considered his words. “No, no, I don’t mean anything bad, you know. I’m trying to make a…” He stopped.

“Why did you go there?”

“My father says I shouldn’t be with a high school girl now that I’m at Lawrence. But we’re just a year apart, really. And what he really means is that I shouldn’t be courting any girl. He’s made that clear.”

“You and Kathe?”

He looked away for a second. “I was thinking of Frana. I used to be with her all the time, Edna. Last year at Ryan. You know that. You saw us together. She was a grade behind me, but that didn’t matter. She liked me. Then out of the blue she left me last fall. Just told me to go away.” He hesitated to say what was on his mind. “She had trouble at home,” he whispered. “It made her, I think, afraid of people.”

“I don’t understand.”

He licked his lip. “It was a secret she let slip out. She was crying one night and…”

“Tell me.”

“One of her brothers…bothered her a lot. He, you know, tried to…but …” He stopped. “She was scared, Edna.”

My mind swam. Violent, horrible images floated before my eyes. I recalled a mysterious remark from Esther. Frana doesn’t like to go home sometimes. Why? I’d asked. Esther just shook her head.

Secrets, I thought. The real lives of Appleton, lived behind closed doors. When I started out at the Crescent, that plump girl whose visions of life came from Dickens and Thackeray, I’d been woefully innocent, and Sam Ryan purposely kept me from the dark underbelly. It wasn’t possible. Now, a year later, I understood that darkness loomed on too many lost souls’ horizons. The first time I saw a drunken man slap his wife as I joined a noisy celebratory crowd outside a beer hall, I was stunned and couldn’t sleep that night. Yet last week when I was sent by Sam Ryan to interview a doctor who was hawking some new, improved health elixir, the august doctor, a slobbering man in his seventies, was startled that a nineteen-year-old girl was doing the interview. All of a sudden he reached into a drawer and thrust before me some photographs-the kind of risque French postcards I’d seen high-school boys tittering over. The doctor watched me closely, expecting-what? — screams, horror…fainting. But I’d been on the streets of Appleton for a year now. “Interesting,” I stated. And stood up to leave.

Now, beside a sad Jake, I questioned, “Did you ask her about it?”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

“So she just left you?”

“Just told me to go away. It drove me crazy. I’d see her around town, and she’d stay away from me. But then we met by chance a month ago or so back, bumped into each other on College, and we talked a while. I guess I… went a little crazy.”

“But you are seeing Kathe.” A fact, stated bluntly.

He nodded. “I started seeing her right after Frana told me goodbye.” The last word hung in the air, awful and loaded. “I guess Kathe had been around me a lot and I didn’t notice. When Frana said goodbye, suddenly Kathe was there, and, well…” He waved his hand in the air.

I knew all of this. I’d watched parts of the curious evolution and heard the rest of it through Esther, who’d blathered about all the ups and downs of Jake Smuddie’s infatuation with Frana, as well as Kathe’s shameless pursuit of the jilted boy. Kathe had been telling friends she and Jake were “close” long before they appeared at a barn dance at the Masonic Hall this past February. “I know, I know,” I told him now.

Jake looked away for a second. “I never lost my feelings for Frana, and I was angry that she told me goodbye. When I talked to her last month, she said she had a way out. That surprised me. She was always talking about New York. You know, I said to her-Frana, you’ve never even been to New York, much less Broadway. She got mad at me. She really wanted a different life…away from her home. But I don’t think she knew how to get away clean. I suspected there was somebody wooing her, whispering something in her ear.”

“No idea who?”

“Somebody not in high school, that’s all I knew.”

“Why?”

“When I said we should talk again, she laughed. ‘Isn’t that pushy Kathe enough for you?’ She made fun of me. She wanted to be around a mature man who valued her talent. What does that mean- valued her? She ain’t a…a porcelain vase.”

“But after all that you went to her house?”

He gazed over my shoulder, his face reddening. “After we broke up, I used to wander to her yard…until her uncle chased me away with a shotgun. When Kathe told me that her family locked her in at night, guarded her, and even sent that uncle of hers to and from school, I had to see her. She was a prisoner. Kathe told me she was seeing an older man who promised her a new life away from Appleton, a man with bucks in his pocket, and I got, well, bothered.” His lips trembled. “Edna, I never lost my feelings for her. I wanted her back in my life, and I thought if I talked to her…”

“What were you thinking?”

“I know. It was stupid. I went through the Lempke back fields in the dark, bumping into the chicken coops so that the whole world was alerted, and I threw pebbles against her window. They locked her in at night and the window had bars nailed across it. She could open it a few inches. I thought she’d be happy to see me, the two of us whispering there, the rest of the house asleep. The house dark. But you know what she said to me? ‘Go way. Just go away. I’m getting married. I’m going away. Tomorrow.’ That was crazy-she looked like a nun or something, standing there in this dark robe in the shadows. And then I saw a flash of lantern light behind her, all shaky, and her crazy uncle was there, peering down at me. It was awful. He yelled at me, ‘I kills you, I kills you, bad bad person.’ I panicked and ran away. But as I did, I saw him slap her right across the face. She screamed like a polecat, I tell you. So I ran. You know, I ran and ran. Edna, I just wanted to save her.”

“Jake, you know…” I stopped. There was a shriek behind me. Kathe Schmidt ran lopsidedly, stumbling, toward the gazebo. I expected to see a carpet beater flying in her hand. She’d obviously abandoned her chores at the Ferber backyard. Fannie would be livid and blame me.

“I knew you’d be here, Edna. You’re not a friend.” Her words ended in a scream.

True. We didn’t like each other. An indication of taste on my part, foolishness on hers.

“Jake, she’s a reporter.”

Jake shook his head. “Kathe, she’s one of the people we know.”

Kathe glowered. “What did you tell her?”

“Nothing I haven’t told the chief of police.”

“What?”

Jake talked to me. “You know, after my father closed down my interview with Chief Stone, I decided to see him myself. I stopped in at the police station before I came here and told him everything I just told you.”

Decent, this young man. A commendable act, a boy better than his esteemed father.

“You did what?” Kathe yelled.

“It was the right thing to do.”

Kathe was beside herself, swirling around, out of control. “What’s gonna happen to us?” she barked, shoving her face close to his. Jake was watching her with wide and, unfortunately, mournful eyes.

“Frana’s dead.” Tears matched his words. “That just happened.”

The line surprised me. That just happened. What did that mean? Her death was a chance event? Or her death just occurred yesterday? Or he hadn’t planned it but it happened? What was he saying?

Kathe was caught up in a mindless rant. “You know, Jake, you didn’t think I knew about your…your foolishness about that girl. When her name came up, you got quiet and dopey. How was I supposed to feel? You’re with me at the Easter dinner at the Methodist Church, and she walks in, and you start to stammer, can’t take your eyes off her. Think about it, for God’s sake.” She caught her breath. “You know, I wanted her to run away with someone. I really did.”

Вы читаете Escape Artist
Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату