There wasn't any more work I could do, so I filled a big cup with coffee and took it up into Dad's office. I set it on his desk, lighted a cigar and started browsing along the rows of books.
Dad always said that he had enough trouble sorting the fiction out of so-called facts, without reading fiction. He always said that science was already too muddled without trying to make it jibe with religion. He said those things, but he also said that science in itself could be a religion, that a broad mind was always in danger of becoming narrow. So there was quite a bit of fiction on the shelves, and as much Biblical literature, probably, as a lot of ministers had.
I'd read some of the fiction. The other I'd left alone. I went to church and Sunday school, living as I had to live, but that was the end of it. Because kids are kids; and if that sounds pretty obvious, all I can say is that a lot of supposedly deep thinkers have never discovered the fact. A kid hears you cussing all the time, and he's going to cuss, too. He won't understand if you tell him it's wrong. He's loyal, and if you do it, it must be all right.
As I say, then, I'd never looked into any of the religious literature around the house. But I did tonight. I'd already read almost everything else. And I think it was in my mind that, since I was going to sell this place, I'd better be checking things over for value.
So I reached down a big leather-bound concordance to the Bible and blew the dust off of it. And I carried it over to the desk and opened it up; it kind of slid open by itself when I laid it down. And there was a picture in it, a little two-by-four snapshot, and I picked it up.
I turned it around one way, then another. I turned it sideways and upside down-what I thought was upside down. And I kind of grinned like a man will, when he's interested and puzzled.
It was a woman's face, not pretty exactly, but the kind that gets to you without your knowing why. But where the hell it was, what she was doing, I couldn't make out. Offhand, it looked like she was peering through the crotch of a tree, a white maple, say, with two limbs tapering up from the bole. She had her hands clasped around the limbs, and… But I knew that couldn't be right. Because the bole was divided at the base, and there were stumps of chopped off limbs almost tangent to the others.
I rubbed the picture against my shirt, and looked at it again. That face was familiar. It was coming back to me from some faraway place, like something coming out of hiding. But it was old, the picture I mean, and there were kind of crisscross blurs-of age, I supposed-scarring whatever she was looking through.
I took a magnifying glass and looked at it. I turned it upside down, as it was supposed to be turned. Then, I kind of dropped the glass and shoved it away from me; and I sat staring into space. At nothing and everything.
She was looking through a crotch, all right. But it was her own.
She was on her knees, peering between them. And those crisscross blurs on her thighs weren't the result of age. They were scars. The woman was Helene, who had been Dad's housekeeper so long ago.
Dad…
12
I was only like that for a few minutes, sitting there and staring, but a world of things, most of my kid life, came back to me in that time. She came back to me, the housekeeper, and she had been so much of that life.
"Want to fight, Helene? Want to learn how to box…?"
And:
"Oh, I'm tired. You just hit me…"
And:
"But you'll like it, darling. All the big boys do it…"
I lived back through it all, and then I came to the end of it. That last terrible day, with me crouched at the foot of the stairs, sick with fear and shame, terrified, aching with the first and only whipping in my life; listening to the low angry voices, the angry and contemptuous voices, in the library.
"I am not arguing with you, Helene. You're leaving here tonight. Consider yourself lucky that I don't prosecute you."
"Oh, ye-ss? I'd like to see you try it!"
"Why, Helene? How in the world could you do such a thing?"
"Jealous?"
"You-a mere child, and-"
"Yes! That's right! A mere child. Why not remember that? Listen to me, Daniel. I-"
"Don't say it, please. I'm at fault. If I hadn't-"
"Has it hurt you any? Have you harmed anyone? Haven't you, in fact-I should ask! — gradually lost all interest in it?"
"But a child! My child. My only son. If anything should happen-"
"Uh-huh. That's what bothers you, isn't it? Not him, but you. How it would reflect on you."
"Get out! A woman with no more sensibilities than-"
"I'm white trash, that's the term, isn't it? Riffraff. I ain't got that ol' quality. All right, and when I see some hypocritical son-of-a-bitch like you, I'm damned glad of it!"
"Get out or I'll kill you!"
"Tsk-tsk! But think of the disgrace, Doctor… Now, I'm going to tell you something…"
"Get-"
"Something that you above all people should know. This didn't need to mean a thing. Absolutely nothing. But now it will. You've handled it in the worst possible way. You-"
"I… please, Helene."
"You'll never kill anyone. Not you. You're too damned smug and self-satisfied and sure of yourself. You like to hurt people, but-"
"No!"
"All right. I'm wrong. You're the great, good Dr. Ford, and I'm white trash, so that makes me wrong… I hope."
That was all.
I'd forgotten about it, and now I forgot it again. There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living. And somehow I did want to; I wanted to more than ever. If the Good Lord made a mistake in us people it was in making us want to live when we've got the least excuse for it.
I put the concordance back on the shelf. I took the picture into the laboratory and burned it, and washed the ashes down the sink. But it was a long time burning, it seemed like. And I couldn't help noticing something:
How much she looked like Joyce. How there was even a strong resemblance between her and Amy Stanton.
The phone rang. I wiped my hands against my pants, and answered it, looking at myself in the laboratory door mirror-at the guy in the black bow tie and the pink-tan shirt, his trouser legs hooked over his boot tops.
"Lou Ford, speakin'," I said.
"Howard, Lou. Howard Hendricks. Look. I want you to come right down… down to the courthouse, yeah."
"Well, I don't know about that," I said. "I kind of-"
"She'll have to wait, Lou. This is important!" It had to be, the way he was sputtering. "Remember what we were talking about this afternoon? About the-you know-the possibility of an outside party being the murderer. Well, you, we were dead right. Our hunch was right!"
"Huh!" I said. "But it couldn't-I mean-"
"We've got him, Lou! We've got the son-of-a-bitch! We've got the bastard cold, and-"
"You mean he's admitted it? Hell, Howard, there's always some crank confessing to-"
"He's not admitting anything! He won't even talk! That's why we need you. We can't, uh, work on him, you know, but you can make him talk. You can soften him up if anyone can. I think you know him, incidentally."
"W-who-yeah?"
"The Greek's kid, Johnnie Pappas. You know him; he's been in plenty of trouble before. Now, get down here, Lou. I've already called Chester Conway and he's flying out from Fort Worth in the morning. I gave you full credit-told him how we'd worked on this idea together and we'd been sure all along that Elmer wasn't guilty, and… and he's pleased as punch, Lou. Boy, if we can just crack this, get a confession right-"
"I'll come down," I said. "I'll be right down, Howard."
I lowered the receiver hook for a moment, figuring out what had happened, what must have happened. Then, I called Amy.