I spent a while thinking about it. Finally I put the phone down on its cradle. I squinted dubiously at the two of them.
I saw the silence begin to rag their nerves. I let it grate for a bit. Then abruptly I said, “All right. Get out. I’ll give you six hours to get out of Australia before I report his death. We’ll keep the murder weapon out of it unless you double-cross me — in which case I’ll manage to ‘find’ it damn quick. You keep that in mind.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“We will,” he said.
“Get out fast now — before I change my mind.”
They fled. They looked as if they were holding their breath. I left the door open until I heard them enter the elevator. Then I shut it and locked it, glanced down at Myers’ bloody body, and went across to the window. I parted the drapes and watched Stenback and Beth Hilley emerge from the canopy below me. They got into her white MG and I watched it squeal away.
Then I let the drapes fall to. Turning around, I said, “They’re gone.”
Myers grunted and got to his feet.
Looking down at himself he grumbled, “Do these phony blood capsules wash out? If not I’ve just ruined a good suit. Good grief but I’m cramped. Couldn’t you have done it faster? I think I bruised a rib when I fell. Incidentally I didn’t take kindly to you calling me ‘punk’ and ‘oaf’ and all that stuff.”
“Are you about out of complaints now?”
He grinned at me. He was an awful sight. “Why, Charlie, I’ve barely started.”
“Look at it this way, Myers. You’ve got something to tell your grandchildren about. You’ve just assisted Charlie Dark in pulling a brand-new twist on the oldest con game in the world — the blank-cartridge badger game. Now doesn’t that just fill your heart with pride and admiration?”
“I believe you are by all odds the most infuriatingly smug conceited arrogant fat old man I’ve ever met,” he said, “and I thank you for the privilege of allowing me to work with you.”
Only the Cardinals Always Returned
by Patricia L. Schulze[3]
A sensitive and poignant story by a new writer (this is her third story in EQMM) who is making great strides toward fulfilling her talent...
Now that I am an adult I realize that few things in my life remained constant. People disappeared and never came back. There were the two small brothers who nestled for a little while in the crib my father had built for Jeff and me and then went away, leaving only two marble lambs in the graveyard as evidence that they had ever been here. And there was the little sister who never made the trip from the hospital in town to our house on the farm. Another marble lamb.
Only the cardinals always returned. In early spring, when the snow still covered the earth, the small red birds came from their winter home in the corn crib at the end of the field to perch on the upper branches of the juniper tree at our front door. It was my mother who first showed me the cardinals in the spring when I was three or four. The red bodies flashing among the close-growing branches of juniper, bits of twig or string dangling from their beaks, were magic to the eyes of a child.
As I grew older I waited eagerly for the return of the birds, the male resplendent in his scarlet coat, his olive-gray and buff mate toiling patiently by his side. When the loose-knit nest was finally assembled, the female disappeared inside, nursing the pale blue and lavender speckled eggs, while her mate took over the task of bringing her the seeds and insects she needed to sustain life.
When the eggs hatched, the busy parents would flit about feeding their offspring and keeping a watchful eye out for any enemies that threatened their happy family. Even the nest-threatening bluejay fled in fear from the cardinals’ wrath.
We would get up before dawn on the great day when the baby birds, their down partially replaced with straggly feathers, would perch trembling on the end of a branch of the juniper tree. The father would take his station on a branch of the crab apple tree by the gate and start his encouraging call, “Good-cheer-cheer-cheer. Good-cheer-cheer-cheer.”
The-dove-colored mother would follow with anxious cries the maiden flight of her offspring, and if, as so often happened, the young fledgling wearied in his flight and fell to the ground short of his destination, she would swoop down beside him and keep an anxious watch until, rested and confident, the young bird clumsily launched himself and attained the crab apple tree where his father kept watch.
The cardinals always came back. Every spring, before we were even aware that spring was coming, the cardinals were busily building their nest in the juniper tree.
They came back the spring that Mother returned empty-armed from the hospital and the promised little sister went to join my two brothers on the hill. Mother and I watched the birds’ mating dance, the flight of their young, but without our old excitement or joy. As the heat of summer came on, Mother seemed to wilt, as the blossoms of the crab apple tree wilted and fell from the tree. When the tree bore its tempting inedible fruit Mother drooped further, as though reminded of her own barrenness.
Then in the fall she bought a set of encyclopedias from a young man who came to the door. She seemed to recover after that and her face took on a new glow. It was like the birth of a new year rather than the dying season of an old one. I had not realized that buying a set of encyclopedias was such a complex thing, but it seemed to involve a lot of negotiation. Every week the salesman came back to discuss some new aspect of the books he was selling.
Knowing that I would be bored by their long discussions, Mother always sent me out to play. Sometimes I went to the orchard behind the house to climb in the branches of the old trees there; sometimes I went out to the oat fields to watch my father and older brother, Jeff, busy with the threshing. More often I just sat on the front steps and watched the cardinals caring for their second family of the year and listened to the sounds coming through the open door.
Then, for the only times that fateful year, I would hear my mother’s laughter, and sometimes much later, her gentle crying and the salesman’s soft murmuring voice comforting her. Often they would leave the house, my mother carrying an old blanket that we used for picnics in the orchard. The salesman would raise the heavy iron door that lay at ground level over the cellar in the house yard. Then I wouldn’t be able to hear their talking.
The old root cellar in the yard was used to store home-canned goods and garden produce in the time of my grandparents. My parents had installed a deep-freeze and pantry shelves in our house basement, so now the outdoor cellar stood empty except for some cans of food and water that Daddy kept there in case of a tornado. We hadn’t needed to use the cellar for so many years that I had almost forgotten what it looked like inside. I do remember that it was completely underground and you had to go down a flight of earthen stairs to get to it. It had only two doors, a heavy wooden door that sealed off the cellar itself and another door of iron that lay flat on the ground and closed off the stairs.
It was on one of the days that they had gone to the cellar that my mother disappeared. I watched them from the front steps and then after a while I went back to the orchard to play. I saw my father come back from the field and go into the house and then a little later Jeff came back and took the milk pails that had been drying in the sun and went out to the barn. I wandered down to the barn and stroked the nose of the Jersey cow that was my special favorite while Jeff did the milking. When we went up to the house it was suppertime and Mother was gone.