The Criminal

by Jim Thompson

  I jumped and sat up. She laughed, her head kind of cocked on one side. She was right up against me, almost; stooped down on her knees. I had to move away before I could sit up good.

  “What the heck are you doing here?” I said. “Why aren’t you in school?”

  “I’ve got a cold,” she said. “Why aren’t you in school?”

  “I suppose you’re going to tell,” I said. “Well, go ahead and see if I care.”

  “Huh-uh.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t tell on you, Bobbie, no matter what you did.”

  “Well, go ahead,” I said. “It don’t make any difference to me what you do.”

  I reached up and got my sock off the bush. It felt pretty dry, so I started to put it on. She took it out of my hand—not snatching, or anything, but just sort of gentle and natural like—and hung it back up again.

  “You want to catch cold, mmm?” she said. “Now, you just leave that right there until I tell you to put it on.”

  “Aw, heck,” I said. “What do you care? Who asked you to come down here tellin’ me what to do?”

  “Well, it’s a very good thing for you, I did,” she said. “You certainly need someone to look after you.”

  I said she was crazy, just about a hundred times crazier’n any two people in the whole world. “I’ll bet your mother doesn’t know where you are. I’ll bet you slipped off without telling her anything.”

  “I’ll bet she doesn’t know I copped her cigarettes, either,” she nodded. “You want a cigarette, Bobbie?”

  She had on some kind of funny looking shorts, not real short, you know, but the kind girls wear to ride bicycles and stuff like that. She had on that—them—and one of those tight goofy-looking blouses like her mother’s always wearing, and a little button-up sweater that was kind of like her mother’s, too. She had the sweater hung around her shoulders, instead of wearing it like anyone with some sense would, and the sleeves kept getting in the way when she tried to get the cigarettes and matches out of her blouse pockets.

  “Well, Bobbie!” she said, finally, kind of pouting like it was my fault. “Aren’t you going to help me?” So I said she was crazy again, but I got the stuff out of her pockets and she sort of stuck herself out so I could get to ’em, and gosh. I mean, well, it was the craziest feeling, me fumbling around in that goofy-looking blouse and her all arched out at me and—and everything.

  I took a cigarette and she took one, and I held a match for us. I threw the cigarettes and matches back in her lap.

  “Well,” I said, “I got to be moving on pretty quick. I’ve got plenty of things to do today.”

  “Mmm?” she said, settling back on one elbow.

  “Going out to the golf links,” I said. “Pick myself up a few fast bucks.”

  “Mmm?” she blew out smoke, lazy-like. “So that’s where you go when you play hooky so much.”

  “I don’t always,” I said. “I get a few bucks ahead, I go into town. I saved up almost ten bucks once, and boy did I have myself a time! I ate lunch there in the station restaurant and then I went to the penny arcade and a shooting gallery and another restaurant and all to heck around.”

  “Mmm,” she said, “you awful bad boy, you.”

  “Well, heck,” I said. “It doesn’t sound like much fun, but it was.”

  She squeezed her cigarette out and lay back, one arm folded under her head. She smiled at me and kind of patted the ground at her side, so I lay back, too. It was a lot more comfortable that way, and I guess I’d kind of been wanting to see her. I guess I’d kind of missed her. I don’t mean I liked her or anything like that, but you get used to someone, they’re always around and then suddenly they aren’t, and you can’t help missing them.

  We just sort of lay there, and, well, somehow or another her hand was in mine, but it didn’t mean anything. I mean, it really didn’t. Why, gosh, she’d always been tagging around after me as far back as I could remember and I’d hold onto her hand to keep her from falling or to help her over something, and maybe we hadn’t held hands in a long time, but it seemed natural enough, like it ought to be, you know. Just there by ourselves, lying there and talking, it was all right.

  “Bobbie…” she said.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Do you remember how we used to play together all day and then when I had to go home or you had to go home, we’d…we’d kiss each other good-bye.”

  “Heck,” I said. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “How long ago has it been, Bobbie? Since you kissed me.”

  “How do I know?” I said. “For gosh sake, Josie!”

  “Well,” she said. “If you’re going to get mad every time I say anything, maybe I’d better go.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “You’re the one that’s mad. All I said was I didn’t remember.”

  “You are too mad,” she said. “I can always tell when you are.”

  “And I guess I don’t know when I am,” I said. “That’s pretty rich, that is.”

  “You can’t look me in the eye and say you’re not mad,” she said.

  “I could if I wanted to,” I said. “For gosh sake, Josie, why do you got to keep jabbering and fussing about—”

  “You can’t do it,” she said. “I dare you to.”

  Well, I wasn’t taking any dare from her, not any crazy old girl like that. So I rolled over, sort of, and looked at her and said I wasn’t mad. I said it a couple of times, looking right at her, almost, but of course that wasn’t good enough for her.

  “You’re mad all right,” she said. “I can tell. If you weren’t, well, you know what you’d do.”

  “For gosh sake, Josie,” I said.

  “Well, you would,” she said. “Oh, B-Bobbie, what’s the matter w-with—”

  And, then, I hadn’t done a darned thing, not a doggone thing, but she began to cry. She kind of cried, but not too much, and she sort of held her arms out, so, well, you know. I kissed her, and she kissed me, and she kept her arms around me when I started to move away.

  I could feel her like I had when I’d got the cigarettes and matches, only I felt her more, and I thought about Dad and what he’d said, but I couldn’t pull away. She held onto me, with our faces pressed together, and she kissed me on the ear a few times and I guess I did, too, I mean I kissed her on the ear, and now and then we kind of whispered things.

  “Bobbie…”

  “Yeah?”

  “This is kind of like that day over at your house, isn’t it? When Daddy raised all that big fuss over nothing.”

  “We weren’t doing anything,” I said. “We weren’t doing a darned thing.”

  “He’s crazy,” she said. “Anyway, well even if we had been, what difference would it’ve made? He does it, he and Mama. If it’s so bad, why—”

  “Josie,” I said. “For gosh sake, are you crazy? You know good and well that’s—well, it’s not the same.”

  She said, all right, if that was the way I felt, if I was going to get mad every time she opened her mouth. So I said what the heck was wrong with her, who was getting mad, and I kissed her again to prove that I wasn’t.

  “Bobbie…did you ever?” she said.

  “Huh-uh,” I said.

  “If I…promise you’ll never tell anyone if I tell you something?”

  “Well, sure,” I said.

  She hesitated. Then, she put her mouth real close to my ear and whispered.

  “Aw,” I said. “You’re kidding.”

  “All right,” she said. “I don’t care if you don’t believe me.”

  I swallowed. My mouth seemed kind of all full of spit all of a sudden. “W-Who—when, Josie?”

  “Last summer. When I was going into town one Saturday. I was almost to the station and this man, I don’t know who he was, but anyway he had a big car, and he asked me if I didn’t want a ride. So…”

  “Gosh,” I said, “you hadn’t ought to’ve gone with him, Josie. He—why, he might have been crazy or somethin’ and—”

&nbs
p; “Pooh.” She shrugged. “People just make those stories up to scare their kids.”

  “The heck they do,” I said. “You read about guys like that in the newspapers all the time. They get a girl in their car, and then they—after they’ve done it they get scared—and they, well, you’ve read about ’em yourself, Josie.”

  “Well,” she shrugged again. “Well, anyway, I did. He did it to me.”

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t right then because I had to keep swallowing.

  “He was sort of playing around,” she said, “and after a while he drove off the highway and pulled up behind a big sign board. H-He”—she shivered and pulled me closer—“it hurt awful, Bobbie.”

  “Gosh,” I said. “For gosh sake, Josie.”

  “I…I thought I was going to bleed all over everything. Even the second time when, well, you know, I shouldn’t have…”

  I swallowed again, hard, and she ran her hand through my hair. Then, she took her hand away and I could feel her fumbling for something down in her pants pocket. She, found it, finally, the thing she was looking for, and squeezed it into my hand.

  “B-Bobbie.…You know what that is?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I said.

  “I copped it out of Mama and Daddy’s bedroom. I…are they all alike, Bobbie? I mean, will they fit anyone?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “Gosh, how do I know? I guess they will.”

  “Would they, you? W—Would that one?”

  “I—Josie!” I said. “Josie, what—d-do you—”

  “Wait,” she said. “Wait a minute, Bobbie. Someone might see us here.”

  She pushed me away and stood up, and then she looked down at me kind of drowsy-like, her eyes narrowed, and held her hand out to me. I stood up, and we went back toward the cliff a little ways, where some bushes grew out of the base of it and there was a kind of little cave.

  I got down on my knees and spread her sweater on the ground, and it was like a dream, me with that thing still clenched in my hand, and her getting down on the sweater and lying back. It didn’t seem real at all and my head was pounding like sixty, and I was so choked up I could hardly breathe.

  I sort of turned my back so she couldn’t see when I put the thing on, and my hands kept fumbling and jumping, but finally I did it. I turned back around and there she was, just taking her time like it wasn’t anything, unzipping the side of those goofy-looking shorts, and pulling the blouse up out of them, unbuttoning it and turning it back. And—

  I was down on the ground with her, hugging and kissing and—

  “Bobbie!” she said, kind of mad-laughing. “Now, wait a minute, silly!”

  “J-Josie,” I said. “F-For g-g-gosh—”

  “You hear me, Bobbie? I’m going to be mad, now! Y-You’ll—Please, Bobbie! W-Wait. We c-can’t—you can’t do it that…Bobbie!”

  So we did it, and she didn’t seem mad then, but afterwards she was. She said just to look at her and how could she go home with blood on her and it was all my fault and she had a good notion to tell her mother I’d made her.

  “I’m sorry, Josie,” I said. “For gosh sake, I didn’t mean to. How many times I got to tell you that?”

  “A lot of good that does,” she said. “It’s all your fault.”

  “Well, you’d better not blame it on me,” I said. “You’d better not go blabbing to your folks about me.”

  “Ho, ho!” she said. “Well, I know I got to do something. You certainly can’t expect me to take all the blame.”

  I began to get scared. I thought about Dad and the time Jack Eddleman had raised such a fuss, and, now, well, now, there was really something to fuss about, and if he acted that way then, what would he do now.

  I could wash them out for you in the creek,” I said. “You want me to do that, Josie?”

  “Pooh!” She jerked away from me. “Cold water and no soap. A lot of good that would do!”

  “Well,” I said. “Well—uh—well, maybe—”

  “Well, go on and say it,” she said. “If you’ve got anything to say, say it!”

  “I’m trying to, ain’t I?” I said. “What do you think I’m trying to do, anyway? Shut up a minute, for gosh sake, and give me a chance.”

  “Well, go on,” she said. “And don’t you dare tell me to shut up, Mr. Bobbie Talbert!”

  “Maybe—well, maybe,” I said, “you could kind of sneak up behind those bushes at the top of the cliff, and when you see your mother talking to someone you could slip around the block and come up the alley to your house and get into some other clothes.”

  “And what would I do with these?” she said. And then she said, “Well, I guess I could. I could spill ink on them or something and put them in the dirty clothes, and maybe, well, I guess that would be all right.”

  “Will you, Josie?” I said. “Will you do that?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Promise,” I said.

  “Maybe. I will if I can.”

  “But why the heck can’t you?” I said. “I told you just how to do it, and you said you could so what’s the maybe about?”

  She shrugged, looking at me out of the corner of her eyes. And I knew she would do it; she just had to and she knew it as well as I did, so why wouldn’t she promise?

  I guessed she must have been sore, and not entirely because of her clothes. She felt like I did now. I guessed, kind of sore and mean and tired and dirty-feeling. It was funny how you could feel one way a couple minutes before, and then just the opposite now. I felt just as crummy as she did, only I couldn’t act like she did. I had to go on coaxing and begging her to promise.

  “Look at me, Josie,” I said. “I got some on my clothes, too, and I’m not mad. I don’t try to make you feel bad about it.”

  “Oh, pooh,” she said. “It’s different with a boy. Anyway, it’s all your fault. You don’t have any right to be mad!”

  “You wouldn’t—you’ll do it like I said, won’t you, Josie?” I said. “Won’t you, Josie?”

  “I said I would. Maybe.”

  “No maybe, darn it! You’ve got to promise.”

  “Maybe. I said maybe, and I mean maybe,” she said.

  She gave me another of those looks out of the corner of her eyes. And I knew she was just being spitey; she just had to do it, doggone it. But, well, what if she didn’t? A crazy old girl like that, there was no telling what she might do.

  I began to get scareder. Scareder and sorer. All at once I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.

  “I’ll show you!” I said. “Doggone you, you promise or I’ll—I’ll—”

  “Pooh, ho-ho,” she said. “Just what will you do, anyway?”

  “You’ll see. You better promise,” I said. “Promise?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “That’s what I promise. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, may—Bobbie! D-Don’t…”

  6

  Donald Skysmith

  That was the morning after the Star’s quarterly report came out, and it had been a honey. Circulation up thirty thousand over the previous quarter, advertising up forty-three thousand lines. With a report like that under my belt, it was just about the last morning in the world I expected an ass-eating from the Captain. But he was already on the phone when I hit the office, and it wasn’t to hand me a bouquet.

  He kept on talking to the operator after I picked up the receiver and said hello.

  “Now you’re quite sure of that, miss,” he was saying. “You’re positive we still have a managing editor? Mr. Skysmith is still with us?”

  “Yes, sir,” she giggled. “H-He’s—tee, hee—he’s on the wire now, sir.”

  The stupid, silly bitch! Boy, maybe she thought that was an ass in her girdle, but she’d find out. It was pure mud from now on and I’d make her know it.

  “You’re positve,” the Captain said. “It isn’t someone posing as Mr. Skysmith? He has all the proper credentials?”

  “No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. He’s—hee, hee, hee…”

/>   The goddamned rotten stinking little bitch! Laughing at me because I was getting the razz and thinking she could get away with it. Thinking, by God, I’d take it from every goddamned pissant in the plant just because I had to take it from that goddamned dried-up, bastardly, son-of-a-bitching old Fascist.

  I made a fast shuffle through the clips on my desk, those from the opposition papers and those from ours. I couldn’t see where we’d missed a thing. We had everything the opposition had, and we had it better and more of it.

  “Well,” the Captain said, “as long as you’re positive, miss. Don, how are you this fine morning?”

  How was I? How the hell would I be? “Fine, sir,” I said, as the operator went off the wire. “How are you, Captain?”

  “Wonderful,” he said. “I tell you, Don, there’s nothing like this mountain air. You’ll have to come up some time.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. “I’d like that very much.” And I closed my eyes, thinking, oh, you son-of-a-bitch, you don’t know just how much I’d like to.

  I could picture myself up there in that castle, creeping into his room with its big twelve-by-twelve bed. It would be loaded down with teletype flimsies and probably if you dug deep enough you’d turn up every whore west of the Mississippi. But to hell with them. I’d burn them all up together. I’d say, “I got something hot for you, Captain,” and then out with the good old gasoline and a handful of matches, and—

  “Don,” he said. “I’ve been very much worried about Teddy. How is she getting along?”

  “Wha—” I squeezed my eyes open, and unclenched my teeth. “Why, all right, I hope, Captain. The doctors aren’t very committal, but they believe the malignancy was confined to the left breast. It’s largely a matter, now, of wait and see.”

  “Terrible.” He clicked his tongue. “So young, so beautiful. A terrible, terrible thing.”

  You bastard! Oh, you son-of-a-bitch!

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “She’s suffered a great deal.”