Chapter 4 #2
“And if he tries to stop us going?”
Malcolm knelt on the edge of the bed and reached behind his traveling case. He’d laid out the sidearm he’d brought home from Korea—a Browning Hi-Power 35—and now he revealed it to Violet, barrel pointed at the mattress.
“Okay, then,” she said.
“It doesn’t make you nervous?”
Violet crossed her arms and leaned against the doorframe. “I’ve seen men with guns before, Malcolm. As long as they know how to use them and don’t point them at me, I’m not bothered.”
Early in the war, he’d been stuck with the same Colt revolver the army issued to its troops.
The same revolver they’d used in the Second World War.
But once he’d seen what the Browning could do—once he knew the magazine could hold thirteen bullets, with one more in the chamber—Malcolm had been determined to get his hands on one.
His friend Ron Bellamy had taken a bullet in the gut because his Colt had clicked on an empty chamber.
The surgeons at the field hospital had kept Bellamy alive, but he’d never be the same man—never be whole again.
Malcolm had decided then and there that if he died, it wouldn’t be because he’d run out of bullets.
Even now.
He moved the shirts he’d just put into the traveling case to show Violet the boxes of ammunition he’d already packed.
“When I go out the front door, it’ll be in my hand, not in my case,” he said.
“I don’t know who’s behind that mask, but the way he’s lurking out there isn’t just strange, it’s repugnant.
Grief isn’t meant to be on display. I’m not gonna shoot him for bad manners, mind you.
We can draw the curtains and do our best to forget he’s out there.
But if he tries to interfere with what we need to do, or tries to follow us … I’ll make him think twice.”
Violet gave a small nod. “Okay.” She started for the door. “You should go in and sit with her, if you’re all packed. I’ve got to pull some things together.”
“You all right?” he asked.
She paused with her hand on the doorframe. “Sometimes I forget the war taught you to be dangerous.”
Malcolm turned away. He set the gun back on the bed and arranged his shirts over the ammunition boxes again. “The war taught me to survive.”
The room had fallen silent, and when he glanced at the doorway, he found it empty.
On his bedside table was a battered paperback copy of In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes. Malcolm had only read fifty pages or so and he wanted to know what would happen next, so he tucked the book into his traveling case, closed and locked it, and took one last look around the room.
Music still drifted from Maggie’s bedroom.
He knew he ought to go and check on her, but nursed the suspicion that somehow, as long as he didn’t look into her room, she would keep living.
A foolish thought, and he grew angry with himself.
The clock of her life had nearly stopped, and there would be no rewinding it.
Go, he thought. Be with her, even if she tries to send you away again.
Malcolm went into the hall, heading for his mother’s room. The door to Violet’s bedroom stood open several inches. He heard her opening and closing drawers, packing, the floor creaking as she moved back and forth.
He knew he ought to go to his mother, but he thought they had just a little more time.
She had said so, after all. Local people had called Maggie a witch often enough that it had become part of her identity.
As ridiculous as it seemed when she insisted she could stave off death until daybreak, he believed her.
Sunrise would take her, she’d claimed, and sunrise had not yet arrived.
He nudged open Violet’s bedroom door.
Standing in the doorway, he watched Violet pull things from her closet and lay them over her left arm. She held a pale blue peignoir so sheer that spiders might have woven it. His face and neck flushed, and he wanted to laugh at himself, or scream at the world. This wasn’t the time for either.
“You’d be safer here,” he said, startling her. “I could find a place for you to stay while I’m gone.”
Violet tossed the clothing she’d gathered onto the bed with a clatter of metal hangers, then walked over to him and lay her head on his chest. Sadness enveloped them, but a breathless tension as well.
He felt they were approaching a crossroads beyond which nothing would ever be the same.
Maggie’s death would be a part of that, but not the only part.
Malcolm took her by the shoulders and created space between them. Violet could not mask her disappointment. She cinched the belt around her robe, then ran her hands through her sleep-mussed hair.
He despised his brother for abandoning her, and for leaving them in one another’s company all this time.
“Elias should be here,” he said.
Violet’s gaze hardened. “As should your sister.”
“Yes,” he said. They both knew they were talking about two different things. “But he should have come home.”
“And if he had?”
Malcolm hesitated. The world might be changing, but 1956 hadn’t made much of an impact on Elkhart.
Maybe in places like Hollywood and New York City, a man might carry on an affair with his brother’s wife and escape lifelong shame and scandal.
In some places, he thought, people thrived on scandal. But this was Indiana.
“If Elias came home,” Malcolm said, “I’d tell him he ought to stay here and be a proper husband to you, or set you free.”
Violet parted her lips, but no words emerged. A puff of her breath reached him just as he inhaled, and he breathed it in. The moment hung between them, all the unknowns, the dangers, the allure of possibility.
He started to speak, to put words to the crazy thoughts in his head.
Violet glanced away. “Did you hear that?”
Malcolm flinched. Had she invented some distraction, afraid of the things they might say to one another?
“I heard nothing.”
“From Maggie’s room,” Violet said.
He rushed from Violet’s bedroom and down the hall to his mother’s.
The door stood open. Shadows and candlelight painted the room in strange hues.
Malcolm couldn’t see the bed until he entered.
For just a moment, he thought he caught sight of a shape at her window, dark eyes peering through the glass.
But then he hit the light switch, and the glaring bulb overpowered the candlelight, revealing nothing beyond the window but the opacity of night.
Maggie’s water glass had thumped to the carpet without breaking. A dark wetness spread where it had struck. The last book she’d tried to read had also fallen, and he knew she had knocked these things from her nightstand on purpose.
“Mom?” he said, knowing she’d hate it. Knowing she wanted to be called by her name. But this close to losing her forever, he could no longer pretend it did not cause him pain, that space she’d always insisted on creating between them. “What happened?”
She lay on the bed, head slipped off her pillow, one arm reaching toward him as he crossed the room. There were tears in her eyes.
Malcolm had seen his mother cry only once, the fourth time Elias had promised to return to take up his responsibilities to his wife.
He’d sent a telegram instead, something about an investment opportunity, and promised it would be just another month.
But Maggie and Malcolm and by then even Violet knew he would not be coming home again.
Now her eyes were yellowed, shot with red, and her face streaked with tears.
“I had a dream,” she rasped. “They were in there with me. They saw me, and I felt them … stirring.”
He knelt by the bed, took her hand. “I’m sorry, Momma. I don’t know what you mean.”
Her gaze narrowed, took on a flinty edge. “They’re not awake yet, but they’re restless. They know I’m nearly dead. And when I’m gone…”
“Who’s ‘they’? I don’t understand.”
Her eyelids fluttered and closed. She exhaled softly, a quiet rattle in her throat. Malcolm fought the urge to shake her, to demand clarity. Was she capable of clarity now? How muddled had her mind become?
“I’m here, Maggie,” he breathed. “I’m here, Momma.”
“You’re a good boy, Malcolm,” she whispered without opening her eyes. “But you’ve gotta carry me home. Selfish of me … to wait so long.”
They were her last words. Malcolm held her hand in both of his and knelt by her bed as minutes and then hours passed. The creak of footfalls behind him told him that Violet entered the room at least once, but he didn’t turn. At some point, he drifted off, his forehead resting against her arm.
When he blinked awake again, Maggie’s skin was already cold.
He sat back, studied the peaceful expression on her face, and forced himself to release her.
He stood, knees and back stiff despite his youth, and glanced at the window.
Maggie had been true to her word. The horizon had turned pink and gold and peach, and the night was in full retreat.
He went to the glass and looked out.
Across the street, in among the branches of the willow tree, the raven still waited.
Malcolm balled his fists and thought of the gun on his bed, but he could feel the weight of his mother’s presence. Somehow, now that she was dead, the things she had expected of him meant more than they ever had.
He went to the kitchen, took the phone from its cradle on the wall, and dialed the funeral home. Paxson Keates himself picked up on the first ring, as if he’d been expecting the call. As if he’d written it down in his appointment book because Maggie Wise had warned him in advance.
“Mr. Keates, it’s Malcolm Wise.”
“Hello, Malcolm. I’ll be right over.”
As if, like the raven, he’d been waiting.