I was only a kid, no more than sixteen, when they let Old Man Winters out and, since I was the one responsible for his release, I went around that summer swaggering like a damn hero. It wasn’t until later that I came to think differently of myself. I haven’t been back to Wilton Falls in a good many years, and I wonder if they still tell their kids and their grandchildren about that summer. I wonder if they still tell it the wrong way, too — making Miriam Winters out to be some sort of witch. Well, they’re wrong. She wasn’t a witch. I talked to her enough later (too late) to know.
Swinging my chair back to the desk, I looked at the letter again. It was strange, but I was probably the only living person who had ever heard the full details of her side of the story. Certainly the newspapers had never given her her due. They were too busy making sensational copy out of the horror she had perpetrated — and it was horror. I have never denied that, or condoned what she did, but it was my fate to get a more rounded picture than anyone else, and so I always have felt differently about Miriam Winters...
Miriam stopped to wipe the perspiration from her brow. There were two more shirts to iron. Harry was due home tonight, and he’d ask about them first thing. He had a lot of shirts, enough to last him four weeks on the road while an equal number were being done up at home. A salesman had to be well-groomed, Harry always said. Still, it seemed that he took more shirts than necessary. Miriam, after her first blunder, never mentioned it when she found lipstick or powder smudges on any of them.
She looked fearfully at the clock over the kitchen sink. Why had she waited until the last minute? Well, it had been a difficult month. Bobby had been sick, and then she’d had so many of those awful headaches. Ever since Harry had knocked her against the stove the last time he’d been home, she had been bothered by the headaches and that funny confused feeling that came over her from time to time. She put down the iron and rubbed her head. She didn’t mind the headaches so much, but worried about the confused feeling. She wondered if she blacked out at such times and fervently hoped not. Bobby was pretty self-sufficient for a four-year-old, but who could tell what he would do if he found his mother unconscious someday?
Fortunately she had just put the final touches on the last shirt when she heard Harry’s car drive into the old barn behind the house. He came banging in — a big man, a good twenty years older than Miriam — set down his luggage without an answer to her quavering “hello,” and went out again. He returned with a couple of paper bags which he carefully placed on the kitchen table. Miriam’s heart sank. It hadn’t been a good trip, then. She could always tell by the amount of whisky he brought back with him to ease the few days’ rest at home before he started off again.
“I have your supper all ready,” said Miriam, poking at the pots on the stove.
Harry, fussing with the seal on one of the whisky bottles, stopped only long enough to glare at her. “My shirts done?”
“Yes — oh, yes — all of them. Now just you sit down and I’ll dish out your supper.”
He grunted and seated himself heavily at the wooden table.
Two hours later he was wildly drunk.
He would not allow her to go to bed, and although she was able to avoid his drunken lunges for a while, he finally had her backed into a corner. The whisky fumes of his breath and the feel of his fumbling hands at her clothes sickened her. “No, no, H-Harry...” Her voice involuntarily rose in a crescendo.
Then there were other hands plucking at her, and she looked down at Bobby. Aroused by the noise, he had come weeping into the kitchen. “Mama, Mama,” he said, trying to pull her away.
Miriam swallowed and tried to speak calmly. “You must go back to bed, Bobby. Come, I’ll take you.”
But Harry held her firm. “You’ll do no such thing. You can just stop being the damn mother for once. When a man comes home from the road he wants a little comfort — a little wifely comfort.” Then to the child, who still clung, “G’wan, dammit. Get to bed.”
But the weeping child did not move, and swift as lightning the big hand of the man swung out. The body of the small boy seemed to fly through the air before landing in a crumpled heap at the base of the sink. From the gash on the forehead blood spurted first, then flowed in a horrible red sheet down the face of the child. His mouth opened but no sound came out.
Even Harry seemed stunned by the sight and made no move to stop Miriam as she tore from his arms with a strange animal-like sound. The child’s breath had come back, and his sobs mingled with hers as she rocked him in her arms and sponged at his face with a wet dish towel. There was no hope of outside help in this emergency, for there was no phone and Harry was too drunk to drive to a doctor. The house itself was isolated, situated as it was on the edge of a meadow. Beyond that stretched a wooded area. The nearest neighbor, Miriam knew, was at least a mile away.
Finally, thankfully, the flow of blood lessened and then stopped. As Miriam gently swabbed her son’s head, she noted how wide the gash was and how frighteningly near his eye. Tomorrow morning she would have a doctor look at it, but now bed, probably, was the best therapy. She picked the child up and went past Harry, who had again settled himself at the table, silently drinking. She improvised a clumsy bandage, and tucked the still faintly sobbing child in bed. He did not want her to go, so she sat on the edge of the bed until, with a last convulsive shudder, he allowed himself to be overtaken by sleep.
She went quietly back to the kitchen. Harry had succumbed finally, and sat sprawled at the table, his head on his arms. Miriam shook him, but when he did not respond, she went to the knife drawer and selected the largest, sharpest knife she had. She shut the drawer and went and stood behind her husband, hefting the knife, gauging the angle of thrust that would be best...
It was odd. Her role in life up to this minute had been that of follower. She was ever stumbling after some stronger-willed person, often hating it but never knowing how to break away; indecisive. That’s why it was odd that suddenly she should know just what to do. She didn’t have to agonize over her decision or consult someone else. Harry must be done away with. It was right. She knew it.
What stayed her hand, then?
A haunting phrase from her childhood Sunday schooclass="underline" Thou shalt not kill? An awareness of how difficult it would be to dispose of a dead body? Perhaps. But more probably it was the sudden image that flashed across her mind, an image of herself behind bars and Bobby alone. Murderers were always caught, weren’t they? She had made no plans to cover her “crime,” nor had she any belief that even if she did, the police wouldn’t find out sooner or later. She was not that clever — merely right.
Slowly she lowered her hand. Perhaps she could not kill Harry, but he must be restrained in some way — the thing tonight was too close. Miriam shivered as she recalled the bloodied face of her child. No, just as wild beasts must be killed or locked up...
Locked up? She thought a moment. Of course. That was the answer. The big old house with its large expanse of fenced-in grounds had been purchased less than a year ago from former kennel owners. They had been breeders of Great Danes, as a matter of fact, and in the cavernous cellar one area had been sectioned off with sturdy cyclone fencing set in concrete. The area was about nine by nine feet, with the fencing extending even across the top. This “cage” had been used for whelping bitches and their puppies. Harry in such a cage would never be able to hurt Bobby or herself again.