Fidelity Read online

  “Son,” Henry said. “The victim’s son. I only know what his wife told me.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She said he said something about Indiana.”

  “We have an APB on him in Indiana.” Detective Bode said this with the air of one who leaves no stone unturned. “But we really think—I think—the solution is to be found right here.”

  But looking at Henry and remembering Lyda, he felt unmistakably the intimation that he and his purpose were not trusted. These people did not trust him, and they were not going to trust him. He felt his purpose unraveling in his failure to have their trust. In default of that trust, every stone must be turned. And it was a rocky country. He knew he had already failed—unless, by some fluke of luck, he could find somebody to outsmart. Or, maybe, unless this Danny Branch should appear wearing a blue shirt.

  “Maybe you can tell me,” he said, “if Danny Branch is Mr. Coulter’s heir.”

  “Burley was—is—my father’s client,” Henry said. “You ought to ask him about that. Danny, I reckon, is my client.”

  The detective made his tone more reasonable, presuming somewhat upon his and Henry’s brotherhood in the law: “Mr. Catlett, I’d like to be assured of your cooperation in this case. After all, it will be in your client’s best interest to keep this from going as far as it may go.”

  “Can’t help you,” Henry said.

  “You mean that you, a lawyer, won’t cooperate with the law of the state in the solution of a crime?”

  “Well, you see, it’s a matter of patriotism.”

  “Patriotism? You can’t mean that.”

  “I mean patriotism—love for your country and your neighbors. There’s a difference, Mr. Bode, between the state, or any other organization, and the country. I’m not going to cooperate with you in this case because I don’t like what you represent in this case.”

  “What I represent? What do you think I represent?”

  “The organization of the world.”

  “And what does that mean?” In spite of himself, and not very coolly, Detective Bode was lapsing into the tone of mere argument, perhaps of mere self-defense.

  “It means,” Henry said, “that you want whatever you know to serve power. You want knowledge to be power. And you’ll make your ignorance count, too, if you can be deceitful and clever enough. You think everything has to be explained to your superiors and concealed from your inferiors. For instance, you just lied to me with a clear conscience, as a way of serving justice. What I stand for can’t survive in the world you’re helping to make, Mr. Bode.” Henry was grinning, enjoying himself, and now he allowed the detective to see that he was.

  “Are you some kind of anarchist?” the detective said. “Just what the hell are you, anyway?”

  “I’m a patriot, like I said. I’m a man who’s not going to cooperate with you on this case. You’re here to represent the right of the state and other large organizations to decide for us and come between us. The people you represent will come out here, without asking our opinion, and shut down a barbershop or a little slaughterhouse because it’s not sanitary enough for us, and then let other businesses—richer ones—poison the air and water.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Listen,” Henry said. “I’m trying to explain something to you. I’m not the only one who won’t cooperate with you in your search for Danny Branch. There are several of us here who aren’t reconciled to the loss of any good thing. We know that for a hundred years, the chief clients and patrons of that state of yours have been in the business of robbing and impoverishing the country people and their places.”

  “I’m not in charge of the state,” Kyle Bode said. “I’m just doing my duty.”

  “And you’re here now to tell us that a person who is sick and unconscious, or even a person who is conscious and well, is ultimately a property of the organizations and the state. Aren’t you?” Henry was still grinning.

  “It wasn’t authorized. He asked nobody’s permission. He told nobody. He signed no papers. It was a crime. You can’t let people just walk around and do what they want to like that. He didn’t even pay the bill.”

  “Some of us think people belong to each other and to God,” Henry said. “Are you going to let a hospital keep a patient hostage until he pays his bill? You were against kidnapping a while ago.”

  Detective Bode was resting his brow in the palm of his hand. He was shaking his head. When it became clear that Henry was finished, the detective looked up. “Mr. Catlett, if I may, I would like to talk to your father.”

  “Sure,” Henry said, getting up. “You going to tell on me?”

  And only then, finally, did Detective Bode smile.

  Danny dug the grave down until he stood hip deep in it. And then he dug again until it was past waist deep. And then, putting his hands on the ground beside it, he leapt out of it, and stood looking down into it, and thought. The grave was somewhat longer than Burley had been tall; it was widened at the middle to permit Danny to stand in it to lay the body down; it was deep enough.

  Using the larger flagstones that he had taken from the grave and bringing more from the creek, Danny shaped a long, narrow box in the bottom of the grave. Digging to varying depths to seat the stones upright with their straightest edges aligned at the top, he worked his way from the head of the grave to the foot and back again, tamping each stone tightly into place. The light beams that came through the heavy foliage shifted slowly from one opening to another, and slowly they became more perpendicular. The day grew warmer, and Danny paused now and again to wipe the sweat from his face. Again he went to the spring and drank, and returned to his work. The crickets sang steadily, and the creek made its constant little song over the rocks. Within those sounds and the larger quiet that included them, now and then a woodpecker drummed or called or a jay screamed or a squirrel barked. In the stillness a few leaves let go and floated down. And always Danny could smell the fresh, moist earth of the grave.

  When he had finished placing the upright stones, he paved the floor of the grave, laying the broad slabs level and filling the openings that remained with smaller stones. He made good work of it, though it would be seen in all the time of the world only by him and only for a little while. He put the shape of the stone casket together as if the stones had made a casket once before and had been scattered, and now he had found them and pieced them together again.

  He carried up more stones from the creek, the biggest he could handle. These would be the capstones, and he laid them in stacks at the head and foot of the grave. It was ready now. He went down to the barn and removed the blankets that covered Burley and withdrew the pillow from under his head. He folded the blankets into a pallet on the paved floor of the grave and placed the pillow at its head.

  When he carried Burley to the grave, he went up by the gentlest, most open way so that there need be no haste or struggle or roughness, for now they had come to the last of the last things. A heavy pressure of finality swelled in his heart and throat as if he might have wept aloud, but as he walked he made no sound. He stepped into the grave and laid the body down. He composed it like a sleeper, laying the hands together as before. And the body seemed to accept again its stillness and its deep sleep, submissive to the motion of the world until the world’s end. Danny brought up the rest of the bedclothes and laid them over Burley, covering, at last, his face.

  As before, the thought returned to him that he was not acting only for himself. He thought of Lyda and Hannah and Nathan and the others, and he went down along the creek and then up across the thickety north slope on the other side, gathering flowers as he went. He picked spires of goldenrod, sprays of farewell-summer and of lavender, gold-centered asters; he picked yellow late sunflowers, the white-starred flower heads of snakeroot with their odor of warm honey, and finally, near the creek, the triple-lobed, deep blue flowers of great lobelia. Stepping into the grave again, he covered the shr
ouded body with these, their bright colors and their weedy scent warm from the sun, laying them down in shingle fashion so that the blossoms were always uppermost, until the grave seemed at last to contain a small garden in bloom. And then, having touched Burley for the last time, he laid across the upright sides of the coffin the broad covering stones, first one layer, and then another over the cracks in the first.

  He lifted himself out of the grave and stood at the foot of it. He let the quiet reassemble itself around him, the quiet of the place now one with that of the old body sleeping in its grave. Into that great quiet he said aloud, “Be with him, as he has been with us.” And then he began to fill the grave.

  Henry rapped on his father’s door and then pushed it open. Wheeler was still wearing his hat, but now he was holding the telephone receiver in his right hand. His right arm was extended at full length, propped on the arm of his chair. Both Henry and Kyle Bode could hear somebody insistently and plaintively explaining something through the phone. When the door opened, Wheeler looked around.

  “Detective Bode would like to talk with you.”

  Wheeler acknowledged Henry with a wave of his left hand. To Kyle Bode he said, “Come in, sir,” and gestured toward an empty chair.

  Kyle Bode came in and sat down.

  Wheeler put the receiver to his mouth and ear and said, “But I know what your problem is, Mr. Hernshaw. You’ve told me several times . . .” The voice never stopped talking. Wheeler shifted the receiver to his left hand, clamping his palm over the mouthpiece, and, smiling, offered his right hand to the detective. “I’m glad to know you, Mr. Bode. I’ll get done here in a minute.” He dangled the receiver out over his chair arm again while he and Kyle Bode listened to it, its tone of injury and wearied explanation as plain as if they could make out the words. And then they heard it say distinctly, “So. Here is what I think.”

  In the portentous pause that followed, Wheeler quickly raised the receiver and said into it with an almost gentle patience, “But, Mr. Hernshaw, as I have explained to you a number of times, what you think is of no account, because you are not going to get anybody else on the face of the earth to think it.”

  Something was said then that Wheeler interrupted: “No. A verbal agreement is not a contract if there were no witnesses and you are the only one who can remember it. Now you think about it. I can’t talk to you anymore this morning because I’ve got a young fellow waiting to see me.”

  He paused again, listening, and then said, “Yessir. Thank you. It’s always good to talk with you.” He hung up.

  “That was Walter Hernshaw,” he said to Kyle Bode. “Like many of my friends, he has got old. I’ve had that very conversation with him the last four Saturdays. And I’ll tell you something: if I sent him a bill for my time—which, of course, I won’t, because he hasn’t hired me, and because I won’t be hired by him—he would be amazed. Because he thinks that if he conducts his business on Saturday by telephone, it’s not work. Now what can I do for you?”

  The detective cleared his throat. “I assume you’re aware, Mr. Catlett, that Mr. Burley Coulter was taken from his hospital room early this morning by some unauthorized person.”

  “Yes,” Wheeler said. “Henry told me, and I’m greatly concerned about it. Burley is a cousin of mine, you know.”

  “No,” the detective said, feeling another downward swerve of anxiety. “I didn’t.”

  “Yes,” Wheeler said, “his father and my father were first cousins. They were the grandchildren of Jonas T. Coulter, who was the son of the first Nathan Coulter, who was, I reckon, one of the first white people to come into this country. Well, have you people figured out how Burley was taken by this unauthorized person?”

  “He just went in with a gurney,” Kyle Bode said, “and loaded Mr. Coulter onto it, and covered him up to look like a corpse, and took him away—right through the middle of a busy hospital. Can you believe the audacity of it?”

  “Sure, I believe it,” Wheeler said. “But I’ve seen a lot of audacity in my time. It’s not as hard for me to believe as it used to be. Do you know who did this? Do you have clear evidence?”

  “As a matter of fact, we don’t. But we have a good idea who did it.”

  “Who?”

  “Danny Branch—who is, I’m told, Mr. Coulter’s son?”

  “That’s right,” Wheeler said. “And you’re wondering why he doesn’t have his father’s name.” Wheeler then told why Danny went by the name of Branch, his mother’s name, rather than Coulter, which was a long and somewhat complicated story to which the detective quit listening.

  “Anyhow,” Kyle Bode said, “Danny Branch seems also to have disappeared. I wonder, Mr. Catlett, if you have any idea where he might have gone.”

  “I only know what Henry says Danny’s wife told him.”

  “And what did she tell him?”

  “He said she said he said something about Indiana.”

  “The Indiana police are watching for him,” Kyle Bode said. “But a much likelier possibility is that he’s somewhere around here—and that his father, alive or dead, is with him.”

  “You’re assuming, I see, that Danny Branch is the guilty party.” Wheeler smiled at the detective as he would perhaps have smiled at a grandson. “And what are you going to charge him with—impersonating an undertaker?”

  Kyle Bode did not smile back. “Kidnapping, to start with. And, after that, if Mr. Coulter dies, maybe manslaughter.”

  “Well,” Wheeler said. “That’s serious.”

  “Mr. Catlett, is Danny Branch Mr. Coulter’s heir?” The detective was now leaning forward somewhat aggressively in his seat.

  Wheeler smiled again, seeing (and, Kyle Bode thought, appreciating) the direction of the detective’s thinking. “Yes,” he said. “He is.”

  “That makes it more likely, doesn’t it?” Kyle Bode was getting the feeling that Wheeler was talking to him at such length because he liked his company. He corrected that by wondering if Wheeler, elderly as he was, knew that he was talking to a detective. He corrected that by glancing at the writing pad that Wheeler had tossed onto his desk. On one blue line of the pad he saw, inscribed without a quiver, “Det. Kyle Bode.”

  “Now your logic is pretty good there, Mr. Bode,” Wheeler said. “You’ve got something there that you certainly will want to think about. A man sick and unconscious, dependent on life-prolonging machinery, surely is a pretty opportunity for the medical people. ‘For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.’ You suspect Danny Branch of experiencing a coincidence of compassion and greed in this case. And of course that suspicion exactly mirrors the suspicion that attaches to the medical profession.”

  “But they were keeping him alive, “ Kyle Bode said. “Isn’t that something?”

  “It’s something, “ Wheeler said. “It’s not enough. There are many degrees and kinds of being alive. And some are worse than death.”

  “But they were doing their duty.”

  “Oh, yes, “ Wheeler said, “they were doing their solemn duty, as defined by themselves. And they were getting luxuriously paid. They were being merciful and they were getting rich. Let us not forget that one of the subjects of our conversation is money—the money to be spent and made in the art of medical mercy. Once the machinery gets into it, then the money gets into it. Once the money is there, then come the damned managers and the damned insurers and (I am embarrassed to say) the damned lawyers, not to mention the damned doctors who were there for the money before anybody. Before long the patient is hostage to his own cure. The beneficiary is the chattel of his benefactors.

  “And first thing you know, you’ve got some poor sufferer all trussed up in a hospital, tied and tubed and doped and pierced with needles, who will never draw another breath for his own benefit and who may breathe on for years. It’s a bad thing to get paid for, Mr. Bode, especially if you’re in the business of mercy and healing and the relief of suffering.
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br />   “So there certainly is room for greed and mercy of another kind. I don’t doubt that Danny, assuming he is the guilty party, has considered the cost; he’s an intelligent man. Even so, I venture to say to you that you’re wrong about him, insofar as you suspect him of acting out of greed. I’ll give you two reasons that you had better consider. In the first place, he loves Burley. In the second place, he’s not alone, and he knows it. You’re thinking of a world in which legatee stands all alone, facing legator who has now become a mere obstruction between legatee and legacy. But you have thought up the wrong world. There are several of us here who belong to Danny and to whom he belongs, and we’ll stand by him, whatever happens. Whatever happens, he and his family will have a place, and he knows it. After money, you know, we are talking about the question of the ownership of people. To whom and to what does Burley Coulter belong? If, as you allege, Danny Branch has taken Burley Coulter out of the hospital, he has done it because Burley belongs to him.”

  Wheeler was no longer making any attempt to speak to the point of Kyle Bode’s visit, or if he was Kyle Bode no longer saw the point. And he had begun to hear, while Wheeler talked, the sounds of the gathering of several people in the adjoining room: the opening and shutting of the outer door, the scraping of feet and of chair legs, the murmur of conscientiously subdued voices.

  Kyle Bode waved his hand at Wheeler and interrupted. “But he can’t just carry him off without the hospital staff’s permission.”

  “Why not?” Wheeler said. “A fellow would need their permission, I reckon, to get in. If he needs their permission to get out, he’s in jail. Would you grant a proprietary right, or even a guardianship, to a hospital that you would not grant to a man’s own son? I would oppose that, whatever the law said.”

  “Well, anyway,” Detective Bode said, “all I know is that the law has been broken, and I am here to serve the law.”

  “But, my dear boy, you don’t eat or drink the law, or sit in the shade of it or warm yourself by it, or wear it, or have your being in it. The law exists only to serve.”