Harvestman Lodge (76 page)

It was all too strange. He eyed the door.

“Daddy, let me go downstairs and see if I can’t find something to make you a sandwich with. I hate to leave without doing at least that.”

“Thank you, Rawls. But I won’t be needing a sandwich. Flora will be coming in later in the afternoon, so I’m good. I had a good breakfast this morning, and there’s some graham crackers in the cabinet in the corner.”

“You sure, Daddy?”

“I’m sure. I just need one thing from you, son. Come here and give me a hug. Let me feel those strong arms of my boy.”

Another bit of atypical behavior from a man who had always been cold and unemotional. As Rawls hugged his father, he pondered how many years it had been since he’d even touched the man in any meaningful way.

Something was going on here, and Rawls didn’t find it comfortable. He told his father what the man wanted to hear, repeating the lie that Lukey was not in Kincheloe, and vowing, quite sincerely, that he would not ally himself with Lukey if the occasion should arise.

“I love you, Rawls,” Cale said as Rawls began to move toward the door.

“I love you too, Daddy,” Rawls replied, though the words felt unnatural on his tongue. Within minutes he would have cause to be glad he’d said them.

He heard the slightly muffled crack of a gunshot before he’d made it fully out of the yard. Returning to the house, he found his father slumped to one side in his wheelchair, his dulled eyes now truly and fully blind.

He’d apparently had the pistol tucked between his right hip and the side of the wheelchair the whole time.

“Oh, Daddy,” Rawls said. “Oh, Daddy, what have you gone and done?”

He made the call to the police station anonymously, from a pay phone near the auto parts store, then hoped no neighbors had seen him come and go from the house. Rawls’s life had difficulties enough already without questions about an old man in a wheelchair with a bullet in his brain.

Chapter Forty-Nine

MEGAN SURVIVED THE NIGHT UNHARMED IN THE backyard tent, and when she emerged in the morning, Eli was just circling the car around the block so Megan would think they’d just arrived to pick her up. No need to embarrass themselves or alarm Megan by telling her they’d guarded her all night.

Megan went inside to wolf down a couple of toaster pastries for her breakfast, and to thank her host family and say her goodbyes. She gathered her things and darted out to the car.

“How come you’re wearing the same clothes you had on yesterday, Melinda?” Megan asked Melinda. At age twelve, she had reached the time in feminine life in which clothes became important and always noticed.

“It’s … uh … it’s a long story, and kind of embarrassing,” Melinda said, with no idea what kind of “long story” she would fabricate if Megan was persistent. “I’d rather not talk about it with a guy in the car,” she added.

“Oh. Okay.” Megan’s curiosity all but overwhelmed her, but she didn’t seek details.

“Did you sleep well out in that tent, Megan?” Eli asked.

“Yeah, pretty good. The ground’s kind of hard.”

“Maybe you need a more padded sleeping bag.”

“Yeah. This one belonged to the Lanes. If I’d had my own, I’d have slept better.”

“We didn’t sleep well, either,” Melinda said.

“‘We’? You mean you two were … ”

“No, I don’t mean that. Not at all. Eli was at his place and I was home, and he came by to pick me up this morning.”

“Why didn’t you – ”

“The engine has been running rough and the check engine light was on. I wasn’t scheduled to go to the station today, so I decided to go in without my car and hope I didn’t get given an unexpected assignment I’d have to drive to.

“If you had, I’d have let you borrow this car,” Eli said, playing along with Melinda’s story.

“I’m glad you’re nice to my sister, Eli,” Megan said. “She used to have a boyfriend who wasn’t nice to her. He even … ”

“Meggy, Eli knows all about that,” Melinda said. “There’s no reason to be talking about that.”

“Sorry.”

They traveled a few minutes in silence, which Megan finally broke. “Eli, aren’t you taking me home? This isn’t the right way.”

Melinda answered. “We’re taking you to work with us today, Meggy. I want to be able to keep an eye on you.”

“What did I do wrong?”

“Not a thing, Meggy. We just want to make sure you’re safe. With Mom and Dad away from the house and school being out for the summer, we don’t like the idea of you being at home alone.”

“Because of those men I saw.”

“Yes. Because you saw them, and because Eli saw them, too.”

Megan’s eyes widened. “You saw them?”

“I did. Riding in a car together. An Asian man and a white man who looked like a Parvin, though strictly speaking, I can’t really know he was.”

“Why were they watching my house?”

“We don’t really know. Maybe nothing. It could have been coincidence. But it is disturbing, and lets us know we should be extra careful, just in case something is going on.”

Melinda said, “Meggy, if either of them ever approach you, or try to get you to talk to them or go somewhere with them, or anything like that, get away from them as fast as you can. And go to a place where there are people who can see you. If you see a policeman, go to him.”

“This all makes me scared.”

“Sweety, when you feel scared, just tell yourself to be careful instead of afraid. Keep calm and do smart things.”

“Okay. I will.”

Megan had nothing more to say for the rest of the ride to Hodgepodge.

FLORA HAMILTON’S CAR WAS PARKED out front of the office building. Melinda found her swiping down a drinking fountain, as engrossed in her work as usual.

Megan went on into Melinda’s office and turned on the television there, then settled down and wondered how boring the day would turn out to be, stuck here where her sister worked. Melinda herself went on down to speak to Flora.

“How are you getting along, Miss Flora?” Melinda asked.

The old woman sighed. “I miss my brother awful bad,” she said. “I go by his house and can’t believe I can’t go in and see him no more. It makes me feel just as alone as I can be.”

“You’ve got plenty of friends still, Flora. But I know what you mean. Eli and I miss him too. I think of him every time I look down at my hand and see the ring on my finger. It was such a generous gift, and so thoughtful of him.”

“He was a kind-hearted man. His life wasn’t always easy, but he never complained.”

“A good example to follow.”

Flora wiped a tear or two. “I know he’s with the Lord now, but I guess I’m selfish. I wish he was still with me.”

“I understand.”

Flora smiled at Melinda. “He always called you his ‘Sweet Miss Lindy’ when he talked about you. Did you know that?”

“I knew about the ‘Lindy’ part, not the rest.”

“Did I tell you he did let me know where he got those rings?”

“No … where?”

“Right here in this building. In the restroom wall in Eli’s office, matter of fact.”

“The restroom wall?”

“The rings had been put into a crack in the block wall at sometime or other in the past, and dropped on down. When they were renovating this place, somebody accidentally cracked open one of the wall blocks, and Jimbo pointed a flashlight into the hole and saw the rings glitter. He pulled them out and decided to hold onto them until he could find somebody he wanted to give them to.”

“I’m glad it was us,” Melinda said.

“Me too, Lindy.”

Flora returned to her cleaning of the drinking fountain, swiping almost furiously and murmuring things under her breath that Melinda could not hear.

“Flora, are you all right?”

“Oh, honey, when I’m feeling sad, I just get a kind of fury about me that I calm down by working hard. Jimbo was the same way, sometimes.”

“If you’re looking for jobs to do, I can go trash my office. My little sister is in there, probably doing it already.”

“Honey, I’ve got more than enough to do here without any trashing. And this afternoon I got to go over to Mr. Cale Parvin’s house and cook some food and clean for him.”

“I didn’t know you worked for him.”

“Honey, I work for about everybody in town, or have at one time or nother. Mr. Cale, he needs help more’n most in this town. He’s close to full blind now, and he’s stuck in a wheelchair, and I’ve spoke to him enough to know he’s hit a place where he’s full of sorrow for the lives he and his kin have lived … and God only knows what he’ll do with that sorrow. It will lead him either to a light place or to the deeper dark. I don’t know which, Miss Lindy.”

“I never met the man, though I saw a younger image of him recently in that big election party photograph at the Clarion office,” Melinda said. “For a time I kept company with his son … but that came around to a bad end, and I never met Rawls’s dad.”

“You maybe didn’t meet Rawls’s dad, but I hear he sure ’nough met yours. That’s the tale I’ve heard, anyway.”

“I think most have heard that story. I wish people could forget such things as easily as they take them to memory.”

“Yes, Miss Lindy. Yes indeed.”

THANKS TO RAWLS’S SECRETIVE PHONE BOOTH call to the Tylerville police, Flora Hamilton was spared the shock of discovering the self-slain corpse of Cale Parvin. She learned what had happened from one of the policemen. They were all over the place, making photographs, looking for anything that might hint this was anything different from the obvious suicide it was.

“It’s easy to see why a man in his situation could come to this,” Flora heard one cop tell another. “They say he was nearly blind, stuck in that chair, not able to move around most of his own home, and his kin pretty much left him to get by the best he could. He lived a lot of the time on food people brought in to him. His wife’s been dead for years and his family is one of the sorriest in the county. A lot of folks would have done the same thing he did in that kind of situation.”

“It’s sad to see a man’s life wind up so miserable that he don’t even want it anymore,” the other policeman replied.

“These Parvins, I don’t know what to make of them,” said the other. “My folks always told me to steer clear of them, and the Tates, when I was growing up. That was hard to do, though … there were Parvins and Tates out the wazoo in school with me all the way through high school.”

“Yeah, the Parvins had a lot of folks who didn’t like them. Is there any indication here that this was something different than him putting a bullet through his own temple?”

“If there is, I’ve not heard anybody saying it. It seems the old boy just got tired of living and decide to cash it in.”

Flora was still watching and listening from a chair in the corner of the second-floor hallway when a man walked in and entered Cale Parvin’s bedroom without the slightest interference from the police. Such was the level of respect held for Brother Larry Cavness.

Cavness walked over to the wheelchair, where the body remained seated but covered over with a sheet. He pulled the corner of the sheet back, looked, and winced.

“Gentlemen,” he said to the policemen, “I’d had hope my friend here was on the verge of choosing a new life. He’d called me in to talk about it. I’m sad to see he chose death instead.”

“So … you were here with him earlier? When?”

“Roy,” said one policeman to the one who’d just asked the question, “don’t go barking up a tree with no coon in it. This is Brother Larry Cavness. I guarantee he didn’t put that bullet in Parvin’s head.”

“No, but he might have seen something or heard something to shed more light on the situation.”

“There was another man, young fellow, going in as I was leaving,” Cavness said. “I don’t know who he was, but he looked to be a Parvin. You know what I mean, that Parvin glare.”

“Oh yeah,” both officers said almost in unison.

“Bet it was Rawls, his son,” said one of the cops.

“No,” said the other. “He’s in prison.”

“Not anymore. You didn’t hear he got out? He’s been doing night work as a security guard at some of the plants here.”

“Huh! I thought he was still inside.”

Brother Larry rubbed his chin, frowning. “I wonder if I should have spoken. I don’t have any wish to get this young Parvin fellow in trouble when all I saw him do is go in the house.”

“Don’t worry, Brother Larry. He’s not likely to be in trouble. This looks like a pretty clearcut case of suicide. When they dust the prints on that pistol, I’m betting they’ll only find Cale’s. But it could have been the younger fellow who called in about the body.”

“He’s been low in spirits lately, Mr. Cale has,” said Flora. She’d come to the door of the bedroom and heard some of the talk taking place just inside the door. She was staring hard at the sheet-covered cadaver in the power wheelchair.

“Yeah,” said the policeman. “He had plenty to feel depressed about. No doubt in my mind. He offed himself.”