The Hayloft. A 1950s Mystery

school.”
    I looked at Joe. Although known even less than Natalie for his intellectual brilliance, he was nodding in agreement with her. I stumbled out of the room and went to stand by the entrance to the school used by students who drove their own cars. I waited in vain as the few students who drove came drifting through the doorway, but no Sylvia. At two minutes before the bell, I went back to the cafeteria.
    As our homeroom teacher went through the ritual of taking attendance and reading messages from Dr. Graves and others, I happened to stick my hand in my pocket, and felt the piece of paper I had placed there earlier. I pulled it out and unfolded it. It was white bond paper and the following was typed on it:
    “ A nosy young fellow named Gary
    Looked into some things that were scary.
    The death of his coz
    Is the story that was,
    But if he persists he’ll be very
    S O R R Y”
    I read it again, not believing what I was seeing. The bell rang for first period. I slid it back into my pocket and headed for class, wondering if this was some kind of a joke. And then I forgot about it as something else captured my attention.
    The school was buzzing about Sylvia and her father. And the buzz seemed to be overwhelmingly negative. How could she go from being the most popular girl in the school to this in one day? I wanted to yell at these people and tell them how stupid they were to be led around blindly by a junior senator from Wisconsin and his gang of thugs.
    But I was too cowardly. I kept quiet and wondered what I could do to help her. I didn’t have any classes with her, but we did have the same lunch. By the time I went through the lunch line, I was boiling inside. When I gave my twenty-seven cents to Dolores, my hand accidentally brushed against the bulge in her sweater, fulfilling my fantasy. Or was it accidental? We made eye contact for a moment, and then she went on to the next person in line. For some reason, this made me feel a little better.
    I walked into the cafeteria as the jukebox played “Kiss of Fire,” sung by Georgia Gibbs, who was being burned and turned into ashes by her lover’s kiss. A quick glance around convinced me that Sylvia wasn’t here. Her blond hair made her easy to spot. I saw Barney the brain sitting by himself and slid onto the bench across the table from him, facing the lunch line, so that if Sylvia did show up, I could spot her. We greeted each other, briefly, and then were silent for a few minutes while we shoveled the cafeteria slop into our mouths.
    Near us, at the same table, several boys were talking about communists in general and Sylvia in particular. It wasn’t complimentary.
    I glanced at Barney. He looked at them in disgust and said, “Animals.”
    I figured he knew more about what was going on than I did. I said, “What’s happening here?”
    “It’s the mob effect. When there’s danger, it’s safer to be a faceless face in the crowd. Don’t raise your head or it may be cut off.”
    “So everyone’s scared?”
    “Sure. Look what happened to Mr. Doran.”
    “Do you think he deserved it?”
    “I read the article in this morning’s paper.”
    That was more than I had done. “They put in an article about how they fired him?”
    “The article didn’t even mention that. It just talked about his testimony. He testified that when he was in college, he was idealistic, and he joined this communist group, because he thought it was the answer to the world’s problems. When he found out what Communism was really all about—enslaving people and killing them, he quit. They asked him to implicate others who they claim were in the same group. He took the fifth. I think that’s what got him fired.”
    “Because he wouldn’t incriminate his friends.”
    “Right. It looks to me as if those guys in Washington are trampling on the constitution.”
    “And his own newspaper is, too.”
    “Newspapers rave about the importance of free speech. I’d like to see how they explain what they did to Mr. Doran.”
    ***
    Sylvia lived on Main Street in the village of Carter, an unincorporated center of population within the town of Carter. The high school was a couple of miles west of there, also on Main Street. I drove past Sylvia’s house each day on the way to and from school. I had never actually looked at her house before, and in fact, I didn’t know exactly which one it was, so I got the number out of a telephone book before I left the school that afternoon.
    I knew