The Feud (26 page)

Tony frowned at him behind the glasses. “Shut up, Jack.”

It was rare for him to talk this way to his brother, and Jack wondered whether indignation would be in order: he had just tried to be comforting.

But Tony was still staring at him. Finally Tony said, “He’s gone, don’t you see?”

But Jack really didn’t until his mother began to cry.

Frieda dreaded having to tell Bud about what happened to Reverton, to add to the troubles that had laid him low, but Dr. Swan assured her that it would be impossible to keep this news under their hats when it was the talk of not just the’ whole town but the southern part of the state and would maybe go much farther, for the editor of the weekly
Millville Blade
, sensing the appeal such a story would have, had been in communication with one of the national press services.

So Frieda accompanied the doctor to the Merryvale Hospital and went in to see her husband alone. She waited in the little lounge assigned to visitors to the mental ward. After a while Bud came out, attended by a brawny, cheerful nurse. He looked sane enough though pale and tired.

The big nurse said jovially, “Here’s your hubby, dear,” and to Bud, “Now you be nice.” And she went away.

Bud was wearing the pajamas and robe Frieda had brought on her first visit. The spinach-green robe had seen too much service, and in fact she had long since planned to replace it at the next Xmas, but that would be too late for now.

She asked after his state of health.

“Ohhh,” he sighed. Obviously he was vague about it. She decided to get right to the point. “It’s your cousin, Bud, see…”

His previously lackluster eyes brightened. “Rev?” he said. “Yeah, I would sure like to see ole Rev. It’s O.K. for him to come here. But you know I don’t wanna see any of the others. The fuss they’d make!”‘

Frieda shook her head. “Bud, see, Rev…” Deciding to strike the nail on the head did not necessarily mean you would hit it. “See, they held up the bank, and—”

Bud got a strange look. He said, in a voice that began very softly, “I used to think Reverton was a crank of some kind, but it’s coming true, isn’t it? First they burn the store, then they loot what’s left, and now the bank.” He stared suspiciously around the little waiting room, where they sat alone.

“No, Bud,” Frieda said quickly, “that’s not what I’m trying to tellya. It was just one robber. He was a man named Reno Fox. He was wanted by a good many states and also the guvmint. Clive Shell and also the post office had a Wanted notice on him. Your cousin Reverton shot him dead, and they recovered all the money. The bank’s gonna pay Rev a real nice reward, because this Fox cleaned out the vault. He waited for the time lock to open first thing this morning. Turns out he ate a fish samwich at Curly’s last night just before he closed up. Junior stopped in there to drink a bottle of pop and he saw this crook, sitting at the counter big as you please, says he looked like he could be as mean as they come, but he was nice as pie to Junior, which is why Junie never reported him or anything. Now what happened ‘smorning is that Rev was just going into the bank when this Reno Fox was leaving with his bagful of stolen money. Being as how he’s a detective by profession, I guess Reverton recognized him from the Wanted posters, since he ordered him to halt, and they both drew their pistols and Rev shot him dead. They say it was like the Wild West.”

“My God,” said Bud. “My God Almighty. He finally got his chance. Good for Rev! But he’s one lucky man, not to get shot himself by some professional crook like that.”

Frieda lowered her chin as far as it would go. “Thing is, he did get shot.”

“Rev?”

“He’s still hanging on,” said Frieda. “But Doc Swan says he isn’t long for this world.”

This marked the end of Bud’s nervous breakdown. He was ready to leave the nut ward in his robe and pajamas, but Frieda went out into the corridor and brought in Dr. Swan, who cleared things with the nurse while Bud was putting on the street clothes his wife had brought him.

Reverton was in the emergency room, where he had been brought a few hours earlier, directly from the bloody steps of the bank. Various tubes were connected to him, and in attendance were people dressed in white.

His eyes were open when Bud reached the bed. Bud roused himself to say, “This is a fine kettle of fish, Rev! Whatchoo doing here anyway? Why, you look fit as a fiddle.”

Rev had never much been one for jollity. His voice was so feeble that Bud had to lean way over to hear the words.

“I got a reward coming. I want Junior to have it.”

Bud was trying to keep up his nerve. “Why, I think you can put it to mighty good use yourself, Rev,” said he.

Reverton had a funny smell to him, a mixture of medicaments and, probably, death. His voice became ever so slightly stronger now. “I want Junior to have that money…. Don’t you worry none: I got a little inssurance policy to get buried on…. You see Junior getss the reward. Tell him…” His voice failed.

“Sure, Rev, I sure will,” said Bud into his ear. “Now you get yourself some rest.” He was about to leave when he remembered that thus far he had not said what he wanted his cousin to hear before dying. But he had a superstitious feeling that if he didn’t say it, Rev would not die. It was an awful choice to make, because Reverton might expire anyway, and then Bud would have to live the rest of his own life with the knowledge that he had not said it in time, and the fact was that though Bud went to church regularly and certainly called himself a Christian, he didn’t for a minute believe in an afterlife of any kind. Therefore it was important how a man was thought of while he was alive, or anyway for a while after his death, though eventually just about everybody was forgotten, when it came to that. But nobody else in the family so far as he knew had ever shot it out with a crook on the steps of a bank.

He bent down to Reverton’s ear again, but before he could say a word his cousin spoke. “Tell Junior…” The voice failed again, but suddenly it returned strongly, at normal volume: “To buy himsself a real gun.”

A nurse and a doctor came to the bed on opposing sides. They said nothing to Bud, but suggested by their movements that he was in the way.

He stepped aside but asked, “If I could just tell him one more thing?”

They were bending over the patient. In a long moment the doctor straightened up and said to Bud, “It’s too late now.”

Ordinarily at such a juncture Bud would have turned regretfully and made a sad exit, but now he silently forced the doctor to give him access to his cousin’s body.

He didn’t care whether he was overheard or not. “So long, Rev. You were one swell guy, for my money. Listen…” A greater grief than he had been conscious of suddenly enveloped him. He had to use all his strength to add, “Listen. The whole family’s real proud of you.” He found Reverton’s hand, which was unusually small and finely made, like a woman’s, though you could never have told him that. He shook it once, then put it back.

He thought he would break down when he got outside the room, but in fact he did not. He told Frieda, “He’s gone. I got there just in time. You know, everybody but me always thought he was a mighty queer duck, and God knows he wasn’t your ordinary run-of-the-mill, but I liked Rev. I always had a soft spot for him, and on his side he would of put his hand inna fire for me. You recall how he give me a good deal of his settlement money from that accident, for the store. Well, the last thing he said before passing away was he wanted me to have this reward money he’s got coming, to get the business started again. Ain’t that somepin?”

He stayed O.K. until they went to Reverton’s rooming house, in search of the insurance policy mentioned by the deceased. While going through his cousin’s few pathetic effects, he found an old snapshot which had undoubtedly been taken by his own mother, with the big box camera, showing little Rev in cloth cap and knickers, on a Sunday visit from the orphanage. The knickers had in fact been worn by Bud himself for several years before being passed down.

Bud was sitting on the edge of the narrow bed. He lowered the photo and began to weep in almost silent gasps. But after a while he got up and joined Frieda at the grimy window from which she was looking onto the nearby railroad yard.

Harvey Yelton led the funeral procession for Dolf Beeler, but he pulled aside at the gate of the cemetery and did not enter. He was an old friend of Dolf’s and had been even more intimate with Bobby many years before, but when he could, he avoided all actual funeral ceremonies no matter for whom, except of course those for his sainted mother. (His father had been a dirty drunkard who disappeared one day when Harvey was six.) It was around back, on the other side of the cemetery, that he regularly apprehended violators of the ordinances protecting public decency. The damnable fact was that no matter how faithfully you patrolled Lovers’ Lane you could still find used rubbers and empty liquor bottles there next morning. These were obviously the work of no-goods who did not have to get up in the morning and earn an honest living with the rest of the human race, but could just drink and fuck their nights away, and Lord help them if they came around earlier, but he had to sleep sometime.

He had turned the cruiser around and was about to head back to the station when he saw a boy come to the cemetery entrance and look furtively within. He recognized him as a kid named Dickie Herkimer. He knew most of the local lads and could spot potential troublemakers among them, but Dickie was a clean-cut live wire who would make a good businessman when he grew up, a go-getter real-estate agent or a used-car dealer.

“Hi there, Dickie,” he said through the open window. The morning was sunny and warm for October, though the leaves on the cemetery trees had pretty well all turned color. Assuming that Dickie probably wanted to go to Dolf Beeler’s gravesite—he being a friend of Jack’s and a responsible young fellow—Harvey said, pointing, “It’s on in there to the left, around back of the Mumphrey crypt.” This monument was a landmark in the Hornbeck cemetery, being the largest and the most elaborate, with stone angels and so on, the Mumphreys, whose line was now extinct, having been the prosperous but childless coal dealers of a generation past.

But the Herkimer kid stayed where he was, grinning foolishly.

Harvey beckoned the boy over to the window of the cruiser. “Dickie,” he said, “you look kinda peakèd. You O.K.?” Harvey had a police officer’s sixth sense with regard to people, especially youths.

Dickie was grinning ever more wildly, and then all of a sudden the grin burst into a big sob, and tears coursed down his face, on which the skin was clear except for a developing boil on the chin.

Harvey reached over and opened the passenger’s door, and Dickie came around and climbed into the cruiser. He rubbed his eyes on both sweater sleeves.

He stared desperately at the chief and said, “I’m turning myself in.”

Harvey put the car in gear and began to move slowly along the street. He asked, mostly tongue-in-cheek, “What am I supposed to charge you with?”

Dickie sniveled for a while, and then he began to sob again. Harvey got a certain pleasure from the tears of young girls, but male crybabies gave him the willies. He had thought better of Dickie. He felt like slapping him silly.

He said, threateningly, “You gonna tell me?”

The boy was sharp enough to know when he was going too far. He breathed deeply and said, “Murder, probably.”

Harvey grunted in his kind of laughter. “Who’d you kill?”

“Mr. Beeler.”

The chief braked at a stop sign. While at the halt he looked at Dickie. “Gun or knife?” He started rolling again. “You ain’t pulling my leg, are you, Dickie? Or dint you know Dolf died of heart trouble?”

“I think what I did,” said Dickie, “was what gave him the heart attack.”

“Whajoo do?”

“Blew up his automobile,” Dickie said. He sniveled for a while. “I had some cannon crackers saved from the Fourth, when I got sick and couldn’t shoot off all my fireworks, and I tied the fuses of a whole lot of ‘em together, and I put ‘em under the hood—”

“Oh you did, didja?” Harvey wouldn’t give the little fart the satisfaction of seeing him surprised.

Dickie said, “I guess I thought it would be funny. See, Jack told me they had been having ‘sargument with some family over Millville. I figured
they’d
probably get the blame. I thought it would be a neat joke, I guess.” He was staring anxiously at Harvey.

The chief drove several blocks in a silence that he expected Dickie to find unbearable. At last he said, “Wellsir, you ain’t telling me anything I dint pretty much know already, Dickie. I just been so busy I didn’t get around to picking you up on it. Then I was worried about what would happen when your dad heard about it. He might just whip you to death before we could ship you out to the reformatory.” From the corner of his eye he could see Dickie begin to quiver. He turned and pointed right in his face. “You start to bawl again, I’ll take out your front teeth, you goddam smart-aleck little shit-ass. I don’t know what you punk kids think you’re doing, but by God you won’t do any more of it in my town. I’m gonna declare a curfew at sunset and run you all off the streets. And that definitely includes Halloween and the week before. Going around in masks for handouts is all finished in Hornbeck, and anybody who does any damage—I mean, so much as throws a handful of corn on somebody’s front porch—he won’t ever know what hit ‘im. You hear me?”

Dickie said, “Yezzir.”

“Now, about this here damage you done to the late Dolf Beeler’s auto. He’s dead and gone, so you can’t make resitooshun to the man whose propitty the car was. Now if Bobby Beeler didn’t have two strapping sons, I’d send you over to cut the grass for her and run down the store and other errands, but as it is, you’d just get inna way, and Tony would probly end up kicking your butt for you, so I tell you what you do: you come down the police station every Sairdy till Christmas and make yourself useful, warshing windas and mopping the floor and all. You can simonize the cruiser.”

“Yezzir.”

Harvey stopped at the next corner. “Just keep your nose clean, Dickie, cuz I alweez got my eye on you.” Dickie did nothing: he seemed pretty thick. “Go on,” Harvey said. “Make yourself scarce.”