Evil Grows & Other Thrilling Tales Page 9

  “You will if there’s any justice. How’s that pretty granddaughter of yours, by the way?”

  The Tree on Execution Hill

  It seemed as if everybody in Good Advice had turned out for the meeting that night in the town hall. Every seat was taken, and the dark oaken rafters hewn and fit in place by the ancestors of a good share of those present resounded with a steady hum of conversation while the broad pine planks that made up the floor creaked beneath the tread of many feet.

  Up in front, his plaid jacket thrown back to expose a generous paunch, Carl Lathrop, the town’s leading storekeeper and senior member of the council, stood talking with Birdie Flatt from the switchboard. His glasses flashed a Morse code in the bright overhead lights as he settled and resettled them on his fleshy nose. I recognized the gesture from the numerous interviews I had conducted with him as a sign that he was feeling very satisfied with himself, and so I knew what was coming long before most of my neighbors suspected it.

  I was something of a freak in the eyes of the citizenry of Good Advice, New Mexico. This was partly because I had been the first person to settle in the area since before 1951, when the aircraft plant had moved on to greener pastures, and partly because, at 42, I was at least ten years younger than anyone else in town. Most people supposed I stayed on out of despair after my wife Sylvia left me to return to civilization, but that wasn’t strictly true. We’d originally planned to lay over for a week or two while I collected information for my book and then move on. But then the owner of the town newspaper had died and the paper was put up for sale, and I bought it with the money we’d saved up for the trip. It had been an act of impulse, perhaps a foolish one—certainly it had seemed so to my wife, who had no intention of living so far away from her beloved beauty parlors—but my chief fear in life had always been that I’d miss the big opportunity when it came along. So now I had a newspaper but no Sylvia, which, all things considered, seemed like a pretty fair trade.

  The buzz of voices died out as Lathrop took his place behind the lectern. I flipped open my notebook and sat with pencil poised to capture any pearls of wisdom he might have been about to drop.

  “We all know why we’re here, so we’ll dispense with the long-winded introductions.” A murmur of approval rippled through the audience. “You’ve all heard the rumor that the state may build a superhighway near Good Advice,” he went on. “Well, it’s my pleasant duty to announce that it’s no longer a rumor.”

  Cheers and applause greeted this statement, and it was some minutes before the room grew quiet enough for Lathrop to continue.

  “Getting information out of these government fellows is like pulling teeth,” he said. “But after about a dozen phone calls to the capital, I finally got hold of the head of the contracting firm that’s going to do the job. He told me they plan to start building sometime next fall.” He waited until the fresh applause faded, then went on. “Now, this doesn’t mean that Good Advice is going to become another Tombstone overnight. When those tourists come streaming in here, we’re going to have to be ready for them. That means rezoning for tourist facilities, fixing up our historic landmarks, and so on.

  The reason we called this meeting is to decide on ways to make this town appealing to visitors. The floor is open to suggestions.”

  I spent the next twenty minutes jotting down some of the ideas that came from the enthusiastic citizens. Birdie Flatt was first, with a suggestion that the telephone service be updated, but others disagreed, maintaining that the old upright phones and wall installations found in many of the downtown shops added to the charm of the town. “Uncle Ned” Scoffield, at 97 Good Advice’s oldest resident, offered to clean out and fix up the old trading post at the end of Main Street in return for permission to sell his wood carvings and his collection of hand-woven Navajo rugs. Carl Lathrop pledged to turn the old jail, which he had been using as a storeroom, into a tourist attraction. The fact that outlaw Ford Harper had spent his last days there before his hanging, he said, could only add to its popularity. Then, amidst a chorus of groans from scattered parts of the room, Avery Sharecross stood up.

  Sharecross was a spindly scarecrow of a man, with an unkempt mane of lusterless black hair spilling over the collar of his frayed sweater and a permanent stoop that made him appear much older than he was. Nobody in town could say how he made his living. Certainly not from the bookstore he had been operating on the corner of Main and Maple for thirty years; there were never any more than two customers in the store at a time, and the prices he charged were so ridiculously low that it was difficult to believe that he managed to break even, let alone show a profit. Everyone was aware of the monthly pension he received from an address in Santa Fe, but no one knew how much it was or why he got it. His bowed shoulders and shuffling gait, the myopia that forced him to squint through the thick lenses of his eyeglasses, the hollows in his pale cheeks were as much a part of the permanent scenery in Good Advice as the burned-out shell of the old flour mill north of town. I closed my notebook and put away my pencil, knowing what he was going to talk about before he opened his mouth. It was all he ever talked about.

  Lathrop sighed. “What is it, Avery? As if I didn’t know.” He rested his chin on one pudgy hand, bracing himself for the ordeal.

  “Mr. Chairman, I have a petition.” The old bookseller rustled the well-thumbed sheaf of papers he held in one talonlike hand. “I have twenty-six signatures demanding that the citizens of Good Advice vote on whether the tree on Execution Hill be removed.”

  There was an excited buzz among the spectators. I sat bolt upright in my chair, flipping my notebook back open. How had the old geezer got twenty-five people to agree with him?

  For 125 years the tree in question had dominated the high-domed hill two miles outside of town, its skeletal limbs stretching naked against the sky. Of the eighteen trials that had been held in the town hail during the last century, eleven of those tried had ended up swinging from the tree’s stoutest limb. It was a favorite spot of mine, an excellent place to sit and meditate. Avery Sharecross, for reasons known only to himself, had been trying to get the council to destroy it for five years. This was the first time he had not stood alone.

  Lathrop cleared his throat loudly, probably to cover up his own astonishment. “Now, Avery, you know as well as I do that it takes fifty-five signatures on a petition to raise a vote. You’ve read the charter.”

  Sharecross was unperturbed. “When that charter was drafted, Mr. Chairman, this town boasted a population of over fourteen hundred. In the light of our present count, I believe that provision can be waived.” He struck the pages with his fingertips. “These signatures represent nearly one-tenth of the local voting public. They have a right to be heard.”

  “How come you’re so fired up to see that tree reduced to kindling, anyway? What’s the difference to your?”

  “That tree”—Sharecross flung a scrawny arm in the direction of the nearest window —“represents a time in this town’s history when lynch law reigned and pompous hypocrites sentenced their peers to death regardless of their innocence or guilt.” His cheeks were flushed now, his eyes ablaze behind the bottle-glass spectacles. “That snarl of dead limbs has been a blemish on the smooth face of this community for over a hundred years, and it’s about time we got rid of it.”

  It was an impressive performance, and he sounded sincere, but I wasn’t buying it. Good Advice, after all, had not been my first exposure to journalism. After you’ve been in this business awhile, you get a feeling for when someone is telling the truth, and Sharecross wasn’t. Whatever reasons he had for wishing to destroy the town’s oldest landmark, they had nothing to do with any sense of injustice. Of that I was certain.

  Lathrop sighed. “All right, Avery, let’s see your petition. If the signatures check out, we’ll vote.” Once the papers were in his hands, Lathrop called the other members of the town council around him to look them over. Finally he motioned them back to their seats and turned back toward the lecte
rn. For the next half hour he read off the names on the petition—many of which surprised me, for they included some of the town’s leading citizens—to make sure the signatures were genuine. Every one of those mentioned spoke up to assure him that they were. At length the storekeeper laid the pages down.

  “Before we vote,” he said, “the floor is open to dissenting opinions.—Mr. Macklin?”

  My hand had gone up before he finished speaking. I got to my feet, conscious of all the eyes upon me.

  “No one is arguing what Mr. Sharecross said about the injustices done in the past,” I began haltingly. “But tearing down something that’s a large part of our history won’t change anything.” I paused, searching for words. I was a lot more eloquent behind a typewriter. “Mr. Sharecross says the tree reminds us of the sordid past. I think that’s as it should be. A nagging reminder of a time when we weren’t so noble is a healthy thing to have in our midst. I wouldn’t want to live in a society that kicked its mistakes under the rug.”

  The words were coming easier now. “There’s been a lot of talk here tonight about promoting tourist trade. Well, destroying a spot where eleven infamous badmen met their reward is one sure way of aborting any claims we might have had upon shutter-happy visitors.” I shook my head emphatically, a gesture left over from my college debating-club days. “History is too precious for us to turn our backs on it, for whatever reason. Sharecross and his sympathizers would do well to realize that our true course calls for us to turn our gaze forward and forget about rewriting the past.”

  There was some applause as I sat down, but it died out when Sharecross seized the floor again. “I’m not a Philistine, Mr. Chairman,” he said calmly. “Subject to the will of the council, I hereby pledge the sum of five thousand dollars for the erection of a statue of Enoch Howard, Good Advice’s founder, atop Execution Hill once the tree has been removed. I, too, have some feeling for history.” His eyes slid in my direction.

  That was dirty pool, I thought as he took his seat amid thunderous cheering from those present. In one way or another, Enoch Howard’s blood flowed in the veins of over a third of the population of Good Advice. Now I knew how he had obtained those signatures. But why? What did he hope to gain?

  “What about expense?” someone said.

  “No problem,” countered Sharecross, on his feet again. “Floyd Kramer there has offered to bulldoze down the tree and cart it away at cost.”

  “That true, Floyd?” Lathrop asked.

  A heavy-jowled man in a blue work shirt buttoned to the neck gave him the high sign from his standing position near the door.

  I shot out of my chair again, but this time my eyes were directed upon my skeletal opponent and not the crowd. “I’ve fought you in print and on the floor of the town hail over this issue,” I told him, “and if necessary I’ll keep on fighting you right to the top of Execution Hill. I don’t care how many statues you pull out of your hat; you won’t get away with whatever it is you’re trying to do.”

  The old bookseller made no reply. His eyes were blank behind his spectacles. I sat back down.

  I could see that Lathrop’s attitude had changed, for he had again taken to raising and lowering his eyeglasses confidently upon the bridge of his nose. Enoch Howard was his great-grandfather on his mother’s side. “Now we’ll vote,” he said. “All those in favor of removing the tree on Execution Hill to make room for a statue of Enoch Howard signify by saying aye.”

  Rain was hissing on the grass when I parked my battered pickup truck at the bottom of the hill and got out to fetch the shovel out of the back. It was a long climb to the top and I was out of shape, but I didn’t want to risk leaving telltale ruts behind by driving up the slope. Halfway up my feet began to feel like lead and the blood was pounding in my ears like a pneumatic hammer; by the time I found myself at the base of the deformed tree I had barely enough energy left to find the spot I wanted and begin digging. It was dark, and the soil was soaked just enough so that each time I took out a shovelful the hole filled up again, with the result that it was ten minutes before I made any progress at all. After half an hour I stopped to rest. That’s when all the lights came on and turned night into day.

  The headlights of half a dozen automobiles were trained full upon me. For a fraction of a second I stood unmoving, frozen with shock. Then I hurled the shovel like a javelin at the nearest light and started to run. The first step I took landed in the hole. I fell headlong to the ground, emptying my lungs and twisting my ankle painfully. When I looked up, I was surrounded by people.

  “I’ve waited five years for this.” The voice belonged to Avery Sharecross.

  “How did you know?” I said when I found my breath.

  “I never did. Not for sure.” Sharecross was standing over me now, an avenging angel wearing a threadbare coat and scarf. “I once heard that you spent all the money you had on the newspaper. If that was true, I wondered what your wife used for bus fare back to Santa Fe when she left you. Everyone knew you argued with her bitterly over your decision to stay. That you lost control and murdered her seemed obvious to me.

  “I decided you buried her at the foot of the hanging tree, which was the reason you spent more time here than anyone else. The odds weren’t in favor of my obtaining permission to dig up the hill because of mere supposition, so it became necessary to catch you in the act of unearthing her yourself. That’s when I got the idea to propose removing the tree and force you to find someplace else to dispose of the body.”

  He turned to a tall man whose Stetson glistened wetly in the unnatural illumination of the headlights at his back. ‘Sheriff, if your men will resume digging where Mr. Macklin left off, it’s my guess you’ll find the corpse of Sylvia Macklin before morning. I retired from the Santa Fe Police Department long before they felt the need to teach us anything about reading rights to those we arrested, so perhaps you’ll oblige.”

  LOCK, STOCK, AND CASKET

  People who didn’t know that Umberto Fugurello was a great artist tended to mistake him for a comical old man. Outside his shop, his was a rheumatic figure smaller than the average in a tight black coat buttoned only at the neck and a gray homburg perched atop wild gray hair like an egg in a nest. Below that were gold-rimmed spectacles, a tight, lipless mouth, and a chin that usually wore a Band-aid to remind him that one can get only so many shaves out of a razor before it becomes a lethal weapon.

  In the shop, he was a professional in leather apron and shirt-sleeves, the latter rolled up past corded forearms ending in large hands cracked and discolored by the many stains and acids with which he worked. The walls and benches twinkled with mallets, chisels, miters, and wood augers of spotless nickel steel, no two of which were designed for the same purpose. Their handles were worn to fit the contours of Umberto’s calloused fingers and no one else’s.

  Umberto Fugurello made caskets. So had every previous male Fugurello back to Great-Great-Grandfather Filberto Gugliamo, who crafted the final resting place of Catherine de Medici. Since then, many another famous figure had gone to his reward in vessels fashioned by the Stradivari of caskets, and Umberto, had he been a boastful man, could point with pride to mausoleums and family vaults throughout both hemispheres in which resided the evidence, but it was generally agreed within the closed ranks of the world’s casket makers that Umberto was the best of his line. Who could forget the Egyptian-style sarcophagus he had designed for the eminent archaeologist Professor Simon Broderick, dead of a hitherto unknown Middle Eastern strain of venereal disease, or the gold inlays around the lid of the box in which Dirk Crandall, the motion picture star, was buried after his wife caught him rehearsing a love scene from his new movie with a studio switchboard operator, or the lion motif Umberto had created for famed animal tamer Hugo von Rasmussen following that tragic episode involving a young Siberian tiger the performer had mistaken for an aging Bengal? There was also the double-decked piece he had built on commission for a local Syndicate chief, but that was known only to Umberto himself
, and he was not one to boast.

  In any case, past triumphs meant nothing to him. He lived in the present. And why not, in view of the fact that he was working on his masterpiece?

  It lay across two sawhorses in the back room of the shop, a lozenge-shaped construction without a nail or a corner Or a sharp edge anywhere. The handles were solid gold, the lining deep blue satin. The crowning touch - the Fugurello family crest, a hammer in a mailed fist framed in casket shape - was assuming definition even now at the point of Umberto’s chisel. It surpassed all his earlier achievements, and certainly nothing would ever rival it in the future. For this was to be his own casket.

  The imminence of death hardly saddened him. He was 78 after all, and more aware than most that no one lived forever. His only regret was that he would be unable to observe the reaction to his last and greatest work when it was unveiled at his funeral. He was lamenting this necessary disappointment when the little bell mounted on the front door of the shop announced a visitor.

  “Uncle Umberto?” called a familiar voice.

  The old man drew a tarpaulin over the casket just as his nephew, the mortician, entered through the curtain that separated the two rooms. The visitor was tall and thin - one was tempted to say “cadaverous” - and wore his dark hair fashionably long. Recent cosmetic surgery on his nose had left him with average features dominated by icy blue eyes that matched his suit.

  “Good morning, Antonio.”

  “Tony.” Something like annoyance edged the young man’s cool tone. “Tony Farrell. I had it changed, remember?”

  “Who could forget?” The decision to forsake the honored family name had possibly contributed to the early demise of Antonio’s father, brother of Umberto. “What brings you to my shop on a Saturday morning?”

  “You mean my shop.”

  His uncle said nothing. That had been a great mistake, his deeding the property over to his brother’s son on the occasion of his birth. Umberto had not touched wine since that night.