Brett Halliday - Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve

Henry was looking at her now, with the help of a ladder pushed against the wall of the hayloft and an old brass-cased spyglass. This was the hottest day they had had all summer, and Colleen had hiked up her skirt, to make herself a little cooler. Henry grinned slyly, wondering how fast she’d pull that skirt down again, if she knew he was watching her.

“It’d come down damn fast, I’ll bet,” he said aloud. He often talked to himself, working alone so much. “And, oh! — wouldn’t she blush, though!” He shifted the spyglass to his other eye and adjusted the focus, so that he could see the play of the slanting sunlight across the almost imperceptible golden down on Colleen’s tapering thighs. If she only knew I was up here! he thought. Man, if she only even suspected!

He had talked to Colleen twice. The first time had been five weeks ago, when he had driven himself so nearly crazy in the hayloft that he’d felt he simply had to be closer to her. He had crossed the orchard and ambled over to the knoll, and stood watching her paint for a long time, before she noticed him at all. When she did, she didn’t seem to mind his being there. She didn’t even seem surprised. She had just smiled at him and gone back to her painting of a plum tree.

“That’s real pretty,” Henry had said. “It sure enough looks just like an old plum tree, all right.” It was hard for a man to know exactly what to say to her, Henry reflected. Folks hereabouts said Colleen wasn’t quite bright, and that that was the reason her pa didn’t send her to the high school in town, and wouldn’t let her go out with boys.

But hell, folks hereabouts were always saying mean things like that, especially about girls as pretty as Colleen. Why, they had even said he wasn’t bright, too. He had heard it said more than once — just as if a man could run a farm like this one, year after year, and take care of a wife who was paralyzed from the waist down and all, unless he was pretty bright.

Hell, he was brighter than any of them! They were just jealous of him, because he was such a damn good farmer, that was all. Just like they were jealous of Colleen, because she was so pretty.

Colleen hadn’t answered him when he complimented her painting of the plum tree. He stepped closer and squinted at the canvas, and nodded slowly. “Yes, sir,” he said. “It sure looks like that old plum tree’ll be popping out with fruit any minute now. It’s a right nice piece of work, miss.”

The girl had smiled up at him and made another dab with her brush. “Thank you,” she said. “I–I’ve been working on it for a long time.” It was then Henry saw that her eyes were really blue, instead of black, the way they had looked through the spyglass.

“Must get mighty lonesome for you sometimes,” he said. “I mean, the way your pa keeps you penned up here, so tight and all.” Colleen had stopped smiling, and her eyes seemed a little cloudy.

“Me, I get pretty lonesome too,” Henry said. “I don’t get off the place more’n two, three times a month.” He paused. “What with my wife being an invalid and all, I have to stick pretty close.”

Colleen had nodded solemnly and lowered her brush. She sat very still, and a sudden fragment of breeze brought Henry the sweet, slightly dizzying girl-scent of her.

“If it wasn’t for your pa and my wife,” Henry went on, “you and me might…” He broke off, his mouth suddenly dry. “I mean, we might — well, go to a church supper or something. Maybe even to a movie in town.”

The girl tilted her head to look up at him. “But you have a wife,” she said.

“Maybe not for long, though,” Henry said, trying to sound casual. “The doc says she hasn’t got much of her row left to hoe.”

Colleen nodded, her face almost expressionless.

Henry swallowed hard, trying to get the dryness out of his throat. “If — if something happened to her, and if I could make it right with your pa… I mean, would you…?”

The girl frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then raised her brush again and concentrated intently on the addition of some foliage to her plum tree. “If things were different,” she said. “If they really were, I might.”

Henry had wanted to say more, much more, but he had been physically unable to talk. He had stood beside the girl a full minute before he realized he’d have to get away from her, before he lost control of himself and did something he’d be sorry for. This should have been one of the happiest moments of his life, he thought bitterly as he trudged back to his own farm. But it wasn’t — it was one of the worst.

Things wouldn’t get any different, he knew — not for months and months, maybe even years. Martha might linger for God knew how long. Meanwhile, there wasn’t a thing he could do. The property was all in Martha’s name, even down to the rakes and hoes. He could leave Martha, sure — but what then?

All he knew how to do was farm. If he went somewhere else, all he’d be was a hired man. This way, at least, he didn’t have to take orders from anybody except Martha — and he had his spyglass and his knothole in the barn wall.

The second time Henry talked to Colleen he had seen her father approaching before he’d been on the knoll more than a minute or two. But he had satisfied himself that he could have her, if it weren’t for Martha. With Martha dead, and Colleen and he safely married, there wasn’t anything Colleen’s pa could do.

Today, Henry had spent almost two hours watching Colleen through the spyglass, and now the longing for her had become too strong to bear. He took one last look at the firm, sunbathed thighs beneath the hiked-up skirt, then climbed back down the ladder and hid the spyglass in the hay…

The pickup truck pulled into the yard, just as Henry came through the barn door. There were two bloodhounds in a cage on the back of the truck, and the white lettering on the door of the cab read, Sheriff’s Office — Miller County. Riding in the seat beside the driver was Constable Jim Weber, from town. Weber and the other man got out and walked over to Henry. Weber carried a double-barreled shotgun crooked in his arm. The other man carried a rifle.

“Afternoon, Henry,” the constable said. “This here is Deputy-Sheriff Bob Ellert. Bob, this is Henry Ferris. That was his field you was admiring so, up the road a ways.”

“Afternoon, Sheriff,” Henry said.

The deputy nodded and crossed his arms. He was a big man, even bigger than Constable Weber, and he looked hot and uncomfortable in his khaki uniform with the leather leggings and heavy Sam Browne belt. “Hotter’n the hinges themselves, Mr. Ferris,” he said.

“That’s for sure,” Henry said. “I been looking for it to rain. A good rain’d cool things off a bit.”

“There’s another one loose, Henry,” the constable said.

“What?” Henry said. “Oh — you mean from the asylum?”

“Yeah. And this is a mean one, Henry. He’s one of these maniacs. He got him a meat-cleaver out of the kitchen somehow, and killed a guard with it and got loose. Next thing we hear, he’s taken the cleaver to old Mrs. Kurtz, over Lordville way. Cut her up like side-meat.”

“I swear,” Henry said. “You think he’s somewhere around here?”

“He just might be,” the deputy sheriff said. “We’re beating the whole county for him. The Sheriff’s Office and the State Police, and all the local peace officers, like Jim here.”

“We’re warning everybody,” the constable said. “We’re phoning some of them, and calling on the ones that ain’t got phones. How’s your wife, Henry?”

Henry sighed. “She’s just the same, Jim, just the same.”

“That’s sure a pity,” the constable said.