After Eli Read Free

him in years,” he added.
    “Well, no offense taken, friend,” Michael said. “It’s true enough, I’m a talker. Proud of it, if you twist the fact out of me. It’s the way I’ve made my way, everythin’ from readin’ Milton to little ladies on the tent Chautauqua to—”
    “What’s that?” Lester asked innocently.
    “The tent Chautauqua. It was like a travelin’ show. Music and actors doin’ plays and readin’s. Died out about ten years ago, I’d say, what with radio and the Depression. But it was somethin’ to see, Lester Caufield. Somethin’, all right. Me, I’d be readin’ from some good Irish poet, or actin’ in a play, and the ladies would be swoonin’ and the nights were lovely, they were. Not been the same since. Little left that I can find but some carnival barkin’ at the circus.”
    “Never run across it,” Lester confessed. “Only thing around here’s some revivals, and when that ain’t on, some drinkin’ done down at Pullen’s, down in town.”
    “Times change,” Michael said simply. “Maybe your friend took off on some tent circuit of his own likin’.”
    “Eli? Don’t nobody know, I reckon. He wadn’t Irish, I reckon, but he had him a streak. Tale around the hills is he come back home last time with a whole suitcase of money he stole somewheres. Hid it on that farm of his—down the road five or six miles—and then he lit out again. But that was some time ago, like I said. He ain’t come back since.”
    Michael shifted his weight, leaning forward from the doorjamb. He folded his arms around his knees and locked his right hand over his left wrist. His eyes sparkled quickly and played across Lester’s face.
    “Ah, a buried treasure, it is?” he said. His voice had the exuberance of a child’s question.
    Lester nodded and returned a child’s smile. He glanced over Michael’s shoulder through the screen door, then motioned Michael closer with his head and whispered, “Them Pettit women say it ain’t so, but ain’t nobody believes ’em. They’s been some snoopin’ around, times bein’ what they are, but ain’t nobody found nothin’. Harley Nixon tells around how he got shot at one night, thinkin’ they was gone, but them women don’t leave the place all at one time, not even goin’ to church.”
    Michael returned the whisper: “Is it a goodly sum?” he asked.
    “What they say. Ten thousand dollars, some say. Five thousand, according to others. Word is Eli took it from a bank up in Kentucky, but don’t nobody know for certain. Way he talked, he could’ve been lyin’ just for the hell of it. Eli loved to do his talkin’ and word is he told around that it was hid in his luck place. But that was the way Eli was.”
    Michael could sense a drama moving in his mind. Flashes of a house he had never seen, of faces, of secret, hidden places. His heart pumped hard against the muscles of his throat and he could feel the palms of his hands warming.
    “And the women?” asked Michael, forcing his voice low.
    “Couldn’t call ’em all women, I reckon,” replied Lester. “I ain’t seen ’em in a while, but there’s Eli’s wife—Rachel, she’s named. And there’s Sarah, the daughter. I expect she’s sixteen or seventeen now, a couple of years younger’n my Mary. Always been a little weak, like Mary.”
    “Just the two of them?”
    Lester shook his head and laughed sharply. He sipped from the whiskey, smacking and sighing as he swallowed.
    “One more,” he said. “Dora. She’s the sister to Rachel. Old maid. Tale is, she’s the one you got to watch out for. Keeps a shotgun handy and damn well knows how to use it. Besides, she’s quaint, I hear tell.”
    “Quaint?”
    Lester shrugged his shoulders. He rolled the whiskey jar in his hands and thought about his answer.
    “Well, maybe that ain’t the way to say it,” he replied. “She’s always starin’. Got a mean eye. Meaner’n Hell.” He laughed. “Reckon that’s the reason she never got