“I’m going to see Toale.”
“I’m going, too.”
“No, Sis. No, you’re not.” Clara had the wrap on. “I’m the older. I insist, I beg — you know very well you’re excitable. Please, Sis. I’m just going to find out.” She opened the door. “Please, Del?”
“All right.”
Delia went onto the porch, and called to the form of her sister receding in the dark, “Hurry back!” She stood there until she saw the car turn from the driveway into the street, and then re-entered the house. After she got into the front room she remembered that she hadn’t closed the front door, but that was of such vast unimportance that she didn’t go back to shut it. Instead she flung herself onto the couch, face down, and, not having cried in her jail cell, did so now.
The crying ended after a while; her shoulders stopped shaking and shudders no longer ran over her; but she stayed with her face buried in the cushion. She had thought that she had things pretty well figured out there in her cell, and now here was this. The town where her father had lived and worked, where she and her sister had been born and gone to school and had danced at parties and had given parties at their house — the people of that town were saying that her mother had murdered her father. That finished everything; that was enough — but here she was again, not thinking. She must think about it, and first she must decide in what way it could be thought about...
When the phone rang she answered it to stop its ringing — and it might be Clara or Ty. But it was someone at the county attorney’s office, asking why Clara wasn’t there. She didn’t know what to say, whether to say that Clara would not go, so she merely told him that she had left the house at twenty minutes to ten. After she had hung up she looked at her watch: ten after. It took only four or five minutes to drive to the parsonage and Clara might be back soon. She threw herself onto the couch again.
She had promised Ty she would go to bed and try to sleep, and one of the things she had decided in jail was that she would keep all promises, but she wouldn’t go upstairs until Clara returned. There would be no sense in that. Anyway, she had to think. One thing to think about was what to do. She and Clara would go away, would leave Wyoming. There was nothing — there was Ty. What about that? What kind of a feeling was it that he had for her, and what kind did she have for him? Had he heard what people were saying about her mother? If he had, shouldn’t he have told her? Wouldn’t a man in love with a girl tell her a thing like that?...
Was that a car in the driveway, or was it next door? Clara? No, it hadn’t gone on to the garage. Probably next door. Wouldn’t a man in love with a girl?...
The footsteps — now on the steps, now on the porch — were certainly not Clara’s, they were much too heavy. She wouldn’t answer the door no matter how long they rang; she should have turned out the lights. But she had left the door open! The steps were in the hall! She jerked herself up, swinging her feet to the floor, and saw the Reverend Rufus Toale entering the room, his face white, wearing no smirk and displaying no blandness.
Chapter 14
Rufus Toale kept on coming, advancing with a heavy dragging tread. At the big chair in front of the couch, lately occupied by Lem Sammis, he stopped, resting his hand on its back; then he edged around it and lowered himself with ridiculous carefulness onto its seat. Delia started to rise, but her knees wouldn’t take it. She sat and stared.
When he spoke he didn’t begin with “Praise God,” and his voice was as preposterous as his manner of movement had been and his white face still was. Instead of being deep and sonorous and musical, it was little better than a hoarse squeak as he said one word: “Clara?”
Delia shook her head without willing it.
“She’s not here?”
She shook her head again.
Rufus Toale put the palm of his right hand, the fingers outspread, against his breastbone, and pressed it there. “I mustn’t breathe much,” he declared with no improvement in his voice. “I feel it bleed inside when I breathe. I’ve been wounded. Shot. I plugged it with my handkerchief to keep the blood in. If I’m dying... your sister?”
Delia shook her head. “She’s not here.” His zealot’s eyes, out of his white face, bored into hers. “Can I trust you with God’s errand? Do you believe in the vengeance of man?”
“Who—” Delia stopped with her mouth working. “Who shot you?”
He ignored it. “Do you believe in the vengeance of man, my child? I think I’m dying. Answer me.”
That was one of the things Delia had figured out in jail, and apparently she had got it fixed in her mind, for she said clearly, “I don’t believe in vengeance. But if you’re wounded — I must—”
“No!” His voice and his eyes held her to the couch. “This comes first, then whatever comes. You must know it all — if I can—” He controlled a grimace, then inhaled a long slow breath, with a catch in the middle of it. “I thought some day to tell you this, you and your sister, as we kneeled to God — as I did your mother. Now without the preparation of prayer — oh, I entreat you, take the guidance of God! The facts are brief, but follow His guidance!”
“The facts—”
“About your father. God rest his soul. He was not a devout man, but he was a good and friendly man. When he left on that fatal trip two years ago he had with him much worldly money and a little of God’s money. I gave it to him. It was my own money, but it was for my church. It was God’s money. I gave him ten twenty-dollar bills, and in the corner of each one I wrote R.T. for Rufus Toale. He was to select a worthy man to receive them, and whatever treasure that man found in the rocks was to return to my church for the glory of God who made the hills and all the treasure in them. I gave that money, God’s money, to your father. He had it. He was killed and it was taken from him, with the other money he had.”
Rufus Toale stopped, to take another long careful breath, with his hand still pressed against his chest, where it had stayed without movement. His lips twitched and he went on, “That money was taken from your father by the one who killed him. I said nothing about it. I furnish no fuel to the fires of man’s vengeance. But I am human. I didn’t often see twenty-dollar bills, for God’s money is smaller sums, but when I did see one I looked at it. And the day came when, to my horror, I found that I had in my possession one of those bills I had given your father. The R.T. was in the corner just as I had put it there twenty-one months before. I knew where I had got it. Under the circumstances there could be little... little doubt—”
He stopped again to breathe. “I think—” He gasped, trying not to; the fight he was making showed on his face; he reinforced his right hand by spreading his left one over it to hold it tight. “I think... I must finish. The blood inside — chokes me. The bill was taken from me — there where I was shot — as I lay pretending I was dead — to escape death.”
He gasped and a spasm went over his face. Delia, paralyzed with horror, could make no movement. He swayed in the chair and braced his elbow against the arm.
“Praise God!” he whispered fiercely. “I must leave you — with His errand! I must finish! The guilty must confess and submit — but not to man, to Him! You must go to — God! Help me!” His elbow slipped from the chair’s arm and he started to crumple. “Praise God!” he croaked, gasping, and collapsed, hanging on the arm of the chair almost precisely as Dan Jackson had done, arms dangling to the floor.
Delia, staring, said, “No.” She repeated it. “No!” Without moving her eyes from him, she got to her feet and backed away. “No,” she said again, and stopped. She could scream. She, who had thought everything out so carefully and definitely, could scream. Someone would hear her. “No,” she said. A doctor. Yes, of course a doctor; but Clara? Clara—