The Girl at Central

by Geraldine Bonner

He raised it and saw the faint white of the face and hands and felt by the clothes it was a woman. He knew the way an enraged bear attacks—rising up to its hind legs and giving a blow with its paw, a blow that if the body it strikes is unprotected, can break bones and tear muscles out of their place. In the dark he felt the woman till his hand came on the trickle of blood on her face. That told him the brute had struck at her head, and sick and trembling, he lit a match and held it low over her. The hat had protected her from the claws; without it they would have torn through the scalp like the teeth of a rake. But when he saw her face and felt of her pulse, he knew that that savage blow had broken her skull and she was dead.

At first he was too paralyzed to think, kneeling there beside her with the bear crouched at the end of his chain, not stirring as if it was scared at what it had done. Then the horn of the Doctor's auto woke him and, clutching the body, he drew back into the shadow. The car passed at furious speed, its noise drowning any sound that that strange and awful group might have made. Shaking in every limb he laid his burden on the grass and tried to compose it, putting back the hat which was torn off, but was caught to the hair by its long pin.

While he was doing this the clouds broke and he was drawing the coat about her when the moon came out bright as day. By its light he saw the pearl necklace and in his own words, "All the badness in his heart came up into his head."

When he told that part of his story he wrung his hands and sobbed, declaring over and over that he was an honest man and a good Catholic. Never before had he stolen, though often he had gone cold and hungry. But he knew now that he must kill the bear, and then he would be left an old man without a penny or any way to earn one. "And the pearls," he moaned out, "what are they to the dead? And to me, who must live, they mean riches forever."

He said his hands shook so he couldn't find the clasp and to get at it he pulled open the coat. And then he gave a cry and drew back like he was burnt, for there on the breast of the dead woman, sparkling like a thing of fire, was the cross.

Babbitts said the two men were greatly impressed by the way he acted when he told this. The perspiration broke out on his face and he crossed himself, bowing his head and shuddering. "It was God's voice," he whispered. "It said: 'Stop, Tito; hold your hand. No man can rob the dead.'"

So he closed the coat, folded the arms across the chest and covered all with branches he found in a pile near by. As he moved about the bear watched him, not stirring, as if it knew it was guilty and was waiting to see what he would do to it.

When the work was finished the two of them stole away, as noiseless as shadows. His head was clear enough to think of the footprints and he kept on the grass till he was near the Firehill Road. He was approaching this when he heard Reddy's horn, and with the bear following, he slipped through a break in the trees into the open space beyond. Here, huddled into the blackness under the boughs, he saw the car swing past. It went a little way down the road and then stopped and stood for what seemed to him a long time, every now and then the horn sounding. When it finally started again he moved on, the bear padding silently beside him. He said the car came back soon and passed and repassed him a number of times. Each time he was ready for it, the noise and the lamps warning him of its approach. Crowded up against the bear, he watched it through the branches, all the road bright in front of it where the lamps threw their two long shoots of light.

When they asked him if he wasn't afraid of the bear making some sound he shook his head and said just like a child:

"Bruno? No—he is wise like a man. When I look him in the eye I see he knows he is a murderer and must die, and it makes him very quiet."