Brandt's Secret
by J.R. Lindermuth
The wind wasted itself in the night, whistling and whipping round the grim black hulk of Brandt’s house and down the silent, empty, sodden-cindered streets to rattle windows and shake the dark houses of the sleeping village. The mountains, which stood like ramparts around the valley, frozen hard under a blanket of soggy snow, and leaden clouds scudding across the black sky, were the only witnesses as we crept along the wall and took shelter from the wind in the lee of the cellar entrance.
My cousin, Peggy, leaned forward and shoved the door which, as we knew from previous reconnoiters, flung open with an ominous creak of its rusty hinges. “Well,” she hissed as I hesitated.
Shivering and knowing it wasn’t from the assault of the wind, I was glad to hear the quiver in her voice. “What if he catches me?” I asked, stalling.
“We seen him drive away,” Ed Yeager, my best friend, said from behind as he gave me a push toward the door. “He went to church—just like he does every Saturday night. That’s why we picked tonight. Remember?”
“I’ll bet he worships the Devil,” Peggy said, narrowing her eyes. I could barely see her but her eyes glowed, catching and reflecting the light of the scudding moon. “I mean, what kind of people go to church on Saturday?”
“Maybe we oughta go home,” I ventured, swallowing hard.
Ed gave me another shove. “Are you getting chicken, Nick?”
“Me? No. But what if he comes back?”
“That’s why we’re here,” Peggy told me. “If he comes back, we’ll see him and warn you so’s you can get out.”
I took a hesitant step toward the entrance, then turned back to them. “What about the dog?”
Peggy sighed. “We saw him lock it in the shed like he always does. If you don’t get going, he will be back.”
Reluctantly, yet without a backward glance, swaggering with the kind of bravado boys will use to conceal any evidence of cowardice, I took the two paces separating me from the door and stepped through into the dank darkness of the cellar, closing my eyes and clenching my fists as though these futile gestures could protect me from the source of my dread. A malevolent odor of mold and mildew assailed my nostrils and set my stomach to churning. Behind me, despite the wind drumming against the bulk of the house like the doleful back-time music in one of those horror movies we kids loved, I heard the shrill whistle of Peggy and Ed breathing through cold-clogged nostrils. Slowly I opened my eyes and waited for them to adjust to the dark, hating Brandt for having brought me here.
It was easy to hate Brandt.
Though the feeling was not that genuine repugnance which only can be known by an adult, it was enough to make three children risk the wrath of their parents by sneaking out on a cold winter’s night, intent on housebreaking. It was in the winter of my twelfth year, Christmas only a week away, and my mind should have been filled with anticipation of gaily decorated trees, family gatherings and presents. But it was no gift I sought from Brandt the night I invaded his house. Revenge was my motivation. I meant to expose his secrets and bring down on him the condemnation of the village.
Brandt had been an enigma all the years of my young life. He was a blacksmith in a time when no one in our village kept horses or mules. In an age of automobiles, this tenacious clinging to the trade of his youth might have been excused had the man not practiced so many other eccentricities.
While everyone else in Alliance worked at the colliery or farmed full-time, Brandt clung to this antique trade, eking out a precarious living by forging and repairing tools, doing other iron work and selling the milk of the small herd of goats he kept in his pasture. In a village dominated by a confident and oppressive Methodism, he practiced an even more stern religion which forbade its members meat, sent them to church on a Saturday and believed the Coming was imminent (our parents believe this, too, though no one seemed in any particular hurry for it to happen). In a village where neighborliness was more than just a word, where pride demanded regular applications of gleaming white paint to clapboarded houses and where picket fences bloomed like flowers around well-kept yards, Brandt again ran contrary. He kept to himself, his clapboards were weathered black as though they’d never experienced a coat of paint, his yard and pasture flourished with weeds and untrimmed bushes, all surrounded by a barbed wire fence intended to keep goats in and people out.
Brandt was a challenge to all of us in Alliance. No one in town walked by that house without wondering what dark secrets lurked within its walls. It stood on the corner next to Reamer’s store, a black carcass of a building as cold and unfriendly as its owner. The windows were shuttered winter and summer against intruding eyes, and the door was never opened to anyone. Salesmen had long ago learned not to rap. If anyone wanted intercourse with Brandt, they knew to approach him at his shop during working hours.
Brandt frightened children and intimidated strangers. Our elders—lest they had need of his skills—mostly ignored the man. Still they were equally puzzled by his solitary and bilious manner. We are a gregarious people and one who holds himself off becomes the subject of much speculation.
The village hummed with stories about Brandt. Unpleasant stories. There was rumor he’d killed a man in a drunken brawl in his youth. It was said he’d spent years in jail and had joined his strange church out of remorse for his crime. Some said he’d been married once. Older people remembered the woman. A good woman, they said. Unlike her husband, she’d liked to talk. She’d confided his odd and miserly ways to neighbors. She’d told how one night they’d gone without supper because Elmer Reamer had raised the price of some victual he craved by pennies.
There had been the woman, and then she ceased to be seen.
She was not from our valley and it was believed she’d left Brandt and gone back to her own people. Others said he’d beat her, and she’d fled. A few believed just as fervently Brandt had killed her and buried the body in his cellar.
No one knew anything for certain and none dared seek the truth from him.
Despite all this, Brandt had one thing in his favor as far as we children were concerned. The apples on the trees in his yard were the best in town. We knew. We’d sampled them all. When we got to feeling particularly adventurous, we’d sneak into Brandts’ yard at night and hook apples.
And it was those very apples led me to sneaking into his house this winter night. Peggy, Ed and I had been plotting it since Halloween.
Knowing there’d be no “treat” at his door, we’d appropriated a supply of his apples as our Halloween “trick.” Unfortunately, Brandt anticipated our raid and was lying in wait. We quaked in fright when he caught us, expecting to be cast into his furnace like the balls of our summer games that rained onto his property. Instead Brandt did the unexpected. He delivered us to our parents. Because of his reputation, we were confident we’d escape punishment. Alas, it was not so. We were but children and didn’t conceive of our theft as a crime, nor did we see the hidings we received as just.
There’s no spite like that of a child who thinks himself wronged. Many a day afterward was spent in conspiring how we might gain revenge and vindicate ourselves in the eyes of our parents. Finally, it was mutually agreed there could be no better way than by exposing the secrets Brandt had hid these many years.
Like those Romans before the cross of Jesus, we cast lots for the honor of being the one to invade his privacy. It fell on me, and the honor was quickly replaced by stark terror—though I dared not admit it to my friends.
The last vestige of my courage evaporated like snow in a warm room as I descended to Brandt’s cellar. It took everything I could muster to strike a match for a look around the cellar. I don’t suppose I really expected to see skeletons, coffins or other ghoulish things, but I was greatly relieved when the light revealed no more than the boxes of apples, barrels of potatoes, crocks of sauerkraut and other provisions that might have been seen in any other cellar in Alliance.
The match sputtered and went out against my flesh, eliciting a sharp cry. Another wave of fear swept over me as I was plunged once more into darkness. Oh, if I had only thought to bring a flashlight.
“Whadja see?” Peggy croaked in a low voice from the stairwell.
“Nothin’.”
“You gotta go upstairs.”
I didn’t answer.
“Nick!”
“I’m goin’, I’m goin’.” Heaving a deep breath, I crossed the room to where I’d seen the stairs by my match. I knew there’d be no living with Peggy and Ed if I didn’t complete the mission as we’d planned it. Despite my trepidation, I had to go all the way up to the second floor. We figured Brandt wouldn’t leave any evidence of his crimes downstairs on the off chance some stranger did gain access to the house.
As I crept up the stairs, cringing every time a riser creaked under foot, I ran my hand along the wall, searching for a banister. There was none. But just as I came to the landing, my hand struck a shelf and bumped an object that fell with a clatter at my feet. Kneeling and feeling around, I found it. A flashlight. Flicking the switch, it came on, shining a dim pool of yellow across the floor. I smiled. The batteries were weak, but at least now I was confident of seeing where I was going and not bumping into any of the grotesque fantasies my mind had conjured up.
Opening the door, I found myself in the kitchen of the house. Shining my light round the space, I was disappointed to find this little different from any other kitchen of my experience. A black coal stove against one wall, sink and cupboards on another, a refrigerator humming its familiar song and a pillar table and chairs in the middle of the room.
The flashlight revealed a hall leading through to the dining room and on to the parlor at the front of the house. Other than the refrigerator and the clinking of the radiators, the only sound was the wind rattling a window and the pounding of my own heart. Gulping another breath, I headed out the hall. The stairs to the upper floor were probably near the front door.
I’d just got through the dining room when the flashlight went out. I halted, bumping it against my thigh in hope of reviving it. Fortunately, it did come back on, but the light was even dimmer. After gauging a path clear of obstruction, I shut the flashlight off. I needed to conserve its power for upstairs.
A loose shutter banged against an outer wall, startling me. I dropped the flashlight and bumped into an end table, nearly knocking over a lamp. I made a grab and prevented the light from falling. As I was setting it back on the table I jumped again as I heard a voice call out. I paused, straining my ears, but the sound wasn’t repeated. I figured my imagination was playing tricks on me.
Searching for the flashlight on the floor, I thought I heard the voice again. My throat went dry and I scuttled back until I came up against the sofa. I sank down on the cushions, steeling myself against a desire to run and get out of there. My hands shook and I felt half sick with fear. The wind banged the shutter again and it was followed by the squeak of a tree limb against the house. I breathed a sigh of relief. That must have been what I heard. Brandt wasn’t home. There was no one else in the house.
Calmer now, I searched again and found the flashlight. With its aid I located the stairs just where I thought they’d be.
Come on, I told myself. Just take a look upstairs and then you can go home. But as I peered up into that darkness, fear took me again. Did I really want to go up there? I didn’t, though I knew if I told them I had Peggy and Ed would catch me in a lie. The thought of their reaction outweighed my fear. Flicking on the light, I took a tentative step. Just to the top of the stairs. Then I can truthfully say I went to the second floor.
One step. Two. A riser squeaks underfoot. Stop. Listen. Go on. The wind bangs again. Stop. Listen. Go on.
I’m not sure how long it took. Eventually I reached the top. By my light I saw a closed door to the left. Cautiously, I pushed it open. The hinges creaked loud enough to make me jump once more. Shining the light inside I saw an array of sheet-covered furniture. A storeroom. Okay. There’s another door down there to the right and it’s standing open. I’ll check that one and then get out of here.
Just as I reached the door, my light flickered out and this time no amount of bumping could rejuvenate it. That’s enough. I’m out of here. If old Brandt has any secrets, he can keep them.
“Jim?” a voice called out just as I was turning away.
If that wasn’t enough to scare me out of five years growth, the light that illuminated the whole area and momentarily blinded me was.
“Jim? Is that you?” the voice, plainly a female voice, inquired again. Blinking against the glare of light she’d switched on, I saw an elderly woman sitting up in bed and staring out at me from the room.
“I-I…” I muttered, staggering back.
The woman picked up spectacles from the bedside table, put them on and peered closely at me. “You’re not Jim,” she said.
“No, ma’am.” I wanted to run, but my feet wouldn’t cooperate.
“Well, come in here, boy, and tell me what you’re doing in my house.” She said it calmly, so it wasn’t exactly like an order. Yet I couldn’t resist. I made my way over to where she sat. “Who are you?”
“Nick Becker, ma’am.”
“Kin to the Beckers from the alley behind this house?” she asked, peering closely at me.
“My parents,” I said, nodding.
“So, what are you doing in my house, Nick Becker?”
I swallowed a couple times before finding my voice. “Thought nobody was home,” I croaked.
“Oh? You only break into houses where nobody’s home?”
“No, ma’am. I mean—I didn’t exactly break in.”
“You’re here, no?”
I shrugged.
The overhead light flashed off her glasses as she scowled at me. “Grab that chair over there. Bring it over here next to me. Sit down and explain yourself to me.”
I dragged the chair over and sat down as she’d asked. My heart was up in my throat and thumping like a frog on a griddle.
“Well?”
I had no idea who she was nor what I could say to explain my presence in the house. She didn’t look mean. Yet I couldn’t be sure of her intentions now she’d caught me.
“How did you get in? I’m sure Jim would have locked the doors.”
“Through the cellar. Who’s Jim?”
She gazed at me as though I were stupid. “Why my husband. Who’d you think I meant?”
“Mr. Brandt is your husband? We didn’t know he had a wife anymore.”
She stared at me over the top of her spectacles. “What do you mean—anymore? I’ve always been his wife since we got married.”
I explained about the stories of her leaving or being murdered.
She gasped and then broke out in a sputter of laughter. “Nosey busybodies with nothing better to do than gossip.” She laughed again and it was a good sound, not mean at all. “So, did you break in here expecting to find a body or, maybe, some treasure Jim had accumulated?”
There was no way around it. I had to tell her the whole story of how and why I’d been delegated to sneak into her house and ferret out her husband’s secrets. When I finished Mrs. Brandt grinned and asked, “Your throat as dry as mine after all this talkin’?”
I was parched, but I didn’t figure it came from talking. I nodded.
“Well you go on downstairs to the kitchen. There should be some soft drink in the refrigerator. You bring us up a couple bottles and I’ll tell you a thing or two about my husband which you can take back to your friends and whoever else you choose to tell.”
I could have run off then. But she’d sparked my curiosity and I was anxious to hear what Mrs. Brandt had to say. I brought the drinks as she’d requested and sat down next to her again.
After a couple swigs of RC Cola (right out of the bottle like any kid would have done), Mrs. Brandt fixed me in her sight and told her story. How she’d been taken with health problems that confined her to her bed and how Mr. Brandt had been taking care on her ever since. “Like any decent husband would,” she said. “Jim is a private and proud man. He’s not the kind to go advertising our problems to others. He does his work and he minds me. We married for better or worse. If it had been him took sick, I’d be doing the same for him as he does me.
“Jim Brandt is no murderer. He’s a fine man. And people who spread those rumors about him just because he didn’t blabber to them about our troubles—well, they should be ashamed of themselves.”
I saw there were tears glistening in her eyes and I felt ashamed for the things my friends and I had thought about her husband. She patted me on the shoulder then. “You’d best run along home now,” Mrs. Brandt said. “Just one thing I want you to remember, boy. Things aren’t always what people say they are, and you shouldn’t judge people without knowin’ all the facts.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said and started for the door.
“Nick,” she called after me.
I turned.
Mrs. Brandt gave me a big grin. “It was nice talkin’ to you, Nick. Your mother and me used to talk a lot over the back fence. You tell her, she has a mind to, it’d be all right if she came over and knocked on the door sometime. You’re the first company other than Jim I’ve had in a long while.”
My cousin, Peggy, leaned forward and shoved the door which, as we knew from previous reconnoiters, flung open with an ominous creak of its rusty hinges. “Well,” she hissed as I hesitated.
Shivering and knowing it wasn’t from the assault of the wind, I was glad to hear the quiver in her voice. “What if he catches me?” I asked, stalling.
“We seen him drive away,” Ed Yeager, my best friend, said from behind as he gave me a push toward the door. “He went to church—just like he does every Saturday night. That’s why we picked tonight. Remember?”
“I’ll bet he worships the Devil,” Peggy said, narrowing her eyes. I could barely see her but her eyes glowed, catching and reflecting the light of the scudding moon. “I mean, what kind of people go to church on Saturday?”
“Maybe we oughta go home,” I ventured, swallowing hard.
Ed gave me another shove. “Are you getting chicken, Nick?”
“Me? No. But what if he comes back?”
“That’s why we’re here,” Peggy told me. “If he comes back, we’ll see him and warn you so’s you can get out.”
I took a hesitant step toward the entrance, then turned back to them. “What about the dog?”
Peggy sighed. “We saw him lock it in the shed like he always does. If you don’t get going, he will be back.”
Reluctantly, yet without a backward glance, swaggering with the kind of bravado boys will use to conceal any evidence of cowardice, I took the two paces separating me from the door and stepped through into the dank darkness of the cellar, closing my eyes and clenching my fists as though these futile gestures could protect me from the source of my dread. A malevolent odor of mold and mildew assailed my nostrils and set my stomach to churning. Behind me, despite the wind drumming against the bulk of the house like the doleful back-time music in one of those horror movies we kids loved, I heard the shrill whistle of Peggy and Ed breathing through cold-clogged nostrils. Slowly I opened my eyes and waited for them to adjust to the dark, hating Brandt for having brought me here.
It was easy to hate Brandt.
Though the feeling was not that genuine repugnance which only can be known by an adult, it was enough to make three children risk the wrath of their parents by sneaking out on a cold winter’s night, intent on housebreaking. It was in the winter of my twelfth year, Christmas only a week away, and my mind should have been filled with anticipation of gaily decorated trees, family gatherings and presents. But it was no gift I sought from Brandt the night I invaded his house. Revenge was my motivation. I meant to expose his secrets and bring down on him the condemnation of the village.
Brandt had been an enigma all the years of my young life. He was a blacksmith in a time when no one in our village kept horses or mules. In an age of automobiles, this tenacious clinging to the trade of his youth might have been excused had the man not practiced so many other eccentricities.
While everyone else in Alliance worked at the colliery or farmed full-time, Brandt clung to this antique trade, eking out a precarious living by forging and repairing tools, doing other iron work and selling the milk of the small herd of goats he kept in his pasture. In a village dominated by a confident and oppressive Methodism, he practiced an even more stern religion which forbade its members meat, sent them to church on a Saturday and believed the Coming was imminent (our parents believe this, too, though no one seemed in any particular hurry for it to happen). In a village where neighborliness was more than just a word, where pride demanded regular applications of gleaming white paint to clapboarded houses and where picket fences bloomed like flowers around well-kept yards, Brandt again ran contrary. He kept to himself, his clapboards were weathered black as though they’d never experienced a coat of paint, his yard and pasture flourished with weeds and untrimmed bushes, all surrounded by a barbed wire fence intended to keep goats in and people out.
Brandt was a challenge to all of us in Alliance. No one in town walked by that house without wondering what dark secrets lurked within its walls. It stood on the corner next to Reamer’s store, a black carcass of a building as cold and unfriendly as its owner. The windows were shuttered winter and summer against intruding eyes, and the door was never opened to anyone. Salesmen had long ago learned not to rap. If anyone wanted intercourse with Brandt, they knew to approach him at his shop during working hours.
Brandt frightened children and intimidated strangers. Our elders—lest they had need of his skills—mostly ignored the man. Still they were equally puzzled by his solitary and bilious manner. We are a gregarious people and one who holds himself off becomes the subject of much speculation.
The village hummed with stories about Brandt. Unpleasant stories. There was rumor he’d killed a man in a drunken brawl in his youth. It was said he’d spent years in jail and had joined his strange church out of remorse for his crime. Some said he’d been married once. Older people remembered the woman. A good woman, they said. Unlike her husband, she’d liked to talk. She’d confided his odd and miserly ways to neighbors. She’d told how one night they’d gone without supper because Elmer Reamer had raised the price of some victual he craved by pennies.
There had been the woman, and then she ceased to be seen.
She was not from our valley and it was believed she’d left Brandt and gone back to her own people. Others said he’d beat her, and she’d fled. A few believed just as fervently Brandt had killed her and buried the body in his cellar.
No one knew anything for certain and none dared seek the truth from him.
Despite all this, Brandt had one thing in his favor as far as we children were concerned. The apples on the trees in his yard were the best in town. We knew. We’d sampled them all. When we got to feeling particularly adventurous, we’d sneak into Brandts’ yard at night and hook apples.
And it was those very apples led me to sneaking into his house this winter night. Peggy, Ed and I had been plotting it since Halloween.
Knowing there’d be no “treat” at his door, we’d appropriated a supply of his apples as our Halloween “trick.” Unfortunately, Brandt anticipated our raid and was lying in wait. We quaked in fright when he caught us, expecting to be cast into his furnace like the balls of our summer games that rained onto his property. Instead Brandt did the unexpected. He delivered us to our parents. Because of his reputation, we were confident we’d escape punishment. Alas, it was not so. We were but children and didn’t conceive of our theft as a crime, nor did we see the hidings we received as just.
There’s no spite like that of a child who thinks himself wronged. Many a day afterward was spent in conspiring how we might gain revenge and vindicate ourselves in the eyes of our parents. Finally, it was mutually agreed there could be no better way than by exposing the secrets Brandt had hid these many years.
Like those Romans before the cross of Jesus, we cast lots for the honor of being the one to invade his privacy. It fell on me, and the honor was quickly replaced by stark terror—though I dared not admit it to my friends.
The last vestige of my courage evaporated like snow in a warm room as I descended to Brandt’s cellar. It took everything I could muster to strike a match for a look around the cellar. I don’t suppose I really expected to see skeletons, coffins or other ghoulish things, but I was greatly relieved when the light revealed no more than the boxes of apples, barrels of potatoes, crocks of sauerkraut and other provisions that might have been seen in any other cellar in Alliance.
The match sputtered and went out against my flesh, eliciting a sharp cry. Another wave of fear swept over me as I was plunged once more into darkness. Oh, if I had only thought to bring a flashlight.
“Whadja see?” Peggy croaked in a low voice from the stairwell.
“Nothin’.”
“You gotta go upstairs.”
I didn’t answer.
“Nick!”
“I’m goin’, I’m goin’.” Heaving a deep breath, I crossed the room to where I’d seen the stairs by my match. I knew there’d be no living with Peggy and Ed if I didn’t complete the mission as we’d planned it. Despite my trepidation, I had to go all the way up to the second floor. We figured Brandt wouldn’t leave any evidence of his crimes downstairs on the off chance some stranger did gain access to the house.
As I crept up the stairs, cringing every time a riser creaked under foot, I ran my hand along the wall, searching for a banister. There was none. But just as I came to the landing, my hand struck a shelf and bumped an object that fell with a clatter at my feet. Kneeling and feeling around, I found it. A flashlight. Flicking the switch, it came on, shining a dim pool of yellow across the floor. I smiled. The batteries were weak, but at least now I was confident of seeing where I was going and not bumping into any of the grotesque fantasies my mind had conjured up.
Opening the door, I found myself in the kitchen of the house. Shining my light round the space, I was disappointed to find this little different from any other kitchen of my experience. A black coal stove against one wall, sink and cupboards on another, a refrigerator humming its familiar song and a pillar table and chairs in the middle of the room.
The flashlight revealed a hall leading through to the dining room and on to the parlor at the front of the house. Other than the refrigerator and the clinking of the radiators, the only sound was the wind rattling a window and the pounding of my own heart. Gulping another breath, I headed out the hall. The stairs to the upper floor were probably near the front door.
I’d just got through the dining room when the flashlight went out. I halted, bumping it against my thigh in hope of reviving it. Fortunately, it did come back on, but the light was even dimmer. After gauging a path clear of obstruction, I shut the flashlight off. I needed to conserve its power for upstairs.
A loose shutter banged against an outer wall, startling me. I dropped the flashlight and bumped into an end table, nearly knocking over a lamp. I made a grab and prevented the light from falling. As I was setting it back on the table I jumped again as I heard a voice call out. I paused, straining my ears, but the sound wasn’t repeated. I figured my imagination was playing tricks on me.
Searching for the flashlight on the floor, I thought I heard the voice again. My throat went dry and I scuttled back until I came up against the sofa. I sank down on the cushions, steeling myself against a desire to run and get out of there. My hands shook and I felt half sick with fear. The wind banged the shutter again and it was followed by the squeak of a tree limb against the house. I breathed a sigh of relief. That must have been what I heard. Brandt wasn’t home. There was no one else in the house.
Calmer now, I searched again and found the flashlight. With its aid I located the stairs just where I thought they’d be.
Come on, I told myself. Just take a look upstairs and then you can go home. But as I peered up into that darkness, fear took me again. Did I really want to go up there? I didn’t, though I knew if I told them I had Peggy and Ed would catch me in a lie. The thought of their reaction outweighed my fear. Flicking on the light, I took a tentative step. Just to the top of the stairs. Then I can truthfully say I went to the second floor.
One step. Two. A riser squeaks underfoot. Stop. Listen. Go on. The wind bangs again. Stop. Listen. Go on.
I’m not sure how long it took. Eventually I reached the top. By my light I saw a closed door to the left. Cautiously, I pushed it open. The hinges creaked loud enough to make me jump once more. Shining the light inside I saw an array of sheet-covered furniture. A storeroom. Okay. There’s another door down there to the right and it’s standing open. I’ll check that one and then get out of here.
Just as I reached the door, my light flickered out and this time no amount of bumping could rejuvenate it. That’s enough. I’m out of here. If old Brandt has any secrets, he can keep them.
“Jim?” a voice called out just as I was turning away.
If that wasn’t enough to scare me out of five years growth, the light that illuminated the whole area and momentarily blinded me was.
“Jim? Is that you?” the voice, plainly a female voice, inquired again. Blinking against the glare of light she’d switched on, I saw an elderly woman sitting up in bed and staring out at me from the room.
“I-I…” I muttered, staggering back.
The woman picked up spectacles from the bedside table, put them on and peered closely at me. “You’re not Jim,” she said.
“No, ma’am.” I wanted to run, but my feet wouldn’t cooperate.
“Well, come in here, boy, and tell me what you’re doing in my house.” She said it calmly, so it wasn’t exactly like an order. Yet I couldn’t resist. I made my way over to where she sat. “Who are you?”
“Nick Becker, ma’am.”
“Kin to the Beckers from the alley behind this house?” she asked, peering closely at me.
“My parents,” I said, nodding.
“So, what are you doing in my house, Nick Becker?”
I swallowed a couple times before finding my voice. “Thought nobody was home,” I croaked.
“Oh? You only break into houses where nobody’s home?”
“No, ma’am. I mean—I didn’t exactly break in.”
“You’re here, no?”
I shrugged.
The overhead light flashed off her glasses as she scowled at me. “Grab that chair over there. Bring it over here next to me. Sit down and explain yourself to me.”
I dragged the chair over and sat down as she’d asked. My heart was up in my throat and thumping like a frog on a griddle.
“Well?”
I had no idea who she was nor what I could say to explain my presence in the house. She didn’t look mean. Yet I couldn’t be sure of her intentions now she’d caught me.
“How did you get in? I’m sure Jim would have locked the doors.”
“Through the cellar. Who’s Jim?”
She gazed at me as though I were stupid. “Why my husband. Who’d you think I meant?”
“Mr. Brandt is your husband? We didn’t know he had a wife anymore.”
She stared at me over the top of her spectacles. “What do you mean—anymore? I’ve always been his wife since we got married.”
I explained about the stories of her leaving or being murdered.
She gasped and then broke out in a sputter of laughter. “Nosey busybodies with nothing better to do than gossip.” She laughed again and it was a good sound, not mean at all. “So, did you break in here expecting to find a body or, maybe, some treasure Jim had accumulated?”
There was no way around it. I had to tell her the whole story of how and why I’d been delegated to sneak into her house and ferret out her husband’s secrets. When I finished Mrs. Brandt grinned and asked, “Your throat as dry as mine after all this talkin’?”
I was parched, but I didn’t figure it came from talking. I nodded.
“Well you go on downstairs to the kitchen. There should be some soft drink in the refrigerator. You bring us up a couple bottles and I’ll tell you a thing or two about my husband which you can take back to your friends and whoever else you choose to tell.”
I could have run off then. But she’d sparked my curiosity and I was anxious to hear what Mrs. Brandt had to say. I brought the drinks as she’d requested and sat down next to her again.
After a couple swigs of RC Cola (right out of the bottle like any kid would have done), Mrs. Brandt fixed me in her sight and told her story. How she’d been taken with health problems that confined her to her bed and how Mr. Brandt had been taking care on her ever since. “Like any decent husband would,” she said. “Jim is a private and proud man. He’s not the kind to go advertising our problems to others. He does his work and he minds me. We married for better or worse. If it had been him took sick, I’d be doing the same for him as he does me.
“Jim Brandt is no murderer. He’s a fine man. And people who spread those rumors about him just because he didn’t blabber to them about our troubles—well, they should be ashamed of themselves.”
I saw there were tears glistening in her eyes and I felt ashamed for the things my friends and I had thought about her husband. She patted me on the shoulder then. “You’d best run along home now,” Mrs. Brandt said. “Just one thing I want you to remember, boy. Things aren’t always what people say they are, and you shouldn’t judge people without knowin’ all the facts.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said and started for the door.
“Nick,” she called after me.
I turned.
Mrs. Brandt gave me a big grin. “It was nice talkin’ to you, Nick. Your mother and me used to talk a lot over the back fence. You tell her, she has a mind to, it’d be all right if she came over and knocked on the door sometime. You’re the first company other than Jim I’ve had in a long while.”
J.R. Lindermuth is a retired newspaper editor. His short stories and articles have appeared in numerous magazines, including Mystery Weekly, Pennsylvania Magazine, History Magazine, A Twist of Noir, Mysterical-E, Untreed Reads, and others. He has published 20 novels and two non-fiction regional histories. He is a member of International Thriller Writers and the Short Mystery Fiction Society. Visit him at www.jrlindermuth.net.