LADY CLAUDIA: Thou Man of Blood (XII)

FLOYD looks hard at Wilbur.

"Do you really think that that story does our friend any credit, Will?"

"Well, yes. I think that it does to some extent. I also think that it sheds light on recent events on Brick House Hill Road."

"And also on certain judgments that were reached in certain quarters about those events?"

Will returns Floyd's hard look.

"Well, let me just tell it. Then each of us can draw his or her own conclusions. Here it is. Back in the summer of 1917 there was a group of young bucks who ran all over Bisbee Township and Onatonga looking for fun and excitement and good sport. The leader of the pack was my brother Lester. He was the oldest. He had the car. Next in the line of command was this big lug right here, Claudia. He was the responsible one. The law-abiding one. He saw to it, as much as possible, that it was good clean sport. But he wasn't always around. In fact, he was around only half the time. The junior members of the pack were Lex MacEveny, Bobby Bisbee, and myself. The Three Little Pigs, Les called us. That may sound like rough boyish humor. But Les was absolutely incapable of that kind of playfulness. He called us the Three Little Pigs because that was his frank opinion of us. He thought that we were basically harmless and basically worthless flibbertigibbits who lacked any and all moral weight.

"Over in Bisbee Corners there is a back road called Hidden Pond Hill Road. An old farmer by the name of Svenloe lived there. He was nasty. He had this bristly gray and black beard that stuck straight out of his face about a foot. He stank. Luke Singenstraw finally had to bar the old stinker from his general store, though being a truly Christian Presbyterian he would call on him to pick up his grocery list, drive back to Camel Creek and fill it, and then back out to deliver it. Farmer Svenloe was a kind of bogeyman to children around the Township. When they got older he became their target. I mean, the older boys would play pranks on him and give him a hard time in every conceivable way. And not just on Halloween, though we always made sure that we had something particularly cruel planned for that occasion. Lex, Bobby, and I were the most dedicated nemeses of Old Man Svenloe."

"And once," Floyd interrupts, "Bobby and you stole Les's car and drove out to Bisbee Corners and knocked over his roadside vegetable stand and squashed all his tomatoes and squash and cucumbers. You weren't happy until you had gone into reverse and then forward twenty times to make sure the destruction was total. And Farmer Svenloe came running out of the outhouse with the top part of his overalls hanging down his legs and his red Long Johns a'blazin'. And he chased after you shaking both of his fists. And Bobby and you roared away roaring with laughter. All right, Will. I spared you the temptation to be whimsical and folksy about that part of this thoroughly revolting story."

Wilbur looks taken aback and offended for a moment or two. He glances at Lady Claudia. She twitches her nose at him. This makes her look as though she is winking. She nods slightly. It seems to be a kind of appeal. She moves closer to Floyd and takes his hand. Wilbur winks at her.

"Boy, Floyd," he says with a grin. "You've sure gotten testy in your old age!"

"I'm sorry, Willy," Floyd says. "I'm really sorry. That was out of line. You go ahead and tell your story the way you want to."

"Okay," Will says. "Okay. Well, here's the way of it... As fate would have it... I mean, in those days it came to pass... Oh, dear! I was so set on being whimsical and folksy!"

Floyd grins.

"Okay, wise guy. Okay..."

"Well, Claudia, I made the mistake of telling the guys back at the ranch all about it."

Floyd turns to Lady Claudia.

"That ranch was the Tavern, oddly enough. Aunt Parmelia let us use it as our club house."

"Aunt Parmelia always had a soft spot for wild naughty boys," Will says. "It was the seminarians who brought out the old maid in her. Anyway, I told Lex and Floyd about it. Floyd expressed dismay and strong disapproval. Ho-hum. Les looked and spoke as though he thought it was all hilarious. The best yet. 'Really?' he kept asking. 'You got the cucumbers too? You got all his tomatoes?' I wasn't too bright. I really thought that he thought it was all a hoot. I didn't pick up on anything ominous in the way he was repeating the details with this fixed grin on his face. Lex MacEveny did. He kind of slid out the side door. Les said that he wasn't sore anymore that we had taken his car without permission. He said that he wanted to go back out there to see all those squashed cucumbers for himself. Bobby was always the really stupid one in our set. He was all for going back. I didn't want to. Not that I foresaw what happened. I just didn't want to. But Les insisted. And you didn't last too long resisting when Les insisted.

"He said that he had to use the washroom. He told us to wait out in the car. He went in the back and we went outside. Floyd here grabbed my arm out by the lilac bush in the dooryard. He said, 'Are you so foolish that you don't even know your own brother? You're not going back out there with him.' I said I was. I said a few other things too. So Floyd turned to Bobby and said, 'All right. But you're kin. You I'll stop.' Bobby said he'd like to see him try. Floyd picked him up by the collar and his belt and walked over to the bushes that used to be in front of the house. He pitched him into one of them. Then he said, 'So how did you like seeing that? And that wasn't even trying.' I think that it was then that Bobby kind of got the idea. As I said. He was stupid. But he also had a good survival instinct...

"So I drove out there with Les. He didn't say a word the whole time. I stopped trying to make conversation. Then, as he turned off the Turnpike on to Hidden Pond Hill Road I noticed a small hand-painted sign on a sapling. Vegtabul for sale, it said. V-e-g-t-a-b-u-l. I don't know why exactly, but suddenly I felt bad about what I had done to Old Man Svenloe. I suddenly realized that being bored and exasperated by my folk's constant harping on doing the right thing didn't give me the right to do the wrong thing willy-nilly. Especially when it was a case of going out of my way to hurt someone else. I suddenly realized something else. Something about my brother. I looked at him. I looked at his face. At his eyes. And suddenly I knew. I knew my brother. What I didn't know was just what he had in mind where I was concerned. Never mind the Lester. He was Peter Knapp Junior. Except his weapon of choice was not the razor strap or the birch rod. I started sweating. I couldn't breath. I opened the door and jumped out about a hundred feet shy of the Svenloe farm.

"It was as though he had been waiting for it. He stopped the car. He jumped out. Naturally, I had fallen and gotten all scraped up. I had twisted an ankle. But I did manage to get to my feet and start limping in the direction of the thickets. I turned around. Les was holding his shotgun. The one he always kept in the trunk of his car. He was aiming at my head. I froze. He started walking towards me. I saw that he had a coiled rope under his arm. He lifted his arm and the rope fell on the grass. He told me to come over and pick it up. I was still frozen. He shook the gun. I had to decide right then and there. Do I really think that my brother Lester is really going to blow my head off over Old Man Svenloe's cucumbers? I decided that I really thought he really might. So I limped over and picked up the rope. He told me to sit down and tie my legs together right above the feet. He said no funny business. It should be good and tight. I wasn't about to disobey. I made it good and tight, though that was hard because it was a fairly long rope and I had to coil it around and around. He said to leave about six feet of rope free. I did so. He set his shotgun down and picked up the end of the rope and started dragging me across the road..."

"Excuse me, Will," Floyd says gently.

He turns to Lady Claudia.

"All I knew was that Les roughed him up a bit and left him on the side of the road all tied up with cucumber gunk all over his face. I never heard anything about guns and inhuman tortures until now."

"So now you want me to shut up?" Wilbur asks. "Or now do you want the lady of the house to retire to her kitchen? That's what she tried to do before. Because she's a very kind and considerate lady. But you were having none of it. I mean no disrespect, Claudia. But these are modern times. I'm sitting here looking at a young married couple who are extremely intelligent and sophisticated and, shall we say, unusual. Extremely old-fashioned too. I know that. But can't we bend the rules tonight? I'd like you to stay and hear, Claudia. I think you should. If what I hear and what I read is true, you can take it. You understand, of course, that I'm not merely indulging myself by telling this unpleasant little story about my deceased brother. We're working up to the truth about this past Wednesday night. Or at least to the unpleasant story I told Sheriff MacEveny and Lieutenant Ashwood."

Floyd looks at Lady Claudia. She squeezes his hand.

"Will," she says, "it seems that you're saying so much about this long ago incident in order to rub in the fact that you have not yet asked Floyd one simple question. What happened in that breezeway up on Brick House Hill Road this past Wednesday night?"

"I wouldn't tell your mother," Floyd says. "Not then and there. But I would have told your father. I would have told you."

"Maybe if you let me finish," Will says, "you'll understand why that, perhaps, is a question that you might well ask me. You do read the The Onatonga Star?"

Floyd stares at him.

"Sure. I read The Onatonga Star, Will."

"Then you know that Lester Knapp, 35, of Camel Creek, died of an accidentally self-inflicted gunshot wound. I came here to explain to you how that was."