The Buck Passes Flynn Read online

  “I don’t know whether a crime has been committed. A mystery had happened. Everyone in town just got up and left. We wanted the mystery investigated.”

  “Do you feel the mystery has been investigated?”

  “An agent, an F.B.I. agent came down. A nice young man. Named Silvers. Agent Silvers. I told him all about it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He agreed with me.”

  “How’s that?”

  “He agreed it was Satan’s work.”

  “He did, did he?”

  “Before he left we joined hands and shared in praising the Lord.”

  “My God.”

  “Since then, I have racked my brain and spent many hours going over the word of the Lord, studying each sample in the Testament of sudden emigrations.”

  “And what have you found out?”

  The minister lowered his head. “I can find no parallel. Here there was no famine, no pestilence.… I’m sure there is a lesson somewhere. I’ve even written the dean of my old school in Alabama.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He didn’t exactly write me back. Not yet, that is. He sent me a copy of his new book, Jesus, I’m Coming. That was real good of him. I read through it, believing there might be some reference to sudden emigrations, but there wasn’t.”

  “Did the book come with a bill for it?”

  “No! Lord, no. I did see the price of the book and mailed him a contribution to cover expenses.”

  “Mysterious are the ways of the Lord, indeed,” said Flynn. “Your Man chased the money changers from the Temple, but so far no one’s done anything about those who take advantage of others through the mail. And have you ever heard back from the devout F.B.I. man again, Agent Silvers?”

  “Yes, he called once.”

  “To say what?”

  “Well, to say Alligator Simmons had been killed.”

  “Who was Alligator Simmons?”

  “A boy from town. Agent Silvers said he had been shot dead in a bar in Fort Worth.”

  “In the act of robbery? Was he holdin’ up the bar?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that. Agent Silvers said it was one of those ‘I’m-from-Ada-and-can-whup-anyone-in-Fort-Worth’ kind of things.”

  “He was shot for that?”

  “Well, you’re not from Texas, Mister Flynn. He said it several times runnin’.”

  “And someone shot him?”

  “In Texas, they call that lookin’ to be shot. In Fort Worth, especially, that kind of talk is suicidal.”

  “My, my. I must remember to mind my manners if I’m ever in Fort Worth.”

  “Alligator was carrying a gun.”

  “Why was he carrying a gun?”

  “You wouldn’t go into a bar in Fort Worth and say that kind of thing unless you were carrying a gun.”

  “I believe Texans have a most refined sense of suicide,” mused Flynn. “And tell me, how old a boy was this Alligator?”

  “Fifty. Fifty-two maybe.”

  “Fifty-two! He got a skinful, stood up on his hind legs, and bellowed bravely for three minutes runnin’—and someone shot him?”

  The minister’s bloodshot eyes bulged, but he said nothing.

  “And did you ever hear anything else from Agent Silvers?” Flynn asked in a milder manner.

  “No,” the minister answered. “Two other men came down and took the town records from the sheriff’s office. They didn’t say much.”

  “Did you get them on their knees?”

  “What did you say?”

  “Never mind. The sound of the wind tires a body out, doesn’t it just? Now, if you’d just tell me what you told Agent Silvers in the first place …?”

  “Sure.”

  “Whew. Hot enough, too.”

  Flynn tried to pick the tweed away from his legs.

  “Saturday—all of three months ago, now—I went to see Billy Pat, sayin’ the Lord had blessed us and I was prepared to engage him and his men to spruce up the church. The foundation’s cracked….”

  “If you’d begin at the beginning,” said Flynn, “we’d get to the end faster.”

  “The beginning?”

  “You and your wife rise up from the sleep of angels … at about what time?”

  “We got up at six-thirty.”

  “You buckled on your toast and coffee….”

  “We came to the living room, knelt. I read a chapter, she read a chapter, I read a chapter.”

  “On your knees?”

  “Of course. We joined hands and sang a hymn. We said the Lord’s Prayer together.” The minister blushed. “Then we kissed and wished each other a good day. This is a Christian home, Mister Flynn.”

  “Then you had breakfast.”

  “My wife went to get the eggs, while I tidied the bedroom and the bath.”

  “You mean, she went out for eggs? She went to the store?”

  “She went out to the hens. We have hens. We try to save as much as we can. This is a poor community, Mister Flynn. My wife and I don’t feel we should be any more of a burden to the people here than we need to be. It’s a good example. What would the people think of us if we lived off store-bought eggs? We try our best at raising our own vegetables too, but—” The minister shrugged.

  “What was the first unusual thing that happened to you that morning?”

  “Unusual?”

  “Out of the ordinary.”

  “The first? Well, I don’t know. Well, yes, I do know. Marge tripped on the back stoop. An egg fell right out of her apron.”

  “It broke,” guessed Flynn.

  “It was almost useless. She was deeply vexed with herself. She called the Cranins’ dog, from next door, and he came over and lapped it up. To do her penance, Marge went to sweep off the front porch before putting a thing on the stove for breakfast.”

  “And all this time, you were scrubbin’ the tub, wait-in’ for the odor of coffee.”

  “I heard Marge call me. She was standing in the front door, broom in one hand, two big manila envelopes in the other. ‘Someone must have left these for us,’ she said. ‘My name’s on one.’ I took one envelope from her, causing her to drop the other one. It fell on the floor, and all this money spilled out.”

  “What was your first reaction to that?” asked Flynn.

  “Praise the Lord, Mister Flynn. We both said, ‘Praise the Lord.’ We sat at the kitchen table and counted the money.”

  “What,” said Flynn. “Before breakfast?”

  “There were two hundred thousand dollars in the envelopes, Mister Flynn.”

  “I’m hearin’ it’s as difficult to get to breakfast around your house as it is mine. Did you eat then?”

  “We knelt and praised the Lord. Joy was in our hearts.”

  “Then you had breakfast?”

  “After breakfast, I drove over to see Billy Pat.”

  “Wait a minute, Reverend Sandy Fraiman. Did either you or your good wife ever stop and ask yourselves, or each other, where the hell the money came from? It’s not every morning you wake up and find a pot of gold on the front porch, now, is it?”

  The minister’s answer was definite. “It came from the Lord, Mister Flynn.”

  “I see. I wish I could get you to swear to that.”

  “I will. Happily. On the Lord’s Word.”

  “So you zip out to see the construction man, to see about shorin’ up the church …?”

  “Yes. Billy Pat. But he wasn’t there. And that surprised me sortie, I’ll tell you. I mean, Billy Pat might have been out on a job, although he hadn’t had any jobs lately, that I know of—you know, once in a while Billy Pat would get the job of goin’ out to dig a well, but that was only in sort-of good times, when people had money to be optimistic. But Bea, his wife, was—well, blessed by the Lord with too much weight, and she hardly ever left that chair of hers on the front porch. And they had four teenaged kids, you know. No one was around at their place.

  “Well, drivin’ ove
r to Billy Pat’s I noticed that the gas station was doin’ a land-office business. People were still crowdin’ around the gas pumps when I was drivin’ back.

  “So I stopped and got out of the car to tell the people the good news. ‘Praise the Lord!’ I said. ‘Praise the Lord!’ And I told them about the money the Lord had delivered unto us to repair the church and that the next morning, Sunday, the service would be a service of praise and thanksgiving.”

  “And what did the people say to that?”

  “They seemed happy. I told them to pass the word And they said they sure would.”

  The minister, looking at his hands folded in his lap, shook his head sadly.

  “Marge spent the day on the phone, passin’ the word. Calling out around the ranches. As the day went on, more and more people weren’t answerin’ their phones. “That’s odd,’ Marge said. ‘Let me try the Bronsons. They have a sick old daddy and I just know they can’t all leave the place at once.’ She called the Bronson spread and, would you believe, no one answered?

  “In the afternoon, we started seein’ the cars and pickup trucks goin’ by, goin’ both directions, loaded up with mattresses, big family clocks, television sets, people. Marge and I couldn’t make it out. We worried there was a prayer meeting somewhere we hadn’t been called to. Why else would people be leaving Ada all at once? Where else have they got to go? Marge said the people wouldn’t be bringing family clocks and mattresses to a prayer meeting, least no prayer meeting we ever heard of. It was the wrong season for football, I said.

  “Next morning, Sunday, the town was very quiet. I went over to lead the service, Marge with me, and would you believe there were only about twenty people in the church? That hadn’t happened before. Not since I was called to this church, eleven years ago. Many, many people in this town, Mister Flynn, have been born again, have accepted new life in the spirit of Jesus Christ, have—”

  “You were surprised there were so few attending service,” Flynn urged him on.

  “And those who came weren’t coughin’ or sniffin’ I mean, there was no sickness around. We thanked the Lord anyway. We were real sorry the whole community wasn’t there, though, so the Lord would hear one voice, raised in—”

  “What did you and Marge do then? Did you talk to the people?”

  “We tried, we tried. No one seemed to have any more time for us that morning. Why, we came back to the house and prayed for what understanding the Lord would give us.”

  With his handkerchief, Flynn wiped some of the sweat from his neck.

  “Well, the traffic was picking up again, and Marge and I went into the street and began stopping the pickups. ‘Where y’all goin’, Louise?’ ‘Well, we’re just goin’ in to Dallas to visit with Frank’s brother’s family, you know?’ ‘Where you going, Tom Coffey?’ ‘I been called to Las Vegas, brother. Visit a sick friend.’ ‘Jack and Mary Lou, now where you takin’ these nice children of yours?’ ‘Well, you know, Marge, they ain’t never seen the ocean. This land of ours is so parched. We’re goin’ to show them the Pacific off California.’ ‘What’re you doin’ about your animals?’ Marge began askin’ every one of ‘em. ‘Who’s takin’ care of your critters?’ She never got one answer to that question.

  “Dusk came, and there was ol’ Marge standin’ in the middle of the street, sayin’ to no one, ‘What’re you doin’ about your animals?’ Then Marge began to cry.”

  Flynn listened to the wind. He heard it building far away. From what he had seen of Texas, there was nothing to stop the wind.

  “There was no understanding this, for us,” the Reverend Sandy Fraiman said. “Next morning, we drove around to the ranches we knew were empty. No one was taking care of the animals. They had been just left. We went from ranch to ranch, tryin’ our best to feed and water ’em. We just couldn’t understand what had gotten into these people. What had Satan said to them? How had he appeared? Well, we worked until three o’clock Tuesday morning, when we had to come home. Exhausted. Next morning we started out again. Grocery store was closed. Sheriff’s office was locked. Feed store. Few people were around, and I’ll swear, those few left because everyone else in town had. We kept tryin’ to feed the animals all that day and night. We knew we couldn’t save all the animals around Ada. Why, we didn’t even know how some ranches in Ada worked their water. Thursday, after prayer, I called the F.B.I. Was I wrong?”

  “No,” answered Flynn. “You were right.”

  “What could I do?”

  “Still no one told you why they were leaving town?”

  “Oh, they told us why, all right. They wanted their kids to see the ocean. What they didn’t say was how they could leave. How could they leave their homes, their ranches, their animals? How could they so fall in with Satan?”

  “Have you any answer to that?”

  “No,” said the Reverend Sandy Fraiman. “I don’t.”

  “What, then?” said Flynn, the sweat dribbling down him.

  “What, then? Well, I called some of the preachers around here I know and tried to tell them what happened. It must have sounded crazy, it must have—tellin’ ‘em everybody in Ada had run off their places leavin’ all their animals. It took some convincin’. Preachers in the other towns organized some ranchers and sooner or later they came over and took most of the animals off, the healthy ones anyway, to keep ’em fed and watered. They’re supposed to return ’em to the people of Ada, if and when they ever come back. They’ll see some feed bills then, you bet your life.… I expect—well, I know, the people from the other towns took some stoves and a few tractors and like that, for collateral, I guess, against the feed bills.”

  “The town has been plundered,” asserted Flynn.

  “I was thinkin’ on the animals,” the minister said uncomfortably. “I know the grocery was broken into.”

  Flynn heard a car.

  “What else was I supposed to do?”

  Flynn said, “I don’t know.”

  “Everybody in town left.”

  “Everybody?” asked Flynn. “Absolutely everybody?”

  “Well, no. There’s the pig woman.”

  “Pig woman?”

  “Old Mrs. Lewis. She’s a poor thing. Blessed by the Lord with her own craziness. She runs pigs in a gully just west of town.”

  When the minister heard the car he looked alert.

  He said, “That must be my wife. Marge.”

  Suddenly he got up and went into the kitchen.

  The kitchen was quiet.

  Flynn heard the car door bang.

  He got up and stepped quietly so he could see into the kitchen.

  The Reverend Sandy Fraiman was on his knees on the kitchen floor, shoving a nearly full bottle far back behind some cereal boxes.

  6

  “BUT what about the earthquake?” she asked. “Did you tell Mister Flynn about the earthquake?”

  “I said there was no earthquake!”

  “I felt the tremors, Sandy. I surely did.”

  “There was no earthquake!” Standing barefooted in the yard between the house and the dusty old car, the Reverend Sandy Fraiman raised his hand to the sky. “That was Satan walking! He has walked in this land!”

  Marge Fraiman searched Flynn’s eyes for understanding.

  She was a slip of a woman in a long cotton dress hanging from her breasts, showing little of her white, skinny legs. Her hair was pulled back and clasped. It gave her a particularly drawn, tired look.

  Fraiman had introduced Flynn as she came through the back door with a bundle, then told her rapidly, nervously about what he had told Flynn as he went back and forth to the car, bringing in more bundles.

  In the kitchen, Marge Fraiman said, “I’ll bring you around, Mister Flynn. Show you what an abandoned town looks like.”

  “We can take my car,” said Flynn. “You might enjoy the air conditioning.”

  “First we’ll go to the grocery store,” she said. “We can walk there.”

  Leaving the minister to his
unpacking, they walked through the small house and out the front door.

  As they crossed the main street of Ada, Texas (population formerly 1,856; presently three, including the pig woman), Flynn said to her: “Earthquake?”

  “Well, I thought so. I surely did.” They avoided a scrub pine lying in the middle of the road. “Of course I didn’t recollect it until all this had happened—after our brothers and sisters left and we were scratching our heads as to why on earth they’d do such a thing.”

  “When do you think you felt the tremors?”

  “Why, that Thursday morning before—you know, before everybody began pullin’ up stakes? That Thursday morning, real early it was, and late the night before, Wednesday.”

  “What were the tremors like?”

  “The earth moved. Just as if Satan was walking the land.”

  “Mrs. Fraiman, did anyone else mention to you feeling the tremors?”

  “Why, no. I scarcely gave it a thought myself, at the time.”

  The front door of the grocery store had been forced open crudely—most likely with a well-aimed kick.

  Flynn said, “I take it the tremors you say you felt were not enough to make you think of moving away from town.”

  “No. But you never know. The other people might have felt them more than I did. The tremors might have given them more worry than they did me. My husband says he didn’t feel them at all.”

  Behind the door of the grocery store, on the floor, lay a dead cat.

  “Poor Bowie,” said Marge Fraiman. “We forgot all about you, didn’t we?”

  Except for a few cans that had dropped and rolled into corners, the shelves were bare. A half-empty box of crackers was on its side on the checkout counter. Someone had stepped on a cereal box in the main aisle.

  Heads of lettuce were rotting in their bins and on the floor.

  Tomatoes had been thrown against the wall.

  “Poor Mister Joe Barker,” Marge Fraiman said. “He just worked so hard at keepin’ this store. Who’d ever think he’d run off? And him in his middle seventies.”

  “I expect people in this town found it hard to keep up with their grocery bills?” Flynn asked.

  “They surely did. We all do. Are you a family man, Mister Flynn?”