“Yes. They blamed things on him, incredible things, things he didn’t do and would never have done. Those nights they said he broke into the houses, he was safe at home with me. Or else he was down at the library, or going to the movies to study acting techniques. He never drank or anything. The one night he came home with something on his breath, it was because some men forced him. They waylaid him in an alley and forced a bottle of whisky to his mouth. He spat it out and told them what he thought of them. And those things they found in the little room in the basement which I fixed up for him, he bought them fair and square from a boy he knew at school.”
Her hands were stroking the cat rapidly.
“I know why they blamed him. I understand it only too well. It was his running around with that Dotery girl. Bad associations make bad reputations. The rumors were flying around about him, and what could I do with a fatherless boy and a living to make in this godforsaken hole? Could I go out on the streets and argue with them? Or stand up in court to defend him?
“His lawyer said he might as well confess, or they wouldn’t admit him to Juvenile Court. They’d judge him as a man and send him off to the penitentiary. So he naturally confessed. He told me that very night it was all lies. He wasn’t the cat burglar, he swore to me that he wasn’t. But how could he prove it? A man is guilty until he’s proved innocent. You’re a lawyer, you know that. And there was the stuff in the basement which he’d bought from that nasty boy who ran away from school.
“I went to the principal and I told him the facts in the case. He flatly refused to have the boy tracked down, the boy who really was the burglarizer. He flatly refused, and I began to see that the principal and the chief of police were covering up the real villains for reasons of their own. I could guess their reasons from what I learned of the white-slave traffic when I was a young girl. The chloroformed handkerchiefs, the whited sepulchers. I wrote a letter to the governor, and when he didn’t answer, I telephoned him personally. I told him who I was, my father was one of the founders of the Mountain Grove Water District, a wealthy man in his time, and a good party worker all his life. But in the modern world there’s no loyalty up or down.
“All I got for my pains, they sent a man to threaten me. He threatened to lock me up in an asylum if I brought pressure on the governor. That’s how high the conspiracy went, as high as the State Capitol. I saw that it was no use. They sent my son to reform school, and he was gone for years. Nothing was done to the actual criminals. It’s the same old story-after all, they crucified Christ.”
Her fingers were tight on the cat, and tightening. It exploded out of her lap, crossed the room like long brown vapor, and settled in the corner behind my chair. She got down on her knees beside the chair, reaching for it, calling seductively: “Come to Mother. Come on now, Harry. Mother didn’t mean to hurt you, boy.”
It stayed out of her reach. Looking down at her nape, I could see the gray tendrils that the dye had missed. Her perfume rose to my nostrils like the odor of funeral flowers over the scent of corruption.
“Is the Dotery family still in town?”
“How would I know?” She sat back on her haunches and looked up at me angrily. “I assure you that I have nothing to do with people like that. My father was a respectable man, a monied man in his day. He was a member of an old Ohio family. Where do the Doterys come from? Nobody knows. They’re people without a history.”
She went back to calling the cat. “Come now, Harry. Don’t be silly, lover. Mother knows you’re just being coy. She didn’t mean to hurt hims.”
She crawled into the corner. The cat walked away from her clutching hands disdainfully, and went behind the piano. It was a game, perhaps a nightly one. But the knowing cat and the crawling woman with the twisted stockings were getting me down.
“Where do the Doterys live?”
She must have heard the impatience in my voice. She got to her feet and returned to the piano stool, sitting down with prim politeness as if I’d interrupted her housekeeping.
“The Doterys,” I said. “Where do they live?”
“You’re angry. Don’t be angry. Everyone gets angry with me and then I want them to die, another sin on my conscience. You’re a lawyer, you should understand. They used to live over a store on the other side of town. They used the store as a front for their activities. I don’t know if they still do, I haven’t ventured out that way for years. Sometimes I see a woman in the market who resembles Mrs. Dotery in appearance. She may be someone sent to trap me into admissions. So I never speak to her, of course, but I watch her to see if she steals anything. If I could catch her, just once, it would reveal the whole conspiracy.”
“There is no conspiracy.” I didn’t know if it was the right thing to say, but I had to say it, before the entire room was fogged by spiderwebs.
She was shocked into silence for a long moment. “I must have misunderstood what you said. I understood you to say there was no conspiracy.”
“There isn’t, in the sense you’re talking about.”
She nodded. “I see. I see what you are. I took you for an intelligent man of good will. But you’re another false one, another enemy of my son.”
I got to my feet. “Mrs. Haines, have you ever discussed these matters with a doctor?”
“What would a doctor know about it?”
“He might be able to give you some good advice.”
She knew what I meant, I think, and even considered it for a little. But she couldn’t contain her anguished rage in the face of reality. “Are you casting aspersions on my sanity?”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“Don’t lie to me.” She struck her thigh with her fist. “I was talking to you in good faith, while you’ve been sitting there thinking false thoughts about me. Henry knows the truth of what I’ve been saying. They sent him to reform school on a trumped-up charge. They’ve been hounding him and harrying him for over seven years now. Ask him if you don’t believe me. Ask him.”
“I would if I knew where he is.”
“Henry said he was coming-” She clapped her hand over her mouth.
“Coming here? When?”
“Next week. Next month. You’re not going to worm and wangle anything more out of me. I don’t know what you’re doing coming here denying facts as plain as the nose on your face.”
“I may be mistaken, Mrs. Haines.” There was no point in arguing with her. I moved toward the door. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
She rose and stood between me and the door. From the awkward fierceness of her movement, she might have been on the point of attacking me. But there was no harm in her. The harm she was capable of had long since been done. The rage that lived in her vitals had died down, and left her eyes empty and her mouth slack. The lipstick which her hand had smeared was like blood on a wound.
She showed herself to me for the first and only time. The woman who lived in her central desolation, obscured by sleight of mind and shadow play, said: “Is it bad trouble he’s in?”
“I’m afraid so. Do you want to talk about it, Mrs. Haines?”
“No. No. My head.”
She clutched her dark head as if it were an animal that had to be subdued. The cat came out from behind the piano, and rubbed its flank on her leg. She got down on her knees to speak to it: “
The cat permitted itself to be stroked again.
chapter 23
I BOUGHT A CUP OF COFFEE and a piece of pie, for energy, in a restaurant on the main street. It was crowded with young people. The jukebox was playing rock-music for civilizations to decline by, man. The waitress who served me said yes, they had a business directory somewhere. She found it for me.
James Dotery was listed as the proprietor of the North End Variety Store. His residence was at the same address. I got directions from the waitress, tipped her fifty cents, which seemed to surprise her, and drove out that way.
The store was in one of those badly zoned areas which clog the approaches to so many cities and towns.
