“We don’t act that way here,” I disagreed.
“You are fools,” he stated. He blew cigar smoke and looked at people milling around in front of the theater, talking and being friendly. “Now, tell me about this Heritage Festival you’ll have tomorrow night. As I understand it, half the town is in the play, including the sheriff and his deputy. The other half — and that includes a lot of people that make this a sort of homecoming — will buy tickets and make cash contributions to the historical society. I understand this crazy old maid, this Miss Tessie, has collected a neat bit of cash.”
“She’s raising money for a historical marker to honor her ancestor, Cajun Caton.”
“Yes. That’s the idiot the town is named for.”
“He was not an idiot. Caton and Davy Crockett were both killed in the Alamo, and they were Texas heroes.”
Cousin Rush blew more smoke. “And there are at least a hundred people in this town descended from Caton. I understand that during the finale of this play, which Miss Tessie wrote, it has become a custom for every man in the audience to put on a mask to honor Cajun Caton or Davy Crockett? Hmmm.”
I didn’t like the sudden suspicion I had. I’d heard Mama and Dad talking in whispers, telling that Rush had served time in a Texas penitentiary for small-time robbery. I didn’t like the cold, greedy look on my cousin’s face.
I could have reported my suspicion to Sheriff Mitchell or to Deputy Haskins except for one thing — my mother was an Adams. Every Adams is intensely loyal to other Adamses, and don’t you forget it. Cousin Rush was Rushid E. Sarosy, and his daddy had been a shoe salesman in Dallas, but his mama was Verney Adams to start with. Verney was a hot little blonde who was born with a female urge and grew up around it. She left Caton County fifty-six years ago for the big city, but she was still an Adams.
I had a suspicion, from the calculating look on his face, that Cousin Rush would burglarize some place tomorrow night when everybody was in the theater, or he’d rob the box office at the theater, wearing a mask like everybody else would wear.
I couldn’t talk to Mama about my suspicions. If I was wrong and Cousin Rush didn’t do anything bad, she’d say I was disloyal to the name of Adams.
As we left the plaza, the old black cat that Cousin Rush had kicked came out of Miss Tessie’s store and looked at us as if she were casting a spell. I shivered.
I still wonder if what happened that night was just coincidence.
My little brother Pete had been unsuccessfully baiting that animal trap for a week. The trap was in the back yard. Here in Caton City, which is in northeast Texas, just south of Oklahoma and not far from Arkansas between the Red River and the Sulphur River, things were different. Coyotes and raccoons and possums and other animals came into town at night to raid garbage cans. Pete had been baiting that animal trap, actually a cage, for a week with cornbread, beans, cabbage, and such, hoping to catch a raccoon and make a pet of it. On this night, with a big moon beaming down, he had jerry-rigged a Rube Goldberg device that would turn on a light if the trap door was triggered.
Cousin Rush had our room now, so we slept in beds on our big screened-in back porch. About midnight the signal light came on to show the trap door had slammed down. Pete got out of bed in his underwear and ran barefoot to the trap, waving a flashlight.
He came back in a hurry. “Brian, we got trouble!”
I sat up, sniffed. “I smell it.” The smell of skunk was not all that strong, showing the animal was fairly content, but it was definitely skunk.
“You got to shoot it.”
“Hell, no! If you shoot that skunk, it’ll make a smell that will wake up the town,” I cautioned. “It has plenty of food and water and room to move around in that cage-trap. After it eats, it will probably go to sleep, won’t it?”
Pete thought this over. “I guess so, unless it’s disturbed.”
“Okay. I’ll make sure the yard gates are closed, so no dogs or other animals can disturb that skunk. We’ll figure what to do after it gets daylight tomorrow. Let sleeping skunks sleep, that’s my motto.”
After Pete had gone back to bed, I lay awake, thinking. I could take a long fishing pole, hold the cage as far from me as possible, and move gently. I’d have to get that skunk out of our back yard somehow...
I finally went to sleep and dreamed that Cousin Rush robbed Miss Tessie of all the Heritage Festival money. He got by with it because he was wearing a mask and all the men in the crowd he joined afterward wore masks. Nobody knew which masked man had the money. I woke up. Then I went to sleep again and this time I dreamed Cousin Rush didn’t get away with it after all. He came out of the theater with the money still in his hands, and the old black cat cast a spell on him and made him throw the money in the air.
And I dreamed the old cat was really a witch in disguise.
When I woke up, it was Halloween Day and I still didn’t know what to do about Cousin Rush. Maybe I was suspicious of him because I didn’t like him.
But later in the day, as I listened to him talk with Miss Tessie, I became more alarmed. Oh, it was just general talk, discussion of the fact that Cajun Caton wasn’t really a cajun. He was from Henry County, Tennessee, and he had picked up that nickname in Louisiana in what Miss Tessie described as an “indiscreet house.”
I watched as Cousin Rush got his Oldsmobile filled with gas and the tires and oil checked. Looked like he was planning for a trip. He couldn’t go to Houston, because police would arrest him if he went back there. He’d have trouble with his fourth wife in Dallas, and was wanted on charges there. But the way he was fussing around his car, it looked as if he would go somewhere in a hurry.
Long before the Heritage Play started that night, he parked his car on the north side of the plaza near the biggest rosebush. Then he went into the theater early, carrying a cape and a mask as some other men were doing.
I stood looking across the plaza, worried. The black cat came from the rosebushes, sat on the base of the fountain, and stared back at me. Darkness came, and a full moon rose. Stars shone.
Looking at that cat, I knew what I had to do. Maybe it wouldn’t work, but maybe it would. I had to try.
After the play was well under way, with everyone except me in the theater, I got a long fishing pole and some cord. Cautiously, holding my breath at times, I carried that animal cage-trap the three blocks to the plaza. The skunk, his belly full of cornbread and cabbage and beans, slept most of the time.
I learned later that during the last two minutes of the play a man wearing a mask and a cape went inside the box office where Miss Tessie was counting money. He didn’t speak a word, but he pushed a small pistol in Miss Tessie’s face and motioned for her to sit down. He tied her to the chair. She opened her mouth to scream, and he jammed a handkerchief in it. Nobody would have heard if she had screamed because the audience and the cast were singing the finale.
The man put his pistol inside his cape, took handfuls of the paper money she’d been sorting. He stuffed money in his pockets and inside the cape pockets, and left with some money in his hands.
He walked out of the theater as the townspeople, wearing capes and masks, also walked out.
I knew which one was Cousin Rush. I could tell by the prissy walk and the dumpy figure.
A couple of kids ran ahead of him across the plaza, but I pulled the cord I had rigged to the trap door. With that door open, and with all the noise, the skunk would come out. He would not be disturbed or afraid, because skunks are not usually afraid. Even a grizzly bear would tippity-toe around a skunk.
The two kids apparently saw him, hollered, “Uh-oh,” detoured slightly, and kept running. Cousin Rush paid them no attention.