“Creep!” it squawked.
“Shut up.”
“Cheap creep.”
“I am a man.”
“Cheap creep.”
“I am a man! I am a man! I am a man!”
But the jay always had the last word, creep.
One morning he was awakened in the hayloft by the rustling of wood rats on the roof. Even before he opened his eyes he was aware that during the night a change had taken place: the colony had returned.
He lay still and listened. He heard no voices, no bustle of activity or familiar coughing of the truck engine, but there was another sound he used to know well, a quick, spasmodic drumming. It was Karma playing with the typewriter in the storage shed.
Forgetting for once his ritual of self-effacement, he climbed down the crude ladder and ran between the trees toward the storage shed. He was halfway there when the noise stopped and an acorn woodpecker flapped out of a sugar pine with a flash of black and white.
He shook his fist at it and cursed it, but his rage was for himself and the trick his mind had played on him. He realized the typewriter wasn’t in the shed, the sheriff’s men had taken it away along with a lot of other stuff. Well, it wouldn’t do them any good, they couldn’t prove it belonged to him, they still didn’t know he was the one they were looking for, they still—
“Karma.”
He spoke the name aloud and there was more of a curse in it than what he had screamed at the woodpecker because this time the anger was aggravated by fear.
He went numb as he remembered something he had forgotten about the last day at the Tower, Karma following him out to the shed.
“Are you taking the typewriter with you, Brother?”
“No.”
“May I have it?”
“Stop bothering me.”
“Please, may I have it?”
“No. Now leave me alone. I’m in a hurry.”
“When I go to my aunt’s house, I can get it all fixed up good as new. Please let me have it, Brother.”
“All right, if you’ll shut up about it.”
“Thank you very much,” she said solemnly. “I’ll never forget this, never in my whole life.”
I’ll never forget this. They were simple words of gratitude, at the time. Now, recurring to his mind, they were enlarged and distorted. I’ll never forget this had become I’ll tell everyone the typewriter belonged to you.
“Karma!”
The name rang through the trees, and through the trees he followed it.
Twenty-Four
The long-distance call came just before noon on Saturday. Quinn was puttering around his apartment waiting for Martha to arrive from Chicote. He had arranged to spend the day on the beach with her and the two children, swimming and sunning. But a high thin fog obscured the sun as efficiently as a layer of steel, and from his window Quinn looked out on a deserted beach and a grim gray sea. He was trying to decide on an alternate plan when the phone rang.
Half expecting that Martha had changed her mind about coming, he picked up the phone. “Hello.”
“I have a person-to-person call for Mr. Joe Quinn.”
“Quinn speaking.”
“Here’s your party. Go ahead, please.”
Then Karma’s voice, tremulous and quick. “I said I wasn’t ever going to phone you, Mr. Quinn. I even tore up your card, but I remembered the number on it and—well, I’m scared. And I can’t tell my aunt because she’s not here, and even if she were I couldn’t tell her because I want the message from my mother and my aunt won’t let me have anything to do with her anymore.”
“Take it easy, Karma. Now what’s this about a message from your mother?”
“Brother Tongue called me a few minutes ago and said he had a very important message for me from my mother and that he wanted to deliver it in person.”
“Where?”
“Here at the house.”
“How did he find out where you were?”
“Oh, he knows about my aunt. I often mentioned her. Anyway, I told him he couldn’t come here because my aunt was home, which was a lie, she’s working on her garden-club display for the flower show. Chrysanthemums and pampas grass with a hidden electric fan to keep the grass blowing. It’s going to be very pretty.”
“I’m sure it is,” Quinn said. “Why didn’t Brother Tongue just give you the message over the telephone?”
“He said he promised my mother he’d see me personally. To report on how I am, etcetera, I guess, though he didn’t say that.”
“Was his call a local one?”
“Yes, he’s in town. He’s coming to the house this afternoon at four o’clock, I told him my aunt would be away by that time. I thought I’d better phone you about it because you said if anything at all happened involving any member of the colony I was to let you know.”
“I’m glad you did. Listen carefully now, Karma. Does it seem likely to you that your mother would choose Brother Tongue to deliver an important message to you?”
“No.” After a moment she added, with a child’s candor, “I always thought they hated each other. Naturally we weren’t supposed to hate, but some of us did anyway.”
“All right, let’s assume there is no message, that Brother Tongue has an entirely different reason for wanting to see you. Can you guess what it might be?”
“No.”
“Perhaps it’s something quite trivial to you but not to him.”
“I can’t think of anything,” she said slowly. “Unless he wants his silly old typewriter back. Well, he can have it. My aunt bought me a brand new portable for my birthday last month. It’s a gray and pink—”
“Wait a minute. Brother Tongue gave you an old typewriter?”
“Not exactly gave it to me. I talked him out of it.”
“It belonged to him?”
“Yes.”
“And he kept it in the storage shed?”
“Yes. I used to go out there and fool around with it until the ink dried up and the ribbon broke and I didn’t have any more paper anyway. I was a mere child then.”
“Why are you so sure it belonged to Brother Tongue?”
“Because it was how I first met him. We were living in the San Gabriel Mountains and I was exploring around when I heard a funny noise like a drum. Brother Tongue was on the back porch of his shack, typing, only he wasn’t Brother Tongue then. It’s funny, if it hadn’t been for me hearing his typewriter he would never have become Brother Tongue.”
Quinn heard the front door of his apartment open and Martha’s quick light step as she crossed the room, he spoke hurriedly into the phone: “Listen, Karma. Stay right where you are. Lock the doors and don’t open any of them until I get there. I’m driving right down.”
“Why?”
“I have some questions to ask Brother Tongue.”
“Do you think that maybe my mother really gave him a message for me?”
“No, I think he wants his typewriter back.”
“Why should he? It’s so old and broken-down, he couldn’t use it for anything.”
“No, but the police could. That typewriter was in the back seat of O’Gorman’s car the night he was murdered. I’m telling you this because I want you to realize he’s a dangerous man.”
“I’m scared.”
“You don’t have to be scared, Karma. When he comes at four o’clock I’ll be in the house with you.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“I believe you,” she said gravely. “You kept your other promise about the acne lotion.”