The Bad Seed (16 page)

After lunch, Rhoda asked permission to sit in the park, and Mrs. Forsythe said she could. She took her book and went to her usual place under the pomegranate tree. She had hardly turned to the correct page when Leroy, who could never leave her alone very long, came into the park and pretended to sweep the path behind her. He swept the same spot over and over, and at last he said, “There you sit reading a book and trying to look cute. Maybe you’re thinking about how you hit that little boy with a stick. Is that what you’re thinking about right now? Is that what makes you look so pleased and happy?”

Rhoda, in the tone that a bored but tolerant adult might use,
said, “Finish sweeping the walk and get away from me. I don’t want to listen to you. You talk silly all the time.”

Leroy put down his broom for a moment and examined the pomegranate tree, snickering and nodding his head. He picked off a dead branch and held it in his hand; then, coming in front of the child, weighing the branch in his palm, he said innocently, “Is this about the size stick you hit him with?”

“Sweep your path. Either that, or talk to somebody else.”

“After you rolled little Claude in the bay, he tried to pull himself up on the wharf again; but you hit him on the back of his hands that time until he had to turn loose, and drown; but before he done that, you fetched him another good lick on the temple, and that was the lick that bled so free.”

Rhoda looked about her for a bookmark, as she did not want to damage her property by turning down a leaf. Before her, on the path, was a small, soft pigeon feather; she picked it up, blew on it to rid it of dust, and marked her place with it. Then, putting the book on the bench beside her, she stared calmly at him.

“You make out like you don’t know what I’m talking about,” said Leroy in delight, “but you know what I’m talking about, all right. You ain’t dumb like them others—I got to admit that, no matter how mean you are. You know what time it is, just like I know what time it is. You ain’t no dope—that I must say—and that’s why you didn’t leave that bloody stick where people could pick it up. Oh, no! You got better sense than that. You took that stick with you when you ran off the wharf, and when you were among the trees, with nobody to see you, you went down to the beach and washed off that bloody stick good. Then you threw it in the woods where nobody could find it.”

“I think you’re a very silly man.”

“I may be silly, but I’m not silly like you are,” said Leroy. He was enjoying the scene more and more. That mean little girl was letting on like she wasn’t interested, but she was interested,
all right! She was scared, deep down, but she wouldn’t admit it. “You’re the silly one, not me,” he continued, “because you were silly enough to think you could wash off blood, and you can’t.”

“Why can’t you wash off blood?”

“Because you can’t, that’s why. You can wash and wash, but it won’t come off, leastways, not all of it will come off. Everybody knows that but you. You’d know it, too, if you didn’t talk so much, and not listen to what people who know about things say.”

He began sweeping the path vigorously. “Now, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, unless you start treating me nice,” he said. “I’m going to call up the police, and tell them to start looking for that stick in the woods; and they’ll find it, too. They got what they call ‘stick bloodhounds’ to help them look; and these stick bloodhounds can find any stick there is, provided it’s got blood on it. And when them stick bloodhounds bring in that stick you washed off so careful, thinking nobody could tell, if that stick looked clean to you, they’re going to sprinkle some kind of powder on it, and that poor little boy’s blood will show up to accuse you of what you done. It’ll show up a pretty blue color, like a robin’s egg. And then them policemen—”

He turned away quickly, for he saw Mrs. Penmark come into the park, seeking her daughter, and walk toward them. She felt the tension at once and said to Leroy, “What have you been saying to her this time? What have you done to annoy her?”

Leroy said, leaning against his broom, “Why, Mrs. Penmark, I wasn’t saying nothing out of the way to her. We were just talking a little.”

“What did he say to you?” asked Christine.

Rhoda got up from the bench, picked up her book, and said, “Leroy said I ought to run about and play more. He said I was going to make myself nearsighted if I kept on reading all the time.”

But Mrs. Penmark had seen the cold, angry look in her daughter’s eyes, and she saw now the smirking expression of triumph
which came over Leroy’s face at the child’s words. Again she felt anger rising in her, but controlling her voice and hands, she said, “I don’t want you to speak to Rhoda again under any circumstances. Do you understand?”

Leroy opened his eyes in a hurt, simulated astonishment, and said, “I didn’t say nothing out of the way to the little girl. You heard what she told you.”

“Just the same, you’re not to speak to her again. If you worry her again, or any of the other children, for that matter, I’m going to report you to the police. Is that entirely clear?”

She took her daughter’s hand, and together they walked around the lily pond toward the gate. When they reached it, as Christine tugged at the heavy handle, Rhoda turned and gave Leroy a hard, thoughtful, appraising glance. She made one of the conventional answers of childhood, an answer both wise and very deep: “What you say about me, you’re really saying about yourself.”

That night after supper, Leroy took off his shoes, laughed, and told his wife of the affair. His own three children were sitting on a bench under the althea bush, stringing four-o’clock flowers on grass, their bare, tough toes digging into the packed earth. When he’d finished, Thelma lowered her voice, so that the children could not hear her, and said, “I done told you to leave that girl alone, Leroy. You’re going to get yourself in bad trouble. You’re going to keep messing with that child until you get yourself in a big jam.”

“I just like to tease that mean little girl. I couldn’t get nowhere with her before, but I got her listening to me now.”

“You’re heading for trouble, is all I can say.”

“I’m not going to get in no trouble. That little Rhoda is a cute one. She don’t run away crying and blabbing. That little Rhoda’s mean, all right, but she’s cute, too.” He sat quietly, smiling, nodding, and digesting his dinner.

There was a curious smell about the place, a vague moldiness which could not be traced to its source, as though the beds had been rained on and had dried out in the shade. Thelma went into the house and got herself a can of beer. When she returned, she said, “Rhoda may not tell on you, but somebody’s going to hear you, like Mrs. Penmark almost heard you today. Then there’s going to be trouble. Suppose she does hear you, and calls the police like she said. The police’ll take you down to the station house and kick your teeth in.”

Leroy stretched, laughed indulgently, and said, “What do you think I am, anyway? A dope?”

Afterward Christine felt relief, as though Miss Fern’s certainty had dissipated her own doubts, and during the next days she went about her duties of preparing meals, sewing, and looking out for her child and her house. She went to an afternoon wedding with Mrs. Breedlove where both wept a little behind their handkerchiefs; she shopped for an old-fashioned, hard hair mattress that Kenneth wanted for his bed; she went to a dance given by the treasurer of her husband’s company for his nieces from New Orleans. She was determined to deny her fears, to forget her uncertainties, and she did so as long as she kept herself busy, or was with others; but at night, with Rhoda asleep and the house so quiet that vibration and sound were magnified in her mind, her doubts came back to trouble her.

She awoke one morning thinking if she did not take herself
in hand, did not make a greater effort at self-control, she’d soon become as overwrought as Mrs. Daigle. It occurred to her then that if she questioned Rhoda’s normality, if there were true grounds for her feeling that the child had criminal traits, she should no longer avoid the issue; it was her duty, if her fears were grounded in fact, to educate herself, to read and study the things she’d avoided in the past—to accept any reality that faced her, no matter how unpleasant, with courage and resourcefulness; to remedy the situation if possible; if not, to make the best compromise she could with facts. It was only through knowledge that she could help her child, could guide her with both understanding and intelligence to more acceptable attitudes, toward more conventional goals.

Her mind turned automatically to Reginald Tasker, to the talks they’d had together. She wanted to telephone him instantly, to ask his guidance; but already doubt had undermined her good sense a little, and she felt fearful at doing so, as though he would guess the true motive of her interest; then, although she despised her guilty deviousness, she decided to handle the matter another way. She’d give a cocktail party and ask him to it, along with other guests in whom she was not momentarily interested at all; she’d make an opportunity to be alone with him, and she’d ask him with misleading casualness, as though the matter had just occurred to her, to advise her in her reading. Certainly under those circumstances he would attribute no motive to her except the idleness of her mind; but if he did, she’d be forced into another untruth. She’d tell him she was thinking of trying her hand at a novel, now that Kenneth was away and time hung so heavily on her hands.

She gave her party on the last day of June. She arranged that Rhoda stay with Mrs. Forsythe across the hall; but Rhoda wanted to come in for a little while to meet her mother’s guests. Christine consented, and when the guests were all there, Mrs. Forsythe
brought in the child. Rhoda was dressed in white lawn embroidered in yellow, a frock her mother had made her a few days before. She wore white shoes and yellow socks, and her hangman braids were looped back with little yellow bows. The guests were enchanted with her. She smiled her hesitant, charming smile; she curtseyed in the manner Mrs. Forsythe had recently taught her; she listened with solemn intensity when she was complimented, her eyes wide and innocent of guile; she was polite, dignified, and serious, and when Mrs. Forsythe said they must leave, she nodded gravely, and, making the soft sound a contented and pampered animal makes, she ran to her mother and embraced her with calculated spontaneity; and then smiling again, looking down in modesty, her shallow dimple plain for all to see, she held Mrs. Forsythe’s hand, pressed close to her thigh for protection, and left with her.

When the child had gone, and her guests no longer needed her attention, Christine went to Reginald and said that since that time at Monica’s when he’d told the story of Nurse Dennison, she’d found herself more and more interested in his field; she’d even read the accounts of the Ponder trial. Then, touching his arm, her head tilted to one side and lowered in gracious surrender of her mind to his, she said she’d never be reading such shocking things if he’d not first introduced her to them—and wasn’t he ashamed of himself for going about town corrupting old married ladies? Reginald said he wasn’t in the least ashamed. On the contrary, it was one of the things he’d boast about in his old age, or use in an expanded and flattering version in his memoirs.

Behind them on the balcony, his voice coming through with shrill clarity, an intellectual young man said, “A great novelist with something to say has no concern with style or oddity of presentation. Now, take a man like Tolstoy. I’ve just read
Anna
again. Tolstoy had no fear of the obvious. He wallowed in platitudes. That’s why his work has survived.”

Christine said, “The last time we talked about crimes, it was about the crimes children commit. You said, although I found it hard to believe, that it wasn’t rare for children to commit major crimes. You said the ones destined to become famous in their field almost always began young. Were you serious, or were you taking advantage of my innocence?”

“Well, I never thought of Tolstoy as dealing in platitudes. Dickens, yes. But hardly Tolstoy.”

Reginald said he’d been serious, indeed. There was a type of criminal he was particularly interested in. The type was his specialty, and for a long time now he’d been clipping and saving reports of cases, and making notes for a sustained study of the type. In this sort of criminal, which seemed different from all others, there seemed to be as many women as men, which was unusual to begin with. His type, if they weren’t too stupid or too unlucky, ended up as murderers on a grand scale. They never killed for those reasons that so often sway warm but foolish humans. They never killed for passion, since they seemed incapable of feeling it, or jealousy, or thwarted love, or even revenge. There seemed to be no element of sexual cruelty in them. They killed for two reasons only—for profit, since they all had an unconquerable desire for possessions, and for the elimination of danger when their safety was threatened.

“I’m very interested,” said Christine. “Will you let me look at your material? I’ll take very good care of it.”

Mrs. Breedlove, a Martini in her hand, moved through the crowd and came closer to them. She stood listening in a sort of dramatic astonishment, then impulsively she said, “But, dear Christine, what’s come over you? Why have you done such an about-face?”

Christine smiled self-consciously and said, “I doubt if there is a reason.”

Mrs. Breedlove shook her head in patient denial, sat between
them, and said, “There’s a reason, dear Christine; there’s a sound psychological reason for everything we do, if we can only find it.” Then, with seeming inappropriateness, she said, “When I was in analysis with Doctor Kettlebaum, I used to go early, having such a positive transference to the poor man. There was an attractive young Englishman who preceded me, and we met in the waiting-room quite often. Sometimes when Doctor Kettlebaum was tied up on the phone between patients, and was late in calling me, we talked together. This young man—I’ve forgotten his name years ago, which is symptomatic, too, as you’ll soon see—once told me that he considered me unusually attractive; except for one detail, I’d be his ideal, he said. His temperament was an odd one, you see. He said he adored only one-legged women, and I so plainly had two.”