"Or Uncle John's kinfolks…"
"Oh, now-" Robert Lee laughed. "Let's not be ridiculous, Nick."
"I say something funny?" I said.
"Well, uh," said Robert Lee, sort of clearing his throat. "Perhaps I chose the wrong word. I should have said impractical."
I looked blank, and asked just what did he mean, anyways? He snapped back that I knew very well what he meant. "No doctor is going to do a post mortem on a Negro. Why, you can't get a doctor to touch a live Negro, let alone a dead one."
"I reckon you're right," I said. "Just in case we had to, though, and I'm just asking for information, do you suppose you could get out a court order t'make a doctor do his duty?"
"We-el"-Robert Lee leaned back and pursed his lips-"I imagine that's something that one could do de jure, but not de facto. In other words you'd have a paradox-the legal right to do something that was factually impossible of accomplishment."
I said I'd be god-danged, he was sure one heck of a smart man. "I reckon my head's plumb bustin' from all these things you been tellin' me, Robbie Lee. Maybe I better run along before you give me some more information, an' it pops wide open."
"Now, you're flattering me," he beamed, standing up as I did, "which reminds me that I should compliment you on your conduct in today's affair. You handled it very well, Nick."
"Why, thank you kindly, Robert Lee," I said. "How does the election look to you by now, if you don't mind my asking?"
"I think you're a cinch to win, in view of the unfortunate talk about Sam Gaddis. Just keep on doing your job, like you did today."
"Oh, I will," I said. "I'll keep on exactly like that."
I left the hardware store, and sauntered back toward the courthouse, stopping now and then to talk to people, or rather to let them talk to me. Almost everyone had about the same idea about the killing as Robert Lee Jefferson. Almost everyone agreed that it was an open and shut case, with Uncle John killing Tom and then Tom, dead as he was, killing Uncle John. Or vice versa.
About the only people who didn't see it that way, or said they didn't, were some loafers. They wanted a coroner's jury impaneled, and they were ready and willin' to serve on it. But if they were that hard up for a couple of dollars, I figured they hadn't paid their poll tax, so what they thought didn't matter.
Rose had heard the news from probably two, three hundred people by the time I got back to the courthouse, and Myra said I had get out to the Hauck place right away and bring Rose into town.
"Now, please hurry, for once in your life, Nick! The poor thing is terribly upset!"
"Why for is she upset?" I said. "You mean because Tom is dead?"
"Of course, I mean that! What else would I mean?"
"Well, I was just wonderin'," I said. "She was terribly upset last night when she thought he might becomin' home, and now she's terribly upset because she knows he ain't. Don't seem to make much sense somehow."
"Now, just you never mind!" Myra snapped. "Don't you dare start arguing with me, Nick Corey! You just do what I tell you to, or you won't make much sense! Not that you ever did, anyway."
I got the horse and buggy and drove out toward the Hauck farm, thinking to myself that a fella hardly got one problem settled before he had to take care of another one. Maybe I should have foreseen that Rose would be coming in and staying with Myra and me tonight, but I hadn't. I'd had too many other things on my mind. So now I was supposed to see Amy tonight- I'd just better see her if I ever wanted to see her again. And I was also supposed to stay at home-Rose would think it was god-danged peculiar if I didn't. And I just didn't know what the heck I was going to do.
They were a real problem, Rose and Amy. A lot bigger problem than I realized.
The farm house was all steamy and kind of smelly when Rose let me in. She apologized for it, nodding toward the black dress that was hung up over the stove.
"I had to give it a hurry-up dye job, honey. But the goddam thing ought to be dry pretty soon. You want to come into the bedroom, and wait?"
I followed her into the bedroom and she started taking off her shoes and stockings, which was all she had on. I said, "Looky, honey. Maybe we shouldn't do this right now."
"Huh?" She frowned at me. "Why the hell not?"
"Well, you know," I said. "You're just now officially a widow. It just don't seem decent to hop in bed with a woman when she ain't hardly been a widow an hour."
"What the hell's the difference? You slept with me before I was a widow?"
"Well, sure," I said. "But everybody does things like that. You might say it was even kind of a compliment to a woman. But this way, when a woman ain't been a widow long enough to get her weeds wet, it just ain't respectful. I mean, after all, they's certain proprieties to observe, and a decent fella don't hop right on a brand-new widow any more than a decent brand-new widow lets him."
She hesitated, studying me, but finally she nodded.
"Well, maybe you're right, Nick. Christ knows I've always done my goddam best to be respectable, in spite of that son-of-a-bitch I was married to."
"Why sure you have," I said. "Don't I know that, Rose?"
"So we'll wait until tonight. After Myra goes to sleep, I mean."
"Well," I said. "Well, uh-"
"And now I am going to tell you a surprise." She gave me a hug, eyes dancing. "It won't be long now before we can forget about Myra. You can get a divorce from the old bag-Christ knows you've got plenty of grounds-or we can just say to hell with her and leave here. Because we're going to have plenty of money, Nick. Plenty!"
"Whoa, whoa now!" I said. "What the heck are you sayin', honey?" And she laughed, and told me how it was.
Back in the beginning, when Tom was still sugarin' up to her, he'd taken out a ten-thousand-dollar insurance policy. Ten thousand, double indemnity. After a year or so, when being nice got tiresome, he'd said to hell with the policy and to hell with her. But she'd kept up the premiums herself, paying for them out of her butter and egg money. Now, since Tom had been killed instead of dying a natural death, she'd collect under the double-indemnity clause. A whole twenty thousand dollars.
"Isn't it wonderful, honey?" She hugged me again. "And that's only part of it. This is damned good farm land, even if that son-of-a-bitch was such a no-good bastard that he never put any improvements on it. Even at a forced sale, it ought to bring ten or twelve thousand dollars, and with that much money, why-"
"Now, wait a minute," I said. "Not so fast, honey. We can't-"
"But we can, Nick! What the hell's to stop us?"
"You just think about it," I said. "Think how it would look to other people. Your husband gets killed and right away you're a rich woman. He gets killed and you profit by it plenty, and you tie up with another man before his body's hardly cold. You don't think that folks would wonder about that a little! You don't think they might get some alarmin' ideas about her and this other man and her husband's death?"