Carol O’Connell - Stone Angel

Her last phrase was so heavily underscored, Mallory was virtually shouting off the page.

He was examining the broken telephone cord when Augusta hurried past him on her way to a chest of drawers in the far corner.

“There’s a pack of men coming over the bridge.” She was ripping through the top drawer, and articles of intimate apparel were flying. “We got to leave, and fast.” She pulled out a very small handgun and slammed the drawer. She held the weapon out to him. “It’s only a single-shot forty-five, but better than nothing.” She stuffed it into the pocket of her dress and ran from the room. The cat seemed to grasp the sense of it before Charles did, and now the creature was following its mistress.

Charles quit the room and ran down the hall, racing the yellow cat. He closed the outer door on the animal, and it began to growl, not frightened at all, but genuinely pissed off.

“Let the cat out,” commanded Augusta.

He opened the door and the cat sped past him. Charles looked up at Augusta, astride the white horse and without a saddle. She danced the stallion closer to the courting staircase. “They’ll be at the cemetery by now. Get on or you’re a dead man.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to – ”

“I know a lynch mob when I see one, Charles. Want to live? Get on!”

Charles stepped on the second stair and swung one long leg over the rear of the horse to mount behind Augusta.

“Hold on tight as you can!” she yelled. They galloped across the wide grassy lawn.

He had not been on horseback since he was a child, and then he had sat in a proper saddle. Now he felt that he would fall in every passing second. The horse’s massive muscles were elongating and contracting as they flew over the long grass, heading for the great earthen dike, pitch-black against the sky.

He held Augusta by the waist and leaned into her neck to yell, “We’re going along the base of the levee, right? Around the tip of Upland Bayou?”

“Can’t,” she called back to him, heading straight for the great looming barrier. “Too many bad patches and wet ones,” she yelled into the wind. “The horse would lose his legs in the dark before we even got to Henry’s place.”

“When will Henry be back?”

“Not till late. Wrap your legs tight and dig in with your heels. We’re going the way the horse knows best. He’s been this route a thousand times.”

And now they were moving up the embankment. Skillfully she led the horse into a slanted approach to the road atop the levee. Charles held on tight, knees and heels to the horse’s hide, arms wrapped around Augusta, and certain that he would slide off as the horse faltered on the steep slope of Bermuda grass. But the animal never lost its forward momentum, finding purchase in the worn areas of dirt scumbling out beneath his hooves in a brown spray as he climbed up to the stars. Now the horse was running full-out across the levee road, along the top of the earth where it met the sky.

Charles looked back to the mansion. A small army of ants with pale white heads and hands emerged from the oak alley and converged on Trebec House.

The stilt-walker’s baggy pants obscured the glass-domed coffin as he tottered back and forth alongside the truck’s flat bed. Every one of the hundred mourners was dressed for a blowout party of free booze. A few men in the crowd had disguised their eyes with bright costume masks. Some wore feathers and capes. Gaudy colors bobbed and weaved as the liquor flowed and spilled, and cheap jewelry flashed in the beams of spotlights on tall metal stands around the truck. But Malcolm’s suit of lights outglittered all of them. He had forsaken his throne to straddle the coffin, riding it like a nightmare, waving one hand in the air, hailing his subjects and laughing.

Only the Dixieland band was silent. The musicians stood by the float, exchanging glances, shifting on their feet and wanting to leave now. Clark Kinkaid, the trumpet player, put up his horn and nodded to the others. They began to back away from the truck. One of the Laurie brothers stepped in the path of the man with the sax. Old Ray was stern as any chain gang boss, and carrying a rifle.

The musicians thought better of leaving. A pretty woman danced by with a full bottle for the band to pass around. The drinking had been well under way for an hour, but the funeral had yet to begin.

Clark cradled his trumpet in one arm and looked toward the pile of gas-soaked rags wound on sticks. They should have been lit long ago to signal the start of the torchlight parade down the main street of Owltown. But the crematorium truck had arrived only to be sent away empty. Apparently, Malcolm had plans to expand the evening’s entertainment.

Well, this was not part of the deal.

Clark had arranged another gig for his band, figuring this would be a done thing before eight. So when was the show gonna get on the road, and who was that old guy in the center of the loose ring of drunks? Men and women closed ranks to tighten the circle and block his view. Clark stepped onto the truck’s bumper and hoisted himself up on the fender for a better look.

Every pair of eyes was trained on Malcolm Laurie as the man swung one sequined leg over the coffin, stood up and held out both his hands for silence. “This man, Riker.” Malcolm had real anger in his voice as he pointed to the man in the gray suit. “This staggering drunk, this subhuman garbage, was found in the cemetery, naked from his waist to his ankles – standing over the idiot’s dead body.”

Obscenities and moans rose up all around the truck. “Look at this man, so drunk he can hardly stand. His victim did not die easy. The boy was raped and beaten to death. Poor helpless idiot. It’s like the rape of a child.”

“You ought to know, Malcolm,” yelled Riker, not the least bit inebriated. “Your brother raped Ira Wooley when the kid was only six years old. Does it run in the family? Is that where your expertise comes from?”

“Shut him up!”

A man stepped forward to put a fist in Riker’s face and did just that. Riker fell to his knees. His lip was split open and blood ran into his mouth. Malcolm was livid. Something had gone wrong, and Clark wondered if it had anything to do with Riker’s sobriety.

Malcolm waved his fist to the sky. “Three witnesses found him – ”

“That’s why Cass Shelley had to die!” Riker stood up. “She had the hospital reports. Babe raped Jimmy Simms, too. That’s why he ran away when he was only twelve years old.”

“Shut his lying mouth!”

But no one stepped forward this time, except Jimmy’s father, Dan Simms, all rapt attention. Malcolm turned to his brother Ray, who nodded back his understanding and moved into the crowd to do the job right as Riker was saying, “She couldn’t figure out how a six-year-old could contract a junkie hepatitis. Then she ran the test for syphilis. Remember Babe’s syphilis party. He – ”

Ray Laurie had both his hands on Riker’s windpipe. Dan Simms was a larger man and had no trouble clearing Ray’s fat fingers from Riker’s neck. Simms looked down at the shorter Ray Laurie and backed him off with only a rising fist. Simms turned to Malcolm. “This ain’t the story you gave me, Mal. Now I want to hear this man out.”

Malcolm strutted to the edge of the truck bed, shaking his head in pity, and pity was in his voice. “Dan, how can you listen to a man who was caught with his pants around his ankles assaulting that poor idiot?”

“But you said he was drunk too, and he don’t seem all that tight to me,” said Dan Simms. He turned to Riker. “Go on, mister.”

“Cass had all the blood work,” said Riker. “She matched up the stages of syphilis. Babe’s was the oldest, then Jimmy’s, then Ira’s. That’s what she was trying to tell you when she crashed that meeting. But Malcolm drove her off and covered it up.”