The Angry Dream by Gil Brewer Read Free Book Online Page B

street in thin eddies, blown by a strong wind coming down the valley. The outrage back there at the sheriff’s office was so strong inside me it was a kind of awe. Perhaps it’s because you never think of the law until you need it, and you never expect to have its back turned on you. You know you’ve always got that one place to turn to, just in case. The law can’t turn its back.
Only it does …
    Looking out the side window, I saw I was parked near a sign in a front lawn that said:
    WHITE’S
Room and Board
    Noraine had said she was staying here.
    I got out of the car, walked across the street to the walk leading to a three-story white house with a large, railing-enclosed veranda that circled the front and sides of the house. It was the kind of home that always looks out of place in the winter. A summer house, caught in a snowfall and uncomfortable about the whole business. A vine-covered trellis lay askew by the porch steps.
    The bell buzzed and an old woman answered the door, spry, hollow-cheeked, with wisping black hair and cold eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses.
    “Yes?”
    “I wonder if I might see Miss Noraine Temple?”
    “Who are you?”
    “I don’t think that matters, ma’ am.”
    “You’re Al Harper. I used to chase you out of my back yard.”
    “Well-”
    “You stole my peaches.”
    “I’m sorry, Mrs. White. I remember now. Yes I guess I did. Everybody did.”
    “You had peaches enough of your own.” She began to close the door. I set my knee against the door. We struggled for a moment, her hands working on the edge of the door, her pinched face gasping.
    “Go away, young man—I’ll phone—I”
    “I want to see Miss Temple.”
    She ceased, panting. The wind ripped across the porch and a handful of dry snow danced about her slippered feet. It was very cold suddenly.
    “Miss Temple no longer lives here. Now, please—go away, or I’ll have to—”
    “She must live here.”
    “She rented one of my cottages. The second one down the street.”
    I stepped back. The door slammed. There was a shade over the window on the door. It rattled down sharply and the hall light went out. I walked off the porch and looked back at the house. The downstairs lights were rapidly blinking out, one by one. Soon the house was dark save for a single orange glow behind a bedroom shade …
    It was a small white cottage, all the windows dark. I stood on the tiny porch and rang the old-fashioned pull-bell. There was an odor of oldness and decay about the cottage and I recalled it having been here all my life.
    Nobody answered the door.
    Somebody called my name. It was Mrs. White. She had on a dark coat, flapping about her ankles as she bent against the wind, moving toward me on the street. There was a single streetlamp, elm limbs tossing and flinging shadows across the snow-covered grass.
    “Mister Harper?”
    I waited for her to come up to me by the curb.
    “Should’ve told you. Plumb forgot. She asked me to tell you—” She clutched frantically at a wisp of hat jammed over her head. The wind drew at the skirts of her coat. “Miss Temple—she said—”
    “What did she say?”
    “Said to tell you, if you come by—she was gone out with Mister Gunther.” She looked sharply at me. “That’s Sam Gunther. What do you want with her?”
    I said nothing, not really seeing Mrs. White, now.
    “I say, young man! What you want with Miss Temple? She’s a good girl—you keep away from her.”
    “Miss Temple is a friend of mine,” I said.
    “Friend? You’ve known her before?”
    I nodded.
    She looked at me, her pale lips working. Abruptly, she whirled and scurried back toward her house.
    “Mrs. White?”
    She did not cease running. She climbed the porch steps and moved across the porch into the house. The door slammed.
    A car was parked in front of the house. It had ceased snowing, save for an occasional flake drifting down through the cold air. I half expected Bunk to come leaping around the side of the house