Masters of Noir: Volume Four

by Lawrence Block

  Elaine said, “I still don't get it all. You mean both the host and hostess are gone?"

  "Yeah. They took L. Franklin away, too. So there's nobody to call off the party. You know, this thing may last for weeks."

  "How long will you last?"

  I grinned at her. She laughed softly, whirled and ran toward the beach. I waited about one second, and then turned.

  I ran after her.

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  LUST SONG by STUART FRIEDMAN

  Cha cha cha-tiyata ... cha-ta-cha," her chirpy voice sang. The melodious sound penetrated the closed windows. “Cha cha cha-tiyata ... cha-ta-cha."

  In the dim old bedroom, Barton stood listening behind lowered blinds. Tall and gray in workshirt and overalls, his sinewy old body was bent forward and motionless like a taut bow and his mouth was open slightly like a crater in the dry crust of the seamy skin of his face. His big, knuckly hands were clenched and still as weights. “Cha cha cha-tiyata ... cha-ta-cha." He straightened up, moistened his lips, drew a long breath and shook his head. His hands opened. He turned and started for the door, but some counter-will in him made him veer to the bureau. He opened a drawer and took out the binoculars.

  He went to the window, inched it up and raised the blind two inches from the sill, squinting briefly against the glare stripe of sunlight. He went to the chair at the end of the room, where light wouldn't catch on the lenses, and put the binoculars to his eyes, his heart beginning to thump against his ribs. Cha cha cha-tiyata ... cha-ta-cha, he whispered as the sound of her came again, louder, richer through the opening. His thick fingers became tremulous on the delicate adjustment wheel as he found her and brought her into focus, her red hair in the wind glowing like embers in a forge.

  Deena May, his hired hand's wife ... the “child bride” as Barton thought of her ... was hanging clothes in her yard and dancing to her own foolish, delicious music. She wore a loose, carelessly buttoned, pink house dress ... and probably nothing else ... and she came toward him from the clothes basket to the line, lifting her knees in quick, prancy steps. She was a pretty little thing, as lively and mindless as a bird, with a tiny waist and dainty legs. She wasn't fully fleshed out yet and her lines were clean as stems and from the front or back or side views, the roundings of her femaleness showed clearly when the wind pressed the thin dress to her flesh.

  She moved back to the clothes basket, not in a straight line, but in a prancing, dancing half circle to the beat of the “Cha cha cha-tiyata ... cha-ta-cha ... “ On the “tiyata” part her thin voice rose high as a cat's, then swiftly dipped with an oddly stroking sound that was nakedly voluptuous in quality. She accompanied the sound with a tantalizing motion: a fluid roll, tilt and swish of her hips. She came back to the line with another garment ... a pair of her husband's underwear shorts ... and as she pinned them up her knees flashed higher than ever, showing the smooth pale nakedness of her inner thighs. Pain stabbed at Barton's eyeballs and he shut his eyes, resting the binoculars on his knees. Warm, warm her young body would be, warm as new milk ... or cool in the fresh breeze, cool as silk. Warm, cool, whichever, whatever, it didn't matter.

  He pulled her to him again with the binoculars. She had a saucy round face with round blue eyes and a round dimple in her chin. Down in the mule country, where she came from, the dimple meant the devil was in her, Deena May said. Ignorant superstition. But Barton supposed it had been drilled into her child mind till she believed it. With her showing her flesh and singing and stepping high to the devil's beat, anyone could believe it.

  He saw she kept turning her head to her shoulder and he was so enrapt with the brilliant image of her red hair, like a wanton brand of flame on her cheek, that he didn't realize she was looking back at the house. Then the screen door flew open and her husband Hugh charged out. Barton realized then that Hugh had been watching from inside and Deena May had been putting on the show to work him up. She whooped and shrieked and took off across the yard. He caught her by the hair in a dozen long-legged strides and dumped her. She kicked her bare legs in the air and rolled onto her knees and tackled his lanky legs and in a moment he was on the ground with her, scowling and mussing her up. She got away and he chased her out of sight around the front of the house. In awhile he came marching her in front of him, twisting her arm. She stopped every few steps and bumped her bottom back against him, a look of high glee on her excited face. She boasted how she could get him excited any time, morning, noon and night, and could wear him down to a frazzle even if she was only fourteen and he thought he was a man because he was twenty-one. Hugh pushed her inside the house with a loud spank and the screen door whacked shut. Barton lowered the binoculars, his mouth clamped in a straight line.

  Barton thought of Hugh with a bitter scorn. For all his big talk about being man enough to handle her, all she had to do was swish her tail to bring him down on all fours and use him up. He went to the bureau, dropped the binoculars in the bureau drawer and kneed it shut with an air of finality. That's all there was these days, animals yielding to their pleasures, no discipline, no pride in strength, only in weakness. Barton caught sight of himself in the bureau mirror, which was flaking and yellowed, decaying like everything else in this dying house. Light from the peephole opening of the window shone on one side of his face, leaving the other in shadow, and an uneven line ran down the center as if a jagged axe blade had tried to split his head—and struck granite, he told himself. He had lived his life on his hind legs, and nothing, nothing short of God could bring him low at the end ... no, not even the devil.

  He left the bedroom and went along the hall, past the shut doors of the long-empty bedrooms, where the rugs and curtains and chairs and made-beds remained, unused, and giving off the silent musty breath of slow decay. He went down the gloomy central stairs and looked in at the big, glassed-in porch that had served as a play room and sewing room and second parlor, where the girls could entertain their beaux, and in the final years Melly, his wife, had made it her afternoon headquarters, for reading or sewing or just contenting herself looking out at the side lawn and her flowers and their fields. Often she would have her nap there after the midday meal and he'd come down from his own nap and they'd have coffee together before he went out to work. Sometimes he thought a belief in ghosts would be a help, so he could imagine her there smiling and asking if he'd had a good nap ... though he was inclined to wake grumpy and had usually been aggravated by the question. On an impulse he went over and started to raise the blinds; a little clean light in this room of Melly's might give the whole dreary house a better feel.

  He glanced around to look at the furnishings when the first blind was up. Slowly, he lowered the blind again. The furnishings were shabby and graceless and heavy, nothing anybody would want today. It had been mighty pretty once. He shrugged. Better to leave it with the dead past.

  He went to the kitchen and set coffee warming while he tidied up the mess from his dinner, his mouth down at the corners, a sourness in his stomach and at the base of his tongue. He took some baking soda and belched, looking with distaste at the leftovers in pans and skillet. He still ate the same old greasy food, and too much of it, just as if he still worked from “sun to sun.” He drank his coffee standing up; then marched out like a man going to work, but he wasn't going to do anything but putter ... maybe fix up that board in the corn crib, or maybe mend harness. He shook his head; damnfoolishness mending harness for a team of horses that never did anything but pasture and once in awhile some light hauling. The tractor did their work better and cheaper, and there wasn't really enough land left to require a tractor. He had sold off all but the sixty acres he and Melly had started out with. He'd saved his three boys and two girls the trouble of waiting for him to die by giving them their patrimony shortly after Melly passed on. He had a few thousand and this place and he wouldn't have to crowd any of his grandchildren out of their rooms, which was probably luckier than an old man had right to be.

  He dawdled around in the barn
, feeling that there wasn't any point in doing anything in particular. He went and stood in the barn door and looked out over the green expanse of growing corn and beyond it in the south field to the vast great yellow square of young wheat. It would grow and ripen and then be cut down and there'd be another winter and maybe another spring....

  He spat! God damn a self-pitying man. Whining at his age, worse than a whelp. He heard the tractor start up and located it out in the field with Hugh on the seat, riding young and high and mighty. Then his gaze slid toward the little house, the one he and Melly had started out in. Deena May would be up and chippying around at her chores ... or maybe sprawled in the bed, sleeping and renewing that radiant, lustrous, sweet vital young body. The mere sight of that little house roused his belly to life.

  He walked up the lane, toward the houses, toward the old barn, thinking of his Bible and the times of greatness when the old men were kings and Solomon lay cold on his bed and they brought to his bed the choicest virgins and ... The land swirled in the bright heat and Barton stopped and lighted a cigarette ... and there had been King David who had looked upon the flesh of Bathsheba ... the smoke dry-tickled his throat and he coughed violently ... and the great king had sent the young husband off to his death ... in the Bible, yes, in the good Book, and it had been recorded, the living truth ... wicked though it might be, it was the nature and the Fate of Man ... and when a man grew cold with age he could not help himself if he went to the life-saving fire ... it was his own life he saved, even if it came to King David's way ... Scraped down to the raw an animal had to choose to save his own life....

  An animal, yes, an animal killed or was killed ... but not a man, not a human standing on his hind legs. NO! He didn't wipe out the pride of all his achievements at his life's end....

  Barton turned into the old barn, got into his car and drove to town. Maybe there would be a few cronies around the grain elevator or the feed store. He parked on Main Street. He sat, debating. He didn't have many cronies left. And all they could do together would be to carp about the way things were and down in all their bellies was nothing but the cold fear of death and the fear of life and the aching, hopeless wish to be men again. He didn't want the smell of them. He went over to the bank and cashed a check and drove on into the city. He parked and roamed the bright, busy streets, looking sharply in at the women's shops, tempted and afraid to go in and buy some pretties for her. Panties and stockings and shoes and perfumes and dresses. He felt flushed and excited and he stopped at a travel agency window with its pictures of gay, carefree foreign places and girls in bathing suits and without exactly knowing what he was doing he got the car again and drove to the airport. He watched the great, shiny planes, landing and taking off; he mingled with the moving, lively crowds waiting to go or going and he longed to have Deena May there to see it and feel it and catch the fire and enthusiasm. He could take her and give her the sparkling brightness and the go go go that she craved. What did it come to, all his hard work and sober virtue? It came to dullness and death.

  Hugh was at the milking when Barton got back and Barton, remembering all the hostile thoughts he had had toward the boy, took pains to praise him.

  "Sorry to leave you with all the work. Had some business in town. But I'll grant that you're handling things fine, just fine."

  Hugh took it with clear pleasure. And after some easy talk about farm matters he said: “I hope she never bothered you, woke you up from your nap. Did she?"

  Barton laughed. “Why no. Why? Was she cutting up?"

  Hugh shook his head, looking comically earnest. “She was singing around in the yard and carrying on. The thing with Deena May, Mr. Barton, is she is a good-hearted little thing, only she's childish. She was the young'un of a big family and they catered to her something awful. But I've got real confidence that right down in her heart she ain't really spoiled, but will turn out a first-class woman.” He sighed. “I do have a time with her, she's that childish. She's enough to wear out your patience sometimes. But I won't leave her get on your nerves."

  "Don't you let it worry you. You just keep up your good work ... and keep on reading those Agricultural pamphlets and the papers and learning, the way you have been, and improving yourself. I like the both of you. Fine, just fine."

  "Would you like to come down to supper?"

  "Not tonight. Young folks should be alone, and I take Sunday dinners with you ... that's plenty ... not that she's not a grand little cook. She is."

  "Thanks. She'll be tickled to hear you said that."

  "Didn't I ever tell her?"

  "Well ... “ Hugh began uncomfortably. “No. And ... well, I always was a little scared you don't like her much ... “ He waited and Barton assured him. “I sure am relieved. I kind of thought you sometimes look at her ... well, stern-like."

  "That's mainly how old men do look, you know."

  Hugh chuckled. “Funny thing, but Deena May says she ain't fooled the way you look stern because you like her."

  Barton felt a quick uneasiness. “I do, indeed I do."

  "And she sure likes you. Wants to come up and live in the big house. Says it's a pure shame you got to cook yourself and stay around that big old empty place alone. I said to her: ‘Deena May, it would just aggravate him out of his wits to have to put up with your childishness right in the same house.’ “

  "But not at all ... why, that's a splendid idea ... I mean, Hugh ... if you'd want to ... the pair of you would give the old place life, and the stove's a good one and there's that fine refrigerator and a nearly new bathroom ... “

  "Begging your pardon, Mr. Barton, it's only her idea.” He shook his head. “You see, even if you could stand her childishness ... well, you understand, I got my hands full already to make a woman out of her ... and if you both like each other why you'd cater to her like she had it back home with old ... older people ... No offense, but, well, that little house is just nice. Sure you wouldn't take supper with us, though?"

  Barton hesitated; he dreaded cooking his own meal and eating alone in that oversized coffin of a house. Talking with Hugh, face to face, Barton liked him and shared with him, from Hugh's viewpoint, his problems with the “child bride.” But Deena May in the flesh was something else. In his presence, they both became kids and meals with them were full of bickerings, and each would turn to Barton for support. He had always found it amusing, but inevitably he had had to side with Hugh. Still he didn't want to go over there and be forced to sit like a gray sage passing down moral pronouncements. He didn't want to say a word against her, nor uphold a set of principles that smelled of must and decay.

  "No, thank you just the same,” he said. “See you tomorrow, Hugh."

  Barton sat in the parlor with the evening paper, rereading grain market quotes without absorbing them. He didn't give a damn. There was something else, like a small, pleasant glow in his belly, holding his mind. Hugh had said she wasn't fooled by the look of sternness; she knew with the sure female animal instinct that the sight of her stirred the still-living male in him. And she wanted to take over the big house, where he'd cater to her.

  He turned off the parlor light and went up to the bedroom and turned the bedroom light on for a few minutes, as though he had come up to bed. He didn't undress. Presently, he turned off the light and waited, listening near the open window. It would be awhile. She'd peer over to make sure the big house was dark and that he slept.

  She was looking out her window. She vanished, and her front screen clapped shut and the hound, put out, whimpered for his mistress like an exiled lover till she shrieked at him. Then the lights went out. Barton tensed and rubbed his thick, calloused fingers against his dry palms. The beat of his heart quickened in anticipation and he could feel the juice of life rising in him, even his mouth salivated and his lips were warm and wet.

  He began to fear that Hugh had, in a sense, won, that he was lying there cold beside her fire, sober and resolved to hoard his strength, and sleep like the goddamned fool he was ... Then it
came. A squall and a moan. Barton blinked, brightening. Hugh handled her roughly, but with no genuine air of mastery. Instead, his roughness seemed against the grain, something he did because she willed it. But one Saturday night they had gone to a dance, and, from the gossip Barton heard, Deena May had slipped out to the parking lot and serviced a squad of young bucks before Hugh caught her. He'd bloodied some noses and got a whaling himself and the sounds coming from the little house that night had been pure hell. But tonight, as usual, Barton heard her song of lust, a primitive sound of combat and terror and wild joy that set a serpent crawling in his belly.

  In the long wake of silence, Barton found himself shivering and disgusted with himself. What had he come to? Turning his eyes and ears and mind into sneaking, slimy things that degraded everything he had ever been. The most shameful, the most intolerable part of it was that he was reduced to this cowardly caricature of manhood, as if he was a eunuch. He slept fitfully, waking repeatedly till almost dawn, when he dropped into a deep sleep.

  He woke to the sound of her “Cha cha cha-tiyata ... “

  Light flooded the room and he knew from the slant of the sun that it was very late. Past ten. My God, he hadn't overslept this way in years. He sat up and got heavily out of bed. He heard the tractor in the field. Everything was going on without him.

  "Cha cha cha-tiyata ... cha to cha ... “

  He shut the window and the blind, but her chirpy, teasy little voice penetrated the dim bedroom with an insistent, irresistible rhythm. It stroked his waking senses and thrummed through his tired body like another pulse. He had to see her, he had to see her. He got the binoculars. His trembling thick fingers fumbled at the blind. It got away with a startling zip and hiss and flapped around the roller at the top. He found himself standing flatfooted and exposed at the window in his old nightshirt. He jumped aside, and had to stand gripping the bedpost for balance until his heart quit slamming and the dizziness passed. He edged back into the room and in the mirror caught sight of his scarecrow old body, in the old fashioned nightshirt, and turned his face.