A Stone's Throw by James Ziskin (best sci fi novels of all time .TXT) 📕

all. Mr. and Mrs. E. Coleman had surely long since departed or simply perished in the fire on Tempesta Farm. Still, the prospect of driving fifty minutes to the far end of Saratoga County appealed to me more than climbing a flight of stairs to Judge Harrison Shaw’s chambers, located a couple of blocks from the New Holland Republic’s offices on Main Street.

It was past ten thirty when I pulled into the dirt-and-grass driveway. If forced to guess, I’d say no vehicle had used it in at least five years. The old clapboard farmhouse, long since stripped of its protective paint, was mostly gray with liver spots and warping weather panels. It was listing visibly to port, and I feared a stiff breeze might well knock it over. The deck of the front porch had collapsed on one side, and the torn screen door in the entrance hung half open by the rusty bottom hinge, the only one of three still dispatching its duties. The yard was overgrown in places and hard, bare dirt in others. An old garage, doors thrown open wide, was crammed with junk, and the carcass of an old pickup at least thirty years old languished shipwrecked in a sea of tall grass beyond the end of the drive.

I climbed out of my Dodge and approached the pile of lumber with care. I even left the driver’s door open in case I needed to make a quick escape from what looked like an amusement park haunted house. This was the address I’d found in the phone booth directory the day before, the one listed as “Coleman, E.” I climbed the steps gingerly, fearing a fall through the rotting boards, but they bore my weight, such as it was, and saw me safely to the door. I rapped three times on the dusty glass behind the screen and waited. A second attempt roused something inside.

“If you’re here for the meter, it’s broke,” came a man’s voice from somewhere inside.

I explained that I was not there to read the meter.

“I said it’s broke, and I’m not paying for no electricity.”

“I’m not from Niagara Mohawk,” I called out as a man in his late fifties or early sixties appeared in the doorway. His face was long and haggard, with a week’s growth of black-and-gray whiskers sprouting from his chin. He was wearing a long undershirt and, so it appeared, nothing else. I wanted to avert my frightened gaze, but the shotgun he was pointing at my chest held my attention.

“You’re not from the electric company,” he said as if to accuse. All of his upper incisors were missing, and canines, too. The rest of his teeth didn’t appear to be long for this world either.

“I’ve been trying to tell you that,” I said.

He lowered the gun. Now it was pointing at my knees. “Then who are you?”

I gave him an abbreviated explanation. He didn’t strike me as the patient type, and until he put the weapon away, I wasn’t resting easy.

“Do you know a man named Everett Coleman?” I asked.

“Are you funning me?”

“No, I’m looking for Mr. and Mrs. Everett Coleman.”

“What for?”

There was no way to sugarcoat this. I drew a deep breath and explained. “Because I think they died in a fire Saturday morning.”

More confused than ever, the old man gaped at me. He let the muzzle of his shotgun drop until it was pointing at his own feet. I was safe for the present.

“Everett Coleman, you say?”

I nodded.

“I’m Everett Coleman. And my wife’s been dead for eight years. No great loss there. She run off with a trucker and left me with the girl.”

“Do you own a black Chrysler by any chance?”

He scoffed. “A Chrysler? I don’t own nothing, can’t you see? Nothing except for this shack of a house.” He made a limp gesture with his left hand, as if to showcase the property.

“Have you ever been to Manitoba?”

“What business would I have in Africa?”

Of all the false leads I’d ever chased, this might have been the oddest. As I was searching for the words to excuse myself without scaring him into hoisting his shotgun again, I decided to cover the last base and ask one more question.

“You mentioned a girl. What girl?”

“I’m gonna put some pants on,” he said. “Then you can come inside, and we’ll talk.”

“Actually, I prefer to wait outside.”

He tilted his head and aimed a crazy eye at me. I thought for a moment that he was going to squeeze the trigger a mite too hard, discharge his weapon, and blow off a couple of his toes.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Of course I’ll come in.”

Clothes make the man. Everett Coleman slipped into an old pair of trousers and donned a short-sleeve shirt for receiving hours. He offered me some water in a grimy glass, which I sedulously avoided. We sat opposite each other in the parlor, him on the worn sofa, me on a wooden chair. I asked if he minded if I smoked. His eyes grew to twice their size, so I held out the package to him. He leaned forward on the couch and, ogling the cigarettes with avidity, rubbed his fingers together as a greedy child might while trying to decide which chocolate to choose from a sampler.

“Take the whole pack,” I said at length. “I’ve got another in my purse.”

I didn’t need to repeat the offer. In short order, he’d lit a cigarette and leaned back on the sofa to take a deep drag. Then another.

“The wife left me when I was serving in the navy overseas,” he said without preamble. Smoke oozed from his nostrils. “I was wounded at Guadalcanal. Shrapnel from a shell in my hip. Can’t walk straight no more, at least not without a lot of pain.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Won the Purple Heart. But Betty, she didn’t care. Didn’t even bother to send a Dear John letter. All I got was a wire from my sister saying that no-good tramp of a wife of