13 French Street

by Gil Brewer

  I was already in the hall with the raincoat half on. I walked toward the rear of the house and found an unopened pint of whisky on the liquor shelf in the kitchen. I put it in the deep raincoat pocket and went out the back door.

  In the back yard I opened the pint and took a good drink, capped it, and put it away again. Then I went out to the highway and started walking down toward the bend. The rain was still a mist, but slightly heavier, and it felt good on my face and on my bare head. It was clean. It came straight down from the sky without touching anything at all.

  I kept thinking, Maybe it will wash out my brain, get the smell off my brain. That had been bothering me. My hands didn’t smell of her right now, but how could I wash my brain? I decided the rain couldn’t do it because it couldn’t get inside.

  It was very dark and the hills blended into the dark but the trees didn’t. The trees were like flat deformed black hands against the streaming sky. Actually the sky was not black but more of an extremely dark violet, and somewhere there was a radiance because the vibrant puddles in the road gleamed. A single bird piped fitfully up in the brambles on the hill.

  Cecil Emmetts. It didn’t bother her at all. It didn’t reach her. Murder didn’t. So nothing would. That’s what I knew now.

  I was waiting for something. Every day. What was it? Strength? Will? The driving will that had always kept me on the straight and narrow, forsaking me like a lost hat when I most needed it? I was waiting.

  Something was going to happen. It had to. Because it kept on mounting and getting worse all the time. Something had to break. I had a feeling it would be me.

  It was getting a lot colder now. This was the coldest night since I’d been here. I got out the bottle and had a good one. Then I was by the bushes.

  I walked around the bushes on the soggy pasture grass. He wasn’t here yet. I went and stood on the shoulder of the road. A car hissed by, whipping a spray of rain and exhaust into my face. I thought of Chicago. I wrote a letter in my mind to Madge.

  Dearest Madge:

  I am an accessory to murder, or maybe in some eyes an accomplice. I am sleeping regularly with my best friend’s wife. We are being blackmailed for the murder of my best friend’s mother. Right now I am drunk. I am also wet, and believe me, sick with despair. Whenever I see her I want her. I am rotten with desire for her. Yet I am certain that I love you. I will always love you, no matter what happens, and it probably will.

  I began to laugh. Finally I stopped and had another long drink from the bottle. I looked at my watch and it was nine-fifteen. I laughed at nine-fifteen.

  It began to rain harder, hissing on the highway.

  All I wanted was to get away, back to Madge. Get away from the house and Petra. But now there was more to it than just that. Whatever way the dice turned, I had to stand up to their reading. It wasn’t enough now just to get away and exhibit some bones and relics in Chicago. And not only murder, either. Somehow I had to face Verne and tell him. It was the only way for my own freedom.

  I had another drink.

  When I next glanced at my watch, it was nine-thirty and I was pacing in the rain. “Hell with Cecil Emmetts,” I said aloud. I started off down the highway.

  “All right, mister. Stay put.”

  I stopped, turning. Emmetts came out from behind the bushes. He lounged up to where I stood and snorted through his nose. “Been watchin’,” he said, punctuating his words with a stream of tobacco juice from the side of his mouth.

  “You’ve been here all the time?”

  “Not quite. Just thought I’d figure to give you a worry.”

  I started walking off again. He grabbed my arm. “Set tight,” he said. He wore a poncho and his hat, and he was very wet, but his eyes and mouth laughed. His shoulders hitched and hunched beneath the poncho.

  In my left raincoat pocket I had one hundred dollars, just in case. I kept crumpling the money between my fingers.

  “Give me a drink,” he said. “I seen the bottle.”

  I didn’t move.

  “Y’hear?”

  I handed him the bottle. He uncapped it. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” he said. “You ain’t holdin’ out nothin’ from now on.” He drank and smacked his lips, then he threw the bottle cap away.

  “You’re worried, ain’t you?”

  “This will be the last time you ever pull a stunt like this,” I said.

  “Think so? I don’t figure you got much to say ‘bout that, mister.”

  “What if I go to the police?”

  He grinned. His teeth gleamed. He tilted the bottle.

  “Bet you must’ve felt funny carryin’ the old woman to her grave, hey?” He blew air through his nose and slapped rain from his hat brim with his left hand. His eyes were like wet agates.

  “Well,” I said.

  “Must feel dandy,” he said. “Your friend’s wife, too. Figure mebbe I’m doin’ him a turn, this way. Trusts ya like a brother, don’t he? Ol’ Herb says Verne told ‘im you’re th’ one man in the world he can depend on.” He made a noise through his nose.

  “You better shut up,” I said. I wasn’t going to be able to stand much more of this. It was hell. Every bit of it was hell and inside me I was cramped up.

  “Ain’t ya got no shame? Figure mebbe the gal had reason, plenty reason, t’ shove the ol’ gal out the window. Cooped up like she was. Had t’ carry the ol’ woman ever’-place she went. I seen it comin’ in her eyes. Could tell what would happen someday. You show up an’ things pop, hey? Bet she’s red hot, hey?”

  The whisky had worn off. I trembled beneath the raincoat and my guts knotted and writhed like a nest of snakes. Nobody could ever know how it was. It was something you read about in the old novels, where the hero crawled white-faced and weak back to his mistress’ bed—throwing honor and pride and courage in the gutter, then crawling in after them, not even trying to find them again. You laughed at it today, because things had changed. You laughed if there was laughter with it. Only when it turned sour and you saw it was really evil, you were scared stiff. But you still crawled back toward those wanton gleaming eyes.

  And maybe she was like the gatekeeper Milton wrote about, with the scales and the hell hounds running in and out of her womb, snarling and snapping, and you didn’t care. Maybe that was it. Maybe you were subduing the hell hounds.

  I began to laugh.

  “Startin’ to get you, hey?”

  I ceased. I wanted Madge. God, how I wanted to see Madge, to be with her with all this done and over with. No matter what happened, and anyway, I’d have to take whatever came my way. And it would come—it had to. I knew that.

  And now she wanted to kill Verne. I couldn’t think clearly any more and it wasn’t the whisky now. My mind felt like a smudge of smoke. She wanted to kill Verne, so we could have his money.

  She had already nearly killed Verne. There wasn’t much left now.

  He finished the bottle, tossed it to the side of the road. It struck a stone and the glass shattered.

  “All right,” he said. “Make up your mind?”

  “What do you want?” I said. I said it from the front of my mouth without thinking at all, trying to hold myself away from the thought.

  “Figure to tread easy for a spell. Later on, I’ll clamp down. Fifty dollars now. Told you no money tonight, but I figure you got fifty on you. Next Sunday you bring the gal. Same time, right here. I want to see her face.”

  “Fifty dollars?” I said. “You’re scared, aren’t you?”

  He shook his head. But he was scared. It was in his eyes. He was lousy cheap.

  “No,” he said. “I ain’t scared. I figure to have me a regular income from now on. Easy at first, so nobody suspicions.” He paused and grinned. “Sunday bring the gal. I’d kind of like to see her close up.”

  He had asked for the money now. When I gave it to him he was in all the way. It might have been five thousand. It was all the same. And he knew it. That’s why he was scared. But he was fairly sure of h
imself.

  I gave him the money. He put it away beneath the poncho and spat. “I’ll be watchin’,” he said. “You step outa line, or don’t show up with the gal, I’ll make my move. Count on it.”

  “You haven’t got any guts,” I said. “Why don’t you make a big haul and leave?”

  He snorted, thrust his face close to mine. I smelled the wet barnyard and tobacco and his eyes gleamed. “You’re a fine one to talk about guts,” he said.

  I turned and walked away before I hit him again, because what good would it do? Maybe I’d feel a little better, but it wouldn’t change anything.

  “Don’t forget to bring the heifer Sunday night.”

  I walked faster. The rain had stopped.

  My God, she wanted to kill Verne. It was just getting to me. So much had happened I was getting numb to shock.

  I turned, looked back. He was standing in the road, watching after me.

  “Sleep easy, mister,” he called. “Thanks for the drink.”

  Fifty dollars. Fifty lousy dollars’ worth of silence. Silence I didn’t want. That was it.

  But the closer I got to the house, the more I thought about her, and when I reached the house I wanted a drink. Because as the alcohol wore off, it was much worse.

  In the kitchen I found a bottle and drank it down like water. There wasn’t a sound in the house, although a light was lit in the living room. As I drank I thought of Petra, and with every drink I wanted her a little more.

  I draped the soaking raincoat over the lunch bar and dried my hair on a towel. I knew then I was quite drunk. The panic didn’t go away, but neither did thoughts of her. It was like hot iron, being jammed between dry hot iron flanks—stuck to them with the skin searing without odor but with a kind of exquisite pain. Not love, even. If there had only been love with it, real love, or whatever it is—maybe like Madge and me—then it would have been all right. I could have killed then, maybe. No, not killed. That wouldn’t have happened, none of this would have. Because it would have been all right then. We would have gone to Verne and told him. It would have been complete because it would have been right.

  And whatever sorrow there would have been would be honest sorrow, not secret or hidden. And the despair wouldn’t have been there.

  But it was not love. Not lust, even. Something else. I was unable to fight back because there was nothing to get a grip on. All the sharp edges were worn round and smooth. But there was hope. There had to be hope, and all through this I knew there was hope. Without that subconscious realization of eventual hope after the blowup that had to come … but to kill Verne. Even the thought. In my friend’s home I stood drunk in the kitchen wanting his wife, knowing she had murdered his mother.

  • • •

  There was nobody in the living room. I turned off the light and felt my way upstairs. Taking a chance didn’t matter now, nothing mattered. In the back of my head I wanted him to find us, so it would be finished.

  I went directly to her room and she was waiting.

  “He’s asleep,” she whispered. “We’ll have to be quiet.”

  We stood there in the cool darkness and she closed her bedroom door. Her bare feet hissed on the thick nap of the rug.

  “I paid off our keeper,” I said, and my voice not only sounded bitter, it tasted bitter. I told her what silence cost.

  “I knew it,” she said. “He’s that cheap.” She stepped closer and her perfume struck me like a blow.

  “He’s cheap,” I said. “But he’ll get expensive.”

  “Let him,” she said. “My God, you stink of whisky.”

  “Do you care?”

  “No. I don’t care.”

  The room was dark, which was a shame for anyone who lingered across the road up on the brambled hill….

  • • •

  It was three-forty-five when I dressed to return to my room. I don’t know why I dressed, but I did. Petra pleaded with me to stay until dawn, but the whisky had worn off and I felt rotten. Her passion didn’t cool with time, it grew hotter.

  “Stay with me, Alex. Stay. Verne’s asleep. He’ll never know.” She was lying spread out on the bed, her hair black against the pillow.

  Without the whisky to hold me up, it was hell, plain hell. I was living in a fire and she was the one who kept hurling gasoline on the flame. Being with her had been a kind of hellish heaven. It was maybe like trying to drown yourself in pleasure, hoping to God that you would drown, but hoping that the pleasure would continue and in the back of your mind hating every second of it, but never wanting to let up, either.

  We hadn’t talked much. I had nothing to say to her. When she mentioned Verne’s heart, I told her to shut up.

  She had chuckled.

  We’d been talking enough without using vocal cords. I didn’t reply now, but left the room.

  The house was still and dark. I went quietly on down to my room and opened the door. Moonlight flayed the shadows into soft light.

  “Hello, Alex.”

  It was Verne, seated on my bed.

  Chapter Twenty

  I WENT all to pieces. I shook like crazy. I couldn’t control any part of me, just stood there shaking, unable to speak. Somehow I managed to close the door.

  Then suddenly it was all right. He knew and it was all right. The relief was so great I wanted to laugh.

  “You took a hell of a long walk,” Verne said. He was in his pajamas on the bed. “But I don’t blame you. I would too. This must have been hell for you these past few days. I just woke up a few minutes ago. Thought I’d see if you were awake. Felt like talking.”

  He didn’t know. He didn’t even suspect. There wasn’t a tinge of suspicion in his voice.

  “I brought a bottle,” he said. “Have a couple with me?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Sure. I’ll have a couple with you.” Then the lies came out. It was simple, and my voice was calm even though the old torture was worse than ever inside. “Been sitting downstairs,” I said. “Turned off the light when I came in a couple of hours ago. I didn’t feel very sleepy.”

  “Yeah. That’s the way I feel. This has been a rotten vacation for you.”

  I went into the bathroom, closed the door, and lit the light. I looked as if somebody had squeezed me through a sieve and then tried halfheartedly to put the strings together again. I washed, then went back into the bedroom and turned on the light.

  “You do look kind of tired,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll just have a couple of short ones. Then I’ll let you get some sleep.”

  “I’m not sleepy.”

  He handed me the bottle. It was cognac again. When I drank, it again went down like water. It seemed weak.

  “I’m worried about Petra,” Verne said.

  I glanced at him. He looked as sick as you can get.

  “There’s something the matter with her, Alex.”

  “I hadn’t noticed anything.”

  “Well, that’s natural. You wouldn’t, not knowing her, and all. But there’s something the matter.”

  “What seems to be the trouble?”

  It was easy, a cinch. You just talked along with a kind of savage politeness, not knowing half of what you said. But you knew you must be saying the right things. Because convention had taught you that long ago. So you didn’t have to think and you could see her all the time lying on her bed in there. And none of the pain inside you showed, either. None of the conscious guilt showed while you stood there and lied like hell to a man who obviously trusted you completely. You were just like one of those talking machines, robots, where somebody pressed the keys and the voice came out.

  “She’s not happy, Alex. She hasn’t been for a long while. I can tell. Of course, Mother, and all that … But like now. Suddenly she wants to run the house all by herself. It’s a big house and she’s never taken any interest before. But suddenly she doesn’t want any help. Wants to cook all the meals—everything else.”

  “Sounds good to me.”


  “Yes. Only you don’t know her like I do.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Firing Jenny like that. And the cook. All right about the cook, but Jenny was swell—a swell girl.”

  I knew what he meant. But I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to stand there facing him and lying, even with the help of the bottle.

  It wasn’t anything you could just escape from, it was something that held you until it was done and you couldn’t be free until the time came. God. To think. That beautiful goddamned bitch in there with the black hair not even knowing enough to know that she didn’t know what was anyway partly the matter with her, or that she was cockeyed crazy and headed for doom.

  All she knew was Get in bed with me, I love you. Kill. And money. And her husband suspected that something was the matter with her. I took a long drink from the bottle, glad that I was getting drunk again.

  “I met her in a bar in New York,” he said. “She played the piano there. You know what her last name was? It was Jones. Billed Pet Jones, and she sure could play.”

  Jones. It rocked me. Petra Jones.

  “And she was so damned beautiful, Alex.”

  “Sure.”

  “We got married and bought this place and we were happy, too. For a while. Anyway, until Mother … I didn’t mean to—” He stopped. “Give me the bottle.”

  He took a good drink.

  “I’m going back to bed,” he said. “Good night.”

  I watched him leave the room. He left the bottle on top of the bureau in my room. He had tried hard to tell me something but he’d found himself unable to. Maybe it was something he couldn’t even tell himself and believe it at the same time. Or just tell, it even; maybe he couldn’t even do that.

  I got undressed and took the bottle to bed with me and by five o’clock I was really soused and not a bit sleepy.

  • • •

  The next day I stayed that way. Every time I felt myself beginning to sober up I’d take a couple of good drinks. Not staggering drunk, just brain-helpless drunk, not-care drunk, hell-with-it drunk.

  I kept trying to tell myself that it was just that Verne had kept Petra cooped up too much and running around with his mother, and now she was blowing her top. Only it was no good.