“What can I do, Grandmother? I don’t want to be different from the others.”
“I am sorry, child, there is nothing to be done. As long as you live you must see upon those about to die the face of death.”
After that Melina’s isolation from her people was almost total. The others turned away whenever she came near. Among them, only one scoffed at the fear of death. This was Zhivar, a powerful man in his thirties, with eyes as black as his hair. He began to pay attention to Melina, who was fast becoming a woman. When Zhivar asked her to go with him to America as his bride, Melina quickly accepted.
In the new country they had moved from city to city, living on what Melina earned reading palms, and a rare pay check Zhivar would bring home from some temporary job. Sometimes in a crowd Melina would see the terrible metamorphosis in the face of a stranger. When it happened she would look away quickly and pretend she hadn’t seen. She and Zhivar had no friends, so for many years she had not looked closely upon the face of death. Until today.
Now, as the first light of dawn paled the window over their bed, Melina lay awake and alone. The back door creaked softly, and her body tensed under the blanket.
“Zhivar?”
“Yes. Be quiet.”
“What has happened?”
“Be silent, woman. I must have our money.”
Melina sat up in bed and clutched the blanket to her breast. Zhivar was a dark silhouette in the gloom.
“You are in trouble,” she said.
“I am not to blame. I spoke to the man when he came out of the importer’s shop. For some reason he became afraid and struck out at me. I pushed him and he fell.”
“The man is dead,” Melina said.
“Yes. And worse, I was seen when I pushed him. All night I have hidden, but soon they will be here looking for me. And I didn’t even get his wallet.”
Melina slid out of the bed and pulled on a loose-fitting dress. Zhivar was on his hands and knees. He ran his hand across the floor in the near-darkness until he found the loose board for which he was looking. He pried this up and withdrew a thin packet of bills wrapped in plastic. He rose, tucking the money inside his shirt, and pushed past the curtain into the front of the store. With one hand he pushed the draperies aside and looked out.
As Melina watched, the rays of the rising sun probed through the gap and fell across her husband’s face.
He said in a harsh whisper, “They’re coming already, up the street.” He closed the draperies and hurried through the curtain back to the rear door. “I’ll hide in the old building across the alley until they’re gone.”
Zhivar hesitated in the doorway, and Melina knew he was waiting for her to kiss him. Instead, she turned away, holding her body under tight control.
“When I can I’ll come back for you,” Zhivar said, and he was gone.
In a very few minutes there was a knock at the front door. With a last look behind her, Melina walked up and opened the door to two uniformed policemen. One was about thirty with eyes that were much older. The other was very young with a new moustache that he kept touching unconsciously.
“My name is McCall,” said the older policeman, “and this is Officer Flynn.” He consulted his notebook. “Is there a man named Zhivar living here? You know him?”
“That is my husband,” Melina said.
“Is he here now?”
“No.”
“Do you mind if we look around?”
“As you wish.” Melina stepped aside to make way for them.
Officer McCall walked back to search the living quarters while young Flynn looked around the front.
“Do you tell fortunes, ma’am?” the young policeman asked.
“I read palms. The city has an ordinance against fortune-telling.”
Flynn gave her an embarrassed smile. “I wasn’t even thinking about that. I was just interested. My wife brought home a set of tarot cards last week, but I can’t make heads or tails out of them. Neither can my wife, really, but she plays at it.”
“The tarot is difficult to master.”
“I’ll bet it is.”
McCall stepped back through the curtain that hung between the rooms. “Nobody back there.”
“Not up here either,” Flynn said.
McCall licked a stub of pencil and poised it over his notebook. “When was the last time you saw your husband?”
“It does not matter. You will never take him,” Melina said.
“All we want to do is ask him some questions.”
“You will never take him,” Melina repeated. She knew it was true because in that one flash of sunlight when Zhivar had parted the draperies she had seen the deadly transformation of his face.
McCall looked exasperated. “Lady, I’d advise you to cooperate—”
The crash of falling masonry out behind the store broke off McCall’s sentence. There was a scream of pain, another crash, then silence. The policemen looked quickly at each other and ran out the back door.
Melina eased into the chair by the card table and folded her hands in front of her. She was still sitting like that when the ambulance drove away with Zhivar’s broken body.
Officer McCall asked the necessary questions and took the necessary notes. His young partner stood uncomfortably in the background. Melina remained in her chair with her hands folded as the two policemen walked out the door.
After a minute Officer Flynn came back.
“Ma’am, I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry about your husband. I’ve only been married a little while, and I can imagine how it must feel to lose someone close.”
For the first time Melina’s composure broke. She dropped her head onto her hands and sobbed. “Go! Just go away!”
Officer Flynn stood for a moment in the doorway until his partner came pounding up the sidewalk behind him.
“Come on, Dennis, move it! We just got a squeal on an armed robbery in progress.”
The young man made a gesture as though he wanted to say something more, but when Melina didn’t raise her head he wheeled and ran with McCall toward their patrol car.
After a while Melina pulled herself erect. Her dark eyes shone with tears. If only you had not come back, she thought. You are so very young to die, Officer Flynn.
The Identification
by Pauline C. Smith
There are occasions, of course, when one who will not see nor hear could be suspected of expediency.
Roseanne McCartney sat in her parlor waiting for the son who was soon to arrive; her only son, returning home.
The letter lay at her elbow to prove it, open on the table, a penciled scrawl, jaggedly following the lines of tablet paper. Dear Ma: I am comeing home, have the fatted goose ready. Long time. No see. Ben. She refused to analyze its brevity, to dwell upon its misspelling and scriptural error. This was her son who had written, at last.
Bennett was his name, Roseanne McCartney’s maiden name; good, solid, the name of a family who took care of its own, who held up its head and looked the world in the eye. For these hopeful reasons she had named him Bennett, which he had hated and shortened to Ben.
So what was wrong with the name of Ben? Nothing at all. It had the ring of strength, the sound of character. Now Ben was coming home after all these years. Perhaps her strict severity during his formative childhood was, at last, paying off.
She hadn’t wanted to be strict, heaven knows. She adored the boy, worshiped him, wished to lay out a rich and rewarding life under his feet, but because of his father, she had to construct that life along the rigid and closely confined paths of righteousness.
Roseanne McCartney turned from thoughts of Joe McCartney the moment they entered her mind; the delightful drifter, gregarious grifter who entered her life so long ago to charm the shy and not too attractive third-grade teacher into marriage, only to drift and grift again until his violent end, leaving her Bennett who, with stern and watchful care, must be formed into something very unlike his father.