Whom Gods Destroy

by Clifton Adams

  “You goin' to play?” I heard Sid saying huskily. I had forgotten that Sid was in the room. I had forgotten that there was anybody in the room except me and Lola.

  “Of course,” she said evenly. “Please don't let me keep you from the game.”

  When she was gone it seemed to me that everyone in the room must have heard the pounding in my chest. I looked at Sid and he was still holding onto the edge of the bar, glass in hand. Finally I took a deep breath and poured myself another drink. “I thought I'd sit in for a while,” I said.

  Sid nodded heavily. “You find out what a man's like when you play poker with him. Maybe you won't be so hot for bootleggin' when you find out what kind of men they are....”

  He was even drunker than I had thought. He wiped his face, and when I looked into his eyes I could see his mind drifting from one thing to another. “Vida's sore as hell,” he said. “Went out to the car. Won't even talk to me.” Then he reached out and took my arm. “See Kingkade over there, that little dried-up guy? Looks like a prune, don't he? The little punk would move in on me tomorrow if he thought he could get away with it.”

  “You mean take over your territory?”

  “Sure. He can't do it, though. I'm a friend of Barney's. I did Barney a big favor once. Old Barney won't let me down.” He laughed abruptly. “The sonofabitch'll be sorry if he tries it.”

  “What kind of a favor did you do for Barney?”

  But that was going too fast. I could see that Sid wasn't apt to ever get drunk enough to answer a question like that. “Roy,” he said ponderously, “you better play poker.” But when I started to move away he grabbed my arm again, and his face was deadly serious. “You were talkin' to Paul Keating's wife.”

  “There's no law against it, is there?” I managed to say it tonelessly.

  “I'm not so dumb, Roy. And I'm not so drunk that I can't figure out a few things. Stay away from Lola Keating.”

  “I wouldn't touch her with rubber gloves!”

  Sid grinned faintly. “That's what I mean. Everybody in town knew why you left Big Prairie fourteen years ago. She's Paul Keating's wife, and Paul Keating is the county attorney. That's the way it's got to be—if you want to stay in Big Prairie.”

  We stood there looking at each other, and I could feel myself about to blow up. Lola hadn't been satisfied with what she'd done, she'd had to brag about it. Sid handed me a glass, and I poured it down without tasting it.

  “Just forget, Roy.”

  “Sure.”

  Seaward, McErulur, and Kingkade were cutting for the deal when I pulled a chair up to the table and sat down. “Half a dollar ante, Mr. Foley,” Seaward said. “Is that all right with you?”

  That could run into big money, and the three hundred dollars in my pocket was all I had in the world. But there was no easy way to back out now. McErulur cut a king and began to deal.

  It was the kind of night that you have once in a lifetime, if you're lucky. I was still boiling, and every chance I got I'd sneak a glance at Lola and curse her under my breath. Half the time I didn't even know what I had in my hand, but it didn't make any difference. The cards kept falling one on top of the other and I couldn't lose.

  “Are you sure you're not a beginner at this game, Mr. Foley?” Joe Kingkade asked gently. “I don't believe I ever saw anything like this except in what they call beginner's luck.”

  When I could count my chips I found a little over five hundred dollars in front of me. It jarred me. “Luck like this can't last all night,” I said, and tried a laugh that didn't come off very well.

  Sid wandered off somewhere. Then McErulur fell out and Paul Keating sat in. They jumped the ante to a dollar and the pots got bigger, and that was when my luck started going downhill. I had almost a thousand dollars in front of me at one time, but then I started playing the cards close, or jumping in on wild hunches, and pretty soon it had dribbled down to about seven hundred. Every card got to be harder to play and I started trying to outguess them. But you don't outguess men like Seaward and Kingkade.

  I thought, How the hell am I going to get out of this? I can't just get up and say I've had enough. Kingkade would squeal like a stuck pig. As the game got hotter the women stopped their talking, and pretty soon there wasn't any sound at all except the few words mumbled by the players. I could feel Lola watching me, and that didn't help my game. Roy Foley! I could almost hear her thinking it. Burk Street Foley. Roy, you're the funniest thing! Then I could hear her laughing.

  It wasn't my imagination this time. She was really laughing. The sound was hard, bouncing like bullets around the brick walls of the room. One of the women said, “Lola, what on earth—?” And she said, “I—I just thought of something. It struck me as amusing.”

  “Are you going to call, Foley?” Seaward said.

  I looked at my cards and all I could see was Lola's face. I turned them over and said, “I fold.”

  Then I heard the front door slam and the click of high heels coming down the hall and into the living room. It was Vida.

  “Roy,” she said, “I don't want to break up the game, but I've got to have your help.”

  “What is it, Vida?” Seaward asked.

  “Sid's down,” she said, spitting out “Sid” like a curse word. “He's wallowing like a pig in the front yard, and he says he won't talk to anybody but Mr. Foley.”

  “I hate to quit when I'm this much ahead,” I said, shoving the chair back. “But maybe we can finish the game some other time.”

  Seaward did make an attempt to be pleasant, but his eyes looked worried and I could see that it had nothing to do with the game. “Sure, we'll get together again, Foley. You go on and take care of Sid.” Keating was being dignified about it. Kingkade was calling me thirty kinds of bastard under his breath, but he kept a straight face. I shoved my chips to the center of the table and collected my money from the game's bank.

  “Well, it's been a pleasure, gentlemen,” and I shook hands around the table and with McErulur. I nodded to the women and almost made it to the door before Lola said:

  “Oh, Mr. Foley, I do want you to know that I'm awfully sorry about your father. If there is anything else my Christian Aid Society can do to help you, please let us know.”

  I don't know how I got out of the house. At that moment I could have killed her. My hands ached for that lovely white throat of hers, ached to choke her slowly, slowly, slowly....

  Somehow I got to the front porch, shaking, feeling that if I didn't start hitting somebody I'd go crazy. I stepped up to the porch railing and smashed it viciously with my fists and the pain shot up my arm like a bright needle. It was good.

  “Roy, are you crazy?”

  I smashed the railing again and heard a sickening crack in my hand. Then pain washed over me and blotted out everything.

  “I'm all right now. Where's Sid?”

  We found him on his hands and knees in a rose bed to one side of the steps. He was trying to get up and couldn't make it. I got a shoulder under him and swung him across my back in a fireman's carry, then dumped him in the car. I sat on the outside and Vida got under the wheel, holding Sid up between us. As she slammed into gear, she said, “He makes me sick! He makes me so damned sick I could die!”

  “Does he get this way often?”

  She made an ugly sound in her throat. “Seven nights a week is all. You'd think he'd take a holiday sometime, but not Sid. Not one of Big Prairie's most prominent bootleggers. He has to get drunk and shoot off his mouth and tell everybody what a big shot he is.”

  I knew by this time that I had broken something in my hand. The sharp pain eased a little and a pounding ache took its place. It worked its way up my arm and across my shoulders, and the hammering set up at the base of my skull. It hurt like hell, but I welcomed it. It gave me something besides Lola to think about.

  Sid's chin dropped on his chest, he sagged over toward me, and pretty soon he began to snore. Vida had worked up a full head of steam and had to let the pressure off some
way, so I let her talk.

  “If he drinks like this all the time,” I put in finally, “how does he take care of his business?”

  She stared at the windshield hard enough to break it.

  “Oh, he doesn't get this drunk often. Tonight was something special. Oh, Sid's smart, he'll tell you so himself. He takes care of his business and does his drinking at nights. Every goddamn night. Can you imagine what it's like having a lush for a husband?”

  I could imagine. And I was beginning to understand Vida a little better. When a girl's husband goes out on a bust once in a while, that's one thing, but when he does it seven times a week it's something else again. Especially at nights. A girl like Vida could get very restless at night if a thing like that went on too long.

  The car moved across the river, then through the heart of Big Prairie. Finally Vida braked the Ford and turned into the driveway of their house.

  “I'll help you get him to bed,” I said.

  “How does your hand feel? We can always leave him in the car.”

  My hand was throbbing and, without looking at it, I knew it was beginning to turn an ugly blue. “Never mind the hand. Just get the door open and I'll bring him in.”

  Using my left hand, I managed to wrestle Sid upright in the seat. Then I eased under him and got him across my shoulders. I couldn't stand touching anything with my right, and it was a ticklish job getting him up with just the left, but finally I managed it. I got him to the front door and went inside where Vida had switched the lights on.

  “Show me where the bedroom is and open the doors for me.”

  She shrugged and held a hall door open. I took Sid down the hall, into the bedroom and dumped him. He fell on the bed like a sack of oats.

  I pulled his shoes and coat off, and loosened his tie. He never stopped snoring.

  “I can get you a drink,” Vida said.

  “I think I need one.”

  So we went back to the front room and I waited there while Vida got the drinks in the kitchen.

  “Bourbon?” she called.

  “That's fine.”

  The room looked like something right out of Better Homes and Gardens. The furniture was what they call “modern,” and every piece of it was a monotonous blond. The floor was carpeted from wall to wall in pale green shag, and the walls were draped in Japanese prints. Everything was neat and clean and completely without imagination. Vida came in with two full highball glasses on a silver tray.

  “Let me look at that hand.”

  “It's all right,” I said, but she took it anyway and I winced.

  “Sure,” she said dryly, “it's fine. If you're lucky, maybe there's a bone or two that isn't broken.”

  “I'll have a doctor look at it in the morning.”

  She looked into her glass, rattling the ice. “Sid said you were going to work for him,” she said after a pause. “He said you were thinking of going into business for yourself in another county.”

  “That's the idea.”

  She had something on her mind but I didn't guess what it was until she said, “You don't have to work for anybody to learn how to be a bootlegger. It's the same in every county and Sid can tell you all there is to know in five minutes.”

  I thought L was beginning to get it then. “You don't want me to stay in Big Prairie,” I said. “Is that it? If it's about that business on Seaward's back porch, we'll forget it. It didn't even happen.”

  “It's partly that,” she said bluntly. “You probably won't believe me, but I've been a good wife to Sid. I'm not the kind of woman you think I am—but sometimes it isn't easy.” She took a quick drink. “But I was really thinking of Lola Keating.”

  I turned the glass up and drank until the ice hit my teeth. “Go on.”

  “Sid told me about you and Lola,” she said quietly. “I didn't think much about it then. That was a long time ago. But when I saw you tonight, you scared me. A woman shouldn't be able to do things like that to a man—not after so many years.”

  She continued to look into her glass again, not at me. “Leave Big Prairie, Roy. You can't hurt her, she's hurt-proof. Her husband's the county attorney and before many years he'll be the governor, because the liquor dealers like him. He does what they say.”

  “What makes you think I want to hurt Lola Keating?”

  She smiled then, but very faintly. “When you broke your hand tonight on Seaward's porch railing, you weren't hitting the railing, you were hitting Lola. It will always be like that—the harder you hit, the more you'll hurt yourself.”

  “You're quite a philosopher. But why are you so interested in getting me out of Big Prairie?”

  She looked at me, and those eyes were cool. “Because I signed a marriage contract with Sid and I mean to stick to it. For better or for worse, as they say. I'm afraid of you, Roy.”

  Then, as she stood there looking at me, I could see a shudder start at her shoulders and go all the way down. Her mouth parted as if to say something, but no sound came out, and that shudder went over her again. And a strange thing happened. As I stood there looking at her she stopped being Vida and became Lola. It was Lola and she was laughing without making a sound. Laughing. I stepped over to the wall and snapped the light out.

  I could see the nakedness of her pale arms and shoulders and that was about all. I heard myself saying, “You lousy, rotten bitch!” But it was Lola I was talking to. I went up to her and she didn't move. “Goddamn you!” I took the front of her dress in both hands and ripped it wide open.

  If there was any pain in my broken hand, it never reached my brain. “Crawl, Lola, goddamn you! Let me hear you beg!” The dress fell somewhere and she stood there, shaking, her body seeming to glow in the darkness. Oh, you're beautiful, all right, I thought. You never thought this would happen, did you, Lola? A thing like this couldn't happen to a proud, snotty little bitch like you. But it is!

  “Roy! Don't!”

  It was the first sound she made. But it was too late then.

  The house was full of small sounds. As from a great distance we heard Sid's snoring. Somewhere an electric clock whirred. There in the front room Vida and I lay in the darkness, on the couch.

  It took me several long minutes to pull myself away from that first rush of madness. I was convinced now that I was crazy—or at least partly crazy. I had seen Lola, I'd had my hands on her, but it was Vida beside me now. She had her arms around me, pressing my face to her breasts, and she was crooning something softly. It had a soothing, pleasant sound in the darkness. “Lie still,” she crooned. “Lie still....”

  But it scared me—whatever had happened in my brain. I had to figure it out, and I couldn't do it my myself. “I went crazy,” I said. “As crazy as a whole carload of loons. I saw her, right here in this room. She started laughing and I—God, Vida, I'm sorry.”

  “I'm not. It had to happen sometime, and I guess I've been hoping it would happen. I'm not made like some women. I can't keep holding on and on forever. And a lush is no husband, Roy. It happened and I'm glad—even if you thought I was someone else.”

  “It wasn't that. But I saw her. She started laughing and I went nuts.”

  Vida ran her fingers through my hair and kind of twisted it, and then I lifted my face and she kissed me with that red mouth, slow and warm. “I'm glad it was you, Vida. I'm glad it was you instead of her.” She began shuddering again.

  5

  I WOKE UP IN THE HOTEL the next morning without knowing exactly how I got there. My hand was swollen and discolored and I lay there feeling the pain spreading all through me. I looked at my watch and it was ten o'clock, so I figured I ought to find a doctor's office open at that hour. It was a job getting dressed and I didn't even try to shave. There was no way I could hold the hand without hurting it. I thought of Vida then and the whole thing was clear enough in my mind, but still it didn't seem real. No more of that, I thought. Sid is too important to you for you to take chances like that with his wife.

  There was a doctor half a b
lock from the hotel. He looked at the hand, prodded it in different places with his finger, frowning. “It's a fracture, all right.”

  He shot something into me with a needle and I felt my arm growing numb. That was about all I remembered, except for the red haze of pain and the shock of splintered bone ends snapping into place. It took maybe twenty minutes, getting the cast on and everything, and then he said, “That's all there is to it.”

  I ate something, later got a shave, found a used-car lot and bought a '46 Ford for five hundred dollars. It was noon by the time I phoned to see if Sid was at home.

  Vida answered, and I said, “This is Roy. Is Sid around?”

  Nothing happened for a minute, and it occurred to me that maybe she thought I was angling to take up where we'd stopped the night before. The hell with that, I thought. It was too risky.

  “It's the job,” I said. “I've got the car and everything's ready to go. I want to know where I can find Sid so I can get started.”

  “Oh,” she said, in a voice that didn't mean anything one way or the other. “I think he's at the office,” she went on, cool and impersonal. “That's the telephone office. The address is 116 West Main; it's over a department store.” She hung up.

  I stood there for a minute, the receiver in my hand. It seemed kind of crazy to have it broken off like that after what had happened just a few hours before. But I reminded myself that that was the way I wanted it, and apparently Vida wanted it the same way, so that made everything fine. Just fine.

  I found the telephone office without any trouble. It was on the second floor of a two-story building, over a department store as Vida had said. It wasn't much of an office, really—a ten-by-twelve affair with bare walls and unswept floor. There was a long table against one wall where two men sat with six telephones, answering them as they rang. On the other side of the room there was an old-fashioned, roll-top desk and a tilt-back chair, and that was where Sid was sitting, looking weakly at a ledger. He looked up when I came in. He'd made a good comeback from the night before but he still looked pretty hung over.