(He listened to Dr. Rabbitfoot, lady.)
Oh, you'd like to go out to the cemetery?
3
He did. It was on a road called Pleasant Hill, just out of town on one of the state roads (she gave him good directions), long fields dying under snow that came too early, and every now and then the wind picking up a flat sheet of loose snow, making it stand up and wave its arms. Funny how lost this country seems, though people have been walking back and forth over it for hundreds of years. It looks bruised and regretful, its soul gone or withdrawn, waiting for something to happen that will wake it up again.
The sign, Pleasant Hill Cemetery, was a length of stamped gray metal on one side of a black ironwork gate; if it had not been for the big gates standing at what looked like the entrance to just another hilly field, Don would have missed it. He looked at the gates as they came nearer, wondering what kind of farmer would be grandiose enough to stick up a baronial gate at his tractor path, slowed down, glanced up at the rising narrow road-more than a tractor path-and saw half a dozen cars parked at the top of the hill. Then he saw the little plate. Just another field, but heavens what they planted there. He swung his car through the gates.
Don left his car apart from the others, halfway up the hill, and walked to the top: nearest him was the oldest section of the cemetery, tilted slabs with pitted markings, stone angels lifting arms weighted with snow. Granite young women shielded their eyes with forearms hung with drapery. Thin skeletons of weeds mounted up the leaning slabs. The narrow road bisected the old section and led into a larger region of neat small headstones. Purple, gray and white, these were dwarfed by the expanse of land rolling out from them: after a moment, a hundred yards away, Don saw the fences surrounding the cemetery. A hearse was drawn up at the land's lowest point. The black-hatted driver cupped a cigarette so that it would not be seen by the little knot of people clustered around the newest grave. One woman shapeless in a pale blue coat clung to another, taller woman; the other mourners stood as straight and motionless as fenceposts. When I saw the two old men standing together at the base of the grave, I knew they had to be the two lawyers-if they weren't lawyers they were from Central Casting. I started to come toward them down the slope of the narrow road. Then I thought, if the dead man was a doctor, why aren't there more people-where are his patients? A silver-haired man beside the two lawyers saw him first and prodded the massive one who wore a black fur-collared coat with his elbow. The big one glanced up at him, and then the little man beside him, the one who looked as if he had a cold, also took his eyes from the minister and looked curiously at Don. Even the minister stopped talking for a moment, stuck one frozen hand in the pocket of his overcoat, and gaped at Don with rubber-faced confusion.
Then, finally, a sign of welcome, a contrast to this guarded examination: one of the beauties, the younger one (a daughter?), wafted toward him a small genuine smile.
The man with silver-white hair who looked to Don as though he should have been in the movies left the other two and sauntered toward Don. "Are you a friend of John's?" he whispered.
"My name is Don Wanderley," he whispered back. "I got a letter from a man named Sears James, and the receptionist in his office said I could find him out here."
"Hell, you even look a little like Edward." Lewis grabbed his bicep and squeezed. "Look, kid, we're having a rough time here, just hang in there and don't say anything until it's all over. You got a place to stay tonight?"
So I joined them, half-meeting, half-avoiding their glances. The woman in the pale blue coat sagged against the challenging-looking woman holding her up: her face worked and she wailed oh no oh no oh no. Crumpled colored tissues lay at her feet, lifting and scampering in the wind that cut into the hollow. Every now and then one of them shot away like a small pastel pheasant and caught in the mesh of the fence. By the time we left there were dozens of them there, flattened out against the wire.
Frederick Hawthorne
4
Ricky had been pleased with Stella. While the three remaining members of the Society had been trying to adjust to the shock of John's death, only Stella had thought of the plight of Milly Sheehan. Sears and Lewis, he supposed, had thought as he had-that Milly would simply live on in John's house. Or that, if the house was too empty for her, she would put up at the Archer Hotel until she decided where to go and what to do. He and Sears knew that she had no financial troubles; they had drawn up the will which left Milly John Jaffrey's house and the contents of his bank accounts. If you added it all together, she had been willed assets of somewhere around two hundred thousand dollars: and if she chose to stay in Milburn, there was more than enough in the bank to pay the real estate taxes and give her a comfortable living. We're lawyers, he said to himself, we think like that. We can't help it; we put the pettifogging first and the people second.
Of course they were thinking of John Jaffrey. The news had come near noon of the day following that in which Ricky's premonitions had reached their height: he had known that something dreadful had happened the moment he recognized the shaky voice on the other end of the line as Milly Sheehan's. "It's, it's," she said, her voice trembling and cloudy. "Mr. Hawthorne…?"
"Yes, it's me, Milly," he said. "What's happened?" He pushed the buzzer that communicated to Sears's office and told him to switch on the telephone speaker for his extension. "What is it, Milly?" he asked, knowing that his voice would be much too loud for Sears, but momentarily unable to speak softly-the speakers, while reproducing the client's voice at a normal volume, tripled the noise made by anyone at the other office extension. "You're breaking my eardrums," Sears complained over the line.
"Sorry," Ricky said. "Milly, are you there? It's Milly, Sears."
"So I gathered. Milly, can we help you?"
"Oooo," she wailed and the back of his neck went cold.
The phone went dead. "Milly?"
"Pipe down," Sears commanded.
"Are you there, Milly?"
Ricky heard the telephone clattering against some hard surface.
The next voice was Walt Hardesty's. "Hey, this is the sheriff. Is this Mr. Hawthorne?"
"Yes. Mr. James is on the other line. What's going on, Walt? Is Milly all right?"
"She's standin' lookin' out the window. What is she anyhow, his wife? I thought she was his wife."
Sears burst in impatiently, his voice loud as a cannon in Ricky's office. "She is his housekeeper. Now tell us what is happening out there."
"Well, she's fallin' apart like a wife. You two are Dr. Jaffrey's lawyers?"
"Yes," Ricky said.
"Do you know about him yet?"
Both partners were silent. If Sears felt the way Ricky did, his throat was too tight for speech.
"Well, he was a leaper," Hardesty said. "Hey, hang on, lady. Sit down or something."