Black Cat Weekly #26

ALLIGATORS DON’T ASK FOR PAYMENT, by Stephen Wasylyk-2

Aside from what I recognized as half-grown corn, I had no idea what other crops Ralph had been raising in the green and golden fields stretching away from the house. After I sold, the bulldozers would destroy them all, to the chagrin of whatever ghosts of my maternal ancestors might be watching. They considered wasting food a crime.

They’d crossed the mountains with an axe over one shoulder and a Kentucky rifle over the other, cleared the land, fought for it, bled for it, died on it and for it. Two had shed more than their share at Gettysburg, which wasn’t that far away, under a July sun that was still as hard as brass and lay on the shoulders like a weight. Now it had come down to me, the last of the line, and I didn’t want it.

A pickup came down the access road and pulled up behind my rental. Tom Wellens had changed into jeans, a white T-shirt, and a gimme baseball cap. He appeared scrawny, but those corded arms would have the tensile strength of steel wire. He joined me on the steps.

“Would have bet you wouldn’t show, but Ralph said you would. He’ll be here to bury me, he said, because my sister would have raised him right.”

“Don’t know how a man who didn’t come to her funeral could be so sure.”

“Couldn’t come. Laid up. Slipped off the harvester last fall and hurt his hip. Never did come around properly. Did the best he could, but—” he waved at the fields “—none of that would be there without my help. ’Course, we already had a pretty good working arrangement. One man can’t do it all, and help is hard to find.”

“About that hip. He could have let me know.”

“Told him that. Most hard-headed man I ever knew. Wouldn’t listen. Said you’d have enough brains to know that if he could have come, he would.”

“How could he possibly know that?”

“Your mother’s letters. Proud of you, Ralph was, all those honors you took in college and how well you did afterward. Said it was about time the family produced someone with brains.” He chuckled. “Thought it was because of that nonsense that he never left the farm, did you?”

“Nonsense?”

He took off his cap and ran a finger along the sweatband. “Nonsense. Kept it up just to remind those good churchgoers not to judge lest they be judged. They became so used to seeing my wife doing his shopping for him it never occurred to them to think otherwise. ’Course he left the farm, but not so they’d notice. Wasn’t crazy, you know. Didn’t live here like a monk. Good man, Ralph. Too stubborn and high-principled, that’s all.”

I let my imagination tell me what “didn’t live here like a monk” meant.

“These revelations are overwhelming,” I said dryly. “Have any more?”

“Want you to sell, do they?”

“Meisser seems sure I will.”

He replaced the cap and leaned forward, squinting down the valley. “Knew Ralph never would, so they had to do something, didn’t they?”

I stared at him. “What in the hell are you getting at, Mr. Wellens?”

“Told you I found him in his bed, didn’t they? Just another worn-down old farmer whose heart gave out. Let me tell you something. You’ll find one of those recliners inside. Big soft one. Cost him six hundred dollars. Said it was worth every penny because that was the only way he could sleep without pain after he hurt his hip. He never used the bed. But only I knew that. A bit suspicious, don’t you think?”

When someone hints of murder, you either blurt out, “That’s crazy,” or you’re stunned speechless. I was stunned speechless.

“The way I figure it,” he said, “they gave him something to make it look like a heart attack, then put him in that bed so everyone would think he died peacefully. No problem getting away with it if no one suspects.”

I found my voice. A croak, but intelligible. “That makes no sense. They could have left him on the floor. Or in the recliner. No one would have given it a second thought.”

“Sometimes people are too smart for their own good. Man is supposed to die in bed, you put him in it. How could they know he never used it?”

Unchecked assumptions have blown many otherwise foolproof schemes sky high. I felt a chill.

“Did you mention this to anyone? The doctor? The county sheriff?”

“Think they’d have listened?”

Hell no, I thought. They’d have put him down as a crazy old coot.

“So why tell me? Nothing I can do now, is there?”

“You’re his nephew,” he said, as if that answered all questions. “He was very proud of you, the things your mother told him. He’d have left everything to you, but he said you’d know damned-all about farming so it was best that I took the stock land the machinery, but you’d know what to do about the land. I dunno. Must have suspected something would happen. Day before he died, he told me you were to look in your secret place when you showed up.”

“My secret place?”

He shrugged. “Somewhere you used to hide things when you came to visit as a kid.”

Secret place? After thirty years, I was supposed to remember a secret place where I’d hidden things as an imaginative kid?

I rose and dusted off the seat of my slacks. To hell with it. Wellens’ brains had probably been addled from being out in the sun too much. Hadn’t done Uncle Ralph’s much good, either. Not that I was in a position to criticize. Mine hadn’t been working like a computer chip lately, which made the three of us no different from the rest of the country. Everyone is a little nuts.

“Mr. Wellens, I’m going to keep my mouth shut, get as much as I can for this place, and take off for somewhere far away.”

He walked down the steps, turned, and gave me a knowing grin. “Yeah, sure you are.”

I unlocked the door and stepped thirty years into the past. Living alone, Uncle Ralph had no reason to change a thing. The furnishings, from the sofa to the curtains and the lamps in the living room, were exactly as I remembered. So were the oak table, chairs, sideboard, and china closet in the dining room, all waiting to be snapped up by an eager used-furniture dealer. He must have had Mrs. Wellens in to clean once in a while. Not a spot of dust anywhere. Another family trait.

I had no doubt that the bedrooms upstairs harbored a few antiques. I should do well on the house contents alone.

He’d redone the kitchen, though. Everything from the sink to the microwave to the tiled floor was new.

Seemed much smaller than I remembered. Then I realized why.

He’d converted most of the big, old fashioned, farmhouse kitchen, along with the walk-in pantry and house-wide back porch into a two-room apartment suitable for a bachelor. Bedroom and bath in one; den in the other.

I couldn’t help grinning. Why climb stairs if you don’t have to? Now I knew where my pragmatism came from.

A desk and pair of filing cabinets in one corner of the den served as an office. Farming, after all, was a business that required record-keeping, like any other. The recliner Wellens had mentioned stood opposite, facing a nineteen-inch television set on a stand, a VCR below it. No moss on Uncle Ralph. I couldn’t help but feel that if he’d lived a bit longer he’d have bought a computer.

I lowered myself into the recliner and leaned back, sinking into its fabric-covered softness. Easy to understand why he preferred it to his bed. The small table alongside held a reading lamp and a compact AM-FM clock radio. Used when he found nothing of interest on TV, I supposed, or to listen to farm and weather reports.

Against the wall just beyond the table was a shallow bookcase holding small magazines. Four rows of them. I straightened, stretched, and pulled out the first one.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, April 1968.

He must have continually renewed the subscription and saved every copy. Obviously he liked mysteries, yet the shelves held no novels, not even paperbacks. Now that was a mystery in itself. There were, after all, some very good ones out there.

I replaced the book, sank back into the recliner, closed my eyes, and wondered why a hardworking farmer would confine his reading to short stories. Half dozing, I came up with what might be the answer—if I assumed he and I were very much alike, which wasn’t a great assumption at all.

In the evening he could sit here and finish a short story with no difficulty even as his eyes grew heavy; all there, characters, plot, conclusion taken in one bite. With some novels he’d be up against what I’d found. Names would appear, unfamiliar until I realized the character had been introduced thirty pages and three days earlier. References to previous occurrences would make me wonder when did that happen? And sometimes my eyes would drift shut before I reached the end of a chapter or marked the page, and I’d start the next night with where the hell was I?

Half smiling, I thought that Uncle Ralph and I would have gotten along real well. Genes are genes. Our minds traveled the same roads.

And then I straightened the recliner with a crash, walked into the dining room, and crawled beneath the table.

It was big and square with a massive center pedestal, designed to take extra leaves so it could be expanded to seat eight. The leaves were stored above . the pedestal, leaving a space of about two inches where a boy could hide all sorts of good things from the eyes of grown-ups.

My secret place.

I thrust my hand into it, found smooth plastic, and pulled out a miniature tape recorder, easily slipped into a shirt pocket.

Kneeling there, I slid the small switch to Play.

The sound of a door closing, and then, “Been thinking the offer over, Ralph?”

“No thought necessary.”

“Now, Ralph, I told you we have a schedule to meet. A lot of big people, important people, are involved here and they’re getting impatient. Not like you’re being cheated or anything. I’ve been your lawyer for a long time, and I wouldn’t let them do that. You’re getting a fair price. You can go live anywhere, take it easy.”

“Something you don’t know. This hip of mine, now. Poking around in there, they found a cancer they can’t do anything about. One of the wild, fast-growing kind. I’ll be gone in six months, so there’s no reason for me to take all that money, is there? If you don’t mind, I’ll end my days here. Now, if that inconveniences your powerful friends, well, that’s the way it’s got to be. I’m not selling. Not what I want.”

“I’m sorry to hear about the cancer. Really I am. All the more reason for you to take the money. Buy you an awful lot of good care you’ll be needing.”

“Prefer to die where I was born.”

A sigh and menace in the voice. “That could happen sooner than you think.”

A chuckle. “Then you’d have to deal with my nephew. He could be more hardnosed than me.”

“C’mon, Ralph. We looked him up. Wife took off and left him broke, and he lost his job. He’ll grab the money and run.”

Absolutely correct.

“Best thing you can do for him is take the money. You’ll leave him more than he’ll get from us. He’s a loser.”

Insult me if you like, but pay me first.

“Good reason for you to back off and let me die in peace, isn’t it? Tell you what. I’ll sign if they promise to work around me.”