“Japheth?” Having secured the wheel to the manure spreader’s axle, Dury stood and laid hold of a large pole. “In what way was he not?…I suppose you couldn’t expect much more, from a child born out of anger and unwanted by both his parents. To my mother he was a symbol of my father’s savagery and lust, and to my father—to my father, much as he wanted more children, Japheth was always a symbol of his degradation, of that terrible night when desire made an animal of him.” Using the long pole, Dury knocked the piled rocks out from under the spreader’s axle, at which the machine fell to the earthern floor of the barn and rolled a few feet forward. Satisfied with his work, Dury took up a shovel and kept talking. “The world is full of pitfalls for a boy left on his own. I tried to give Japheth what help I could, but by the time he was old enough for us to be real friends I had been sent to work on a nearby farm and saw little of him. I knew that he was suffering all that I’d endured in that house, and even more. And I wished that I could have been more help.”
“Did he ever tell you,” I asked, “just what was happening?”
“No. But I saw some of it,” Dury said as he began to shovel manure from the floor of several livestock stalls into the spreader. “And on Sundays I’d try to spend time with him, and show him that there was much he could still enjoy about life, whatever happened at home. I taught him how to climb the mountains, and we spent whole days and nights up there. But in the end…In the end, I don’t believe that anyone could have counteracted my mother’s influence.”
“Was she—violent?”
Dury shook his head, and spoke in a voice that seemed judicious and honest. “I don’t think Japheth suffered in that way any more than I had. The occasional strap to the backside from my father, and nothing more. No, I believed then, and I still believe now, that my mother’s ways were far more—devious.” Dury laid his shovel aside, sat down on one of the large rocks that had supported the spreader, and took out a pouch of tobacco and a pipe. “I suppose, in a way, that I was luckier than Japheth, only because my mother’s feelings toward me had always taken the form of thorough indifference. But Japheth—it didn’t seem enough for her to merely deprive him of love. She took issue with his every action, his every move, however insignificant. Even when he was an infant, even before he had any awareness or control over himself—she’d badger him about everything he did.”
Kreizler leaned forward, offering a match that Dury took only reluctantly. “What do you mean by ‘everything,’ Mr. Dury?” Laszlo asked.
“You’re a medical man, Doctor,” Dury answered. “I think you can guess.” Smoking for a few seconds to get a good coal going in his pipe, Dury finally shook his head and grunted angrily. “The cruel bitch! Hard words, I know, for a man to assign to his own dead mother. But if you could have seen her, gentlemen—
Pieces were falling into place with every passing minute; and as they did, it became steadily more difficult for me to control a profound, swelling sense of discovery and triumph. I almost wished that Dury would end his account, just so I could run outside and scream to the heavens that, all opposition be damned, Kreizler and I were going to catch our man. But I knew that self-control was more important now than it had ever been, and I tried to follow Kreizler’s self-composed example.
“And what happened,” Laszlo asked, “when your brother got a bit older? Old enough, that is, to—”
With savage, terrifying suddenness, Adam Dury screamed incomprehensibly and threw his shovel against the rear wall of the barn. The chickens in the adjacent coop sent up a flurry of frightened clucks and feathers, and, hearing them, Dury wrenched his pipe from his mouth and attempted to regain control over himself. Kreizler and I made no move, though I know my own eyes had gone quite wide with shock.
“I think,” Dury seethed, “that we had all best be honest with each other.
Kreizler said nothing, and my own voice quavered badly as I asked, “Honest, Mr. Dury? But I assure you —”
“Damn it!” Dury shouted, slamming a foot to the earth. Then he waited a few more seconds, until he could speak more calmly again. “Don’t you think there was talk of it at the time? Do you imagine that simply because I’m a farmer I’m also an idiot? I know what it is you’re here to find out!”
I was about to offer further protests, but Kreizler touched my arm. “Mr. Dury has been exceptionally forthright with us, Moore. I believe we owe him the same courtesy.” Dury nodded, and his breathing became something like regular as Kreizler went on: “Yes, Mr. Dury. We believe there is every chance that your brother murdered your parents.”
A pitiable sound, half-sob and half-gasp, got out of our host. “And is alive?” he said, almost all traces of anger gone from his voice.
Kreizler nodded slowly, and Dury held his arms up helplessly. “But why should it matter now? So long ago— it’s over, done. If my brother is alive, he’s never contacted me. Why should it matter?”
“Then you suspected it yourself?” Kreizler said, avoiding the question as he produced a flask of whiskey and held it out to Dury.
Dury nodded again and took a drink, no longer displaying the resentment toward Laszlo that he’d shown earlier. I had thought that attitude the result of Kreizler’s accent; I could see now that it had been spawned by Dury’s suspicion that this visit—from what he must have thought a very strange sort of doctor—might reach just such a pass.
“Yes,” Dury said at length. “You must remember, Doctor, that I’d lived among the Sioux, as a boy. I had several friends, in their villages. And I’d witnessed the uprising in ’62. I knew that the explanation the police finally accepted of my parents’ death was almost certainly a lie. And more than that, I knew—my brother.”
“You knew that he was capable of such an act,” Kreizler said softly. He was maneuvering very carefully, now, just as he’d done with Jesse Pomeroy. His voice remained calm, but his questions became steadily more pointed. “How, Mr. Dury? How did you know?”
I felt a twinge of real sympathy when a tear appeared on Dury’s cheek. “When Japheth was—oh, nine or ten,” he said softly, after taking another deep pull from the flask, “we spent a few days up in the Shawangunks. Hunting and trapping small game—squirrel, possum, coons, and such. I’d taught him to shoot, but he wasn’t much for it. A born trapper, Japheth was. He’d spend a whole day searching out an animal’s lair or nest and then wait for hours, alone in the dark, to spring his scheme. It was a talent. But one day we were hunting separately—I’d gone to trail some bobcat tracks I’d spotted—and as I came back to camp I heard a strange, terrible scream. A wail. High- pitched and faint, but awful. As I came into the camp I caught a glimpse of Japheth. He’d trapped himself a possum, and he was—he was cutting the thing to pieces while it was still alive. I ran up and put a bullet in the poor creature’s brain, and took my brother aside. He had an evil sort of light in his eyes, but after I’d hollered at him for a while, he began to cry and seemed truly sorry. I thought it was a lone incident—the kind of thing a boy might do if he knew no better, and wouldn’t do again once he’d been told.” Dury began to poke at his pipe, which had gone out.
Kreizler offered another match. “But it wasn’t,” he said.
“No,” Dury answered. “It happened several times over the next few years—several times that I knew of, that is. He never bothered the big animals, the cattle or horses on the farms around us. It was always—always the small creatures that seemed to bring it out in him. I kept trying to put a stop to it; and then…”
His voice trailing off, Dury sat and stared at the ground, seemingly unwilling to go on. Kreizler, however, kept after him gently: “And then something worse happened?”
Dury smoked and nodded. “But I didn’t hold him responsible, Doctor. And I think you’ll agree that I was right not to.” One of his hands became a fist and he slammed it into his thigh. “But my mother, damn her, just took it as another example of Japheth’s devilish behavior. Claimed he brought it on himself, as if any boy would!”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to explain, Mr. Dury,” I said.
He nodded quickly, then took a final sip of whiskey before handing the flask back to Kreizler. “Yes, yes. I’m sorry. Let me see—this would have been during the summer of—hell, it was just before I moved away, the summer of ’75 it must’ve been. Japheth was eleven. At the farm where I’d been working they’d recently hired a new man; he was just a few years older than me. A charming character, to all appearances. Seemed to have quite a way with children. We got to be friendly, and eventually I invited him along on a hunting trip. He took a great interest in Japheth, and my brother took a real liking to him—so much so that the fellow came along on a few more outings.
