Cropper's Cabin

by Jim Thompson

  I listened, and I couldn’t hear a thing out of the way. I could hear their voices now and then, not words just voices. I could her the creak of shoes on the planking. Then, finally, I heard the kitchen door close and the door to Pa’s bedroom, and I figured that any minute she’d be coming across the breezeway.

  But ten, twenty minutes passed and she didn’t come.

  I got uneasier and uneasier. I wondered if Pa had been mean enough to send her packing without even letting her take some clothes.

  I tiptoed out of the bedroom and opened the outside door. I looked out, around the yard and down the road; and I couldn’t see a sign of her.

  I closed the door again, wondering what the heck had happened—what I’d better do. And, then, because I couldn’t think of anything else, I tiptoed across the breezeway and into the kitchen.

  I listened a minute, and that was all that was necessary. It was more than enough to know that I didn’t need to worry about Mary.

  I came back across the breezeway, not bothering to tiptoe; because the noise that mattress was making, they wouldn’t have heard me if I’d stomped. And they wouldn’t care that I’d heard them. It wasn’t in Mary to care. It wasn’t in Pa either now that, as he saw it, he’d lost his last chance at redemption.

  He was damned through me. Now the bars were down and nothing mattered to him.

  I undressed and stretched out on the bed, and my stomach felt all queasy and tight; I felt like any minute I might throw up my guts. I thought about that afternoon—about Mary and me that afternoon—and I wondered if I could ever scrub away the dirt that seemed to be on me. I scratched and scrubbed at myself, thinking about her. And suddenly I sat up, shamed, the blood rushing to my face.

  Shamed and sick. For them, for myself.

  I lay down again. I sat up and lay down again. I closed my eyes and the image of them came into my brain.

  It must have been two or three hours before I finally dozed off.

  Just like always, the breakfast smells awoke me in the morning. And I was out of bed and pulling on my pants before I remembered that this morning wasn’t like the others. I hesitated, almost of a notion to walk right out from my bedroom without looking at them again. But I figured that might suit them too well, so I decided against it.

  They were sitting at the table, eating, and there wasn’t any chair or plate at the place where I always sat. Pa looked at me, looking without looking, like I wasn’t there; then bent back over his food. Mary gave me one quick glance, then dropped her eyes.

  She’d never been able to meet anyone’s eyes for long, and she couldn’t now. She was still beat down. But she wasn’t beat down too much to let me know with that glance exactly how she felt about me. She didn’t need me now; I was in the way and the quicker I got out the better.

  See? her eyes said. Tried to do me dirt, didn’t you, and it didn’t work. Now you better watch out.

  I sauntered over to the cupboard, and took down a plate and cup. I took a knife, fork and spoon from the drawer and set my own place at the table. I dragged up a chair and sat down.

  Mary gave me another one of those glances. I winked at her. I leaned forward, pulled the food dishes up in front of me and loaded my plate. I filled my coffee cup and began eating.

  I didn’t pay any more attention to them than they did to me, from then on. Just looked right through them when I bothered to look up at all. And, of course, they had a head start on me, but, at that, it seemed like they finished eating pretty fast.

  Pa pushed back his chair and got up. Mary got up, too, as if she’d been waiting for him to move; and they went out on the porch together.

  A couple of minutes after that I heard a car drive into the yard. The door slammed—two doors; a couple of men were getting out. I stopped eating.

  I’d been pretty hungry, everything considered, but all at once I couldn’t have put down another bite if I’d been paid a million dollars. I went all-over stiff and cold and dead. It was almost as if I knew what was going to happen.

  I stood up; something seemed to pull me up from my chair. I walked out the door and onto the porch.

  Pa and Mary were out in the yard, and there were two men with them. And when I came out, they all turned and looked at me; and then they started for the porch together. The two men in front—Sheriff Blunden and one of his deputies.

  “Howdy there, boy,” the sheriff said. “Wanta talk to you.”

  “Talk to me?” I said. “Talk to me?”

  “Yeah, and I want you to talk to me. Talk plenty and straight, understand, boy?”

  The deputy hunkered down in the yard on his boot-heels; squatting just short of the porch with his Stetson pushed back and his fingers already working on a cigarette. Blunden sat down on the porch, facing me, with his back to a post. He was short and fat, a man who liked to take it easy—and the way I must have looked, he probably thought he could. Up until the last year he’d run a cotton gin.

  “Where’s your knife, boy?” he said, and his voice wasn’t unfriendly. He waited, and when I didn’t answer—I still couldn’t speak—he asked the question again.

  I began to come to a little. I took my knife out of my pocket and held it out to him.

  He shook his head.

  “I mean your other knife. Pretty knife with bone on one side the handle and ashwood on the other.”

  “I haven’t got it any more,” I said. “I lost it.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Somewhere around the house, I think.”

  He shifted his eyes sidewise a second, then moved them back to me. “Seen bigger houses,” he said. “Shouldn’t be too much trouble to find it in there.”

  “I didn’t say I’d lost it there,” I said. “I said…”

  “I heard what you said. When’d you lose it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know when you lost a pretty knife like that? Didn’t mean any more to you that you can’t remember a-tall?”

  “Well,” I hesitated. “I think it was about a month or so ago. I can’t say for sure because I had this other one to use, and the other—the one you’re talking about—may have been lost a while before I discovered it.”

  He took off his hat—it was just a plain store hat like business people wear—and fanned himself with it. “Hot,” he said. “Don’t know when I seen it so warm this time of year. You recollect a fall like this, Bud?”—he glanced at the deputy.

  “Not in the last ten year,” the deputy nodded. “No, I’d say it was all of twelve year. Had a tol’able warm November back in…”

  The sheriff grunted and put his hat back on. “Now, let’s see, boy,” he said. “Let’s see—uh—mmm—ain’t you been having quite a little trouble lately?”

  “Well, I—I don’t know,” I said.

  “Don’t know? Don’t know where you lost your knife, don’t know when you lost it, don’t know whether you’ve had any trouble. Don’t know—or you don’t want to talk?”

  “Look,” I said, “what’s this all about? I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  “Got caught stealing, didn’t you? Up at the school?”

  “No, I didn’t!” I said.

  “Cussed out your teachers?”

  “No, I”—I hesitated—“I said a thing or two I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just out of temper, kind of an’…”

  “Temper,” he said. “Don’t know anything that’ll get a man in trouble quicker. Reckon you was kind of out of temper when you knocked down Matthew Ontime, weren’t you?”

  “No,” I said. “I was just scared on Pa—his account.” I jerked my head at Pa without looking at him. “They’d been having an argument, and Mr. Ontime got sore and I was afraid he was going to ride him down.”

  “Didn’t seem to me like he was,” Pa put in, mildly. “The way I looked at it, he was just through talking and was gonna ride away.”

  I gasped and choked up. The sheriff said, “Well, that’
s a young’un for you. Don’t mean no harm at heart, prob’ly; just can’t keep off the half-cock. Can’t keep their hands in their pockets and their tongues in their heads. Why, I recollect…”

  “Now, wait a minute!” I said. “See here, now! Can’t you see he’s lying to you? I didn’t have anything against Mr. Ontime. I wouldn’t ever have gone near the place except for him!”

  “Yeah?” Blunden nodded. “Your Pa drag you up there night before last?”

  “I”—I stopped.

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “Your Pa tell you to go around calling—’scuse me, miss—Mr. Ontime a dirty son-of-a-bitch, boasting about what you were going to do to him?”

  “I didn’t do that,” I said. I spoke before I remembered that I had done it.

  “You didn’t? I can name you a couple of boys, friends of your’n, that’ll say you’re a liar.”

  “Well, maybe I did,” I said. “I guess maybe I did. But I didn’t really mean it.”

  “Half-cocked,” he nodded again. “Yessir, that’s the whole trouble with these young’uns.… Now, you was up there to the Ontime place and you got chased off with a bullwhip; took a real toe-popping. How’d that set with you?”

  “I didn’t like it,” I said.

  “No, sir, don’t reckon you did. Wouldn’t have liked it myself, even if I got it from a white man. When’d you say you had that knife of yours last?”

  “I didn’t say. Look, Mr. Blunden, maybe if you’ll tell me…”

  “I heard you had it yesterday. A couple of fellows say they saw you whittling with it.”

  “It was this one they saw,” I said, “and they really didn’t see it. All they saw was me whittling. I had the knife put away by the time they got to me.”

  “Had a little ruckus with ’em, I hear. Or maybe they’re mistaken about that, too?”

  “We had one,” I said.

  “Didn’t like their teasin’, huh? Still pretty sore about that bullwhipping.”

  “I didn’t like it, no,” I said. “I didn’t like the whipping. But I guess I had it coming.”

  “Where were you last night, say, around midnight?”

  “Where—why, I was right here,” I said. “I was in bed at midnight, and the rest of the night, too.”

  He eased one flank up off the porch and reached his hand into his pocket. He brought it out again and there was my knife, the one I’d lost.

  “At midnight last night,” he said, “Matthew Ontime was murdered. Someone stabbed him to death with this knife and tossed him into one of his own hogpens, and what was left of him when they found him this morning wasn’t pretty to see. It took someone with a pretty bad grudge to do that. Now, if you can prove you ain’t that someone I’ll prob’ly be just as happy as you are.”

  Prove it? Prove I hadn’t killed him? I laughed, puzzled and irritated, like you will when something doesn’t make sense.

  “That strike you as bein’ funny, boy?”

  “Well, gosh,” I said. “I mean—well, that’s crazy, Mr. Blunden. I wouldn’t—why, anyone ought to know I wouldn’t…”

  He sat looking at me, waiting, as if he didn’t see anything unreasonable about it at all. And the deputy was looking at me the same way. And Mary and Pa… Mary and Pa. Pa.

  And a Cadillac pulled into the yard, and Donna got out of it. Her face was all drawn and white and hard, and she stood at the side of the car, watching me. Waiting for me to prove that, that I hadn’t done it!

  The sheriff glanced at Pa. “You said he was out of the house last night, Mr. Carver?”

  “We-el,” Pa dragged it out. “No, that ain’t what I said, sheriff. I said he could have been without me knowing about it, like he was the night before.”

  “What about you, young lady? You say you sleep over in that end of the house.”

  “Don’t ask me.” Mary ducked her head. “He could sneak in an’ out all the time for all I know.”

  “And y-you you know I never did!” I stuttered over the words. “Both of you know it! I was never out of the house but the one night, night before last, and that was to try to square things with Mr. Ontime. Tell ’em, Donna!”

  She didn’t answer me. She stood off there in the yard, like she didn’t want to get close to me. “That’s why he said he came,” she said.

  And they all looked at me again.

  “Well, boy?”

  “Ask them where they were at midnight.” I pointed at Pa and Mary. “This all started as his quarrel. I got dragged into it through him.”

  “I know where they were,” said the sheriff. “Miss Mary had to step out to the, uh, commode about that time. Your Pa heard her when she came back in, and called out to her. Seems like that takes care of them pretty well.”

  “They’re lying,” I said.

  “Reckon so? You weren’t in bed asleep then?”

  “Sure, I was! What’s that…?”

  “Then how you know they’re lying?”

  He waited; and there didn’t seem to be much that I could say. What good would it do to say that they’d slept together? What would it get me and how could I prove it?

  “Guess you’d better come along with us, boy. Want to get your hat or somethin’?”

  “Well,” I said, “I guess maybe I—I better…”

  I suppose I looked pretty dazed and bewildered, and I was. But not so much because of what had happened as what I intended to do. It didn’t seem like I could do it; it seemed like I was planning it for another guy. But there wasn’t any other guy—it was me that was trapped. And I could only see this one way out.

  Still, it was hard to get started.

  I wondered why they didn’t see what I had to do and try to stop me.

  “Well, you better get movin’ then,” the sheriff said. “Go on, or we’ll have to go without it.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  And I didn’t linger after that.

  I went through the kitchen door, lifted the shotgun off its hooks, and went right across the breezeway into the other end of the house. Moving fast, walking light. The door there was off the latch and I eased it open without a sound. I stepped back into the room, then ran—I hit the screen in a running jump.

  I landed in the yard, threw an arm around Donna and whirled her around in front of me. I held her with the one arm and leveled the shotgun with the other.

  “N-now,” I panted, “now you bastards. On your feet!”

  11

  They got up, slowly, like people in a dream; and Mary’s face was so sickish gray I laughed out loud. I jerked the gun at the deputy, drawing my arm so tight round Donna’s breasts that she gasped.

  “You, Bud,” I said, “raise your hands, turn around and back toward me.” I said it like I’d been saying things like that all my life, and he did exactly what I said. “Now unfasten that gun belt with your left hand—keep the other one up!—and let it drop. Good! Now, get back there with the others.”

  He moved forward again. I hooked my toe under the belt and booted it under the porch.

  “Boy”—the sheriff found his voice at last. Up until then no one had spoken. “You don’t want to do nothin’ like this, boy. This won’t settle nothin’. You just…”

  I triggered one barrel of the shotgun; and there was a hell of a kick because I could only cradle it in one arm. But I head on, and the right rear tire of his car exploded.

  “All right,” I said, “all of you start walking. Stick close together and head for that field.”

  “Tom…” It was Pa. “Maybe I made a… Sheriff, wouldn’t it fix things if I was to say…”

  I swung the gun on him. I rubbed my finger along the trigger. I tightened it. And his face was fish-white with fear, but to me it was red. I was seeing everything through a gauzy, hate-red curtain.

  Fix things? Fix things? He’d killed my mother; he’d taken her away from me. He’d taken Donna away from me. He’d taken nineteen years of my life—and now he was taking the rest of it. And now…

  Now—I was
laughing, laughing and crying, and silent, my eyes frozen on his buzzard’s head—now he was going to fix things!

  I’m not sure why I didn’t blast him all over the yard. Probably because it would have been too clean and quick for him. Because I knew there’d be another time and a better way to pay him off.

  “You made a mistake,” I said, “but I’ll do the fixing. Count on that, Pa. I’ll be back to do some fixing. I won’t forget you. I won’t forget her. That’s a promise and I always keep my promises.”

  I let it soak in on him, grinning at that fish-white pallor of fear. Then I moved backwards toward the Cadillac, pulling Donna with me.

  “Walk, damn you!” I yelled. “Head for that field or I’ll give you the other barrel!”

  They walked. Fast. Mary was dragging her feet a little, but she couldn’t help it.

  I slid under the wheel of the Cadillac, holding Donna so that she was half outside and half in. I got it backed into the road, tossed the gun into the back seat, and yanked Donna over the wheel and into the seat beside me.

  I pinned one arm up behind her, so that she couldn’t move without breaking it. I turned the wheel with the other hand, and headed down the road. But I just couldn’t do it very long. About a mile down the road, where there weren’t any houses nearby, I stopped the car and let go of her arm.

  “I’m sorry I had to do this,” I said. “You can get out here.”

  She opened the door and started to get out. She didn’t speak or look at me.

  “Donna!” I said. “Wait…”

  She waited.

  “Back there,” I said. “You said you didn’t know. And I know how you feel—how things look to you—but you must know I…”

  “I didn’t know,” she said, “but I know now.”

  She got out without looking at me, and started up the road. I sat unmoving for a second. Then I slammed the car into gear and stepped on the gas. And I whipped by her so close that the fender grazed her. But she didn’t waver an inch or a step.