The Accursed. Joyce Carol Oates

the victim was female—but am not certain as to her age or other details of her life; having been still as a churchmouse overhearing the Negro servants chattering, as they will when they do not believe we are around. Horace must not know.

      To cheer me, Horace read from The Gentleman from Indiana. He & Booth Tarkington having been in the same eating club at Princeton & the Glee Club & Triangle Club. I lay back laughing in the chaise longue, till suddenly I began to feel faint; then, suddenly vexed; I know not why, swept from the table all my medications, & a pitcher of water Hannah had only just brought me; half an accident, & half not. Horace was astonished as I wept, & wept; & Horace comforted me; though I thought him somewhat stiff & startled; & an air of weariness in his limbs, as he carried me to my bedchamber. When I inquired of him about Axson Mayte whom he had met that day at lunch at the Nassau Club, he spoke curtly: saying only that Mayte was not, in his eyes, a gentleman. And there was something in his complexion & the shape of his nose, that was not quite right. But when I begged him to explain, he would not. “You are in a state of nerves, Adelaide. I will give you your nighttime medication, it is time for bed.” Gravely my husband spoke, & I knew not to confound him. For it is wisest not to confound them, at such times. Yet how unfair, when all of Princeton is buzzing with excitement, & every sort of news & gossip, at only 9 p.m. poor Puss’s eyelids are drooping & soon—all spark of what Madame Blavatsky calls the divine spark of being is extinguish’d.

      _____ . Disguising my handwriting to emulate that of Frances Cleveland, & using a dark-purple ink for which the lady is known, I wrote to PRESIDENT & MRS. WILSON, PROSPECT HOUSE, PRINCETON: Dear President & Mrs Wilson you are very foolish people to believe that any in the community might favor you over the virile Andrew West. & you are not of good breeding tho’ you persist in putting on “airs.” & your daughters homely & “horse-faced” like their father & of most dowdy figure like their mother & in addition “buck-toothed.” Sincerely, A Friend.

      This missive, in a plain envelope, stamped, I entrusted to Hannah, to run out & post in a box on Nassau Street, while on errands in town.

      _____ . Horace in the city, visiting our broker at Wall Street; for there is some complications in his will, or in our joint will; of which I never think, for Dr. Boudinot has told me not to worry, in the slightest—“You will outlive us all, Mrs. Burr!” & by stealth & shy questioning like that of a maiden lady of ample years I put questions to Minnie, & to Abraham; as to Hannah, & one or two others; for it is known when a Negro lies to a white person, you can see deceit in their eyes for they are childlike & without guile, in their hearts. In so querying, I think that I have learned that the murdered girl was but eleven years old; father not known & mother a slattern who works at the Bank Street dairy. So there it is, after all my speculation! Poor child! Poor innocence!—for I am sure the child must have been innocent, being so young. Yet she was of a rough background & (it was hinted) of “mixed” blood. Such things will happen to such people, God have mercy on their souls.

      _____ . “Mrs. Burr, please do not ask, no more, Mrs. Burr, please”—so Minnie begged, just this morning; when I summoned her to my bedchamber, to speak frankly to me as to the circumstances of the murder; & whether the child was “tampered with unnaturally.” For this is crucial to know, for the well-being of all in the community. Tho’ it is too beastly, & will only make me ill to learn. “All right then, Minnie, don’t tell me,” I said, wounded; adding, “But if some grievous harm befalls me, it will be on your head.” Minnie began to quiver, & to shake; she is not so strong a woman as you would think, though the daughter of slaves out of Norfolk, & thus strong & reliable stock; yet, it is said she has not been well, with some sort of female illness of which it is best not to speak. Enough to know, I suppose, that there is monstrousness in our midst, in Princeton Borough.

      _____ . A wild windy night & we two are cozy by the fire in the master bedroom, that Abraham has stoked & teased into a blaze. & Horace is less irritable, since his meeting with our broker; our wills have been drawn up, & I have signed, without taxing my eyes, as Horace advised, in attempting to read the arcane legal-babble. & the unease with the unions has subsided, I think. At least, Horace is not raging over it now. Innocently I inquired of Horace, has any progress been made in solving the murder?—& he seemed quite startled, that I knew it was murder; & did not consent to this knowledge, but spoke vaguely that he knew of no serious crime in the Borough, in recent years. Then taking up Mr. Tarkington’s novel, & beginning to read; & I lay my hand on his wrist & begged of him, not to condescend to me; for I wanted to know the Truth, & would know the Truth, as all Theosophists must. & Horace said to me, with a laugh, that the only upset in Princeton of which he has heard, at the Nassau Club, was of some undergraduate pranksters again hammering down a section of Dr. Wilson’s wrought iron fence, he had had built to surround Prospect House; for the boys do take offense, that the president & his family of females should seek privacy for themselves, in the very midst of the campus. (“Dr. Wilson is one of those persons,” Horace has gravely stated, “who may one day succeed in impressing the world, but who can’t be taken seriously in Princeton, New Jersey.”) Later I fell into a headachey sulk, & scarcely consented to take my medicine from Horace’s hand, & dear Horace sought to comfort me, & perhaps wished to cuddle; so I allowed him to lie on top of the quilt & to press his weight gently against me, but very gently—for Horace has grown stout these past few years. & some other exertions may have transpired on Horace’s part, of which I took no heed; for already Puss’s eyelids were drooping. “Do you regret it”—so I asked in a whisper, & the dear gentleman kissed my closed eyes—“do you regret your invalid wife, that never yet has been a wife, nor ever shall be” & he denied all emphatically, as he always does; & hummed a gentle little tune; & his curly mustache tickled, & I thought of the ravaged child in the marsh, & felt an exquisite pain in the very core of my being, & in the next instant—was gone . . .

      _____ . Here is a surprise: there was no child of eleven murdered in Princeton, nor of any age. There were two persons said to be murdered—“executed”—for misbehavior & insult to their superiors—not in Princeton but in Camden, New Jersey. These persons, of whom I have been reading in the Philadelphia Inquirer, discovered by chance in Horace’s study, were called Jester & Desdra Pryde of Camden. All that was done to them, or why, was not explained in the paper, in a brief article on page eight; but the sheriff of Camden County stated that, of 500 persons observing the executions, “not a single eyewitness” has stepped forward. It is an ugly story but too distant from Princeton for pity, I am afraid. & you would know from the intent of the article, that the Prydes were Negroes, & not white; & that they were punished for misbehaving of some sort, that might have been avoided by more discreet judgment on their part.

      _____ . & so, there is no UNSPEAKABLE crime in Princeton after all, but, as Horace warned, a swirl of mere gossip. I am not sure if I am relieved, or disappointed. Poor Puss, misled!

      I have put away Horace’s newspaper where he will not know that it has been touched; & next is nap, & teatime in the late afternoon & ah!—B O R E D O M in gusts like airborne ether.

THE BURNING GIRL

      One afternoon in late May, Annabel Slade, Wilhelmina Burr, and Annabel’s cousin Todd were walking along the bank of Stony Brook Creek, at the edge of Crosswicks Forest; the young women were intensely engaged in conversation as the boy—(at this time eleven years old but looking and behaving like a younger child)—frolicked about, and shouted commandments to the Slades’ dog Thor, who was accompanying the small party in their ramble.

      “Thor, here! Thor, obey.”

      The boy’s voice was sharp, provoking the dog to bark. The dog was a mature German shepherd with a gunmetal gray, whorled coat.

      “Thor, run! Go!”

      How noisy the boy was! And the handsome dog, that did not ordinarily bark, was barking now, excitedly.

      Out of the May sunshine and into the splotched