Cropper's Cabin

by Jim Thompson

  “No, of course not. No one wants rattlesnakes around.”

  He nodded, and I waited for him to go on. But he seemed to be through. He was waiting, apparently, on me.

  “Oh,” I said, finally, and I shook my head. “That wouldn’t work, Mr. Kossmeyer. It’d be hard to find a finer man than Mr. Ontime and I’d be the first to say so.”

  “That’s the way he appeared,” he said.

  “Anyway, I didn’t kill him. So…”

  “It appears that you did. We deny it, naturally; we throw in the old doubts by the armload. But we can’t and won’t win that way. For all practical purposes”—he tapped me on the chest again—“we’re not going to let ’em try you. We’re going to try him and her.”

  “Donna? No,” I said. “Not if you mean what I think you do.”

  “Let me tell you something, kid. There’s just one thing that people never get over. Being dead. Anything else can be patched up, and when I say that I’m talking from experience. I defended a madam one time; mayhem and attempted murder. She’d put a bullet through her gentleman friend’s head, and damned near sawed him in half with a razor. Now, he was a hell of a nice guy; honest, easy-going, had his own business. In fact, the whole trouble had started when he threatened to drop her if she didn’t get out of her racket. I said to hell with the facts, to hell with the way things look. He’s an okay guy, I said, and he doesn’t really want this beautiful woman hung in the smokehouse for twenty years. He’s suffered for it and he’s entitled to it, and I’m going to keep her out where he can get at it when he cools off. So I put him on trial. I smeared him like dog crap on a dance floor. I hit him so hard his shirt ran up and down his back like a windowshade. And the jury wanted to give my client a medal. And about three months later she and this guy got married.… That’s a true story, Tom. Sometime when you’re in Oklahoma City I’ll introduce you to them. They’re good friends of mine, and one of the happiest couples I know of.”

  “Well,” I said, after I stopped laughing. “I see what you mean. But it wasn’t like that with—this isn’t the same.”

  “That’s right. This is a capital case.”

  “I—I just couldn’t do it,” I said.

  “Am I crazy? If you took a step toward the stand I’d murder you myself. You’re not going to say anything. All I want you to do is look hurt and handsome, like you wouldn’t say crap if you had a mouthful.”

  “But you’d make her look like… I guess not, Mr. Kossmeyer. If I’ve got anything to say about it.”

  He shrugged. “All right, Tom.”

  “What does Miss—what do they think about it?”

  “I don’t see that they have a think coming. I got a thousand-dollar retainer to come down here and look into the case. All right, I’ve looked. The thousand’s spent. Now, I start all over again.”

  “Well,” I said, “as long as they’re putting up the money…”

  “And you’re putting up your life. It’s like I said, Tom, they haven’t got a think coming. It’s your life. Through no fault of your own, and without your consent, you’ve been forced to trust it to a thing called Justice. And that gal isn’t blind, Tom. She’s a cross-eyed drunk with d.t.s and a hearing aid, and she doesn’t know Shinola unless you shove it under her nose. Did you ever see a man electrocuted?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I have; I’ve seen any number of executions. Every time I’ve felt myself getting holy, thinking more about Blackstone than I did people, I’ve gone to an execution. I’ve seen ’em die in the gas chamber—sitting on that little stool with their lips clenched, their nostrils pinched together, fighting to hold their breath until they just couldn’t do it any longer. I’ve…”

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “And the hangings, where their heads come off. Or their necks stretch way out, three or four feet, until they’re not much bigger around than one of those bars. But the chair, Tom, that’s in a class by itself. I’ve got a theory about it, and I’ve talked to some pretty smart people who think I may be right. I don’t think the juice really kills ’em. I think it’s such a terrific overload for what it has to pass through that it never reaches the brain, all the brain. They still know what’s going on after they’re taken down to the basement, and their guts are cut out and…”

  “For God’s sake!” I started to jump up but he pulled me back down. “You don’t have to…!”

  “… and they’re tossed into the brine tank. They still know when they’re nailed into a pine box and dropped down into a hole in the ground. They go on knowing, thinking, for days, thinking about green grass and sunlight and cool air, and the soft flesh of women and the laughter of little children. And I don’t know how they manage it, but—but some of those coffins have been opened up and it seems that they try to get out. It doesn’t do any good, of course, but they try to climb back up there with their gutted bellies and their melted eyes, and…”

  I was sitting with my head bent forward in my hands. Shaking. Sick at my stomach.

  He grabbed me by the shoulder, jerked me around facing him.

  “All right,” he snapped. “That’s it. What’s a little smearing compared to that? Think about that, and tell me what difference it makes if she used herself for what she was made for.”

  “I’ve got to think,” I said. “You’re probably right, but I’ll have to think about it, Mr. Kossmeyer.”

  “Forget about the goddam money. And don’t think I’m handing you charity when I say that. I’m going to wait about a year and then I’m going to send my bill up to that big plantation house, and you’ll be right there to pay it.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just couldn’t make up my mind. I knew he made sense and I didn’t seem to make much—at least, I couldn’t put it into words—but I still couldn’t say yes like he wanted me to.

  “I didn’t kill him,” I said. “Why can’t we work on that, find out who did it?”

  “How?”

  “Well, I don’t know. But…”

  “Neither do I. And I’m not going to try, Tom. I don’t want anything else dug up. There’s too much already.”

  “But… Oh,” I said.

  He nodded slowly. “You say you’re innocent. I say you are. And then we just forget about it, because what you and I say doesn’t matter. It’s what the jury says that matters—what you can make ’em say—and I’ve showed you the only way to make ’em say the right thing. If they say you’re guilty, you are. If they say you’re innocent, you are.”

  “But I am,” I said. “Don’t you…”

  “Didn’t I say so? Tell the turnkey. Maybe he’ll let you go.”

  “I’ll have to think about it,” I said.

  “Maybe there is another way,” he said. “I’ll plead you insane. It should be easy to prove.”

  “I can’t tell you now,” I said. “I just can’t and that’s all there is to it.”

  He picked up his briefcase and stood looking at me for a moment. Then he nodded suddenly as though he’d asked himself a question and answered it.

  “All right,” he said. “That’ll have to do, I guess. I was just about to take a case back in the city, but I think I can hold off my decision a few hours. Of course, it would be much better if… But I’ll certainly try.”

  He shouted for the turnkey. He waited, frowning thoughtfully, shaking his head now and then. And I grinned to myself, letting him go right ahead with his little act. I was beginning to understand him, I thought. I could see right through him.

  I’d forgotten already, because he wanted me to forget, that you didn’t see any farther through Kossmeyer than he wanted you to see.

  The turnkey came. Kossmeyer sighed and started for the door.

  “Don’t worry, Tom. I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to make it.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Hell, I’ll make it somehow. I’m sure I can. See you in the morning, huh? Bright and early.”

  “Bright and early,” I said.

 
15

  I woke up at daylight; and of course that gave me quite a little while to wait, even if he was early. But that was all right. I’d started thinking things through, and I wanted to have them all clear in my mind before he came.

  He’d got me all confused the day before, scared one minute and laughing the next. I hadn’t been able to get the real point of things across to him. It wouldn’t be enough for him just to get me off. If everyone still thought that I did it—well, where would I be then? How would Donna feel if she went on thinking I killed her father?

  Of course, I didn’t want to die—it wasn’t right for me to go to the chair, no matter what. But if I could just make him understand that I wasn’t guilty—make him care whether I wasn’t—then maybe we could dig up the real murderer. He had to be a local man. He must have left some kind of clues. If they’d really look for him with their minds open, they were almost bound to get a lead on him. I couldn’t do anything, but Kossmeyer could. He’d have to, if I could make him understand, because what good would it do if everyone still thought I—

  I’d be alive, but—

  I’d be alive.

  I ate a pretty good breakfast, everything considered. I stood up on my bunk and peeked out the window, and I figured it must be getting on toward nine o’clock. He said he’d be there bright and early. I started walking. I walked back and forth from the wall to the door, less than three good paces.

  The turnkey went by the door.

  I called out to him and asked him the time; and then he went on past a few steps, like he wasn’t going to tell me. He stopped, though, and took out his watch. He dropped it back in his pocket again.

  “Ten-thirty.”

  “Ten-thirty!” I said. “Are you sure?”

  He kept on going, not answering me.

  I walked some more.

  I stood up on my bunk and looked out.

  I sat down on the bunk. I lay down. I counted to five hundred by tens, then by fives, then by ones. And still he hadn’t come. It was way after eleven. I started pacing again.

  He would come, of course. He was just playing with me now. He was waiting until I was softened up, ready to say or do anything he wanted, and then he’d show up.

  I looked out the window. He’d be here any minute now. He’d said he’d be here early, so—

  I stopped. He hadn’t actually said so. He hadn’t promised. He said he’d try, that he was almost sure he could make it. He—But that was part of the trick. He’d known I’d remember that and start wondering if—

  But he was a busy man. There were probably plenty of people trying to hire him, people who didn’t want a thing but not to die. People with money. And he knew he couldn’t ever get any money out of me. He’d get plenty of publicity, of course, and I reckoned no lawyer ever’d had so much he couldn’t use more. But… but he didn’t need to fool around with a guy like me. I couldn’t mean a thing to him, really, when you got right down to it.

  They didn’t serve lunch at the jail, just bread and black coffee. But I couldn’t even eat that much. It was all I could do to keep from kicking it over, and slamming it against the walls.

  He had another case…

  He’d said early…

  He hadn’t promised…

  The sweat ran down my face, and I kept mopping it with my sleeve. But it was sweaty, too. I was all-over sweat, and I had to keep catching myself to stop from mumbling, and—

  And I knew that was just what he wanted. I knew he’d planned it that way. But I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I…

  And finally I did know. I knew he hadn’t been kidding. I knew he wasn’t coming. I knew it. And I wondered how I could have been so doggone crazy as to hold out against him, and I’d have given anything if…

  And I looked up, and there he was. Standing at the bars looking in.

  “Wait a minute!” He jerked his head at the turnkey. “I’m not sure I’m going in… How about it, Tom? What’s the answer?”

  “We-well,” I said, “Can’t you…?”

  “No.”

  “But…” But I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to die. “Come in,” I said. “Please come in.”

  The turnkey locked him in and went away. He tossed his briefcase onto the bunk and looked down at me.

  “Uh-huh,” he nodded, “but that’s a head up there, Tom. That thing you got”—he flicked his fingers across my forehead—“that’s a pumpkin. So which one of us do you suppose had better do the thinking?”

  “You,” I said.

  “I didn’t stall you simply to swing you around. I wanted to show you what can happen if you try to do your own thinking.”

  “I got it,” I said. “I got the idea, all right.”

  “Hang onto it. You’ll probably never have another one.”

  I nodded. I’d have nodded or yessed him on anything he said. He sat down beside me, like he had the day before, and slapped me on the knee.

  “Good boy. Now, let’s get started. Take it right from the beginning. How long have you known the gal?”

  “Well,” I said, “she grew up there on the plantation, and we’ve…”

  “I said known. In the legal sense. When did you start getting into her pants?”

  My face went kind of stiff. I tried to smile, but I couldn’t.

  “It was over a year ago,” I said. “She was pulled up by the side of the road with a flat tire, and I offered to help…”

  “Naturally, naturally. Poor boy. Big car. Beautiful girl. How could you resist, you in all your innate innocence and courtesy.”

  “Well it—as a matter of fact, I wasn’t real courteous. I was pretty offhand…”

  “Bashful,” he nodded. “Inexperienced. Fighting against the peril you could only sense.”

  “Look,” I said. “It just wasn’t that way, Mr. Kossmeyer. I know it probably seems funny, it happening the first time we ever really met. But it wasn’t. She’d never—she was a virgin, and…”

  “Did I say no?” He spread his hands. “Sure she was a virgin. And she’d had about all of it she could take. She could have got married, sure, but that would have been too much trouble. And she wouldn’t risk her social position with one of her own standing. So she picked on you. Someone who wouldn’t dare say anything, and wouldn’t be believed if he did.”

  “But…”

  “I’m telling you. How often did you see her after that?”

  “Well, pretty often. Maybe two or three times a week. But there was more to it than that, Mr. Kossmeyer! We enjoyed being together. We were in love, and…”

  “That always makes it better,” he said. “Where did you meet her?”

  “Near the school. She used to park in a place back under the willows, a little off the road.”

  “Go on. Keep right on talking, Tom…”

  And I went on. I kept on talking. That day. The next one. More than a week, in all. And he nodded and listened. He listened and kept twisting things around.

  “After school,” he’d say. “At noon. Sometimes even in the morning. Just wouldn’t leave you alone.”

  And:

  “Well, she did tell you where her room was, didn’t she? Didn’t she? And you were up there at her house, weren’t you? Weren’t you?”

  And:

  “That’s a pumpkin, boy. There isn’t a goddam thing in it but goo, and it’s running out your mouth… Sure, you wanted it, but you didn’t take it. You wouldn’t have dared to take a straight look at this beautiful rich girl, who thought only of her own selfish pleasures. She was beating you with it, kid, that’s what happened. She swung at you until you were in mortal fear for yourself, and you climbed her in self-defense.”

  And, finally:

  “Of course she is, Tom. Don’t you suppose I know that? She’s a lovely, sweet, darling girl, and that’s why we can’t let her make a serious mistake. And if the game gets rough, well, we don’t make the rules.”

  I was in the courtroom every day, right from the time
they started picking the jury. And I’d been dreading that and every other part of the trial, but now I got so I kind of looked forward to it. I don’t mean I liked it, exactly. It made me wince a little sometimes to think that this was the law—to know the thinking that was going on behind the things he did. It made me shiver to think what would happen—and probably did happen every day, somewhere—if a man like that was against you.

  He’d help some guy down from the jury box, and bow and smile to him and almost shine his shoes. Then he’d sit down at the table with me and pretend to riffle through some papers, and tell me the way of his actions:

  “A goddam deacon—a Baptist deacon! Don’t they have any Unitarians in this burg? That was one of those eye-for-an-eye boys. He’d have pulled the switch on you himself if he had a chance.”

  And another time, after he’d accepted two jurors who looked mighty sorry to me:

  “Barbers. Barbers and painters and paper-hangers. If you could get enough of ’em, you wouldn’t need a lawyer. Carpenters—huh-uh. Their minds seem to move in a straight line. But barbers and painters and paper-hangers! I’d almost as soon have ’em as bartenders.”

  The county attorney was always watching me, and it seemed to me that he must have just one thing on his mind. And, worried, I mentioned it to Kossmeyer. He grinned, then he looked thoughtful.

  “He might at that. He might be stupid enough to ask why you don’t take the stand. I’ll try to crowd him into it. We’re going to screw these bastards, anyway, but a mistrial always helps.”

  The first day of the trial, the morning of the first day, Kossmeyer moved for dismissal on grounds of insufficient evidence. Then he asked that the judge disqualify himself because he was one-sixteenth Cherokee, and he charged the county attorney with personal prejudice; accepting fees from the Ontime estate.

  Well, the judge did have a little Indian blood in him, along with maybe a million other Oklahomans. And the county attorney and almost every other county officer did get little service fees from Ontime, the kind they’d get from any landowner. But all this had to be explained to the jurors, and the more you explain some things the worse they sound.

  Kossmeyer got a heck of a bawling out from the judge, and he had to apologize to both him and the county attorney. But as he turned away, he hunched his shoulders and raised his eyebrows at the jurors. The judge saw him and bawled him out again. Kossmeyer apologized again.