Raymond broke in to give a description of what had been found on the campus of their old college.
“Sister, this is so eerie. Catherine and I had passed that manhole cover a hundred times without really noticing it, and then one afternoon we did. We managed to pry it loose and look inside. It gave us the creeps, a hole in the earth opening up like that...” She stopped, and seemed to shrivel into herself. Had she rehearsed for this confrontation?
“When did Catherine discover that you intended to use as your own the poem she had given you as editor?”
“Sister, you don’t think...”
“Yes, Hannah, I am afraid I do.”
But there are deeds that can be known and cannot be proved. Raymond’s presence brought back caution to Hannah.
“Plagiarism is not that much of a crime,” she said to Raymond, trying to laugh. “Surely you don’t intend to arrest me.”
“Lady, I wouldn’t arrest you even if you told me you had pushed your friend into that hole. The prosecutor wouldn’t go near it.”
“Of course not! It is nonsense to think I would do such a thing.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Raymond said. He stood, nodded at the old nun, and left the study. Kim went with him to the street door. He looked at Kim.
“Did she really think I would arrest that woman?”
“I’ll ask her.”
Raymond shook his head and stepped out into a present more troubled than the past.
Hannah was still seated facing Emtee Dempsey when Kim returned.
“Would you feel better if I announced that those poems are Catherine’s?” Hannah said.
“Oh, I wouldn’t bother. They’re not Catherine’s either.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someday I’ll tell you. After you’ve made your peace with God.”
When Hannah was gone, shown out by Jane, the old nun sat in silence for a time. “I suppose a logician would say that you can’t plagiarize a plagiarism.”
“You think she killed Catherine, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
More silence. “It would be nice if Mrs. Raines could be told. But what is the point now?” She picked up the copy of the book of poems that Hannah had published as her own. Her lips moved, and then she read aloud the second quatrain of the poem she had read earlier.
“The metrics are regular and the rhymes are sure. But it is a poor poem, hardly more than a jingle.”
“Yet it won a prize.”
“Let that be a lesson to you,” Emtee Dempsey said enigmatically. “Not every wearer of the laurel has run a good race. And not every winner knows that she has won.”
And Kim thought of Mrs. Raines, winner of the Mundelein prize, waiting patiently in Little Flower nursing home until she could join her daughter.
© 2007 by Monica Quill
A Darkening of Flies
by Brian Muir
Brian Muir’s fiction debut was in EQMM's Department of First Stories in June 2004. But he had been a Hollywood screenwriter before turning to short story and novel writing. His most recent movie project is an independent film that premiered at the South by Southwest film festival in March 2007, called Broke Sky — “a drama set in Texas,” he tells us, “about murder and dark family secrets.”
A friend of mine up the coast in Pluvius, Washington, once told me it poured there for 362 days one year. And those other three days were damn cloudy.
I know how he felt.
For twenty-five days straight the clouds have opened up down here, with nary a peek of sun. And this is supposed to be summer.
My employment situation wasn’t helping my normal sugary disposition. My last paying gig was six weeks past, hunting down a deadbeat dad for a divorce attorney. Easy job, but no windfall. Lawyers are notoriously tight with their green.
When I haven’t worked in a while it screws with my head. I begin to question my abilities, wanting a paycheck as much for validation as for putting grub on the table.
So with frogpelts in short supply and the grey clouds reflecting my self-doubt, I needed to get out of town for a few days. Sometimes taking a break from not working can do wonders.
I made sure Stomper had plenty to eat, locked up the houseboat, and stepped up the slick dock with a bag of gear slung over my shoulder. Not one of my neighbors peered out a window to wave goodbye, which was okay by me.
I pulled the elbow-length cape of my customized black greatcoat up over my head to keep my long dark tresses dry as I hiked to my parked 1952 Willys Army Jeep. A holdover from the Korean conflict, the battered relic gets me where I need to go with only minimal creaking and protesting. I put what I could afford in the tank—what I could've shelled out on a steak dinner for two at El Gaucho.
Instead of taking the dreary I-5 south to Corvallis, I headed east on Powell until it turned into Highway 26 and Portland disappeared from my rearview.
The rain downshifted to a drizzle, constant and steady, as I cut through towering lodgepole pine and canopies of old-growth fir so thick they turned the grey day nearly to night.
I passed only a few cars heading the other way as the road kept up a gradual climb around the south base of Mount Hood. The snowy peak of the Granddad was somewhere off to my left, but I couldn’t see it for the low dank clouds forming a dense fog that pressed down on the whole world. It was like driving through an old black-and-white Outer Limits episode, the one where aliens slice out a chunk of earth and transport it to their murky planet for study.
It didn’t end well, as I recall.
I finally hit 97 south and kept going, driving away from the drizzle until the patter subsided from my Jeep’s canvas winter top. The lonely highway bisected sage dotted with Ponderosa pine. After about fifty miles I hit the outskirts of Bend, the main watering hole between southern Oregon and the arid, sparsely populated eastern flatland.
I stopped at a diner at the edge of town and stretched my legs. The white clouds were breaking up, allowing patches of blue to peek through. It was warm enough that I thought about leaving my coat in the car, but that would mean unhooking my shoulder holster and leaving my piece in the glove box. Besides, I had a growling stomach to quiet.
I walked in, straight through to the restroom in back to relieve my travel-addled bladder. I took note of the light crowd as I passed: beanpole manager behind the register, an elderly couple at the counter, a nuclear family with baby in a highchair occupying a table dead center, and three burly guys laughing in a rear booth.
After cleaning up, I got a booth to myself near the front, ordered coffee and a ham and egg breakfast with an extra side of greasy ham. I chugged the coffee and opened my Lonesome Dove paperback, which I’d been thumbing for a year but hadn’t had the chance to finish. Augustus had just taken an arrow in the thigh. I knew how that turned out because I’d seen the miniseries, yet still I leaned close to the pages with dread anticipation.
After a few minutes of reading, I heard what sounded like jangling spurs. Figuring it was only a tray of clattering silverware, I looked up to see a pair of passing dark boots sporting black steel spurs with ten-point rowels.