry. “I'm the one who's always off somewhere when anything happens, right? Screw you, Jack, I've got mine! That's my motto, right?”

“Wood! Don't let him go! Harvey!” Henrietta cried.

“I'm the only one in this fucking family who hasn't been hit! It's my turn, isn't it?”

“Oh, David!”

He turned and ran out through the dining room.

Harvey began to climb the stairs. He could do nothing, fat slob that he was, to save Horace from their bullets. They had the right, the boy was armed. It was too late, too late. Slowly, thinking before each step of canes, good leg, canes, bad leg, he climbed toward the first landing. What was he looking for? He used to run up and down these stairs the way David always ran up and down stairs. Something he must look for. He knew he should have been more patient with Horace. Every time he snapped at Horace he knew it wasn't necessary, it was a mistake, and he vowed to make it up next time. There always seemed to be so much time ahead in which he could make it up to Horace and undo all the other times. They could have a talk and he could explain to Horace that he loved him, that you didn't have to even things up with a shotgun.

He was going upstairs into his castle. He hadn't seen the upper reaches of his castle for a long time—that was why he climbed the stairs. Now he knew he would never find the secret room. His son had killed the only son of his friend. He stopped and had to grab the railing with his elbow as hard as he could because he couldn't stand it. His money was ashes, his castle a pile of shit. He couldn't breathe, couldn't understand why his heart still beat Nancy Ward lay drugged in the hospital, but she had to wake. What barren cold Gordon must contemplate, his only son gone.

Is it my fault? He heard his own querulous voice begin to ask. No, it wasn't his
f
ault!
He could prove that! But not to his insides, not now. His son's act was his own act. He couldn't stop that knowledge.

But there must be the ameliorating fact somewhere. He must clear his throat of this pain and look for it. He climbed the second flight to the upstairs hall, the high, distinguished mansion hallway that had made them all so important. Sweat dripped into his sore eyes, down his cheeks until he tasted salt. What could he tell Gordon of good import? How could he cheer him up? It was impossible that the world could be all ashes. He would have to talk to Gordon tomorrow and he had nothing good to tell him! He couldn't recite his own failures, could he? Would that make Gordon any happier?

He leaned against the brocade wallpaper and groaned. His pride in this wallpaper came back bitter in his mouth. Something broke inside his chest. Something must have ruptured, some tube or vein. He staggered and came down hard on his bad leg—that pain woke him up; he was still functioning. He couldn't live with nothing but unhappiness. He must have good news! Where was it? He had to have something to tell Gordon! God, he wasn't even a man: he'd almost blubbered for his mama. But there must be good news, there must be something! He sat down on a little maroon chair and put his face in his hands, feeling his soft cheeks. The only thing he could think of was that all the polls said Dewey would beat Truman.

 

Later, when Harvey began his slow descent of the stairs, Henrietta looked at him and away, having seen too much. He was too weak to have to go through this night. Playing at his games hadn't given him that kind of strength. She felt those guns at her heart, knowing how they might kill her. In her anguish she would wait, she would have to wait. She had waited before. But Harvey, the little boy, the bright show-off—he had to have something to look forward to. Kate let her go and she went to him.

He let her help him down the last few steps, then to a settee where she could sit beside him, her strong hands holding his soft white ones. Hers were darker, like weathered wood against snow.

Horace was her child, hardly his at all. Horace's presence hovered like a giant above the house, over the towers and battlements. His brute strength and kind intentions—had they all so made themselves into monsters, nonpeople, that Horace could kill one of them? He could never hurt a warm living thing. It must have been a monster he had killed, one of his monsters. As if to prove him right they hunted him down with guns.

Harvey let his head fall on her shoulder. This weak man had once seemed so strong. His transparent hair let his scalp show through. Instead of getting gray his hair was losing all color, and as he aged, all of his colors grew bland and neutral. No one looked to him for strength any more, or consulted him. He played his little games of money, getting more and more money though he didn't work for it, or make anything, or do anything for people in return for it. No wonder he was secretive, and hinted at plots and deals, corruption and conspiracy. Poor Harvey, now he had no excuses. What was happening was happening.

But no one could help reaching for hope, any sort of hope. Gordon was dead. That was over; there was no hope there. Chief Tuttle had promised that they wouldn't shoot at Horace if Horace didn't shoot at them. Then why those shots? Was he hurt and bleeding now, her strange child? She shouldn't think of hope. She knew how to wait among the living; that was all a woman could do. She would not scream or cry. All of her children were strange, precariously balanced. They could break, and she must try to help them as long as she could. Bury the dead and help the living. She saw Horace dead and her heart shuddered. She saw the golden bristles along his jaw, the flesh beneath them bluish in death, his long wrists that were always chapped. All stone, distant as a photograph.

She had never been as close to Horace as she might have been. She loved him, but always with a certain other quality he must have recognized. Apprehension, maybe—some other emotion that got in between. He'd always been a little foreign to her, no matter how her heart claimed him. Not so much as he was to Harvey, though; Horace was the type of person Harvey had always despised, no matter how hard he tried not to. How awful poor Harvey must be feeling now. To despise and love and be guilty. He vibrated, trembled against her. It had been years since he'd touched her in the presence of any of the children, and never because of this terrible need. Once they touched only in fun. All gone now.