“It must be pretty tough on your father, with what happened to his sister, and now what’s happened to his niece. I understand your father and his sister were very close.”
“They were only a year apart. They were inseparable when they were young. I think he nearly died when they had to send her away. I was just a baby, of course. Mother still talks about how sick he was.”
“He looks pretty husky now.”
“Oh yes. He’s very healthy for a man his age. Do you know what he did last fall? All by himself, with an axe, a handsaw, a sledge and wedges, he cut down trees and sawed them up and split over fourteen cords of hardwood. There was so much more than we needed that John Fidd sold six cords in town for twelve dollars a cord.”
“He works out here a lot, I guess.”
“Oh, yes.”
I braced myself again and made it casual. “I suppose he was working here the last time I saw you up at the lake. Was your mother along?”
“Let me think. Yes, she was up there with us but went back early when Daddy phoned about Mary. Daddy doesn’t like us to go up alone, even though Mrs. Johannssen and Ruth are there. Mother isn’t as strict with us. Daddy stayed in town. I don’t know whether he stayed home or out here. Maybe here.”
“And nobody went up this weekend.”
“No, we all stayed in town.”
“Did your father stay out here Friday night?”
“No. He was out here on Friday, but he came home... why are you asking me that?”
“Just making conversation, I guess.”
She was looking dubious again. I made my smile as bland as possible. “You certainly stick to that horse nicely. He’d scare me.”
She slid off the fender. “He’s an old lamb. He’s a honey pie, old Simpy is.”
She caught him, mounted, waved and rode off. His hooves drummed the May earth. I looked at the tree. Dodd Raymond had hung there, night dew on his shoulders, on the wavy hair, two hundred pounds at the end of a tow rope, while dawn came and the birds awakened.
I drove the jeep back the way I had come, following my tire tracks in the pasture grass.
As Toni would say, it was none of my business. But you can’t leave a thing like that alone. Not when you’re nearly positive.
I waited a full hour before they arrived — Uncle Willy, Aunt Myrna and the other two girls. Skeeter came cantering back to the barn just as their car drove in. The girls got out, gave me a quick unconcerned glance and raced toward the barn. Willy halted them with one short bark. They came back meekly, took the two baskets of food and carried them toward one of the cottages. Myrna Pryor stared at me and followed the girls.
Willy came over toward me. His polished boots gleamed black in the sun. His riding pants were crisp and fresh. His white shirt was unbuttoned, the tails knotted at the waist à la Mexican beach. His hair was almost impossibly white against the tan of him. He was a Hemingway, fifty, taut as drums, resilient, proud of his body.
“Hello, Sewell. Something I can do for you?”
The look of defeat he had worn in the jail cell was entirely gone. His eyes were clear, keen.
“Your eldest has been showing me the tree where Dodd was found.”
He frowned a little. “Did you arrange to meet her here, sir?”
“No. No. I just happened to get here at about the same time. Lovely girl.”
His face was unfriendly. “Yes, she is.”
“You have three fine daughters, Mr. Pryor.”
“Did you come out here to tell me that, Sewell? I might say that I have no particular urge to entertain the... companions of my late niece. It’s over and I want my daughters to forget about it as soon as possible. The whole thing was sordid and unfortunate.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Now if you wouldn’t mind leaving, we’re having a family picnic here today.”
“Under the same tree?”
He stared at me. “If that’s humor, Sewell, I find it a little strange. If it isn’t humor, you should know that I’m physically capable of throwing you into your automobile.”
“I guess you are, at that.”
“Please go, will you?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“There’s nothing I can conceive of that we can talk about.”
“I just wondered if another man could take over that business opportunity Dodd mentioned to you, Mr. Pryor.”
He stood there, the sun on his face, looking at me, fists on his hips, brown arms flexed. I cannot say there was any physical change. I saw no change. But I sensed a change that went on inside. I sensed a shifting, a re-evaluation, a new poise of forces. A man might sit at a poker table with that same immobility, certain from the restrained betting that his was the winning hand, and then see a large bet made.
“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”
“Dodd was going to speak to you. He told me he was. I understand you were going to finance him.”
“I’m not interested in new business ventures.”
“He said you were interested in his.”
“Then he lied to you, because I never heard any proposition from him. I thought he was satisfied with his job.”
“Maybe I should rephrase it. He said you couldn’t help but be interested in his proposition.”
“That’s a strange statement.”
“Isn’t it.”
“Are you trying to be cryptic? You’re talking way over my head, young man.”
“I don’t imagine it was the money that stopped you. I guess it was just having someone know. Or maybe you have that strange form of distorted honesty that saw it as one way to get me out of a jail where I didn’t belong. There was a good chance I might get electrocuted for killing her. You wouldn’t have liked that. Conscience is a funny thing, Mr. Pryor. Even your twisted one.”
“This is the damnedest nonsense I ever heard.”
I measured the distance between us and then said softly, “How did she look through the binoculars, Willy? Lush and desirable? You know when I mean. When you broke Dusty’s arm.”
“You must be quite mad.” He said it with discouraging calm.
“It’s the hot sun, Willy. I wonder how you fit your conscience around another thing, though — that elastic conscience of yours. How...”
“Why don’t you leave before I throw you off my land?”
“How do you adjust to what happened to your sister? You did that, you know. You killed the father and then watched the father’s blood come out in the daughter. You framed the beloved sister Nadine.”
Again it was the poker table. He had matched the large bet. Now the stranger’s cards were turned over. He looked beyond me. His mouth moved and was still. His eyes saw nothing.
“There’ll be more,” I said. “Somebody else will figure it out next. Maybe one of your own girls. Maybe your wife. Or maybe she half suspects already. There aren’t any secrets, Mr. Pryor. Not about a thing like this.”
There was something reminiscent of a bull in the set of his shoulders, in the hump of muscle at the nape of his neck. He came at me with the wild sudden fury of a bull. I had driven him a little bit too far. There was no room in his brain for cold plans and projects. There was room for nothing but fury, a very desperate fury.
I had destroyed his world and I must in turn be destroyed. A fist like a sledge numbed my left arm. I struck back once and a second blow thumped my ribs and he was on me. His arms locked around me, head driving against my chin, knuckles in the small of my back. I tripped and fell heavily and he was on top of me, smashing the wind out of me as he fell. I was young and reasonably husky, but you can’t fight that sort of fury. You can’t even survive that kind of fury. He got a blocky knee on my stomach and husky brown hands locked around my throat. I tensed my throat muscles and tried to get hold of a finger to pry it back and loosen his grip. My hands were sweaty and I could not get a grip. The last bit of air rasped in my throat and then his hands closed the air passage. My chest convulsed. The sun swam and darkened and I slapped weakly at his face with hands made of balsa and paper, like the frail drifting wings of toy gliders.