Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999

About an hour later Poot appeared at the edge of my hole. He was red-faced and snot-covered — he’d clearly been sobbing. “Poot, I’m going to be killed tomorrow for something I didn’t do.”

“But you my only friend,” he wailed. “Poot be all alone.” It was true; there had once been a great many of his people, but they were wiped out by — let’s say a lack of common sense. His father tried to mate with a bear. His dear mother got her tongue stuck to a glacier and died of exposure that winter. His uncle used a beehive as a pillow. And so on and so on.

“Poot, you were carrying my art supplies. Did you take my knife? Did you kill Hax?”

“He was bad to you. You are good man,” said Poot, and he walked away. About an hour later a thick vine was lowered into the hole. I grabbed hold as Oof and Bubo hauled me out. “You can go,” the shaman said. “Poot confessed.”

I sat alone in my home, Poot’s execution just hours away. Mother, who rarely left the cave, was already at the village center — she loved a public stoning and had been hoarding ten-pound “head-crackers” for just such an occasion. I poked at the dead embers in the cooking pit, stirring the ash hole, feeling like an ash hole myself. My best friend committed murder to defend my work. And then he confessed — he gave up his own life — just to save me. Most people considered Poot a brute, but there was an awful lot of nobility in that man.

All at once I felt something hard among the ashes — it was one of the pigment dishes from my supply case. Digging farther into the pit I found a charred paintbrush as well as a bent and blackened piece of bone — it was my utility knife! These objects must have spilled out of my supply case after my boozy pratfall over the bag; my dear half-blind mother swept them into the fire the next morning. So Poot hadn’t stolen my knife. And he hadn’t killed Hax.

I ran to the clearing at the heart of our village. My poor friend was tied up in the center surrounded by stone-waving villagers. “Stop the stoning!” I cried. “This man is innoc—” Bonk! A hefty rock hit me in the small of the back. I turned to see who threw it. “Mo-ther,” I said reproachfully.

I asked Poot why he’d confessed. “If you die, I die. If I die, you live,” he said. It was that simple. If I live to be forty, I’ll never see another such selfless act.

I showed the shaman my charred knife. “You’ll need more than that to stop the execution,” the shaman told me. “This is what these people live for. It’s good for morale, and it’s good for business.” Indeed, almost every merchant in the tribe was there peddling his wares — Grop the meatseller, Kuff the potter, Zaza and Lu representing the world’s youngest profession, Qaqaq the dentist-exorcist-artist... that’s when it all became clear to me. “People of the village,” I cried, “in one hour I will produce the true murderer. I ask only your kind forbearance—” Bonk! Another rock hit me. She had a good arm for an old lady.

The shaman and I paid a visit to the one merchant not at the execution. When we arrived at the tavern, we found Mog curled up in the corner, drunk on his own wares. I had realized that Mog would never have missed a stoning; he could sell more ale in an afternoon than he ordinarily would in a month. A search behind the bar turned up a bloody tunic and the big bag of cowrie shells that was to be my pay, and then Hax’s. “I just went to Hax to collect on his bar tab. I mean, it was huge,” Mog confessed. “He was holding this big bag of shells, but he wouldn’t part with any of ’em. We argued, he pushed me... I stabbed him.” The knife Mog used was one I had given him years ago, to pay off my bar tab. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Justice is swift in my little village. Within twelve hours the shaman had sentenced three different men to death for the same murder. Mog was taken back to the clearing for execution. Poot was set free and even allowed to throw the first stone. The shaman, apologizing for my wrongful conviction, awarded me ownership of Meg’s Tavern. “And you can have this bag of cowrie shells as soon as you finish that cave painting.”

“It’s done,” I said, grabbing the bag.

So now I’m a tavern owner, and Mother couldn’t be prouder. Poot works for me, running the bar. As part of his policy no drink costs more than three shells. And I earn enough so that I can paint whatever I want, whenever I want, and no one can make me change it. My first project was a family portrait for the wall of my cave: inside a border of roses are me and The Oldest Woman on Earth. And I must say, Mother never looked more beautiful.

The Jeter family stared at the rose-framed picture on the cave wall. “What the ding-dong is this supposed to be?” asked Mrs. Jeter.