The Dreadful Revenge of Ernest Gallen Read online

  “That letter. I told you I didn’t want it written, but you ignored me, and now it’s gotten you into a lot of trouble.”

  “I didn’t write it,” I said. “You know that.”

  “But you started to. You should have listened to me in the first place.”

  I was quiet. Then I said, “Is that all you want, just to gloat at me because I got in trouble with Mom and Grampa?”

  “I’m not gloating, Gene. I’m simply trying to make the point that I often know what’s best for you. You must learn to trust me more.”

  “Trust you?” I said, still trying to keep my voice low. “Trust you? When you’ve done nothing but wreck my life? Why should I trust you?”

  Then I heard Mom’s footsteps on the stairs. In a moment the door to my room opened and Mom came in. “I brought you a sandwich and some milk,” she said.

  The hollow voice said, “We’ll discuss this sometime when you’re in a better mood.” It disappeared.

  I sat up on my bed with my feet on the floor. “I’ll come down and have lunch.” I felt calmer.

  “All right,” she said. She paused for a minute. “Who were you talking to just a moment ago?”

  I was pretty calm now. “Nobody. I was only talking to myself.”

  “It sounded as if you were having an argument with somebody.”

  “I was arguing with myself. Let’s not talk about it, Mom. I’ll come down and have lunch.”

  But I knew I’d have to talk to Sonny, so after lunch I set off for his place. He was out in the dirt yard, bouncing a tennis ball off the side of the house to practice his fielding. “Where’d you get the tennis ball?”

  “Over at the country club,” he said.

  “Where was the ball?”

  “Laying in the grass beside the courts.”

  “You’re going to get caught doing that someday,” I said. “Around the sixth time you tell them you’re looking for a job they might admire your persistence and give you one.”

  “Naw,” Sonny said. “I’ll tell ’em I’m allergic.”

  “Allergic to what?”

  “Whatever the job is. If it’s mowing the lawn I’ll say I’m allergic to grass. If it’s washing dishes in the clubhouse, I’m allergic to dishwashing soap. You can always get out of anything if you say you’re allergic.”

  “You can’t get out of homework by saying you’re allergic,” I said. “They’ll give you an F anyway.”

  “Sure you can. You can say you’re allergic to pencil lead.”

  “They’ll tell you to write with a pen,” I said.

  “Maybe I’ll tell them I’m allergic to F’s.” He shook his head and shoved the tennis ball in his pants pocket. “I’m tired of this. Let’s go down to the river and see if there’s anything floating by.”

  So we went down to the river and lay in the shade of the big willow tree, with our backs against the trunk, enjoying the river smells and the breeze coming through the willow leaves. But I wasn’t totally comfortable, because I knew I had to talk about that letter. “The Cards didn’t do so hot yesterday,” I said.

  “I didn’t see the paper,” Sonny said. “What happened?”

  Sonny’s dad had always said that everything in the paper was a bunch of lies and wouldn’t waste his money on it. They got their news from the radio, the problem being that Sonny’s mom mostly had the radio tuned to soap operas, except when the snotty little girls wanted to listen to Little Orphan Annie or Tom Mix. Sonny generally found out about the Cardinals a day late when he came across yesterday’s newspaper in a garbage can. “They got creamed.”

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “From Grampa. He gets the paper as soon as it comes out in the morning.”

  Sonny gave me a sideways look. “I stopped by your house this morning to see if you wanted to go over to the country club with me to hook tennis balls.”

  That left it up to me. I didn’t like it any, but there was no way around it. “Grampa told me. He said you asked him about that letter I was supposed to write to the paper.”

  “Yeah. What ever became of that?”

  “I couldn’t write it, Sonny.”

  He was chewing on a piece of grass and looking at me, his back still up against the trunk of the tree. “How come you couldn’t write it? You don’t have no trouble zooming along on that stuff they make us write for school.”

  “Yeah, I know, but that isn’t real; it’s just school. This was real. I started it, but I just couldn’t do it. I really tried, but the words wouldn’t come out.” It sounded kind of flat, like I hadn’t tried very hard. I wished now that I’d given a little more thought to what to tell Sonny. I should have made up some reasonable excuse, like Grampa having asked Mr. Samuels about it, and Mr. Samuels saying he didn’t want to put it in the paper. It just seemed like everywhere I turned these days I had to tell some lie.

  Sonny went on looking at me and chewing on the grass. “Why wouldn’t the words come out? All you gotta do is tell people to shut up about my dad jumping off that lumber platform. That’s all. Just tell ’em that.”

  “I know that, Sonny. I know what to say. I just couldn’t get myself to do it.”

  He looked puzzled. “What do you mean, you couldn’t get yourself to do it?”

  I hadn’t expected him to argue about it. I could see now how much it meant to him. Bad enough that his dad was kind of a no-good. “Maybe I could try again,” I said. That was just to stop him from arguing about it; I knew it wouldn’t work.

  He flung the chewed grass away and frowned down at the ground. “I don’t get how you couldn’t make yourself do it, Yewgene.”

  “I just couldn’t.”

  “Why couldn’t you?”

  I was beginning to lose my temper. “I just couldn’t. Why can’t you leave it alone, Sonny?”

  “Because you promised, Yewgene.”

  “Okay!” I shouted. “I promised. I couldn’t do it.”

  “That isn’t much of a promise.”

  I knelt away from the willow trunk. “All right, I’ll tell you why, Sonny!” I shouted. “You know that voice your dad was hearing? It’s inside me, too.”

  He knelt and stared at me. “You got that voice, too, Gene?” he said in a wondering tone.

  “Yes, I have.” I was feeling pretty shaky, which surprised me, because I hadn’t realized how worked up I was. But it was a relief to have gotten it out to somebody, instead of carrying it around all by myself. “It came on last week out of the blue. I don’t know why it picked me out. Something to do with Grampa—it said he’d done something real bad a while back. It won’t tell me what—said I had to find out for myself, otherwise I wouldn’t believe it. I hate it, Sonny. But I can’t stop it.”

  Sonny went on staring at me, like I had suddenly turned into a troll or a witch or something. “That’s what Dad said. He begged the voice to go away and leave him alone, but it wouldn’t. There was no way to stop it.”

  “Did your dad say it was there all the time, or came and went?”

  He was still staring at me like I’d become a magical creature. “Came and went,” Sonny said. “Leave him alone for two or three days so’s Dad would think it’d gone for good; and then here it comes again.”

  “Just like me. I wish I’d known your dad was having the voice, too. I would have felt a lot better talking to somebody about it. Maybe we could have figured out what to do.” For the first time in my life I felt kind of friendly toward Sonny’s dad.

  Sonny plucked another piece of grass and began chewing on it. “Does the voice tell you to do dangerous things—dive in front of a car or jump out a window?”

  We were still both kneeling, facing each other. “No. Nothing dangerous. I don’t think it’s trying to get me the way it was trying to get your dad.”

  “That’s different, then. The voice was out to get my dad, and finally it did.” He didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he said, “You want to know the truth, Gene? I’m blame glad I found this out. To
be honest, I wasn’t always sure myself that Dad was telling the truth about it. It was hard to believe he was hearing a voice. Sometimes I figured he must be nuts. But then I’d realize that there wasn’t anything nuts about him in any other way. Same old person he always was. Not much use to us, but no different from how he’d been before. I couldn’t decide one way or the other. It’s kind of a relief to find out you got the voice, too.”

  “Not to me it isn’t, Sonny.”

  “No, no, Gene,” he said. “I wouldn’t wish it on you. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But I’m glad to find out.” He gave me a glance. “At least the voice isn’t out to get you.”

  “At least that,” I said. “It wants me to get Grampa. I figure the voice can’t actually do anything itself. It has to get people to do things for it. Like that letter I was supposed to write for you—it couldn’t stop me from doing it, but it could make me not want to write it.”

  “It can make you want to do bad things?”

  “I think so. I think that’s the size of it.”

  Sonny didn’t say anything for a while, and I know he was thinking about his dad walking off that lumber platform into midair. “What are you going to do, Gene?”

  “I don’t know. I wish I did. The only thing I can think of is to find out what Grampa did that was supposed to be so bad.”

  We decided to quit talking about the voice. We played catch for a while and then I went on home. Anyway, it was a relief to have somebody to talk with. It wasn’t going to put an end to it, but it helped some.

  On Monday after school Sam and I went over to the Chronicle office to have another whack at those newspapers. I could have done it by myself, but it went twice as fast with two of us. Anyway, I was glad to have the company. For that matter, Sam wasn’t going to be left out. Her curiosity wouldn’t let her.

  We were going along toward the middle of 1925 when Sam said, “Here’s something about that old Toffey house where you used to pick blueberries.”

  “And raspberries. They weren’t as good as blueberries for pie, but they were mighty good in a bowl with cream. What’s the story say?”

  “Not much.” She handed me the paper.

  Oil in Hardscrabble County?

  The historic Toffey farm, one of the oldest farmhouses still standing in Hardscrabble County, may have oil deposits underneath it. At least that is the opinion of oil geologists, according to Mr. Ernest Gallen, who recently purchased the two-hundred-acre Toffey property. Says Gallen, “Geologists from the Oil Institute of America whom I have consulted say that there are undoubtedly substantial oil deposits in the region west of St. Louis. The composition of the geological strata here is similar to that of the Oklahoma oil field to the southwest.” Gallen says that a report on the potential for oil on the Toffey property is being prepared. He adds that several well-known figures, whom he cannot name at this time, are interested in developing this promising oil field.

  That was all. “Nobody ever found oil out there so far as I know,” I said. “I was berrying up there until I was seven years old, when the Depression hit and we had to move. I never saw anything up there but berry bushes and that old house staring at me with its dark, empty eyes.”

  “If there’d been oil around here we’d all be rich,” Sam said. “Nobody’s rich in Magnolia.”

  I handed her back the paper, and we went on turning pages amid that musty paper smell. Then I hit another one that stopped me.

  Oil Under Toffey Farm, Investor Says There are likely to be deposits of oil under the historic Toffey farm, recently bought by Mr. Ernest Gallen of Chicago. According to Gallen, preliminary reports of an investigation made for him by geologists with the Oil Institute of America indicate that there may be a substantial amount of oil in the ground beneath the Toffey farm and the surrounding area. Gallen says that he intends to make the report available to the public when it is completed. When that will be Gallen was not sure. “We have got to be confident that we have our facts buttoned down before we issue the report,” he said.

  There was some stuff about the history of the old farm—how one of the Toffeys had got scalped by Indians a hundred years ago or something. That was all.

  “What’s this got to do with your grampa?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just have a feeling that it does. I can’t tell you why.”

  “I think you’re wasting your time over it. Let’s forget about it. I want to find out what your grampa did that was so bad.”

  Once again we began turning pages. We didn’t find anything. It was getting on toward suppertime, and we were getting bored with the whole thing. There weren’t even any stories about pigs loose in church or farmers hit by lightning—just school board meetings and stores going out of business, which was pretty common since hard times came. “Let’s quit,” Sam said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let me finish this last paper.” I turned the page and there was another story about the old Toffey place. I took a quick look at it, and then I stopped. “Sam,” I said. My skin felt prickly and my heart began to gallop.

  “What?”

  I felt strange, as if I’d been shifted out of myself and into somebody else. My heart was plowing along, and I was feeling cold. “Listen. The Toffey farm again.” I began to read. “‘Ernest Gallen, who is attempting to develop oil resources under the historic Toffey farm, which he recently purchased, has announced that he has taken a partner in the venture. He is a local man, Mr. Thomas Richards. Mr. Richards is married to the daughter of Judge John Wesley Adamson, a prominent figure in this area.’”

  “Thomas Richards?” Sam said.

  I shook myself to get off the chill. “That’s my dad.”

  Chapter 6

  Sam stared at me. “Are you sure it’s your dad, Gene?”

  “Thomas Richards. Tommy, everybody called him. How many Tommy Richards could there be around here? Besides, it said he was married to Judge Adamson’s daughter. That’s Mom.”

  She thought about it for a minute, trying to find another explanation. “Well, maybe your grampa had another daughter. This guy would be your uncle.”

  “Come on, Sam. Grampa had two daughters and they both married guys named Thomas Richards? Don’t be so suspicious all the time.”

  “I’m not being suspicious, blame you, Gene. I just want to be sure of the facts. You never talk about your dad. How am I supposed to know?”

  It was true: I never talked much about him. There wasn’t much for me to say, for I could hardly remember him. He left when I was around two. But I thought about him sometimes. Maybe more than just sometimes. Wondered where he was, what he was doing. What did he look like? Was he tall, good-looking, have a mustache? What kind of person was he? Jolly, talkative, liked to tell jokes? Or more the quiet type who didn’t say much, but was likely to be right when he did say something? Sometimes in my imagination I’d be sitting at home by myself, and there’d come a knock at the door. I’d go to see who it was. There’d be a man standing there—tall, dressed in a fine suit, and behind him, parked on the street, a big Cadillac. “Hello,” he’d say. “You must be Eugene. I’m your dad. Come on, I’ll take you for a ride in my Caddy.”

  Or a letter would come in the mail for me, saying that he was living in Chicago, had been struggling for a while, which was why he’d never written before, but now he had landed on his feet, had a big apartment with a view of the lake, and wanted me to come and visit him. There’d be a train ticket in the letter, and ten dollars for dinner in the dining car and a cab to his apartment.

  I never got any further than that in my imagination. I couldn’t go any further, because he was the main part of the story and he was just a blank, a hole in the middle of the story. So I said to Sam, “I don’t talk about him because there isn’t anything to say.”

  “Doesn’t your mom ever talk about him?”

  “No. She doesn’t want the subject brought up. She says, ‘That’s something best forgotten about, Gene. When you’re older we can talk a
bout it.’”

  “It sounds to me like he was the one who did something bad, not your grampa.”

  “Why do you think that?” I said. “I don’t think that. You don’t know anything about him.”

  “Well, why won’t your mom talk about him, then?”

  I didn’t want to hear anything bad about my dad, even though I didn’t know him, wouldn’t even recognize him if I saw him. “He didn’t have to do anything bad. She just doesn’t want to talk about him.”

  “All right,” she said. “Maybe he didn’t do anything bad. But I can see where he ties into this somehow. This oil guy, Gallen—it sounds like a swindle to me. Doesn’t it to you, Gene? If there’d really ever been any oil at the Toffey place they’d have found it long ago, wouldn’t they?”

  She was chasing after the mystery again. I didn’t much like the idea that my dad had been in on a swindle. “Maybe it wasn’t a swindle. Maybe back then they had some reason to believe there was oil there.”

  Sam nodded. “That could be. But it still sounds like a swindle to me.” She looked at her watch. “I’ve got to go. It’s almost suppertime.”

  We could see that we were beginning to get somewhere in unraveling the mystery. We hadn’t really found anything, but we were at least going in the right direction. Something had happened back then, something having to do with oil, the old Toffey place, and my dad. It was going to lead to Grampa.

  We agreed that we’d start in on the papers again the next afternoon, and left. I walked with Sam as far as her house, and then I headed home along East Main Street. The sun was going down behind the tall elms along the road, so that pieces of light tumbled down through the branches and fell onto the road. It was a nice afternoon, but I didn’t much notice it, for I was still thinking about my dad.

  Why had he gone away? I’d always wondered if it had been because of me—something I’d done. Or maybe nothing I’d done—he just didn’t like having a kid around. I knew that some grown-ups didn’t like kids. Old Mrs. Marbury, who lived on the corner, was always shouting at kids for cutting across her lawn, or horsing around on the sidewalk in front of her house, or even whistling as they walked by. She just didn’t like kids. Maybe my dad didn’t like kids, and went away because of me. I hoped that wasn’t so; I hoped he remembered me and wished he could visit me and take me out to the Cardinals game sometime, but couldn’t because of some good reason he had.