Stranger

Six

If looks could kill… That’s a phrase you’ll know well enough. When someone who hates you can’t physically touch you but the look in his eye screams, I’m going to rip your fucking head off!

Crowther’s hate-shot eyes burned right into mine. The crowd that walked with him were mainly middle-aged or older. This was no lynch mob. They were the ruling committee of Sullivan, who were known as the Caucus. The youngest there was Lynne’s husband. He was thirty-one. I recognized Crowther’s father, looking the picture of misery.

I came down the steps from the cabin’s veranda and waited for them to speak. They’d walked purposefully enough. Now, however, they slowed to a kind of shuffling approach, as if suddenly they no longer wanted to be here. Rose Bertholly had been a corporate lawyer before the fall. She glanced back at the others, took a breath that seemed to say, Ok, I guess it’s up to me, then: “Greg. How are you?”

Stupid question. I’d been slammed by a hunk of maple wood.

“How’s your face?” she asked when I didn’t answer.

“OK. Considering.” I looked at Crowther junior. Meanwhile, Crowther senior shuffled his feet in the dirt like he wanted those feet to carry him away.

“I won’t beat about the bush, Greg.”

Nice choice of words, lady lawyer.

“The Caucus met tonight. We discussed Mr. Crowther’s assault on you. We consider it unwarranted…”

That mean he didn’t have a good enough excuse to crack my skull bone?

“It was cowardly, and we deem it a serious infringement of the rule of law in this time of national emergency.”

Well, said, Miss Bertholly. You must have been sharp as a blade in court.

“Greg.” She gave me a look that was seriously lawyer like. “The Caucus has agreed unanimously that Mr. Crowther is guilty of the crime of actual bodily harm against you. We feel very strongly, also, that he shouldn’t go unpunished.” She paused. “How do you respond to that, Greg?”

“My response would be, why do you call me Greg and the guy who tried killing me, Mr. Crowther?” I looked from Crowther junior to Crowther senior. “It seems strange to me. Or is it because I crawled in here on my hands and knees just a few months ago? While the two Mr. Crowthers here are old Sullivan blood and the local neighborhood millionaires?” I jerked my head in the direction of the burnt piece of crap that Lewis had become. “See how much you can buy for a dollar across there.”

“Greg… Mr. Valdiva. I apologize.” Her voice was polite, but the words came out with a glint of ice on them now. “This isn’t a court of law.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I was merely trying to be informal.”

“Oh.”

“I can’t blame you for being angry.”

“Me? Angry?”

“You suffered a physical assault today. It was unprovoked.”

“Assault? If you took the hard end of the wood like I did you’d call it attempted murder.”

“Mr. Valdiva. Mr. Crowther had maybe a few more drinks than he ought. He didn’t mean to-”

I couldn’t stop the snort of pure disbelief shooting out of my nostrils. “Oh, I see. You’re closing ranks. It was just a bit of fun that got out of hand. See?” I tilted my head to the light shining from the cabin so she could see the crazy paving of grazes and bruising. “That’s Crowther’s little bit of fun.”

“Hey, Valdiva.” Now it was old man Crowther’s turn. Disgust came oozing through his voice as he spoke. “Valdiva. My boy would not harm anyone without just cause. He must have been-”

“Jim.” An old man beside Crowther senior held up a hand. “Jim, the Caucus has made its decision. Your son is guilty of assault. There’s no debate about that.”

“The question is,” Miss Bertholly said crisply, “what will the punishment be?”

I shrugged. “OK. So why have you come down here to discuss that?”

There was a pause long enough to hear the cry of night birds shimmering across the water. Those men and women shifted uneasily, as if they heard the sound of ghost children calling to them from the ruins of Lewis.

“Why have the Caucus meet here outside my house? You’ll have made up your damned minds about Crowther anyway. You going to stop ten dollars from his allowance, Mr. Crowther? Are you going to ground him for a week?” This slice of crappola had become a joke. I turned to go inside.

“Mr. Valdiva,” Miss Bertholly said. “We-the Caucus, that is-have also decided that as you are the victim you must decide the punishment.”

“Get away…” I shook my head. “You want me to fix a punishment for Crowther? Why?”

“Because if we chose a punishment you’d only say…” She took a breath and selected more diplomatic words, “If you chose the punishment you would know that an adequate redress had been made.”

“OK.” I nodded. “OK. That sounds fair enough.” I reached back to the veranda rail to grab a coil of rope that hung from a nail there. Underarm, I tossed it at old man Crowther. He caught it as it slapped into his chest.

“I’ve decided the punishment,” I told them. “Hang him.”

There was a silence you could have carved with a blade. Even the call of the night birds died. All I could hear was the lap of water out there in the darkness.

“There’s a lighting rig down at the jetty. It’s a good ten feet tall. You can string him up from that.”

Jesus, their faces. They looked as if I’d thrown a hand grenade at them. Crowther junior had arrived with a look of defiance pasted across his face. Now his eyes seemed to race from one person to another, finishing with a pleading look at his father. I looked into the eyes of the others there, especially into the eyes of Miss Bertholly the lawyer.

“What did he say? Dad, what did Valdiva say?” Crowther’s voice came stammering out of his mouth. “Dad?” His eyes had morphed into big rolling white balls that locked tight onto the rope in his father’s hands. “Dad? D-der-does he want to hang me?”

Gritting my teeth, I lunged forward to snatch the rope from the old man’s hands. “Go home,” I told them, angry. “Go home; it’s late.”

With the rope in my hand I went back to the cabin, punched open the door, then crashed it shut behind me.

I stood there with the door pressed shut by my back. Jesus… my hands were trembling. Sweat poured down my face, its salt getting onto my tongue. I balled my hand and rubbed it across my mouth with the back of my fist.

“Christ. Idiots… You crazy idiots…” I looked at the rope as if it had burst into a mass of bloody tumors, then threw it from me. Because I’d read that look in their eyes. They’d have gone along with what I’d asked for. They were going to hang Crowther junior, the poor bastard.

Sweet Jesus Christ.

What was happening with these people?