Walter tried to fix me up on a date today. As if Eleanor could be replaced! He knows better. He loved her, too. I keep thinking I’ll see her again, I mean besides that God-awful last time out in the front yard that comes every night at dusk. I hear you can sell your soul to the devil and get anything you want in return. I want Eleanor walking beside me again, but old Lucifer ain’t made an offer.
A chill went up my spine. The entry was dated 1969. Grandma Eleanor had been murdered in the front yard in 1949. According to the entry, Grandpa had “seen” her moment of death every night for twenty years. Forty, if his hallucination continued. It was nightmarish. “Poor Grandpa,” I told the empty room.
“You talk to yourself, too? Must run in the family.”
I elevated three inches from the chair, heart pounding and hair on end.
“Didn’t mean to spook you,” said an old man from the other side of the screen door. “My name’s Walter Bethroe. You must be the grandson.”
Besides his appearance in the diary, my grandfather had mentioned Walter over the years. They had known each other forever. Although embarrassed at being caught redhanded talking to myself, I remembered my manners and let him in.
“I’m Howard Stintson,” I said.
He nodded and held out yet another foil-covered pot. “This here is pork and sauerkraut,” he said.
A man after my own palate.
“Join me?” I asked.
He did so, and except for my polite compliments on his meal, we ate pretty much in silence. From the looks of him, he and Grandpa were very much two of a kind. Walter was sturdy and weatherbeaten and, like Grandpa, alert for a man closing in on eighty. Over coffee he came out of his reverie.
“I’m gonna miss Thomas. I surely am.”
I nodded but remained silent. What could I say? Grandpa’s heart had been weak for years. He was dying and we both knew it. Walter had reached an age where few friends, if any, remained. His loss would run deep.
“It’ll be dusk soon, almost time,” Walter said.
“For what?” I asked. There were no animals to feed, I had checked.
“We ought to clear the table before all this food goes bad,” was all he said.
We put pots and bowls in the, refrigerator, dirty dishes in the sink. Walter neatly ran soapy water and left them to soak.
“You best sit down, boy,” he said.
Did he want a card game? It was okay with me. He pulled up the window shade and looked outside.
“What do you know about your grandmother’s death?” he asked.
The question surprised me. I would have thought he would tell anecdotes about Grandpa, if he wanted to talk at all. I thought back to what my father had told me. Familiarity with the story somewhat lessened its gruesome quality. “In 1949, Grandma was axed to death by an Indian. No one knew who he was. He was assumed to be a drifter who had too much to drink, saw a pretty woman, and for some reason went berserk. Grandpa had come in from the fields just after the killing and at the sight of Grandma went wild. He beat the Indian to death.”
Walter nodded. “That’s the way I told it,” he said.
I didn’t recall his presence being mentioned.
“You were there?” I asked.
“Only at the end,” he answered. He folded his arms on the table and cleared his throat. “I don’t know how to tell all this, boy. You’ll likely think Thomas is crazy. He isn’t, no matter how it sounds. I saw him at the hospital early this morning and I promised him I’d tell you the truth. There’s something he’s going to do tonight. If he does it, you might think you’d lost your mind. It would only last a few minutes, but he wants to spare you that. If he can’t manage it, he still wants you to know the whole story.”
“Manage, what?” Frankly I was a bit jealous that he had been there while Grandpa was still lucid.
“You’ll see for yourself,” said Walter pointing to the front yard. “It’s Eleanor’s death. It happens all over again. I saw it myself, years ago. Afterwards, I never came visiting at twilight again. Mornings or after dark, yes. Never again at dusk.”
This was too much. Though it matched with what was in the diary, I was more inclined to understand Grandpa’s mental aberrations than Walter’s. It was Grandpa’s wife who had died a horrible death. The trick his mind played for years afterward was strange, but probably an understandable result of psychological trauma. I didn’t feel the same about Walter’s claiming to have seen the crime again. I re-evaluated my former assessment of his mental capacities. There seemed to be only one remark in all he had said to which I might logically respond.
“I don’t think Grandpa will be able to accomplish anything, Walter. He was in pretty bad shape when I left.”
He said nothing.
I looked outside. Whatever they hoped I might see wasn’t readily apparent. My car was parked under the thick old oak. There was a fence needing paint and a few cracks in the asphalt. There was nothing peculiar about any of it.
Walter rubbed his hands across the worn checkered oilcloth.
“I’ll tell you how it was in the beginning,” he said finally. “Tom, Eleanor, and me, we all grew up together. Eleanor was beautiful and sweet, and Thomas and I both loved her. We had a fight over her nearly every week from the time we were fourteen. People used to bet on which of us she’d marry. For sure it would be one of us. We were both from landed people, had ambitions to enlarge our property and better ourselves. We were churchgoers and decently educated. We were handsome, too, if I do say so. It was odd, what with the competition for Eleanor, but we were also the best of friends. If the truth be told, I thought Eleanor was favoring me. And then he came.”
For a moment the old man was silent. I suppose he was lost in his memories. I was grateful the conversation had taken a normal turn.
“Who came?” I prompted.
“The Indian. Fleet. Half Indian, anyway. His ma had named him Fleet-footed something or other, but when they came here everybody shortened it to Fleet. They were from somewhere up by Lubec. We understood that his father was a Norwegian sailing man. He had his ma’s coloring, though. His skin was dark, and his eyes and hair were black. He was full of fire and the girls in town near fainted when he was around. At the annual fair he knocked the rest of us boys off our pins in everything from horse racing to pistol matches. Eleanor wouldn’t run after him like the other girls. She was too proud for shenanigans like that, and as it turned out, she didn’t have to. Soon as Fleet saw Eleanor, it was like all the rest became invisible. Crazy about her, he was. Worse even than Thomas or me. What came as the surprise, though, was that she returned his feelings. You’d think it would’ve ended happy for them, but you got to remember it was still the twenties. No self-respecting family would allow their daughter out the door with a poor, half-breed Indian. Suddenly Eleanor didn’t go anywhere without her ma. I guess they figured she’d get over him. Thomas and I sure figured it that way. Well, to make it short, Thomas and Eleanor’s family both belonged to the same church, which gave Thomas the inside track over me. Eleanor was a good girl, the kind who listened to her family. The marriage was arranged and Thomas was in heaven. Can’t say I blame him. I would have been, too.” The old man stopped for a few moments to shake his head sadly.