Читать книгу Parris Mitchell of Kings Row - Henry Bellamann - Страница 10

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The willow branches stirred in the night breeze that swept the von Eln place, making a slow-moving pattern of shadows on the moonlit water of the pond. Punch, his arm about Dyanna’s shoulders as they sat silently together on a rock, looked at the shadows, then slowly, turning his head, at the trees and shrubs and wide grassy fields that stretched out behind him.

“This place—” he struggled for words with which to describe his feeling, a feeling all the more intense because he could not express it. “This place, Dyanna—it’s like you, sort of.”

She let her head come to rest, gently, on his shoulder. “What you mean, Punch?”

“Well—it’s sort of peaceful, and—well, nice. It’s clean, and cool. It smells clean, out here. Like your hair smells when I’m standing close to you.”

At her quick laugh he spoke in a rush of words, defensively. “Well—aw—you know what I mean. It’s nice. Not hot and dirty and smoky like it is in town.”

Dyanna turned her head lazily and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “I know, Punch. I know what you’re tryin’ to say.”

He sighed, relieved and happy, and rubbed his cheek against the top of her head.

“Punch.” Her voice was drowsy, lush with content.

“Yeah?”

“Let’s get us a farm, Punch, after we’re married. If we work hard and save our money, maybe we can buy us a little chicken farm.”

He caught her mood, answering, “And then we would build us a house—a big log house, maybe, with a fireplace tall enough to stand in. I could do it myself, with a little help. We’d have a farm and a house—”

“And Aunt Carrie could live with us.”

“And we’d raise eatin’ chickens and sell ’em to those truck men that buy for the St. Louis hotels.”

“And make lots of money, Punch!”

“And raise our kids in the fresh air and sunshine, with plenty of milk to drink.”

They laughed, giddily, happily. His arm tightened about her shoulder.

Dyanna broke a short silence with a chuckle. “I hinted somethin’ to Aunt Carrie at supper tonight, about me maybe wanting to get married one of these days, and you know what she said?”

“What?”

“She looked at me in that calculatin’ way she has, an’ she said, ‘Well, Dynnie’—she calls me that sometimes—‘I reckon I couldn’t ask for no better thing than to see you married to a good honest boy like Punch Rayne.’ ”

“Did she say that, honest?”

“Honest. Looks like it won’t be so long now. Just you get yourself a good job and—” She sat up quickly. “What time you reckon it is? I told Aunt Carrie I’d be home by ten.”

“It’s early yet,” Punch said, looking up at the moon.

The movement of a bush close behind him in the darkness made him turn his head. “What was that?”

Dyanna stood up. “Who’s there?” she called.

The voice that answered was gruff, unfamiliar. “We’re guards on this place. This is state property.”

Another voice added, “Don’t you know you’re trespassin’, breakin’ the law? You got no business up here at night.”

Punch, vaguely suspicious of “guards” who hid themselves behind bushes while they talked, rose and moved around the rock, peering into the darkness. “Where are you?” he demanded. “We ain’t hurtin’ anything.”

Suddenly a pistol thrust forward out of the concealing brush, its barrel glinting in the moonlight. It was followed a moment later by another. “Halt!”

The sight of the pistols was enough to convince Punch of the authenticity of the guards. No one in Kings Row carried a gun unless he was an officer of the law. Frightened, he stepped back and caught Dyanna’s arm, ready to retreat. “We ain’t doin’ nothing,” he explained earnestly. “We was about to go, anyhow.”

“Well, you better get on out of here—and quick. We’ll see that this girl gets home safe to her folks.”

Punch’s grip on Dyanna’s arm tightened. “I’ll take her on home myself.”

“No you won’t. She ain’t safe with you, and you’d better be glad we ain’t tellin’. Now you get on out of here or we’ll fill you full of holes.”

Dyanna, wide-eyed with terror, urged, “Go on, Punch. I’ll run along home by myself.”

Punch stood his ground. “I’m goin’,” he told the invisible men, “and I’m goin’ peaceable. But I’m takin’ my girl with me.”

“All right, boy—” A masked figure, taller than Punch, broke through the branches of the shrub. Dyanna screamed.

Too late, Punched ducked. The butt end of the upraised pistol came down on the back of his bent head. He sagged unconscious to the ground.

Sobbing, hysterical, Dyanna stumbled forward toward the attacker. “You yellow dog!” she gasped. A Jinktown phrase sprang welcome to her lips. “You dirty bastard!” She clawed wildly at his face, trying to tear away the handkerchief that masked it.

The man retreated, grunting unintelligibly, throwing up his arms in self-defense. Dyanna kicked at his legs, she threw her whole weight against him, blindly, in a headlong lunge, not knowing or caring what she did.

Suddenly her arms were seized from behind and she felt herself jerked upright and pinned against the attacker from the rear. Strong arms encased her, clasped themselves over her breasts, pinning her own arms tightly against her sides.

She twisted, sobbing, and kicked backward. Her heel struck into the man’s shin. He cursed.

“You little hellcat,” he panted.

Struggling, they fell and rolled on the ground.

Donny Green, brave enough now that Elwee had come to his rescue, came close and stood over them, gun in hand. He wiped his hand across his forehead. “She scratched the hell out of my face,” he whined. “Damned little she-devil! I oughta wring her neck, girl or no girl.”

Elwee Neal, the struggling girl pinned beneath him, laughed excitedly. “Wring her neck, hell,” he panted. “Just gimme a little help with this wildcat—I got a better idea!”

Punch woke—slowly, foggily—to a world so filled with pain that it blinded him. Twice he forced his eyes open and tried to focus them on what seemed to be a swaying tree limb above his head. They closed of their own accord. Through the pain, which shot through his head like incessant small electric shocks, one after the other, he tried to remember what it was he had to do. There was something urgent, something that required action—quick action—on his part. But he couldn’t think, not with the pounding in his head. Not with the surging nausea that gripped him whenever he opened his eyes. He turned over on his side, weakly, and gave himself up to the sickness.

After a while he was able to sit up. Awareness came back. He knew where he was and what had happened. He wondered, dully and with a bitter sense of defeat, where Dyanna had gone, whether she had reached home safely. He rose and stumbled to the spring, where he lay flat on the ground and sloshed the cold water into his face. He rinsed his mouth, then drank deeply.

Immediately he felt better. He would be able to get up, he thought thankfully, in just a few minutes. Get up and go home. Find Dyanna. It must be awful late. Nearly midnight, to judge by the moon.

A small complaining sound, like the whimpering of a puppy, reached his ears. It came from the willow grove, from the other side of the big rock where he and Dyanna had sat—

Dyanna! He jumped to his feet, the throbbing in his head forgotten, and ran toward the sound.

She lay crumpled on her side, like a fallen bird. One arm was flung back, awkwardly, across the ground, hunching her shoulder. Stunned, he looked blankly at the torn clothing, the bared shoulders and breast, the twisted skirt—and for a long moment could not take in their significance.

He dropped to his knees beside her, mechanically rearranging her clothes while he tried to fight off the hideous knowledge that began to beat in on him. She had fallen, that was it. She had fainted. She had struck her head against the rock when she fell. Somehow, she had torn her clothes.

Desperately, he turned his face away, his dark eyes narrowed to shining slits, and looked out into the darkness. He spat, and spat again. She hadn’t fallen. He faced it: the two “guards” had done this.

He jumped up and ran wildly, insanely, through the willow grove, looking behind trees, peering into bushes, striking out blindly with clenched fists at everything in his path, searching for two masked men he knew he would not find. Panting, he ran through an open field to the gate and looked up and down the road. He turned back, still running, and stumbled through the trees to the rock.

Gently he lifted the almost unconscious girl and carried her in his arms toward the road. She stirred feebly. “Punch,” she whispered. “Punch, I’m hurt. Bad.”

He felt the hot angry tears, held back until now, welling out of his eyes and rolling down his cheeks. He bent and kissed her gently.

“It’s awright, Dyanna. We’re goin’ home.”

Aunt Carrie Slater, when she opened the door of her cottage to Punch’s urgent kick, was already in a state of agitation. She had her bonnet in her hand, ready to start on a hunt for her charge. She held the lamp high, studying the boy’s face with a narrow-eyed, probing keenness. “What’s the matter? Where you two been all this time?”

Her glance dropped to the girl in his arms and she gave a horrified gasp. “What’s the matter with Dyanna?”

Punch strode past her and laid the girl gently on the bed. He threw a shawl over her. “She’s bleeding bad,” he said. “You better help her.” His voice was dull, lifeless—and the words came slowly, haltingly, as if they had to be forced out one at a time from his throat. “Do what you can while I go for a doctor.”

He turned away and started for the door.

The girl was awake, now, and crying softly.

Aunt Carrie caught his arm and shook it. “Did you do this, boy? If you did I’m goin’ to kill you.”

Punch looked at her, started to speak, then changed his mind. He moved toward the door. “Dr. Waring?” he asked, tonelessly.

Carrie Slater’s deep-lined face in the lamplight was like something carved out of stone, but she spoke softly, as if in apology. “He ain’t in town, son. Git Dr. Mitchell, out to the asylum.”

Punch turned back briefly. “I’m awful young,” he said. “I know that, but I want to marry Dyanna. Right away. I can work.”

He walked out into the night, turning at the gate toward the hospital at the end of Federal Street. He tilted his head a little to one side, in a listening attitude. The voices. “We’re guards on this place. This is state property.” That was the big voice. The gruff, heavy one. It belonged to the man who had hit him on the head.

His eyes narrowed, his whole face became alert as he strained to recapture the sound of the other—the lighter, higher voice. “You got no business up here at night.” Yes, that one, too, he would remember. He must never forget it.

“We’ll see this little girl gets home safe to her folks.” Yes. Yes! He felt a strange excitement growing in him. He broke into a run. Now he had that one, the heavy one, for sure. Forever.

Parris Mitchell looked up at the ormolu clock on the mantel and closed the heavy volume he had been reading. He should have been in bed before midnight, he thought, since he was to be up earlier than usual in the morning. He had accepted an invitation to have breakfast with Father Donovan at the little rectory on Walnut Street.

As he was about to turn off the light, he was startled by an abrupt pounding on his door. A second, more insistent knock came before he could reach the door to open it. He was aware of some frantic urgency when he saw the disheveled boy standing there.

“Yes? Rayne, isn’t it?”

“You got to come, Doctor.”

“Where—”

“Come on.” Punch half turned to go, impatient. “It’s bad, Doctor.”

Parris asked no questions. There was more than urgency in the boy’s voice; there was desperation.

“I’ll get my bag.”

Parris stepped into the bedroom. Elise had not awakened. He hurriedly wrote a line saying he had been called to Jinktown, laid it on his pillow, and went out with Punch.

“We’ll go in my car, Punch. It will be quicker that way.”

At the cottage in Jinktown, Parris Mitchell worked swiftly and efficiently. He asked no questions; his physician’s eyes, seeing Dyanna’s ravaged body, read the essential facts of what had happened. After he had snapped shut his bag, he turned to Aunt Carrie.

“She’ll sleep now. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Will she—” Aunt Carrie’s hands fluttered nervously. “Doctor, will she—will she be all right?”

Parris nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said, “she’s suffering from shock now. But she’ll be quite all right—very soon.”

“Oh, thank the Lord, Dr. Mitchell. You think we can—can keep this quiet, Doctor?” The old lady’s voice broke pitifully.

“Yes—unless there’s some way to find out who—”

“Punch didn’t do it, Doctor.”

“I know.”

“They don’t know who it was. The men was masked.”

Parris was silent for a moment. “For the present, I think you should say nothing. Later, we can decide.”

“Dyanna might want to tell Miss Randy. I don’t know.”

“Wait until Dyanna is well again and then decide about it. Where is the boy?”

“Punch?”

“Yes. I just want to see if he’s all right.”

“Why—” the old woman looked puzzled. “Punch wasn’t hurt so bad, was he?”

“Never mind.”

Wearily, Parris left the cottage. Young bodies were hard; they healed readily, quickly. But, he reflected with bitterness, what of their minds? In a few weeks the girl would be perfectly sound—physically. Punch Rayne hadn’t been “hurt so bad,” either, but Parris knew that the events of this night could injure Punch far more than the girl.

Punch returned to the cottage after Dr. Mitchell had left. He sat on an upended soapbox near the bed and held the sleeping girl’s hand. The sedative had done its work; her breathing was slow and even. The small hand in his was limp.

“She’s restin’ now,” he told Aunt Carrie. Having spoken, he became very still, tilting his head to one side and looking upward toward the ceiling of the low room.

Aunt Carrie, busy at the stove across the room, turned and looked at him curiously. That was the fourth time Punch had made that same remark in the last ten minutes. He acted like a boy gone out of his head. “I know, son. She’s all right.”

She crossed the room to lay a hand on his shoulder. “Drink some coffee, Punch. Might do you good.”

He shook his head.

The old woman sighed and walked across the room to the oil lamp that burned in the window. She leaned down to lower the wick and blow out the flame. Without turning to face him, she said, “Daylight’s comin’.” She straightened her shoulders. “You don’t know who it was?”

The boy’s voice sounded old, old and tired. “No, ma’am. It was dark where they was hidin’, an’ we couldn’t see their faces.”

There was a long silence, while Aunt Carrie came to the bed and laid a brown, calloused hand across the sleeping girl’s forehead.

Punch looked up at her and Aunt Carrie drew back, startled and vaguely uneasy at the change that came, all in a moment, over his face. Even as she watched, the dark, heavy-lidded eyes, usually so childlike and trusting behind their thick lashes, grew hard and crafty. One corner of his wide mouth lifted into a hideous grin—a cruel, triumphant grin.

“I didn’t see their faces,” he whispered. He spoke carefully, as if to a conspirator—as if it were vitally important that she understand. “But I’ll remember their voices. Yes,” he promised her hoarsely, “I’ll remember.”

He rose suddenly and ran out of the house into the gray dawn.

At the sagging gate he stopped short. He looked up and down the street. “I’ll find ’em.” He spoke aloud, and laughed mirthlessly. “I’ll find ’em, if it takes all my life. And then—” he pounded one fist against the gatepost, “I’ll kill ’em—I’ll kill ’em both. I’ll chop ’em up into little pieces. Nice an’ slow. Inch by inch.”

Fulmer Green had been unable to sleep. Now, at two in the morning, he was still restless, still tossing in his bed. He raised himself on one elbow, listened intently as he heard Donny’s furtive entrance into the house—the tiptoeing up the stairs, the stealthy crossing of the upstairs hall to the door of the back bedroom. Angrily, yet somehow relieved and oddly pleased that he had found an object on which to vent some of his pent-up anger, Fulmer threw back the sheet that covered him and got out of bed. Wearily he ran his stubby fingers through his stiff blond hair, then tugged fretfully at the wrinkled, sweat-dampened pajama coat that clung to his stocky body.

He padded barefoot down the hall, glancing uneasily at Hazel’s door as he passed, and threw open the door to Donny’s room. “Donny!” He blinked a little against the light that stung his eyes. “Fine time of night for you to be getting in, I must say where the hell’ve you been?”

Then he noticed what Donny was doing. The anger he had been nursing turned into a chill of apprehension. Donny’s face was bleeding and the boy was trying to bandage it. His eyes, turned hastily on Fulmer, were terror-filled. Donny actually shrank back against the wall under his brother’s amazed stare.

Fulmer advanced across the room and looked closely into the boy’s face. “How’d you get cut up like that? Who—”

Donny’s voice was weak, his face chalk-white. “Aw—it’s just a couple o’ scratches.”

Fulmer watched him narrowly. There was more to this, he could see, than Donny was willing to tell. He had never seen Donny so agitated before—why, the boy’s hands shook as though he had a chill.

“Tell me—and be quick,” he ordered. He gripped Donny’s shoulder. “You in trouble?”

Donny hesitated obviously torn between caution and the desire for help. Then his face broke up like a child’s about to cry. “Gosh, Fulmer—I’m in a mess, I reckon.” His voice took on a whining note. “I didn’t mean to get into trouble—it wasn’t my fault any more’n Elwee’s—” He began to cry, weakly, holding the loose bandage against his badly scratched cheek. Slowly, through his agonized gulpings, he got out the story of the night’s events. It was an interesting, a terrifying story, but inaccurate. Donny’s version was intended to lead Fulmer to believe that the whole plan had been Elwee’s idea, and that he, Donny, had done nothing except in self-defense.

Fulmer was not a fool. He filled in the blank spots in the story, he salted down the protests of innocence, until he had the whole affair, and Donny’s part in it, pretty well figured out. His first impulse was to draw back his fist and knock the boy flat. He was enraged at the foolhardiness of the act. Only the knowledge that a beating would not help matters, that the damage was already done, made him uncurl his fist. “Don’t hand me that malarky,” he said menacingly, “about you not touching the girl. You had to get close enough to her to get your damn’ face scratched.”

Donny avoided his brother’s eyes.

They sat until daylight, arguing and planning, deciding what must be done for Donny’s protection.

“You’ve got to get out of town—that’s settled,” Fulmer insisted at last. “If this thing gets out—” His anger returned again, briefly. “What the hell did you do it for, anyway?”

By this time Donny had lost his fear and he answered impudently, “What the hell did you get married for?”

Fulmer reached out and drew Donny’s face down against his shoulder. “I don’t know, Don—honest to God. Maybe if I hadn’t—”

Donny, without lifting his face, said meekly, “Look, Fulmer, if you still want me to go to school—well—” It was with obvious effort that he made the concession. “Well, I’ll go on to the University.”

For the first time Fulmer lost some of his look of strain. Well, he thought, this night, with all its ugliness and its danger to the Greens, had at least solved one important family problem. Donny would get a decent education after all—and school life would keep him out of trouble. “Now you’re talking sense. The university’s the answer.” He rose stiffly and yawned. “Get some sleep, Don—and put this thing tonight clear out of your mind. That’s history now—ancient history.” He tried to sound more carefree than he actually felt. “Forget it.”

He walked slowly back to his own room, a worried frown on his face. For the first time in years he felt defeated; the clear logic of his mind told him that he, as well as Donny, was guilty. He had taken charge of Donny and—he had to face it—he had done a bad job.

“My God,” he thought, “I hope Ned Porter won’t find out about those guns!”