Well, there was only one possible thing to do, and I did it. I got
drunk. I hung one on. It was a beauty. Sometime in the course of the
following night I held a tearful wake out by the garage and I buried
my wife's last body. That, I recognize, was thoughtless. I could and
should have called doctors and undertakers to tell me there was no life
left in the body, and then let them do the digging for me in a more
formal, costly manner. But, for one thing, I was drunk. For another, I
guess I'd just sort of gotten into the habit of doing it the other way.
* * * * *
Much too early the next day--like about 2:30 in the afternoon--the
doorbell rang. I was totally despondent, nursing my sorrow and a fat
hangover with a cold beer and some of my Star-baby's more heavily
long-hair, hi-fi selections.
I let the bell ring for a while. Then I let somebody pound on the door
for a bit. But that got to be hard on my headache so I went to the door.
There was Mrs. Schmerler, from next door, who used to be a real
biddy-buddy of my Aunt Belle's. There were a couple of hard-eyed cops
with her, too. They all pushed right on in.
"Celebrating something, Mac?" inquired cop number one, while Mrs.
Schmerler and the other glared suspiciously about.
"No," I said, too miserable to think. "Not celebrating, mourning. Just
lost my wife, and kids, too."
"He never had any children!" said Mrs. Schmerler. "Only women. And a
great deal too many of the cheap tarts. What his poor, dear Aunt Belle,
as saintly a woman as ever lived, would say.... Why don't you ask him
what he was digging for--digging and yowling _Star dust_--out there by
his garage last night? And not the first time, neither!"
The sudden realization of what could be turned up out there by the
garage--and how that would look to the unsympathetic and non-credulous
eyes of the law--hit me. I opened and closed my mouth three or four
times like an unwell goldfish. Nothing came out except a miasma of
alcohol. Mrs. Schmerler gaped at me with delighted shock, indignation
and horror. It was the great moment of her life.
The cops stepped in--not aggressively, more big-brotherly--and took a
good, firm grip on my arm.
I won't go into the rest of all that. They got a squad and they dug.
They took me in. I wouldn't talk. They locked me up. Cell block
bookies quoted 50-1, no takers, I would make the death cell. The way
I felt, I didn't care. The newspapers went wild. Things had been
slow since the election. All my old pals from my working days on the
paper were making a buck with special "Even then there was something
frighteningly different about him" feature stories.
The next day, as my hangover faded and I got to thinking things over,
my outlook changed. It was no time for me to give up. I would get a
lawyer.
I walked over to rattle my cell door for a bit. "Hey! Hey there, guard.
Come here a minute, huh?"