“Mr. Sewell here was wanting to see where that fella hanged himself. I don’t have the time right now to take him over there.”
She looked at me dubiously. “If you really want to see it, I’ll show you where it is. Wait until I saddle up and then you can follow me in the jeep. Or maybe you’d like to ride too?”
“No thanks. The jeep will be fine.”
She trotted off toward the barns. I leaned against the jeep. Fidd went off. In about five minutes she came out on a big roan that was all stallion and half as high as a house. He felt like going sideways. She yanked some sense into him, touched him with a little crop and cantered up to the jeep.
“Once we get beyond that fence line there we’ll cut across country. Better put it in four wheel drive. Do you know how?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t follow Simpy too close. He gets nervous.”
She spun him and lifted him into a full run. There wasn’t any danger of my getting too close. I had enough trouble keeping him in sight. Far ahead of me she cut over toward a dirt road and swung to the ground. The far side of the road was lined with trees. I drove up and stopped and got out.
“This is the tree and that’s the limb there. See, he had the car right about here, so that the limb was about ten feet above the roof of the car and about five feet behind it. It was easy to throw the rope over the limb.”
“I wonder why he came out here?”
“They say he used to come out here a lot years ago. They used to ride out here. He didn’t really date Mary then. She was too young I guess.”
Simpy cropped grass steadily. Skeeter seemed anxious to get on him and be off. I wanted to get her talking, and I didn’t know exactly how to go about it.
“I guess they had to get a ladder to cut him down.”
“I guess so.”
“How do you feel about it, Skeeter?”
“What do you mean?”
“About Mary and Dodd Raymond.”
“I didn’t know him very well. Just to say hello to. I’m certainly not sorry he’s dead, Mr. Sewell. Everything seems so dull without Mary. She was wonderful. We loved her, my sisters and I. It was a terrible thing to do.”
“I guess it was, all right.”
“Simpy wants his run. You can leave the jeep back by the house.”
“How old are you, Skeeter?”
“Seventeen.”
“The last time I saw you was a week ago today.”
Her eyes seemed to change to a paler color. “I know. When you came up to the lake after throwing Mary’s body out in the bushes, acting up there like nothing had happened. I remember it very well, Mr. Sewell.”
“That was a mistake. It was bad judgment. I lost my head.”
“You looked calm enough up at the lake.”
“Skeeter, I was scared to death. Honestly.”
She weighed that carefully. “I guess maybe you had every right to be. But you did a bad thing.”
“I know that. I had that impressed on me... forcibly.”
“She was so alive.”
“I know.” I braced myself carefully, smiled and said, “A little too lively for her Uncle Willy, I guess.”
“I don’t think I know what you mean,” she said with young dignity, slamming the family gates.
“From things she told me, I gathered that your father didn’t care much for the way she led her life.”
“Mary told you that?”
“We talked a lot. Remember, I knew her pretty well, Skeeter.”
“Have you got a cigarette? I’m not allowed to smoke, so I can’t carry them.”
I gave her a cigarette, lighted hers and my own. She hitched her tight pants onto the flat surface of the front fender of the jeep. “She just about drove Daddy crazy. He’s awfully strict with us. He tried to be the same way with Mary, but it didn’t work because she was of age and had her own money. There wasn’t any way he could punish her or restrict her the way he does us.
“At Christmastime Daddy caught Jigger kissing a boy. Just kissing a boy! You’d think she was living in sin or something. Jigger didn’t get any allowance and she couldn’t have a date or even go to the movies for six whole weeks. After dinner she had to go right to her room and study until bedtime. And he restricted Dusty and me for two weeks because he’d caught Jigger. Honestly!”
“They must have fought then?”
“If you can call it fighting. Daddy was either yelling at her or not speaking to her. She never seemed to get mad. She acted as if it was some kind of a joke. I couldn’t ever figure out why she didn’t go and live alone where she could do as she pleased and Daddy wouldn’t know anything about it. That’s what I would have done. That’s what I will do, the minute I’m old enough. It sometimes seemed to me that she stayed with us just to needle Daddy. I think there was some legal reason why he had to provide a home for her for as long as she wanted it.”
“She needled him?”
“I don’t know exactly how she’d do it, but she could sure raise hell with him. When he’d be having one of his bad spells over something she had done, or something he thought she’d done, she would find a chance to say something to him. She’d never let any of the rest of us hear what she said. It must have really been something, though. Sometimes Daddy would go and walk for hours after that happened. Or lock himself in his study and we could hear him in there reading the Bible out loud. You know I’ve always thought she... she told him about... men.”
She was blushing under her tan. “What?” I said.
“About men. Because Daddy has told me, gosh, dozens of times, not to let Mary talk dirty to me, and come and tell him right away if she did. She never did, of course. But that’s the way I think she must have talked to him. Daddy is strong and he has a terrible temper sometimes. Like the time he broke Dusty’s arm when...” She stopped abruptly. “That’s none of your business. I shouldn’t have said it.”
“You’ve said most of it. Maybe it would sound better if you explained it.”
“Actually she fell.”
“Pushed?”
“Well, yes. But he didn’t mean to break her arm. I guess I better tell you. I still don’t understand it. It was two years ago. Mary had come home from a trip. It was a warm day in early October and we went up to the lake, the six of us. I guess Dusty thought Daddy and Mother were up at the big house. Jigger and I were still in the water. Mary had gone to the girl’s shower room over the boat house. Dusty decided to sneak up into the men’s bunk room and look at some cartoons on the wall up there. We’re not supposed to look at them or even know they’re there. They aren’t really dirty, just kind of silly.”
“I’ve seen them.”
“Dusty sneaked up and Daddy was up there at the window with a pair of binoculars looking over toward the girls’ bunk room. He got angry and chased Dusty down the stairs and pushed her. She fell and broke her arm. She didn’t tell us about the binoculars until later. He could have been trying to see Mary get dressed, but that doesn’t make much sense. He’d hate anything like that. I’ve just never been able to figure out what he was doing. I even asked Mary about it one time. She looked startled and then she laughed and laughed. Tears ran down her cheeks she laughed so hard. She wouldn’t tell me what was so funny. At dinner that night she looked at Daddy and started laughing all over again. He got so mad he couldn’t eat. He left the table.”
I had almost all of it. Nearly everything I needed. The pattern was all too clear. I looked at the snub-nosed healthy girl and pitied her. But maybe she and her sisters would have the strength they would need. Maybe the blood of Myrna was strong enough, clear enough, sane enough. Yet probably nothing would ever keep this girl from hating me.