In Cold Blood - Truman Capote [35]
thousand dollars. If what I'd heard was true. But I thought, It can't be, there must be some mistake, things like that don't happen, you don't sell a man a big policy one minute and he's dead the next. Murdered. Meaning double indemnity. I didn't know what to do. I called the manager of our office in Wichita. Told him how I had the check but hadn't put it through, and asked what was his advice? Well, it was a delicate situation. It appeared that legally we weren't obliged to pay. But morally - that was another matter. Naturally, we decided to do the moral thing." The two persons who benefited by this honorable attitude - Eveanna Jarchow and her sister Beverly, sole heirs to their father 's estate - were, within a few hours of the awful discovery, on their way to Garden City, Beverly traveling from Winfield, Kansas, where she had been visiting her fiancé, and Eveanna from her home in Mount Carroll, Illinois. Gradually, in the course of the day, other relatives were notified, among them Mr. Clutter's father, his two brothers, Arthur and Clarence, and his sister, Mrs. Harry Nelson, all of Larned, Kansas, and a second sister, Mrs. Elaine Selsor, of Palatka, Florida. Also, the parents of Bonnie Clutter, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur B. Fox, who live in Pasadena, California, and her three brothers - Harold, of Visalia, California; Howard, of Oregon, Illinois; and Glenn, of Kansas City, Kansas. Indeed, the better part of those on the Clutters' Thanksgiving guest list were either telephoned or telegraphed, and the majority set forth at once for what was to be a family reunion not around a groaning board but at the graveside of a mass burial. At the Teacherage, Wilma Kidwell was forced to control herself in order to control her daughter, for Susan, puffy-eyed, sickened by spasms of nausea, argued, inconsolably insisted, that she must go - must run - the three miles to the Rupp farm. "Don't you see, Mother?" she said. "If Bobby just hears it? He loved her. We both did. I have to be the one to tell him." But Bobby already knew. On his way home, Mr. Ewalt had stopped at the Rupp farm and consulted with his friend Johnny Rupp, a father of eight, of whom Bobby is the third. Together the two men went to the bunkhouse - a building separate from the farmhouse proper, which is too small to shelter all the Rupp children. The boys live in the bunkhouse, the girls "at home." They found Bobby making his bed. He listened to Mr. Ewalt, asked no questions, and thanked him for coming. Afterward, he stood outside in the sunshine. The Rupp property is on a rise, an exposed plateau, from which he could see the harvested, glowing land of River Valley Farm - scenery that occupied him for perhaps an hour. Those who tried to distract him could not. The dinner bell sounded, and his mother called to him to come inside - called until finally her husband said, "No. I'd leave him alone." Larry, a younger brother, also refused to obey the summoning bell. He circled around Bobby, helpless to help but wanting to, even though he was told to "go away." Later, when his brother stopped standing and started to walk, heading down the road and across the fields toward Holcomb, Larry pursued him. "Hey, Bobby. Listen. If we're going somewhere, why don't we go in the car?" His brother wouldn't answer. He was walking with purpose, running, really, but Larry had no difficulty keeping stride. Though only fourteen, he was the taller of the two, the deeper-chested, the longer-legged, Bobby being, for all his athletic honors, rather less than medium-size - compact but slender, a finely made boy with an open, homely-handsome face. "Hey, Bobby. Listen. They won't let you see her. It won't do any good." Bobby turned on him, and said, "Go back. Go home." The younger brother fell behind, then followed at a distance. Despite the pumpkin-season temperature, the day's arid glitter, both boys were sweating as they approached a barricade that state troopers had erected at the entrance to River Valley Farm. Many friends of the Clutter family, and strangers from all over Finney County as well, had