Girl Waits with Gun (25 page)

This one arrived once again by mail. It was delivered in the afternoon just before Sheriff Heath stopped in to pick up a deputy.

Madam: This is a last warning to you. We git this time the whole bunch of you, we lay for you. We know you and when we get you be sorry for we finish you.

Good-by

Your time has come soon

—H. K. & Friends

“Last warning?” I said. “What does he want from us? Warning before what?”

Sheriff Heath sat down on the divan and closed his eyes for a minute. He looked terrible. His eyes were bloodshot and rimmed in dark veins the color of a bruise. As he held the letter, his hands trembled. He looked smaller somehow, as if he'd shrunk inside his overcoat.

“Sheriff Heath,” I said, suddenly worried. “You don't look well.” Why hadn't I noticed it before?

He gave a shuddering, chesty laugh that sent him into a coughing fit.

“Strange men are firing guns at your house and you're asking after my health?”

I was about to offer him coffee when we heard a bang and a scream from the meadow. The sheriff dropped the letter and was out the door before I could even make sense of what I'd heard.

Norma had been in the pigeon loft. I saw her running to the creek and Fleurette struggling across the meadow, where none of us should have been alone.

Norma got to her first. Fleurette was crying and pushing at her. Norma tried to hold her but then realized that she only wanted to get to the house. They turned and ran together, slipping in the mud and half-melted snow. Sheriff Heath reached her before I did. He pointed his two deputies in the direction of the creek bed and corralled us into the house.

Fleurette wore a black wool skirt that was soaked through with water and splattered with mud. If she had been wearing a hat, it was gone. She kept covering her face and turning away from us. It was impossible to get a word out of her.

Sheriff Heath saw that he could do nothing for a girl in this condition. He told us to take her upstairs and get her settled down. He would watch the house and wait for word from his deputies.

We took Fleurette to Mother's fortress-like bedroom, where at last she started to calm down. She let us pull off her wet clothes and wash her face and dress her in a nightgown and a flannel robe of Mother's. I found no scratches on her, just mud and grass. Once she was propped up in bed with us on either side of her, she was finally able to speak.

“Two men,” she said. “I could barely see them through the trees. They were standing in the creek bed, like they were waiting for me.”

“What did they do to you?” I said.

She wrapped her arms around her chest. “They fired at me and I ran.”

“And you're sure you're not hurt?” I wanted to pull up her nightgown and check every part of her, her knees and elbows and the tiny dip between her shoulders, but she held tightly to the blankets and wouldn't let me.

“What were you doing down at the creek?” Norma asked.

Fleurette looked from Norma to me and back again, her chin trembling. “The water pump was stuck. I just went to get water for the washing. I thought everyone could see me.”

The water pump did have a tendency to stick in the winter. We resorted to melting buckets of snow or bringing up water from the creek when we couldn't get it moving.

“But there were three men standing about with nothing to do,” Norma said, “and one of us could have given it a try as well. You know we can usually get it going again. Why didn't you just ask someone for help?”

“That's enough,” I said. “Sheriff Heath is waiting downstairs for a word from you. Can you describe these men?”

She shook her head and sunk deeper under the covers. “They wore long overcoats and hats with the brims turned down. They were tall men, taller than Mr. Kaufman, I think.”

“And they were standing right in the creek? In the water?”

“They were on the flat rock I use to get across.”

I ran my hand along her forehead and she closed her eyes. Her hair formed a perfect half-circle of brilliant inky black on the pillow. “Stay here and rest. We'll be downstairs with the sheriff.”

Sheriff Heath and his deputies were standing outside in a tight circle, stamping their feet and talking in low voices. The men had parked an automobile in our neighbor's field on the other side of the creek and driven off in it. There was nothing but the ruts of tires in the dirt by the time the deputies got there.

We told them what little we had learned from Fleurette. It seemed most likely that the men had been crossing the creek to get closer to the house when she surprised them.

The sky had cleared a little that afternoon and lit up the frozen ground. Sheriff Heath raised a hand to shield his eyes from the glare and squinted at me. “They're getting bolder,” he said. “They'll slip up soon enough. This is almost at an end. But I can't have the three of you running around in the woods and splashing in the creek. You have to do as we ask and stay where we can protect you.”

Norma and I just nodded. We were going to have to take turns watching Fleurette.

“Is your sister asleep?” Sheriff Heath asked.

We said that she was.

He reached under his overcoat and consulted his watch. “That's fine. Let her sleep, and then see to it that she has a good supper. I'll be back at six.”

“I'm not sure it's worth the trip,” I said. “I don't think she'll have anything more to say.”

He squinted up at the house and back down the road and then said, “I'm coming back to give her a shooting lesson. The three of you will all carry revolvers until this is over.”

And that's how we came to be standing in a meadow on a bracingly cold November night, struggling to see our fence-post targets against the gathering dark, taking one shot after another as the sheriff braced us by the shoulders and spoke steadily in our ears, slipping the revolvers out of our pale and frozen hands to reload them so that we could fire again and again and again at the menace that waited somewhere out there beyond the creek bed.

HENRY KAUFMAN AND HIS FRIENDS
had been toying with us the way a barn cat teases a fledgling fallen from its nest: viciously, but unhurriedly. So it was with some relief that we received, in the middle of November, his most serious and specific threat against us.

Now, at last, we had a date and a place.

Madam—We demand $1000 or we will kill you. Give Monee to girl dressed in black at the corner of Broadway and Carroll street, Paterson, Saturday night at eight o'clock. If you don't pay we will fire your house and take that girl of yours. We know your horse and wagon. We live in Paterson. Ha ha!

—H. K. & Co.

I read it and pushed it to the middle of the table. We all looked at Deputy Morris, who happened to be on duty the afternoon it arrived. When he didn't say anything, each of us spoke at once.

“Well,” I said. “This time we'll catch him.”

“A thousand dollars!” Fleurette said. “Is that what I'm worth?”

“Stop that,” Norma said. “And we won't pay it.”

The deputy reacted to our chorus of voices by standing up and announcing, “This is a matter for Sheriff Heath to decide. You ladies go about your business. He'll be here soon enough.”

But a storm came on that night, pushing hail and freezing rain across the fields in waves. Every time we thought it had let up, another icy draft blew through. The weather must have delayed the sheriff, and there was nothing to do but wait. The deputies had been on duty for over twelve hours. I finally convinced them to come in for a bowl of soup and a hot bun. Ordinarily it was forbidden for them to dine with us, but these men had expected to be home for supper and weren't. They had to have something.

Around ten Norma and Fleurette gave up and went to bed. I stayed up and walked the dark house for another hour until at last I heard the tires of Sheriff Heath's automobile in our gravel drive.

His deputies ran out to tell him about the letter, and soon he was standing in the parlor with four of his men around him, the two that were going off duty and the two that were starting the night shift. The room was filled with the smell of wet wool and smoke from the camp stove in our barn. Sheriff Heath took a seat on the divan, placed his hat on his knees, and read the letter to himself. When he was finished, he looked up at me, searching my face for something, then read it again.

“Take a walk around back,” he told his men. “Carry a lamp and check the bushes and the outbuildings. Then wait for me in the barn.”

When they were gone, he said, “Sit down. I have something to ask you.”

“What is it?”

“Just—sit.”

I dropped down next to him and waited. He rubbed his eyes and held his forehead in his hands, breathing so quietly that I thought he had fallen asleep right in front of me. At last he pulled his hands away and turned to look at me, his eyes watery and red.

He swallowed hard. “Miss Kopp. I've tried everything in my power to stop this man. I've followed him around town, I've watched his house, I've spoken to his sister and his business associates, and, for that matter, I've spoken to him. I've tried to build a case for the prosecutor but they fight me on it. They've never charged a factory owner with any kind of crime and they're not inclined to start now. The Kaufmans are a powerful family. They own mills in three states. They can get all the silk men behind them.”

He waited to make sure I understood. I nodded, and he continued.

“I've also devoted more deputies to your protection than the sheriff's office can readily afford. The Freeholders fight with me over every invoice I submit to them. They make it nearly impossible for me to get my men paid. So far I've been able to hide the expense, but if they find out how much they are spending on this one case, I'll be held to account.”

“I'm so sorry,” I said. “I didn't realize—”

He held up his hand to silence me. “That's not your concern. What does concern you is the fact that we need to bring this matter to a resolution quickly. We cannot spend the rest of the winter lying in wait.”

Once again he paused and waited for my agreement. I nodded and he went on.

“This letter gives us an opportunity. I would like you to go to Paterson on Saturday night as the letter instructs. You will carry your revolver and I will post men all around you. We will make sure nothing happens to you. But we must try to catch this girl in black or whoever might be with her.”

“Of course,” I blurted out. “We have to. I can do it. I've become quite practiced with the revolver.” I might have sounded a little too eager to get a shot at Henry Kaufman. The sheriff looked over at me worriedly and seemed to take a minute to make up his mind.

“All right. That's fine,” he said at last. “But that's not all I want you to do.”

What else could there be? I squared my shoulders and waited.

“I think we should go to the papers,” he said.

“The papers? Do you mean that we should let them write about us?” Norma would not like this idea. Other people's troubles belonged in the paper for the world to read about, not ours.

“Yes. I want to let them write a story about your vigil on the street corner. You will give them a full account of what has happened, going all the way back to July. Let them report on the events of Saturday night, whatever they may be, and run their stories in the papers on Monday.”

“But why would you want reporters meddling in this?”

He leaned back and rested his head against the divan. “It will force the prosecutor to take notice,” he said, his voice a little hoarse. “The Freeholders don't like to see unsolved crimes in the paper. They complain about the bills from the prosecutor's office as much as they complain about mine. They want to see that they are getting their money's worth. If the papers run this story, the prosecutor will be made to answer for his lack of action.” He looked over at me. “What do you think, Miss Kopp?”

I could feel my face flush. “We've always been a very private family.”

“I know. You stay out here on this country road, with acres between you and the nearest neighbor. None of you seem to belong to any social clubs. I've never seen you entertain friends or school chums or gentlemen. For whatever reason, the three of you have made up your mind to stay out of sight. I know this won't be easy for you. But I think the only way to bring these men to trial is to begin with a trial in the papers, as distasteful as that is.”

The decision was mine to make, really. Norma would be opposed to it, Fleurette would beg to sit for an interview, and it would be up to me to cast the deciding vote.

“Don't you think that drawing attention to him in the papers will only provoke him?”

“I don't think Henry Kaufman could be more provoked than he is right now.” Sheriff Heath pulled out his watch. “It's almost midnight. Get some sleep. You can tell me in the morning.”

I nodded and he rose to leave. In spite of his fatigue, he always stood very straight. He walked stiffly to the door and then he was gone, leaving me alone in the dark with my decision.

FLEURETTE NEVER ASKED
why she was schooled at home. There were no other children on Sicomac Road, and it might not have occurred to her that there was a school in town she could have attended. She simply accepted the idea that little girls do lessons under the supervision of their families. She didn't know that Mother insisted on keeping her hidden, that Mother's fear of scandal and her mistrust of paperwork and government and organizations of any kind made it impossible for her to consider sending Fleurette out of the house.