“You don’t?” said Jill. “I do.”
She stepped to the table and lifted the blanket, and his eyes all but popped out. “My God!” he exclaimed, after he’d stared. “My God!”
He sat down in front of it, then looked up and whispered: “You did right to call. I take everything back!”
“There it is,” she announced. “Every cent!”
He began counting it, pack by pack. After counting it once, he counted again. “I make it 49 packs,” he said. “Where’s the other two thousand bucks?”
Now counting it was one thing we hadn’t bothered to do, so we did, and it came to what he said, ninety-eight thousand neat, but not the hundred thousand Shaw had baled out with. “So OK?” he snapped, pretty sour, “you’re shy two grand, and it’s not too much trouble to guess where it is. Who stole it, I mean. OK, let’s have it. Where did this money come from? If you’re free to tell me! If not, let’s cut it off now, as I don’t want to get in a position of knowing stuff I should report. In plain English, then: evidence of a crime.”
“That’s what’s bothering us,” she told him very solemnly. “We don’t know what to do.”
“Are you free to say how you got it?”
“We’ll have to say,” she said.
“I guess we do,” I said when he looked at me.
So she told it. You’d think it would have taken an hour, but it took her about a minute.
Pretty soon he said: “Let me think this over. Let me get alone with it. Let me walk around a few minutes.”
He did, circling the house, climbing one of the hills and staring down at the river. I went out to watch, and he called to me to come, so I did. He had me take him up the bank to the boat landing, point out the tree to him, where it stuck out of the water, just up the river, and explain everything that had happened, from our trip in the boat to catch fish to her twirling the hook in the air to her finding the bag in the hollow. Then he led on back to the house where he led in to the living room, sat down, and began: “Well—you have it, there’s no getting around that. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. You have that on your side. Nevertheless, in this case the question arises: Can you keep it?”
“Can she keep it,” I corrected.
“That’s it: Can she?”
“Why can’t she? Or couldn’t she?”
“I don’t exactly know, but I feel her claim is quite shaky, in spite of that deed Mr. Morgan drew. It makes the money hers, but it wasn’t hers at the time it was hidden. At the time it was hidden—by whom? Do you know?”
“I’d rather not say,” I told him.
“Then count me out,” he snapped, annoyed. “You’re skating on thin ice. I can’t be of any help if you make me skate wearing blinders.”
He got up to go, but Jill put her arms around him and pushed him back in his seat. “By his supposed-to-be mother,” she said.
“Who?”
“You met her. The woman he thought was his mother, except it turned out that she wasn’t. She’s his foster mother. We assume she hid the money and skipped.”
“It certainly looks that way.” He asked some questions, then: “And she’s not friendly?”
“Friendly? She hates my guts.”
“Well, you can’t exactly blame her.”
“If you’re talking about Dave,” she told him very quick, “I do like him, but don’t jump to conclusions, please. I did call you from here and did spend the night—but right on that very same sofa, and the reason was money, not romance. I was afraid to take it to town with me, to bring it to that hotel, where it could be stolen, quite easy. It wasn’t what you think.”
“How do you know what I think?”
“I don’t want you to get a false impression.”
“I don’t think, I know—that you told her to her face she tried to get Shaw to kill you. If you think that arouses love for you, I don’t.”
“I see what you mean.”
“But that’s not what you told the officers.”
“That’s right. You told us to take it easy.”
“I would say the same thing now.”
“Well, what are you getting at?”
“I’m not sure. I have to think.” He took us over it step by step and minute by minute—what had happened out there that morning, what Shaw had said, what I had said, what Mom had said, what Jill had said, and what we all four had done. He took us inside, to my bed, to the bathtub, and Jill lined it out, exactly what had happened, even to my looking like God. When we got done, he got up and walked around with it for quite some little time.
Then: “Your trouble,” he said at last, “is that your finding the money, conveniently on purpose now, is going to look very suspicious—at least to Edgren and Mantle, who’ve been suspicious from the start. You can say all you please, that you found it completely by accident while trying to catch a carp, but that won’t convince these officers, at least, if I know them. And on top of that, if this woman is ever located and vents her spite on Miss Kreeger by saying you all three did it, then you’re really in trouble.”
“Why?” asked Jill. “The money’s mine. What difference does it make what she says?”
“On account of Mr. Morgan. If, from what she says, he gets the idea that the three of you conspired, you and Dave and this woman, to gyp him out of this money, then he can allege that you obtained your deed through fraud and have it declared void.”
She flared at that. “Mr. Morgan wouldn’t think any such thing.”
“For a hundred thousand bucks, I wouldn’t trust anyone.”
That kind of took care of that, but I felt he’d come up with something, and asked him: “OK, get to it. So what?”
“So if you put that money back, in the tree, right where you found it, and then tonight saw a prowler, someone in a boat. If you reported that to Edgren, he’d have to investigate. Then he would find the money. Then no one could say you knew it was there. This woman can scream her head off, and still you’re in the clear. And, if you graciously mention reward, a small percentage to Edgren, I don’t know how he’d feel—whether he’d take it, that is, whether he’d feel that he could. But he might—just might persuade himself it would be all right—in which case that brings down the curtain. The rest of the money’s yours, with no more nonsense about it.”
“What do you think?” she asked me.
“Well,” I told her. “It’s why we got Mr. Bledsoe in it, why you did, why you asked him to come out. It covers everything that we were worried about and in a very simple way. At last we’d be playing it safe.”
“How much reward?” she asked.
“Well, that’s up to you. I would say maybe five percent, which you could well afford. It’s off your taxes anyway.”
“My—what?”
“You’ll pay heavy tax on this 98. On 93 you’d pay less.”
“You mean, give him five thousand?”
“Well? For finding your money, for deciding no charges are called for—?”
She sat there staring at him, and then: “I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. I have the money now. If I put it out there again—?”
“For one night only, remember.”
“Yes, but just the same—?”
He sat there a minute but then jumped up to face us. “Wait a minute, wait a minute!” he growled, very excited. “At last I’ve caught up with this, to know why my instinct told me you have to put it back, that money, in the tree, to let Edgren find it. That woman—it lies in her power, not only to say the three of you hid the money, but that one of you killed him for it—Shaw, I’m talking about. Howell, that one is you. Now if you want to spend the next 20 years in prison while she gets immunity for singing—”
“OK, Mr. Bledsoe, you’ve said it.” That was me. She sat staring at him.
15
BLEDSOE LEFT, AND I went outside with him, but she still sat there staring at the money. As he got in his car he said: “I don’t think that girl’s going to do it. I think she’s
hipped on that money. OK, it’s a lot, and putting it out in a sycamore tree, if only for one night, is a heartbreak—but nothing like the heartbreak it’s going to be if it’s taken from her and on top of that, she does a stretch in Marysville. She seems to like you, and I think it would help if you remind her that Mrs. Howell holds the cards, if she wants to play them. She’s not in your power, as this girl seems to think. She and you are in hers, but bad. Because if you killed Shaw to save a girl from being killed, that’s one thing, and no one could possibly mind. But if you killed him to steal the money, if the three of you had that idea, that’s a whole new ball game. Unfortunately, it’s Edgren’s idea, and Mantle’s, or seems to be. Police have that kind of mind.”
He drove off after calling through the window: “You’re still riding for free—no charge for this, Dave.” I waved, but when I went back inside, she was still sitting there, still staring at the money. I asked: “Are you going to do what he said?”
“Yeah, it was easy for him to say, it cost him nothing to say it. It’s not his money, it’s mine. It’s mine and I’ve got it, so why should I give it up? Go hiding it out in some sycamore tree? And another thing: How do I know that Edgren will give it to me? Or that he won’t swipe it from me?”
“You have to trust someone.”
“For one hundred thousand bucks, this lawyer wouldn’t trust anyone. Why should I?”
“In other words, you’re not going to?”
“I have to think about it.”
“Then I have to warn her.”
“Warn who?”
“Warn who do you think?”
“Then if that’s how you feel about her, and how you feel about me—!”
“Her? And you? What about me?”
“What do you have to do with it?”
“Didn’t you hear what he said? So long as she sticks around, she can send the both of us to prison. I’d rather get her out of the way—try to get her out of the way.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“I assume she’s in Flint—laying low till things blow over and it’s safe to pick up the money. I’m going to tell her it’s been found, and she’d better make tracks for Cuba. Or Mexico. Or someplace. She may do it. I don’t know.”
“With my two thousand bucks?”
“It’s worth it.”
“To whom?”
“Didn’t you hear him? To us.”
“Of my money, you mean.”
“I’m getting a bit sick of your money.”
“I’m not.”
We sulked at each other, and then she asked: “And how are you going to Flint? She has your car, don’t forget. And you’re not taking mine, I promise you.”
“Truck.”
“What truck?”
“Pickup truck I have to haul stuff into town. Out in the wagon shed. What was the wagon shed, when it was built.”
“Then OK, warn her.”
“I’m going to. But I’m also going to warn you. What you do today is going to affect the rest of your life—to make it, financially at least, or wreck it, in every way there is. I strongly suggest to you that you not drive off with this money in your car or carry it to your hotel, or anywhere. And I also suggest that you not do anything before talking to someone else—someone you have confidence in, like York. Be sure you tell him what Mr. Bledsoe said, and once you have his reaction you can take it from there. Now if you’ll excuse me—”
I started for the door. She jumped up at last. “Is that all you have to say?”
“I’ve said too much already.”
“Nobody minds, that I notice.”
Suddenly I went over and took her in my arms. But she didn’t really come to me. After a moment or two she lifted her face and I kissed her. If she kissed back, I can’t be sure, but if she did it wasn’t a real honest kiss, kind of a halfway thing that said of course she liked me, but at the same time I must remember that one hundred grand was one hundred grand, or that $98,000 was $98,000. It was the kind of a kiss that can count.
Flint was 60 miles, an hour by the old way of driving, an hour and a half now, and it was a beautiful morning, a spring day in March. The first few miles were low hills, rolling country covered with farms, but coming in toward the Monongahela River, the mountains began to show gray, a little cloudy on top as though they were made of smoke and you could throw a rock through them if you could throw a rock that far. At Clarksburg I hit the west branch of the river, and pulled out on a roadside park, to sit and look for a minute and drink it in. I knew then, of course, if I’d ever forgotten it, that I was mountain, and that this country spoke to me, in a way no other country could.
I also wanted to think, to pull my wits together and decide what I wanted to say, face to face once more with Mom. If I played it the way she wanted, it would be duck soup, as I knew, regardless of what had been said or done or not done that night in my bed back home. If I played it a different way, the way I more or less had to, I could be heading for trouble, real trouble, mean trouble. The question was, could I shade it the least little bit, act friendly without starting something I couldn’t stop? What I came up with was: take it as it comes; don’t cook it up in advance, let her lead to me, don’t go out to meet trouble. After a couple of nice inhales, I started up again and drove on, came to Deer Creek soon and followed it up to Flint. I don’t know if you’ve seen an abandoned coal camp, but I do know that if you have, you don’t care to see it twice.
At the bottom, of course, was the “creek,” a freshwater mountain stream, quite pretty if that was all. Above it was what was left of the spur, the railroad connection that ran down to the main line beside the river. But for whole stretches the rails were gone, with nothing left but weeds. Then when some rails would show they were rusty and slewed around. Above the spur was the road I was driving on that wasn’t much but was in better shape than the spur. Above the road were the houses the miners had lived in, all falling apart now, with busted windows and doors hanging off their hinges. But in between were gaps, where houses had been carted off, and those houses had been loaded on trucks and stolen.
When that merry larceny stopped was when Sid Giles got the job of being caretaker and watchman. You didn’t steal any house with Sid walking guard in the night. Whether he stole the houses himself, as a way of promoting the job, or had it done, or what, I don’t know, but there could have been a connection. Anyway, right now he lived in the “big house,” as it was called, the old super’s mansion, which was next up on the slope. It was painted a cream color and was really something to see. As I passed I saw Sid’s housekeeper, a woman named Nellie, come out and shake a rug. I didn’t stop, but took note that my car wasn’t there. On account of the rise of the hill, the place had no garage, but it did have a carport, and a school bus was parked there.
Highest of all was the tipple. A tipple is a conveyer belt, a bucket chain that runs down the mountain side from the drift mouth to the spur, and carries the coal down to the railroad gonds. A “drift” is the main tunnel into the mine. From it run “entries,” branch tunnels to the rooms where the coal is mined. The mine trains are hauled out by electric locomotives onto a trestle above the conveyer belt. The mine cars dump the coal on the buckets, and the buckets carry it down. In the morning the miners walk up the buckets to the drift mouth, to ride into work on the mine cars, and in winter, of course, it’s dark. That is, most of the miners walk up the buckets, but some of them walk up the mountain side by a path. “They look like a long glowworm,” a miner told me once, “walking along with their miners’ lamps lit. Know who those miners are? They’re the one-legged men who lost a leg in the mine. When a miner gets hurt that’s how he gets hurt—he’s ‘rolled agin the rib,’ as they call it, so it crushes his leg. And after he gets well, the company gives him a job on account they’re kind and considerate, and doesn’t arrest him for carelessness. There’s 20 or 30 of them working in every mine.”
The tipple, of course, was falling apart, with the bucke
t chain all gone, either moved to some other mine or sold for scrap or something, and the housing over it gone. But the trestle was still there, with a straight drop to the road. I wanted to stop and check if what I had heard was true, that Sid had a falls rigged there to lower the booze to his truck for transportation to Fairmont. But stopping was not recommended. It wasn’t possible that the place wasn’t guarded by thin guys with rifles. You wouldn’t see them, but they’d be there.
So I went on to the place I was headed for, which was a cabin back from the road, about a mile above Flint, in a kind of flat place by a hollow that had been cleared years before for farming and now was used to grow truck. It had a dirt lane leading in, kind of bumpy but not too bad, and was built of heavy logs with two sides hewn off flat and the ends shaped to criss-cross. They were cut short on one side of the house, to let in a stone fireplace and stone chimney rising up. Inside it had two rooms, the one at back with an oil cook stove at one side, a bunk on the other, and table with chairs in the middle, the one in front, with fireplace, settees, and low table. The furniture was old, homemade, and goodlooking, the rugs hooked and beautiful. Even the floor was something to see, being of white pine, scoured with sand until it shone like satin. Aunt Jane lived there, the head of the Giles family in that part of Harrison County. She lived with Borden Giles, a son, who I knew wasn’t home, as no car was there, and so she opened for me herself—a gray-haired woman of 60 but smallish and not bad looking. She had a touch of Mom’s slick shape and of my mother’s high-toned way of holding herself. She knew me at once—though it was some years since I’d been there—and was really surprised to see me, not just make-out surprised, a point which I noted at once, as she wouldn’t have been if Mom was somewhere around. She didn’t kiss me, as by her lights she shouldn’t, but did shake hands very friendly, first wiping her hands on her apron. It was gingham and clean. Her dress was wool, of some dark color like brown, and under it she had on pants. I patted her hand after shaking it and watched her eyes, how they looked. Sure enough, they were searching my face, trying to guess what I wanted, which reinforced my first feeling that she had no news of Mom or any idea where she was.