Magnificent Guns of Seneca 6 by Bernard Schaffer Page A

when I’m just blowing off steam.”
     
    “Of course he does,” Halladay said.
     
    “What brings you out here this time of night, Doc?”
     
    “My wife sent me.”
     
    “Why?”
     
    “To check on you.   She said you’re making Betsy miserable with all your skulking around and told me to come check on you as your doctor and as your friend.”
     
      Sam shook his head, “These women, they sure are busybodies, ain’t they?”
     
    “Amen to that, sir.   Amen to that.”
     
    “Well, you can tell her not to worry.   I’m going back to work tomorrow and won’t be…what was it?   Sulking?”
     
    “Skulking.   Although now that you mention it, that is what she probably meant.”
     
    “Anyway, tell her I’m going back to work tomorrow so I won’t be bothering anybody anymore.”
     
    “Excellent,” Halladay said.   He took a long drag and blew the smoke up into the air so that it stung his eyes, “To start searching anew for the wily Mr. Phillips, correct?   But this time, for real, as you said.   It’s about time we had someone push his weight around here and frighten the townspeople into giving up what they know.   Nothing like a little fear and bullying to get the locals in line.”
     
    Sam swished the whiskey around his mouth and said, “Now, you know I’m not like that.”
     
    Halladay nodded and said, “Do you remember when Erasamus Willow’s wife died?”
     
    Sam nodded and drank again.
     
    “Now, bear in mind that as the funeral director, Erasamus has seen more death than anyone in the settlement.   He has stuck his hands inside of more dead bodies and molded the mask of decomposition back into a thing of beauty more times than I could count.   Mrs. Willow had been sick for years when she finally passed, but Erasamus did such a fine job on her that she looked like an eighteen year old beauty queen lying within the confines of that casket.”
     
    “I remember,” Sam said.   “That always did make the hair stand up on the back of my neck, him wanting to work on his own wife like that.”
     
    Halladay shrugged, “Regardless, that is a man who possesses a keep familiarity with death.   On the day after his wife’s funeral, I visited the Willows and saw young Anna standing on the front porch.   The child was rocking back and forth violently, holding herself tight with both arms.   There was an enormous column of smoke coming up from the back of the house, and as I ran around the side, I saw Erasamus standing over a massive fire.   He was chopping his own furniture to pieces and tossing it into the flames.  
     
    ‘What in the world are you doing, Erasamus?’ I asked him.
     
    ‘Burning up the past,’ he told me.
     
    He took a hatchet to his bedframe and started to hack up the headboard when I ran over to him and snatched the hatchet out of his hands.   He tried to fight me, but I managed to knock him down and I said, ‘Erasamus Willow!   When little Anna was first learning to walk and she fell down, did she cry immediately or did she look at you and your wife first?’
     
    And he looked up at me in complete confusion and said, ‘I reckon she looked at us first.’
     
    ‘Why is that, do you think?’
     
    ‘To see what we would do.’
     
    I held out my hand to him and helped him to his feet.   ‘She looked at you because she was using your reaction to determine how badly she’d been hurt.’   I handed him back his axe and said, ‘And she still is, you damn fool.’”   Halladay stubbed out his cigarette on the porch step and said, “Well, time for me to be getting back to the missus.   I’ll tell her what you said, minus the part about being a busybody.   Goodnight, Sam.”  
     
    Sam watched his friend walk down the steps and into the meadow.   “Goodnight, Doc,” he said.   He went to take another sip but stopped and looked at the bottle for a moment.   He walked over to the edge of the porch and dumped the rest of his liquor into the