Centennial (114 page)

So Dumire casually dropped by the railroad station to ascertain what salary Mervin was making, and the agent told him, “We only had a half-time job for him. Gets four dollars a week. He said something about a second job.”

Dumire watched Mervin even more closely and satisfied himself that he had no second job. “He can’t be living on four dollars a week. Not the way they eat.”

His suspicions intensified, but his freedom to investigate became hampered by a development he could not have foreseen. Since it was summer, young Philip had no school to attend, and with the sheriff’s office only three blocks from his home, he had fallen into the habit of spending time there, sitting quietly on the porch, watching carefully as the sheriff came and went. One day Dumire, eager to know what the family was up to, invited the boy into the dark-paneled office, but as Philip sat there, clearly overcome by hero worship, the sheriff was reluctant to question him.

“I like men who have jobs,” the boy said as his eyes followed the tough little sheriff.

“Your father has a job.”

“Not a very good one. Not a real one like yours.”

Such admiration pleased Dumire, and on his duty walks through the town he began to look for the boy. It was obvious to him that Philip was striving to do all the things he had been deprived of during his years of traveling with the theater, and one evening the sheriff watched him in the empty lot across from the Gribben house, and the boy was throwing stones with commendable accuracy. “Good shot,” he called. “Where’s your father?”

“He’s visiting with the Wilsons. They give him sandwiches.”

During another inspection tour Dumire saw the boy swimming in the creek, kicking well and diving deep without fear. “You’re not afraid to stay under, I see,” he called. “By the way, where’s your mother?”

“At the Church.”

He began to look forward to the boy’s visits to his office, and was pleased when Philip told him, “You’re the bravest man I ever met.” He was amused when Philip asked, “Mr. Dumire, why is the bottom of your face so brown and the top so white? Do you use make-up like my father?”

“No!” Dumire laughed. “Sheriffs and cowboys wear big hats ... to keep the sun off their heads. That’s how you can tell a cowboy. Down here brown, up here white.” Next day Philip appeared wearing a large hat.

One morning the boy was perched beside Dumire’s desk, watching him file papers, when the station agent ran in with a telegram from Julesburg. Dumire read it, frowned, then tossed it professionally to Philip, as if he were a deputy:

BOARD UNION PACIFIC 817 AND ARREST CHARLES KENDERDINE ALIAS HARVARD JOE ARMED AND DANGEROUS

SHERIFF BAGLEY

Dumire permitted the boy to follow him down Prairie as he headed for the station, and although the sheriff was not tall, he carried himself with such authority that he imprinted upon Philip’s mind an image of how a man ought to look: clean, hard, devoid of frills. In his life backstage he had seen few such men.

Number 817 pulled into the station; Dumire climbed aboard. Philip could see him, hands over his guns, arguing with a seated man, and in a moment Harvard Joe, much taller than Dumire, came dutifully down the steps, allowing himself to be guided through the main streets to the jail.

Philip waited for the sheriff in his office, and when the courageous little Kansan returned, the boy said with beaming affection, “You can handle those guns.”

“It wasn’t the guns,” Dumire said. “It’s knowin’ what to say so you don’t need them.”

At this moment a man Philip knew as his landlord, Mr. Gribben, entered the office and asked, “Sheriff, can I speak with you for a moment?

“Certainly,” Dumire said.

“Alone?”

Dumire indicated that Philip must go, and he did, pausing to stare curiously at Gribben as he left.

“I want to speak with you, Axel. On an ugly business.”

“Business often gets ugly.”

“I want to warn you about somethin’, but I must first state that under no circumstances will I press charges.”

“Just information?” Dumire asked.

“That’s right.”

“Because the facts would prove you a fool?”

“They would indeed. Sheriff, the Wendells are workin’ the badger game.”

This was the clue Dumire had been waiting for. If they were running a badger game, everything became clear. “Tell me about it.”

“I’m speakin’ of my own case,” Gribben said. “And two or three others I’ve watched, although on them I could be wrong.”

“You met her at one of the socials,” Dumire suggested. “She thanked you for letting them use your house. Brushed against you. And in your hearing Mr. Wendell said he had to catch the night train to Denver?”

“How did you know?”

“There’s only one way to work the badger game. The wife gets the target steamed up, the husband says he’s got to leave town, and some way or another she lets you know you can take her home, and just when you got your pants off and hers down, in storms the outraged husband with a revolver. How much did they blackmail you for?”

“The house.”

“The what!”

“The house. Reverend Holly had pleaded with me that since it was vacant and since they were a Christian family, it was my duty ... You know that Holly. Well ... they grew to like it. Now it’s theirs.”

“Have you gone completely idiot?”

“It was either the house or a scandal, and my wife ...”

“You gave them the house?”

“Yes. I went over to Greeley with them and switched title to their name. ‘For one dollar and other valuable considerations.’ Miserable son-of-a-bitch actually handed me the dollar in front of witnesses. So now it’s theirs.”

“What do you want me to do? Arrest them?”

“God, no!” Gribben cried. “My daughter’s getting married. She wants them to sing at her wedding.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Watch them. Catch them. And run them out of town.”

Dumire considered this for some time, then asked, “Was Mrs. Wendell in this too? I mean ... of course she was the bait, but was she a real partner?”

“Her? Hell, her old man was so wobbly with that gun that I could of settled with him for fifty bucks. It was her that brought up the house, conducted all the negotiations. She’s the brains.” He reflected on this, then added hesitantly, “Did you see how their kid stared at me when I came in? I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in on it too.”

He was. But not in the way Mr. Gribben suspected. He had been asleep that night, but he had heard a strange voice, like the others he had heard on previous nights, and he had peeked through a small opening in the door and had watched as his mother unbuttoned Mr. Gribben’s pants and allowed him to unbutton her blouse, and he could pretty well guess what was going to happen next, except that at the critical moment his father rushed into the room, waving a pistol and making a fiery statement about honor. There was a long argument, with Mr. Gribben trying to get his pants back on and getting them stuck on one leg, and there was discussion about a house, perhaps the one they were living in, and when Mr. Gribben left, cursing at them, his father fell into a chair and said in a hoarse voice, “We can’t do this any more, Maude. It’s too dangerous,” but his mother did a little dance around the room, touching the walls and crying, “The kind of house I’ve always wanted.”

It could have been damaging for a child of ten to absorb what Philip had seen. His mother’s amorous play with Mr. Gribben could have been fearfully disturbing, and his father’s exhibition with the gun might have distressed the boy, but to him, what happened was merely an extension of the plays the family had performed. This was confirmed when he saw the pistol his father brandished: it came from the theatrical company and had a trigger which made a click, but no hammer. And the words his father had said when he burst into the room were not real words. Philip knew them well, and could have recited them, for they came from a play the family had done in Minnesota, the one in which Philip played a girl perched on his mother’s lap when his father tore into the room and cried,

“
Shame, shame! My honor is defiled. I will not tolerate for another moment such disgrace. I will destroy the man who has wronged me.

The ridiculous speech posed no difficulty for Philip, but he did lie awake that night, comparing his father with Sheriff Dumire, and he decided that he preferred men who carried real revolvers and who did not shout about using them, but did use them if they had to. He also liked men who spoke in their own words—in short sentences which they meant.

Consequently, in the days that followed he kept even closer to the sheriff. He did not like men like Mr. Gribben. He wanted to be like Sheriff Dumire, who stood with dignity, and Mr. Gribben had been ridiculous, jumping around the room on one leg, his pants all twisted, while he shouted “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” as if that old revolver had ever been able to shoot.

After Gribben’s visit the sheriff became even more friendly with Philip and showed a deeper interest in his family. He wanted to know what they were eating, where they bought things, and Philip told him. Dumire particularly wanted to know if his mother and father ever had guests, men coming there for dinner, or such like.

And at this point young Philip held back. He knew that Mr. Gribben and other men had come to the house, but he suspected that this was a family secret and none of Sheriff Dumire’s business. So when these questions were asked, he acted dumb, as he had in the play when he was the good bandit’s little girl and the evil king was asking her where her father was. “I don’t know,” the little girl had said, and all the while her father, the good bandit, had been hiding in the trunk, the very one she was sitting on.

“I don’t know,” Philip said. “Mr. Holly, the minister, came over the other day. He wants us to sing at the wedding of Mr. Gribben’s daughter. He said Mrs. Gribben wanted it very much, and there would be five dollars for us.”

Dumire attended the wedding, held in the ballroom of the Railway Arms, and he listened while the three Wendells sang and women wept. He was not able to remain for refreshments because an urgent message arrived calling him to Greeley, and he was therefore not present when a Mr. Soren Sorenson, in town for a couple of days and staying at the hotel, happened to pass the hall where the wedding reception was being held. Hearing the music, he wandered in, even though he did look out of place carrying a black bag, and he found himself standing beside Mrs. Wendell, a remarkably handsome woman, who offered him several glasses of punch and who expressed obvious disappointment when her tall and attractive husband informed her of his bad news: “Dash it! I’ve got to catch the night train to Denver. Those damned bankers.”

Philip was standing at the window of his bedroom when he heard his mother and Mr. Sorenson coming up First Street, chatting gaily, and when they entered the house he would have moved to the chink in the door to watch what unfolded, except that when the pair closed the front door behind them, Philip saw his father slip quietly onto the porch, holding the stage revolver and waiting for a signal to rush into the room to protect his honor.

Philip now moved to the door to watch the playful wrestling, and heard Mr. Sorenson’s heavy breathing and saw what his mother was doing to encourage him to undress her. He wondered what signal she would use to alert his father, then noted that during the heat of the wrestling she found an opportunity to brush her white arm against the window curtain, and Philip knew that soon his father would burst in with the stage pistol and start reciting his lines.

But on this night something went wrong. Philip was watching Mr. Sorenson as his father rushed into the room, and to the boy’s surprise, the visitor showed no fright, didn’t even bother to pull up his pants. Instead, he said, “What in hell is this? The old badger game?”

Philip knew that now his father must begin to recite his lines, but when he tried, the visitor brushed him away. “Put that toy down and let me out of here,” he said contemptuously, reaching for his black bag, and Philip saw that his father was most eager to obey, except that his mother cried, “Don’t let him get away!” and there was a scuffle, during which Mervin dropped the gun, and the visitor would have escaped except that Maude grabbed the fake pistol and clubbed him over the head, knocking him to the floor, where she clubbed him again and again.

The man lay very still, and Philip watched as his father knelt down, saying in an awful voice, “My God, Maude! You’ve killed him.”

She had. The two Wendells, with their son watching impassively behind the door, argued for several terrifying minutes as to what they might do, and Mervin was all for calling the sheriff and charging the dead man with having ...

“Stop it!” Maude snapped. “Dumire’d know in a minute.”

“Then what can we do?” Mervin asked piteously.

“We must hide the body. Get rid of it. No one knows he was in town.”

So Philip watched with detached interest as they pulled the man’s pants back on. He saw his mother help swing the limp body onto her husband’s back, and then he went to the window to watch his father stagger across the field with it. Mervin Wendell was gone a long time, during which Philip watched his mother tidy up the place, removing any signs of struggle. She was as methodical as if she were preparing for a party, and when her husband returned she asked him matter-of-factly, “What did you do with it?” and he said, “Threw it down the well,” and she cried, “Jesus Christ! That’s the first place Dumire’ll look,” and they stared at each other in horror.

It was in that moment that Philip first saw his good friend Dumire as a potential enemy of his family, and be knew intuitively that only he, Philip, could protect his parents from the sheriff’s investigations. It was much like the play
The Bugler Boy of Bruges
, in which he had been the instrument of his family’s salvation, and now as he listened to the real tragedy in the other room, he knew that his mother was right. If the body were left in the well, Dumire would find it. But he knew a safer place, one which not even Dumire could ever discover. It was exactly like that scene with the bugler boy, when his father was going to hide the king’s money in a trunk which the evil counselor would be sure to spot. It was Philip, that is, the bugler boy, who thought of the windmill.