The Hayloft: a 1950s Mystery Read online

  The announcer was saying that Mr. Doran had been fired from his job as chief editorial writer at the Buffalo Express, apparently because of his communist sympathies, although the paper denied that was the reason. He went on to talk about Mr. Doran’s testimony before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee.

  I hadn’t thought about Sylvia and her father since my father had told me what was going to happen. I had been too wrapped up in thinking about Ralph and my theory regarding his demise that Ed had shot down. And my father hadn’t made Mr. Doran’s firing sound imminent. He must have been fired over the weekend. Somehow, the news services got hold of it. Bad news travels fast.

  “The Dorans live in Carter,” Uncle Jeff said while chipping with a small silver spoon at the shell of the soft-boiled egg he ate every morning in a silver eggcup.

  “Their daughter, Sylvia, goes to Carter High,” I said.

  “This is going to be hard on her. Communism is the current panic. Some folks see communists under every rug.”

  “And in some cases, the communists are there,” Aunt Dorothy said, taking toast out of the toaster. “I don’t want someone who is anti-American writing editorials for my newspaper.”

  Uncle Jeff looked as if he were going to say something, but he took a bite of egg instead. I excused myself and went to get ready for school. I had better get there early and see if Sylvia was okay.

  ***

  I opened my locker to take out the books I needed for my morning classes. A loose piece of paper fell out. I picked it up off the floor and saw that it was folded into quarters. I didn’t remember placing it in my locker, so I jammed in into my pocket. I dumped the books in my cafeteria homeroom and went up the stairs to Sylvia’s homeroom. Only a handful of students were there. Sylvia wasn’t among them. Natalie and her quarterback were standing by the windows. She was running her hands over the front of his sweater, as if he were a girl and she were feeling him up.

  I walked toward them and asked, “Is Sylvia in yet?”

  They turned to look at me. Natalie screwed up her beautiful face into a look of hatred and said, “If she’s smart, she’ll never set foot in this school again.”

  I stared at her, speechless.

  When I couldn’t get anything out of my mouth, Natalie said, “Did you hear what happened to her father?”

  I nodded, still unable to speak.

  “He got what he deserved,” she said. “Commie bastard.”

  “But Sylvia didn’t do anything,” I managed to blurt out.

  “We don’t want any communists around this school.”

  I looked at Joe. Although known even less than Natalie for his intellectual brilliance, he was nodding in agreement with her. I stumbled out of the room and went to stand by the entrance to the school used by students who drove their own cars. I waited in vain as the few students who drove came drifting through the doorway, but no Sylvia. At two minutes before the bell, I went back to the cafeteria.

  As our homeroom teacher went through the ritual of taking attendance and reading messages from Dr. Graves and others, I happened to stick my hand in my pocket, and felt the piece of paper I had placed there earlier. I pulled it out and unfolded it. It was white bond paper and the following was typed on it:

  “A nosy young fellow named Gary

  Looked into some things that were scary.

  The death of his coz

  Is the story that was,

  But if he persists he’ll be very

  S O R R Y”

  I read it again, not believing what I was seeing. The bell rang for first period. I slid it back into my pocket and headed for class, wondering if this was some kind of a joke. And then I forgot about it as something else captured my attention.

  The school was buzzing about Sylvia and her father. And the buzz seemed to be overwhelmingly negative. How could she go from being the most popular girl in the school to this in one day? I wanted to yell at these people and tell them how stupid they were to be led around blindly by a junior senator from Wisconsin and his gang of thugs.

  But I was too cowardly. I kept quiet and wondered what I could do to help her. I didn’t have any classes with her, but we did have the same lunch. By the time I went through the lunch line, I was boiling inside. When I gave my twenty-seven cents to Dolores, my hand accidentally brushed against the bulge in her sweater, fulfilling my fantasy. Or was it accidental? We made eye contact for a moment, and then she went on to the next person in line. For some reason, this made me feel a little better.

  I walked into the cafeteria as the jukebox played “Kiss of Fire,” sung by Georgia Gibbs, who was being burned and turned into ashes by her lover’s kiss. A quick glance around convinced me that Sylvia wasn’t here. Her blond hair made her easy to spot. I saw Barney the brain sitting by himself and slid onto the bench across the table from him, facing the lunch line, so that if Sylvia did show up, I could spot her. We greeted each other, briefly, and then were silent for a few minutes while we shoveled the cafeteria slop into our mouths.

  Near us, at the same table, several boys were talking about communists in general and Sylvia in particular. It wasn’t complimentary.

  I glanced at Barney. He looked at them in disgust and said, “Animals.”

  I figured he knew more about what was going on than I did. I said, “What’s happening here?”

  “It’s the mob effect. When there’s danger, it’s safer to be a faceless face in the crowd. Don’t raise your head or it may be cut off.”

  “So everyone’s scared?”

  “Sure. Look what happened to Mr. Doran.”

  “Do you think he deserved it?”

  “I read the article in this morning’s paper.”

  That was more than I had done. “They put in an article about how they fired him?”

  “The article didn’t even mention that. It just talked about his testimony. He testified that when he was in college, he was idealistic, and he joined this communist group, because he thought it was the answer to the world’s problems. When he found out what Communism was really all about—enslaving people and killing them, he quit. They asked him to implicate others who they claim were in the same group. He took the fifth. I think that’s what got him fired.”

  “Because he wouldn’t incriminate his friends.”

  “Right. It looks to me as if those guys in Washington are trampling on the constitution.”

  “And his own newspaper is, too.”

  “Newspapers rave about the importance of free speech. I’d like to see how they explain what they did to Mr. Doran.”

  ***

  Sylvia lived on Main Street in the village of Carter, an unincorporated center of population within the town of Carter. The high school was a couple of miles west of there, also on Main Street. I drove past Sylvia’s house each day on the way to and from school. I had never actually looked at her house before, and in fact, I didn’t know exactly which one it was, so I got the number out of a telephone book before I left the school that afternoon.

  I knew the house was located on the slant where Main Street came down a hill into the village center. I coasted halfway down the hill and stopped the car at the edge of the road. Sylvia’s house was across the street, one of several that sat on the hillside under large maple trees whose broad leaves were in the process of dressing for autumn.

  By checking numbers, I spotted the house—a two-story, brown, clapboard affair that must have been forty or fifty years old. Typical small-town America. Still, it wasn’t as old as the farmhouse, which had been built in the 1870s.

  I sat in the car for a while, staring at the house. What was I doing here? Shouldn’t I stay out of this? Let Sylvia fight her own battles. Yeah, but she had been nice to me and she was being treated unfairly by the students. I wouldn’t get many points for being her friend. But what did I care? I had already decided that I wasn’t here to win any popularity contests.

  A couple of times I almost started the car and drove away. But I couldn’t do it
. Finally, I took the keys out of the ignition, opened the door, and got out. I waited for a break in the light afternoon traffic and ran across the street. I went up several steps to the front door of the house and stopped. My doubts returned. What was I going to say to Sylvia?

  I didn’t know any words that seemed adequate. What could I do to help her? This miscarriage of justice was much bigger than I was. And then I remembered that my father had told me to stay away from Sylvia. By seeing her, I would be disobeying a direct order. And I was usually obedient to my parents, in spite of the trouble I had caused.

  But when I tried to walk away, I found again that I couldn’t. I couldn’t ring the doorbell, and I couldn’t leave. I stood there for what seemed like several minutes, nervously transferring my weight from one foot to the other, until I started to feel conspicuous. In spite of the fact that nobody had gone by on the sidewalk, and the people in cars probably didn’t even see me, or if they did, it was only for a split second.

  Well, Blanchard, shit or get off the pot. My finger lunged at the doorbell, and I heard it ring inside. Now I really wanted to run, but it was too late. There was nowhere to hide. The door had a translucent window on it, and I could make out an image through it as somebody approached. Somebody who looked bigger than Sylvia.

  I wasn’t prepared for this. The door opened, and a man—obviously Mr. Doran—appeared. I should have known he’d be here. After all, he didn’t have a job to go to. He was thin—almost gaunt—but not tall. His light hair was sparse, and he had a haunted expression on his face—or at least it seemed like that to me.

  An involuntary shudder went through me, as if I were face-to-face with a criminal. That reaction angered me. I got a grip on myself and said, “I need to talk to Sylvia.” I immediately realized how childish this was—making a demand before even introducing myself. I was about to say something more when Mr. Doran spoke.

  “Sylvia doesn’t want to talk to anybody.”

  He said it in a firm but not harsh voice and immediately started closing the door.

  “Wait,” I said in desperation. “I just want to tell you how sorry I am about what happened. What you did was very courageous.”

  Mr. Doran hesitated with the door half shut and looked at me. “Thank-you,” he said, softly.

  “My name is Gary Blanchard, and I just moved to Carter, but Sylvia has been kind to me,” I said, speaking quickly.

  “Gary Blanchard? Sylvia mentioned you. She said you helped her and one of her friends. Natalie, I believe.”

  At the mention of Natalie’s name, the sour taste came into my mouth—the taste you get just before you vomit.

  “Just a minute,” Mr. Doran said.

  He left the door ajar and walked away. I heard him calling Sylvia’s name. Then I could make out a few words of his end of a conversation that he was carrying on in a subdued shout. It sounded as if he were arguing. Then I heard his footsteps returning.

  He opened the door wide and said, “Sylvia is upstairs in her room. Go on up.”

  I thanked him and headed for the staircase down the hall that made a right-angle turn partway up. A sturdy wooden banister finished in dark wood protected the side away from the wall, which was wallpapered in a flower pattern. It dawned on me that I was being granted a rare privilege. It wasn’t often that parents let teenagers of the opposite sex be alone together in a bedroom.

  As I stepped on the top landing, Sylvia came out of a room at the front of the house. She was dressed in pedal pushers and an old white shirt, not tucked in, that was too big for her. It was the first time I had seen her not wearing a skirt or dress. Her eyes were red, and her short hair was not brushed.

  We said tentative hi’s, and she nodded over her shoulder toward the room behind her. I followed her inside, and she shut the door.

  “Sorry it’s such a mess,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting a visitor.”

  My first impulse was to tell her that this was nothing compared to my room, but I was actually a fairly neat person and had been even neater since I had been a guest. There were a few clothes and books scattered around, but at least her bed was made. There was a picture of her and a boy in a cardboard frame on the dresser. A book was open, upside down, on the bed. Several stuffed animals inhabited a corner. I smiled and shrugged.

  “Sit here,” she said, scooping some undergarments off a wooden rocking chair and stuffing them into a dresser drawer in such a way that I didn’t get a good look at them.

  I sat down in the chair. Sylvia more or less fell onto the bed and bounced.

  She said, “I saw you cross the street.”

  Her window faced the street and was low enough so that she could see across it while sitting on the bed. White lace curtains prevented outsiders from looking in.

  “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  “At first, I didn’t want to see you. I hoped you’d go. Then, when you didn’t ring the bell right away, I was afraid that you would go. I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Thanks.” There was an awkward pause. “So, are you okay?”

  “Better than Dad. He’s taking it hard. It’s a good thing I was home today to be with him. Mother’s a nurse, and she just started a new job today.”

  “Are you going back to school tomorrow?”

  Sylvia looked out the window for a few seconds. “My mother needs a car for work, so I have to start taking the bus again. And do you know what’s funny? I can’t picture myself getting on the bus. I’m one of the last ones—it’s standing room only when I get on. All those kids will be staring at me—and talking. They are talking about me, aren’t they?”

  I wasn’t going to lie to her. I said, “They’re fools—scared fools.”

  “But they’re my friends. And have been—in some cases for twelve years.”

  “That doesn’t give them the right to talk about you behind your back.”

  “That’s what people do, Gary. That’s human nature.”

  “That doesn’t make it right. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll pick you up and drive you to school. You’re on my way, anyway.”

  “You can’t do that. Think about your reputation if you’re seen with the daughter of a communist.”

  “My reputation?” I laughed. “Let me tell you about my reputation. Let me tell you the reason I got kicked out of Atherton.”

  “You got kicked out?” Sylvia was wide-eyed. “I thought…”

  “Yes. I’m tired of keeping it a secret. I was editor of the Atherton school paper last year and this year. It’s a good job, and I enjoyed it. I like to write. But I wanted to do something more—I wanted to leave high school with a bang. So I wrote a high school version of Confidential Magazine.”

  “That’s the magazine that tells all the dirt about actors and actresses—like who’s sleeping with whom.”

  “Right. I had access to the duplicating equipment at the school. So I typed it up on stencils, ran off copies, and distributed them throughout the school early in the morning, before the teachers got there.”

  Sylvia gasped. “What happened?”

  “All hell broke loose. All the copies were confiscated. A boy who was caught with a copy later received thirty days’ detention.”

  “My God.”

  “Although I didn’t put my name on the paper, there was never any doubt about who did it. When the principal saw me in the hall, he almost casually told me to drop by his office at my convenience. When I went to his office, he wasn’t so calm, and he still had a copy. For example, he pointed to a place where I referred to sports fans as ‘athletic supporters,’ and he said, his voice shaking, ‘Do you know what that means?’”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Uh uh. And he didn’t like a piece I wrote making fun of some of the school rules, which he took as criticism of himself. For my punishment, I was kicked out of the National Honor Society and given thirty days’ detention.”

  “Didn’t the students support you?”

  “Some did
. The president of the student council—your counterpart—told me he would have helped me put the paper together if I had asked him. That would have gone over like a lead balloon.”

  “This sounds like a first amendment issue. Freedom of the press and all that”

  “Maybe, except for one thing.”

  “So you weren’t expelled right away.”

  “That’s what I’m coming to. You see, I libeled a sweet, innocent freshman girl.”

  “Libeled?”

  “Yeah. I said false things about her, like that she was a call girl.”

  Sylvia tried to suppress a smile. “You were really naughty.”

  “I was. And I regret it now. Anyway, her mother threatened to sue me and the school, and for all I know, President Eisenhower if I remained at Atherton, even though all copies of the magazine had been destroyed by that time. I took a quick course in what constitutes libel and found out that it has to be malicious. I wasn’t trying to be malicious—it was all in fun—so I might have won. But my parents and the principal weren’t willing to find out.”

  Sylvia jerked her thumb. “So you were gone.”

  “Right. But here I am. Ready to transport you to school, perhaps not in the style in which you’d like to become accustomed, but at least the radio and heater work.”

  I suddenly remembered the piece of paper with the limerick on it. I felt a desire to show it to Sylvia. I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it to her without explanation. I waited for her reaction.

  She read it, quickly. “Did you write this?”

  “No, I found it in my locker this morning.”

  “Who wrote it?”

  “Somebody who writes bad limericks.”

  “How many people at school know that you write limericks?”

  “You and Natalie.”

  “I couldn’t write a limerick if you held me over a pit of boiling oil. Neither could Natalie.”

  “Wait. Dr. Graves knows. The first day I was here he mentioned it. My father or my aunt must have told him. I wrote a limerick for him.”

  “Do you really think Dr. Graves wrote this?”

  “Who else could have done it? Mr. White must have told him about our conversation.”