The Night My Friend by Edward D. Hoch

Author:Edward D. Hoch [Hoch, Edward D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784085513
Publisher: Head of Zeus Ltd
Published: 2013-10-15T16:21:00+00:00

In Some Secret Place

I WAS ALMOST TOO YOUNG to remember it, and certainly too young to understand it all, but that July weekend of Uncle Ben’s funeral has stayed with me through all these years. Perhaps, by putting the words down on paper, I can expel the demon from my memory. At the very least I may be able to clarify my own thinking on those awful events.

The farm that Uncle Ben had worked alone since his wife’s death was a great sprawling sort of place, stretching out on both sides of the dusty road that bisected it. He’d planted crops on only a small portion of the land closest to the house, preferring to leave the rest for grazing or for timberlands that might prove valuable in his old age. Thus it was that Uncle Ben rarely visited some parts of the vast farmlands.

That summer, that July, we’d seen very little of him. My mother and father were busy with other things and I’d reached the mid-grammar school age when a trip to the beach twenty miles away was much more exciting than a journey over the hill to Uncle Ben’s farm. So it was with a special sense of shock that the midnight phone call reached my father. I remember even then the deep dread I felt at the unknown, and I remember the next morning when my mother dressed me in my only Sunday suit with a lecture that I was to act like a perfect gentleman for the next few days. Then we waited on the front porch in the shade until my father came by for us with the car.

I could see at once, even with my youthful eyes, that the death of his brother had greatly upset my father. He barely spoke during the brief trip up to the farm, and he handled the old Packard as if he’d never driven it before.

“How did it happen?” my mother asked him once.

“Fell off the tractor and hit his head on a rock. Mike Simpson found him out in the field after dark, when he heard the tractor still running.”

That was as much as he said, and the rest of the trip was completed in silence. Overhead, the sun had retreated behind a vast grey cloud that stretched beyond the horizon.

I’d never seen so many people at Uncle Ben’s farm before. The driveway that led past the house and back to the barn was lined with cars and a few wagons. Even the county’s dirt road out front was almost blocked by the vehicles. I recognized only a few of them, and decided at once that I wouldn’t enjoy myself here today.

A group of the men were standing in a circle near the barn, listening to Mike Simpson. He was probably telling them how he’d found Uncle Ben out by the tractor and I wanted to hear it, but my mother hustled me inside. There the women were gathered, somber already in black, speaking in whispers about the tragedy.

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