Footprints by Kay Cleaver Strahan

One thing I am bound to say for Irene: she was eager to tell what she knew. Chris did not wish her to tell. She insisted and got snaky with him for trying to stop her.

She said that, on Monday night, she couldn't sleep; so she got up-she thought it was then about ten o'clock, though she was not certain-put on her slippers and her wrapper, took a candle, and went downstairs to the sitting room. She said she was going to read, and she was afraid a light in the bedroom would disturb Chris. She said, also, that she was cold, and she thought the fire might still be burning in the sitting-room fireplace.

The fire was burning. She mended it, lighted the hanging lamp, and finished reading her book. She thought that it was close around eleven o'clock when she went upstairs again. The door to her room and Chris's was locked. She said that she and Chris had had a "trifling quarrel" before Chris had gone to sleep. She thought, in consequence, that he had misunderstood her reason for leaving the room and had locked her out. (That gives a fair notion of her perceptions. She'd been married to Chris for seven months, and yet she could fancy that he was capable of a cad's trick such as that. Chris is faulty, but he's no mucker.) She said that this made her very, very unhappy and a little bit angry. She didn't desire the family to know that Chris could do such a thing; so without making a particle of noise, she tiptoed downstairs again and made a bed for herself on the sofa, with the Indian blankets.

Her next move was to pull the bolts on the doors to the front and back stairways. She did that because, she said, she felt sure Chris would feel ashamed of himself before long and come down and try to make it up with her. I guess she was pretty hot, all right, for she said she thought the bolted doors would show him that two could play at that lock-out game. Locked doors are a mania of hers, anyway. So is insomnia, though she sleeps until noon often enough. This trick of going downstairs to read was, as far as I know, a new one with her. I fancy the trifling quarrel was responsible for that.

After she had locked the doors, she blew out the light, got into her sofa bed, and settled for a long, comfortable weeping spell. Or, as she explained it, she lay down and cried herself to sleep.

She was wakened by the sound of the shot upstairs. The room Father had then-Chris's old room-is right above the sitting room, you know. She said she thought it was Chris shooting himself because she had been unkind to him. (She is the sort of woman to whom such an action would seem not merely reasonable but also admirable.) She jumped from the sofa, got into her wrapper and slippers, lighted her candle, ran through the rooms, unbolted the door to the front stairway, and ran upstairs. All the noises had begun up there, she said, before she had got the door unbolted. If anyone had been running through the upper hall, or trying to come down the back stairway, there would have been no chance of her having heard him.

She started straight down the hall for Chris's and her room. She says she is sure she did not get hold of the idea, then, that we were all locked in our rooms. She said that she did hear Grandfather shout, "Let me out of here! " but she was too badly frightened to make any meanings at all.

She passed Olympe's room and Grandfather's room on her left, and Aunt Gracia's, and yours, and Lucy's on her right before she came to Father's door. It was standing open. The light was burning, so she ran in there. For the minute, and for the first time, too, she had forgotten about the exchange of rooms.

She said that, when she saw Father lying there in bed, it took her a minute to realize that he was not Christopher. Father was lying with his head tipped back on his pillows, and with blood streaming out over his nightshirt. She ran to him. She put her candle on the table there, and sort of lifted him in her arms. That was when she got her wrapper smeared with blood. She says he turned his eyes toward the open window and murmured, "Got away. " At first, Irene was certain that Father had said, "Got away. " But, when Aunt Gracia questioned her, she admitted that Father spoke indistinctly and that he might have said, "Go away. " But I know that her best impression is that Father said, "Got away. " Then, she declares that Father said, quite distinctly, "Red mask. " There was no shaking her certainty about that. She said that he used his lips to say it, and that she was watching them, and that she would swear that he said, "Red mask."

It stands to reason, Judy, that Father did not say "Red mask. " Now what could he have said that sounds like red mask? Repeat it over to yourself. I have; but I can't get it. "Dead" sounds something like "red. " "Dead past. " That's senseless, isn't it? "May ask," sounds like "mask," and takes the lip pressure that Irene insists he made. But "may ask" is meaningless, isn't it? I can't get it. I am hoping that Lucy may be able to, later. She is such a little word wizard.

Irene knew that Father was dying. She thought that he had shot himself. She did not try to question him. We can't blame her for that. She wanted to do something for him, but she didn't know what to do. She attempted to ease his position; to stop the flow of blood with the sheets.

He said our names: "Neal. Judith. Lucy. " She started to leave him, then, to bring Lucy and me to him. He said, more loudly than he had spoken before: "Wait. Father. " She ran back to him, and he said, slowly and plainly: "Bring Father. I must tell _him_. " He repeated, "Must tell Father. " That was the end.