"If I do, will you promise to take it only at the time of month I tell you?"
"Yes."
"Will you promise to dispose of the bottle immediately after ingestion, where no one can ever find it?"
"Yes."
"And will you promise to tell no one that I helped you? Not even your dearest friend?"
"Yes."
"Then you shall have what you need."
Miss Mercy picked up her lamp, carried it to one of Elias's cabinets. When she handed the small brown unlabeled bottle to Verity, the girl removed its cork and sniffed the neck. Then Verity poured a drop onto her finger, touched her tongue to it.
"It tastes odd," she said.
"No odder than sweetened castor oil. I've mixed the compound with cherry syrup."
"Compound. What sort of compound?"
"Dried scierotia of ergot, bark of slippery elm, apiol—"
"My God! All those blended together?"
"Yes, my dear. Why do you look so shocked?"
"Ergot contracts the womb, tightens it even more. So do dried slippery elm and apiol. All mixed together and taken in a large dose at the wrong time of month . . . cramps, paralysis, death in agony. This liquid is pure poison to a pregnant woman!"
"No, you mustn't think that—"
"I do think it," Verity said, "because it's true." She had risen to her feet and was pointing a tremulous finger at Miss Mercy. "I've studied medicine. I work in Riverbrook as a nurse and midwife."
"Nurse? Midwife? But then—"
"Then I'm not with child? No, Miss Mercy, I'm not. The truth is, I have been three months searching for you, ever since I discovered a bottle exactly like this one that Grace Potter failed to dispose of I thought you guilty of no more than deadly quackery before tonight, but now I know different. You deliberately murdered my sister."
"Murdered?" Now it was Miss Mercy who was shocked. "Oh no, my dear. No. I brought her mercy."
"You brought her death!"
"Mercy. Your sister, all of them—only mercy."
"All of them? How many others besides Grace?"
"Does the number truly matter?"
"Does it truly—! How many, Miss Mercy?"
"I can't say. So many miles, so many places . . ."
"How many?"
"Thirty? Forty? Fifty? I can scarce remember them all . . ."
"Dear sweet Lord! You poisoned as many as fifty pregnant girls?"
"Unmarried girls. Poor foolish girls," Miss Mercy said gently. "There are worse things than death, oh much worse."
"What could be worse than suffering the tortures of hell before the soul is finally released?"
"Enduring the tortures of hell for years, decades, a lifetime. Isn't a few hours of pain and then peace, eternal peace, preferable to lasting torment?"
"How can you believe that bearing a child out of wedlock is so wicked—?"
"No," Miss Mercy said, "the lasting torment is in knowing, seeing the child they've brought into the world. Bastard child, child of sin. Don't you see? God punishes the unwed mother. The wages of sin is death, but God's vengeance on the living is far more terrible. I saved your sister from that. I brought her and all the others mercy from that."
Again she picked up the lamp. With a key from around her neck she unlocked the small satin-lined cabinet Elias had made, lifted out its contents. This she set on the table, the flickering oil lamp close beside it.
Verity looked, and cried out, and tore her gaze away.
Lamplight shone on the glass jar and on the thick formaldehyde that filled it; made a glowing chimera of the tiny twisted thing floating there, with its face that did not seem quite human, with its appendage that might have been an arm and the other that might have been a leg, with its single blind staring eye.
"Now do you understand?" Miss Mercy said. "This is my son, mine and Caleb's. God's vengeance—my poor little bastard son."
And she lifted the jar in both hands and held it tight to her bosom, cradled it and began to rock it to and fro, crooning to the fetus inside—a sweet, sad lullaby that sent Verity fleeing from the wagon, away into the deep dark lonesome night.
"Night Freight," which originally saw print in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine in early 1967, was my second published story. (The first, "You Don't Know What It's Like," a shameless Hemingway pastiche, appeared in Shell Scott Mystery Magazine for November of 1966.) I revised it slightly several years ago for its publication in an anthology, but it still has a number of youthful flaws. I debated rewriting it for its inclusion here, finally decided against it. In a curious way the rough edges add to rather than detract from its nightmarish effect.
Night Freight
He caught the freight in Phalene, down in the citrus belt, four days after they gave Joanie the divorce.
He waited in the yards. The northbound came along a few minutes past midnight. He hid in the shadows of the loading platform, watching the cars, and half the train had gone by before he saw the open box, the first one after a string of flats.
He trotted up alongside, hanging on to the big gray-and-white suitcase. There were heavy iron rungs running up the side of the box. He caught one with his right hand and got his left foot through the opening, then laid the suitcase inside and swung through behind it.
It smelled of dust in there, and just a bit of citrus, and he did not like the smell. It caught in his nose and in the back of his throat, and he coughed.
It was very dark, but he could see that the box was empty. He picked up the suitcase and went over and sat down against the far wall.
It was cold too. The wind came whistling in through the open door like a siren as the freight picked up speed. He wrapped his arms around his legs and sat there like that, hugging himself.
He thought about Joanie.
He knew he should not think about her. He knew that. It made things only that much worse when he thought about her. But every time he closed his eyes he could see her face.
He could see her smile, and the way her eyes, those soft brown eyes, would crinkle at the corners when she laughed. He could see the deep, silken brown of her hair, and the way it would turn almost gold when she stood in the sun, and the way that one little strand of hair kept falling straight down across the bridge of her nose, the funny little way it would do that, and how they had both laughed at it in the beginning.
No, he thought. No, I mustn't think about that.
He hugged his legs.
What had happened? he thought. Where did it go wrong?
But he knew what it was. They should never have moved to California.
Yes, that was it. If they had not moved to California, none of it would have happened.
Joanie hadn't wanted to go. She didn't like California.
But he had had that job offer. It was a good one, but it meant moving to California and that was what started it all; he was sure of that.
Joanie had tried, he knew that. She had tried hard at first. But she had wanted to go home. He'd promised her he would take her home, he'd promised her that, just as soon as he made some money.
But she had wanted to go right away. There were plenty of good jobs at home, she said. Why did he want to stay in California?