Peter Reed

A Handful of Death

Emil Kranz stood before a mirror in the cobwebby little office of the Hillsboro Feed Company and tried to brush the powdery grain dust out of his glossy black beard. Emil was proud of that beard; it covered the cleft in his chin and made him look quite distinguished. Especially when he was carrying his gold-headed walking stick and wearing his monocle. His tall spare build, he told his listeners at social functions, came from his rigid years of military discipline.

By referring to himself as Count Emmanuel, of royal blood, he had been able to separate many a frustrated middle-aged woman from her money. The only Europe Emil ever knew was on the dog-eared pages of an atlas he had picked up — price one dollar.

Of all the rich, homely women he had married and left along the road to Reno, his present wife, Reba, was proving the most difficult. Most of them were so proud to marry a title, husband included, that they carried him from afternoon teas to ball rooms as if he were too good to believe.

Severe, spare Reba rejoiced in her good fortune, but after the wedding she told him some shocking things. Marrying his title, she had told him, was just a good piece of business for her. It would attract trade to her grain and feed store. As for the title itself, well, this was America, where rich and poor of all races meet, labor and read on a mutual plane.

“Get in there and do something useful,” she said.

Emil had learned to operate the big platform scales and issue scale tickets. Reba’s quarter million would be worth this servility he told himself. But this disgusting noise and sweat was damaging to his looks and the nameless insects which came in with the bearded farmers, wriggling in their heavy loads of yellow wheat and fat beans made Emil’s skin crawl with sick loathing. Even a shower and a change of fresh linen at noon was not enough to keep up his usual immaculate grooming.

The door burst open and struck the stop with an undignified hang as a twelve-year-old boy slammed through. His tow-colored hair was tousled up in a peak, and rusty brown freckles dotted his nose. Summer blue danced in his eyes. "There’s a man out there to see you. But first look at the swell new camping tool I made. I’ve got orders from our scout-master for the entire troupe. Isn’t that swell?”

Emil shrank from the black grime on the boy’s fingers and wrists as he felt a greasy, sticky gadget plummet into his open palm. Danny Lee, Reba’s brother, had the run of the place and Emil couldn’t do a thing about it.

“Send the man in. Somebody neglected to teach you courtesy — I’m not interested in your silly inventions.” He dropped the gadget on the floor and started for the lavatory to wash.

“But, gee, Dad, this is swell. It has two knife blades, gimlet, corkscrew for sody, screw-driver—”

“Beat it.”

“O.K., O.K.,” Danny said, the sun washing out of his eyes. “I only hoped—”

“I’m Willie Teague.” The visitor walking in was blonde, hollow chested and shifty-looking. He lighted a cigarette and helped himself to a seat. “You don’t know me, Emil, or should I say Count Emmanuel? But I know plenty about you.” He smiled, and his eyes looked pink like a rabbit’s.

Willie was the weakest-looking person Emil had ever seen, but there was something about his manner which struck terror deep inside Emil’s heart. “You couldn’t know me? I’ve never met you before—”

"True, but I’ve been studying you. I’m just a little nobody from Bean Cove, remember the name? And Emma? Fat Emma Bolin?

"Go on.”

“Well, I don’t know what happened, but all at once you were gone. Fat Emma began to lose weight and her money was gone, too. I’m a clerk in the Bean Cove National Bank. Her account, our fattest, dwindled and petered out. Pride is a powerful thing. Look here, killer.”

Emil craned. Willie had produced Emma’s picture and on the cheap newsprint beside it a clipping of her obituary. Emma had jumped in a well. She couldn’t stand the disgrace, and the poverty. The stiff, charged silence of the little feed shop was broken only by the clatter of an iron-tired wagon on the red cobblestones outside.

Emil wet his lips.

“How many people know.”

“Only me. This is my lifetime chance to get above the starvation bracket. I earn twenty a week. Think I’d be fool enough to talk and have to split the dough?”

“Good. Come back tonight at ten. It takes time to get that much money together. How much do you expect?”

“Fifty thousand. More when you cash in on the current flame. Unless you’d like to have me tell her of Fat Emma.”

“I’ll pay,” Emil said. “Be here tonight. Stay out of sight and keep your mouth shut. A breath of scandal and you’ll never get a cent.”

Emil pressed white knuckles to his hot temples and left the hot office to walk up and down the concrete ramp where trucks pulled in to weigh and dump their grain in the elevator pit. The floor was strewn with soy beans, thousands of bushels of which were pouring in from the fat black fields around Hillsboro. They crackled under the soles of his shoes like roasted peanuts as he paced, sick inside with the knowledge he must kill.

An immense tractor-trailer grain truck was parked under the chute leading to the capacious storage bins above. It would be filled soon for the long haul to the grain barges berthed at St. Louis docks. The driver, a fellow called Big Steve, had gone for a couple of cheese-on-ryes and a pint of beer before starting his night run. Tired as Steve had been from the broiling day, his heavy blue shirt caked with sweat and dust from the dry fields, he’d washed his dusty truck down with a sizzling spray and then gone over it with a chamois. The energy it cost Steve to maintain his truck in a new condition just for pride made Emil tired even to think of it.

But his delay tonight had solved Emil’s problem. If I can get Willie in the grain bed and cover him with soy beans, I’ll have it. He sat down to favor his wobbly knees. The hot air was difficult to breathe.

Let’s see, the trucks dump directly into the barges before they move on up the sluggish stream. They make other stops too, at the spindly river elevators built out over the water on piling. Willie’s body would pour down in the beans and he wouldn’t be found until he got to Davenport.

Emil spat. Who would be able to tell where the little fool got in the barge? It would simply look as if he were hitching a ride and fell asleep on the golden beans. Some one dumped a load on him and he smothered...

But getting him in the load was the problem. Emil needed time to think and he knew he dared not face Reba and Danny Lee at supper. They’d know something was up.

Emil phoned Reba and grabbed a lunch at the drug store which he left untouched on his plate. His stomach was in a knot. He took a short, tortured walk around the little hilltop town. As the late summer sky paled out over the elm-lined streets Emil believed he’d finally found the answer. Why not be up in the grain bed, filling it, when Willie arrived? The tired driver would almost hug him when he came back and found the big outfit ready to roll.

Hurriedly he returned. The court house clock stiffly indicated eight o’clock. The loft at the feed store was filled with baled hay. When he stood up in the empty truck bed he would be about even with the side-loft floor. He could lure Willie up on the edge of the truck and manage to jerk a hundred-pound bale of green alfalfa down on his thin body. It was an ideal weapon which would give him a crushing blow and allow Emil time to open the slide of the chute and bury him forever.

At the river barge in the sleepy hours after midnight, under the flickering beams of a flashlight, the single attendant wouldn’t even go around to the back of the truck. The driver would back up, release the end-gate from his cab, elevate the body with the hydraulic lift and Willie and the death bale of hay would be buried under a dusty Niagara of grain.

A block from the store Emil met Danny. “Where have you been? When I was a kid I was asleep by eight o’clock.”

“I’ve been working on another one of my inventions. I got tired of the one I had.”

“Get home to bed.” Emil heard him mutter something and caught him roughly by the shoulder, jerking him around. “What was that crack?”

The boy’s eyes were clear, unafraid and defiant. “I said, I wondered if you’d ever been a boy.”

Emil gave him a shove. “Get along. And wash. You’re filthy.” He brushed his hands together with sick loathing.

Willie was there, two hours early. He was leaning back in Emil’s chair smoking a cigar.

“Got the money?” he demanded loudly.

“Yes,” Emil lied. “But shut your big mouth. I’ll have to fill this truck and get rid of the driver first.” Gosh, he thought weakly. I told him to come at ten. If he hadn’t come early this truck would have already been gone. That’s luck.

In spite of the clammy heat Emil’s teeth rattled as he climbed over the painted rim of the truck bed. He didn’t feel as if he could go through with it. “Come on up, Willie. No one can see us here.”

Willie mounted avidly, flung himself over and down in the deep, bed shrouded now with summer dark. “Say, that Danny is some boy. It must be great to have a boy like that. Wish I did.”

“Yeah, squat down. I’ll light a match. It looks a little dark to us but light is shining in through from the street.” Slowly his hand felt up the side of the loft, felt the wiry, hard texture of the pungent baled hay. The bale was by itself lying at the very edge.

He slipped his sweating hand under the bale tie and braced his feet in the bed. With a savage yank he brought the bale down on Willie.

There was a sickening crack as the bank clerk’s head rapped savagely against the wooden bed. He slumped, breathing heavily. Emil stooped, grabbed him by the pants legs and rolled him over in the corner formed by the bed bottom and the tail gate. He didn’t have to touch the heavy bale of hay. It was lying squarely across the small man, at an angle against a corner. Emil fumbled up for the metal hopper slide and a yellow torrent of soy beans sluiced down to fill the bed with its dusty tide.

Emil was so nervous he could hardly start the big tractor and move the truck box until it was uniformly filled. Then he sat down to fight his heaving breath and nausea until the driver came for his load. But he was safe. Willie’s dangerous knowledge was sealed off. Emil tried to relax but the gnawing of rats seemed to cut against his hot nerves. The whet of their sharp teeth against wood echoed eerily somewhere off in the dark emptiness of the elevator.

“Hello, Steve,” Emil greeted the driver, half an hour later. “I knew you were tired so I filled up for you. Here’s the weight ticket.”

“Thanks.” The sweaty man gave him a wide grin. “I’ll buy you a tall beer for this. Hell’s kertoots,” he whistled, as he looked at the weight ticket. “You got a thousand pounds more on than I’m licensed for. Think I ought to scoop a few of ’em off?”

Emil’s collar pinched him, but he grinned, thinking what a mild form of chiseling this was compared to his own methods. “Naw, look at the loads the other trucks take out of here. It don’t mean a thing or they’d been pinched a long time ago.”

“Sure,” Steve said, going over the polished engine hood once more with a dust cloth. The engine chuckled, fanning Emil’s face with the hot smell of gasoline and rubber. Spilled beans popped from under the tightly inflated tires with small explosive pings as the big outfit heeled in and disappeared down the street. Emil sat down weakly and fanned himself with his straw hat.

He slept little, but stayed in bed until everybody had left next morning. Then he lit a good cigar and strolled down town.

He chilled. A blue motorcycle was leaning on its side at the feed store. A uniformed state trooper was waiting. Captain Cass, the local cop was standing by him and they were questioning some one earnestly. Danny’s face was as white as the flour they sold at the feed store. Russet freckles stood out on his face and he was close to tears.

Emil recoiled with horror.

On the concrete driveway, his head and feet sticking out of a rumpled tarp, was the rigid, staring body of Willie.

“Oh, hello, Count. Did you ever see this man before?”

“Why, yes. He dropped in here this evening. You remember him, Son,” he said nodding to Danny. “He wanted to hitch a ride down to the river on one of our trucks and for safety reasons I refused. He seemed much disappointed and left. Where did you find him?”

The trooper cleared his throat. “Your trucks have been hauling more beans than you’re licensed for, so I’ve been waiting a good chance to weigh them and slap a fine on you. When Steve pulled by the big sign board where I hide east of St. Jacob, I nearly fell off my motorcycle. Steve had never tried to chisel. I was a little disappointed and mad to see him carrying a level load which I know over-weighs a thousand pounds. I swung in after him and noticed a little stream of beans pouring down from the truck in the yellow light of my head-lamp.”

“Now the other fellows who drive for this outfit are careless and their boxes leak like hell so I knew Steve would appreciate knowing his had sprung a leak. We found this guy dead under the beans.”

“Too bad. He must have crawled up in the box to steal a ride, when the hay fell on him.”

“What hay?” Cass stepped to the corpse and whipped back the tarpaulin. “I didn’t mention any hay. Neither did this trooper.”

Emil gasped. Tightly clasped in Willie’s dead hand was Danny’s original invention, the gimlet bit open and pointing at Emil with chill of an accusing finger.

“Danny says that’s his and that you handled it. Your prints ought to be on it. You knocked him out and put that hay bale over him to hold him down. But in doing it you trapped yourself. It formed a pocket which the beans filled but slowly and it gave your victim time to get out that gadget and try to enlarge the crack between body and bed. He got a hole through with the sharp bit but it wasn’t enough. He died anyway.”

Emil swallowed wearily. Cass would have no trouble tracing back, establishing motive. Too well he remembered the sound of rats gnawing. That had been the whet, whet of the gimlet working away. Willie had been too smart to scream and waste oxygen. He had worked like a madman at the only thing which held a slim chance — and lost.

“Hell — in a handful of soy beans.” Emil’s voice rose in hysterical laughter and broke on a high, weird note.

Content

Peter Reed
A Handful of Death