Lisa Atkinson - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 5. Whole No. 801, May 2008

He’d read everything. He told me about Don Quixote, and David Copperfield. He liked the classics, but his momma would buy books from the dime store and he’d been reading a lot of books by a guy named Raymond Chandler that first summer. He used words like “dame” and “gams,” and before long, much to my own mother’s dismay, I was using them too.

We went to the Rivoli together on Saturdays when Teg could break away from his momma, and we’d watch Roy Rogers or Francis the Talking Mule movies. Movies played forever in Harlow, but it didn’t matter, we’d go anyway. I must have seen Francis Joins the Navy ten times. I think I still do a pretty good imitation of Chill Wills, but I’ll spare you that talent for the moment.

I never went to the Bowman place. Teg always came to my house. And my mother, well, she took him under her wing like the stray pup he was. Teg didn’t talk about Lehigh or Loreen much, but when the subject came up, he got real quiet. Loreen had recovered from her miscarriage, but she didn’t work for Miss Chad anymore. Lehigh thought that she should stay home and be a proper wife, which to Loreen meant sleeping till noon, making Teg do her chores, and moaning about some new sickness that had set in. It seemed the only cure for her was a whiskey bottle she kept under her mattress that she began sipping on as soon as her feet hit the floor in the afternoon.

I think my mother was thrilled that I had a friend of my own, so she didn’t push much, but I could tell she was a little nervous around Teg sometimes, like she was going to say the wrong thing. Dad was always coming or going, so he didn’t seem to notice Teg being around as often as he was. He readily accepted Teg’s presence as if he’d always been there. But Pearl, well, Pearl was Pearl, and that meant she had her chance to be as difficult with my friend as I had been with hers.

One day Pearl was spouting a story to a circle of her friends on the porch about Lehigh Bowman getting drunk and almost running over Bobby Fuller, the high-school quarterback, with his police car. She didn’t know Teg was in the house; he had been engaged in a conversation with my mother in the kitchen about the latest round of books he’d got from the library. The story Pearl was telling was all true, but she veered off the path a bit, as usual, about the time Teg came walking out onto the porch to go home.

“...And that’s when he belted Loreen one, right square in the mouth,” Pearl said.

Teg stopped directly behind Pearl. Missy Bernice sucked in her breath and motioned for Pearl to shut up. Pearl didn’t notice, she just kept at it. “Then he went after Teg.”

Teg couldn’t take much more, so he pushed by her. Lord, I thought Pearl’s legs were going to disintegrate right then and there. She stuttered and stopped, trying to apologize.

Teg would have none of it. He just kept walking until he was off the porch, and then he stopped and turned back to Pearl.

“Lehigh never hits anybody, Pearl. At least not where it can be seen by the light of day.” With that, he turned and started for home.

Mother and Pearl had a big to-do after that little round of storytelling, and, well, things changed for Pearl pretty shortly after that, too. Because it wasn’t much longer, a week to the day I think it was, that Teg Saidlow turned up dead.

Pearl’s current beau, Tommy McVey, was fishing down at the quarry when he found Teg floating facedown. Teg was caught under some brush and the fish and turtles were already starting to nip at his flesh.

Tommy ran like lightning to our house, and Dad promptly called Lehigh Bowman. There was nothing my father could do, of course, but you could see it in his eyes, a glimmer of hope, a chance that he hadn’t woken up in a world where another boy had drowned at the quarry.

I begged him to let me go.

Dad stiffened as he grabbed his black bag of wonders. “I don’t want you to see that,” he said.

A whisper in the form of Mother’s voice drifted in from the kitchen. “Let him go, Earl. Let him see what happens when you swim at that quarry alone.” She assumed Teg had gone swimming, and that it would be a good lesson for me to see.

Dad looked at me; the sheen of his face flickered deep red. The only time I saw that look was when I’d disobeyed him and was about to get a good swat on the ass. The red faded when he made eye contact with Mother, and he motioned for me to come along.

All the way out to the quarry I kept praying to Daddy’s snake-taming Pentecostal God that Tommy was mistaken, that it really wasn’t Teg he’d found. But when we got there, I saw my prayers weren’t answered, and it was the last time in my life I ever prayed to that God for anything.

Lehigh beat us there, and he and Big Mike were pulling Teg out of the water.

“Damn it. Damn it! What the hell am I going to tell Loreen?” Lehigh yelled as he dropped Teg onto the ground.

Teg Saidlow lay lifeless on the ground, arms stretched out as if he was about to be fitted for a crucifix. His eyes were wide open, and he was completely dressed. I knew right then that Mother was wrong about that swim; Teg would’ve never swum with his clothes on. He only had two pairs of pants, and a few pairs of socks. Besides, he knew better than to walk into Lehigh Bowman’s house dripping wet. Teg always swam in his underwear.

“Stay back,” Dad said, just as if he were talking to a dog. I froze, watched as he scrambled to Teg’s side and tried to breathe life into his mouth. He tried for more than twenty minutes to revive Teg, but to no avail.

“How long you figure he’s been dead?” Lehigh asked.

“Hard to say.” Dad answered. “When’d you last see him?”

“Last night. Loreen can’t keep track of that boy. Sometimes she goes to get him for breakfast and he’s done snuck out of his room.”

“I guess he could have been here all night. You sure you didn’t see him at breakfast, Lehigh?”

“Nope. Loreen was still sleeping. Neither one of them is early birds.”

“What about you, Mike? When was the last time you saw Teg?”

Big Mike glared at me, shifted his weight, and looked away. “I ain’t seen him for about a week.”

My father nodded.

“Well, I guess he decided to go swimmin’ and banged his head, huh, Doc,” Lehigh said.

“Could be, but I don’t see any sign of that.” Dad had begun to examine Teg, running his fingers through Teg’s hair, putting pressure on the skull, looking for a soft spot. “Not a drop of blood, though. I imagine the coroner’s going to want an autopsy done.”

“I don’t want Loreen to go through that.”

“Can’t be helped, Lehigh, you know how these things work.”

“Maybe he just drowned. Just got caught on something.”

I spoke up. “Teg was a good swimmer.” Dad looked at me curiously and then I sighed, nodded. I knew I had just told on myself, so I figured I might as well tell everything else I knew. “Teg wouldn’t have swum with his clothes on. He never did, Dad.”

“I don’t know what the boy’s tryin’ to say, Doc, but this here is an accidental drowning and nothing more.”

“Might be, Lehigh, but it might not be, either.”

“I said it was an accident, and that’s the way it’s gonna be.” Lehigh said.

In the end, Lehigh was right; Teg’s death was ruled an accidental drowning. Now I figure if it would’ve happened in today’s world, with forensics being what they are, things might’ve turned out differently. Old man Deeter was the coroner when he wasn’t overseeing the only funeral parlor in Harlow, and when he wasn’t doing that, he was playing poker in Store Longwood’s basement, so he probably wasn’t much motivated to order an autopsy. Right before the funeral, I overheard Dad tell Mother something about some bruises on Teg’s back around the kidneys that didn’t make sense. Dad knew it wouldn’t do him any good to raise a stink, but I think he thought the same thing I did: Teg Saidlow might not have drowned all on his own.