by Otto Penzler
“You ought to get a patent on it,” Kathy said. “Say, isn’t that a chess board down there at the end of the counter?”
He nodded. “I was working out a problem. You play?”
That was better than the smell of the hamburgers to Kathy. Few women like chess, but she’s one of the few, even if she doesn’t look like it. To look at Kathy you’d think gin rummy would be her top intellectual entertainment, but you’d be fooled. She’s got more brains and more education than I. Got a master’s degree and would probably be teaching if she hadn’t decided to marry me instead. Which, I’ll admit, was a big waste of brains.
Kathy told him she played and how about a quick game? And she wasn’t kidding on the quick part; she really does move fairly fast, and the dwarf—I noticed with relief—kept up with the pace she set. I know enough about chess, due to Kathy, to follow the moves, and when a game goes fairly quick, I can stay interested watching it.
Kathy had the men set up by the time he brought our hamburgers and coffee, and I watched until midgame while I ate. Then I strolled front to the doorway and stood leaning against the jamb, looking out across the street.
Directly across from me, in the doorway of the butcher shop, a butcher in a white apron was doing the same thing. My gaze passed him over lightly the first time, then went back to him and got stuck there. At first, I didn’t even know why.
Then a child—a girl of about six or seven—came skipping along the street, noticed him when she was a dozen paces away, and stopped skipping. She circled widely, almost to the outer curb, to keep as much distance as possible between herself and the butcher. He didn’t seem to notice her at all, and once she was safely behind his back, she started skipping again.
Definitely, I realized, she had been afraid of him.
It could have been nothing, of course; a child who’d been scolded for filching a wiener from the butcher shop, but—well, it didn’t seem like that.
It didn’t seem like that because what happened made me look at the butcher’s face. It was calm, impassive. If he had noticed the child, he had neither frowned nor smiled at the wide circle she had made. And the face itself was handsome, but … I shivered a little.
A Chicago cop gets used to seeing faces that aren’t nice to look at. He sees faces daily that might be Greek masks of hate or lust or avarice. He gets used to hopped-up torpedoes and crazy killers. He takes faces like that in his stride; they’re his business.
But this wasn’t that sort of face. It was an evil face, but subtly evil. The man’s features were straight and regular and his eyes were clear. The evil was behind the face, behind the eyes. I couldn’t even put my finger on how I knew it was there. It wasn’t something I could see; it was something I felt.
The part of my brain that’s trained to observe and remember was cataloguing the rest of him as well—I don’t know why. Height, five eleven; weight, one eighty; age, about forty; black hair, brown eyes, olive complexion; distinguishing features—an aura of evil.
I wondered what the looie in charge of my precinct would say if I turned in a report like that.
I strolled back into the restaurant and looked at the chess game, mildly wishing Kathy would be through so she could leave with me while the butcher was still standing there. I wondered what her reaction to him would be.
There were still a lot of pieces on the board, though. Kathy looked up at me.
“Having trouble,” she admitted. “This gentleman really knows how to play chess. Why aren’t you smart like that, Bill?”
The dwarf grinned without looking up, and moved a pawn.
“She’s played this game before, too,” he said. “It’s even so far.”
“But not now,” Kathy said.
I looked at the pieces and saw what she meant. The dwarf had left one of his knights unprotected. Kathy’s hand hovered over the board a moment, then her bishop swooped to conquer.
“Attababy,” I said to Kathy and patted her shoulder. “Take your time,” I told her. “It’s only our honeymoon.”
I strolled back to the doorway. The white-aproned butcher was still there.
Out of the doorway of the store next door to the butcher shop came Len Wilson. He walked, as before, slowly. He walked toward the butcher shop. I started to hail him, to ask him to come over and have a cup of coffee with me while Kathy and the dwarf finished their game. I had my mouth open to call to him, but I didn’t.
Len Wilson caught the butcher’s eye, and stopped. There was something so peculiar about his way of stopping, as though he had run into a brick wall, that I didn’t call. I watched, instead.
The butcher was smiling, but it wasn’t a nice smile. He said something, but I couldn’t hear it across the street, nor could I hear what Len answered. It was like watching a movie whose sound track had stopped working.
I saw the butcher reach into his pocket and take something out, hold it casually in his hand. It looked like a tiny doll, about two inches long. It could have been made of wax. He did something, I couldn’t see what, with the doll between his hands.
Then he said something again—several sentences—and laughed again. I could hear that laugh across the street, even though I hadn’t heard the words. It wasn’t loud, but it carried. And Len Wilson’s fists clenched, and he started forward—not slowly at all—for the butcher.
I started, too, at the same time. There wasn’t any mistaking the expression on Len’s face. His intention wasn’t any intention that a man with a bad ticker should have. He was going to take a poke at that butcher, a man bigger than he was and husky looking besides, and for a man in Len’s shape it was going to be just too bad unless that one poke did the work.
But Len had been only a few steps away, and I’d been across the street. I saw him swing wildly and miss, and then an auto horn and squealing brakes made me step back just in time to keep from getting killed in the middle of the street. When I looked again, the tableau had changed. The big butcher was standing behind Len, with Len’s arm doubled in a hammerlock. Len’s face was red with either pain or futile anger, or both.
I took a quick look for traffic both ways this time before I started across toward them. I don’t mind telling you that I was afraid. Not physically afraid of that butcher, but—well, there was something about him that had made me want to hit him, even before Len had come along, but that made me afraid to do it, too.
Suddenly I noticed that Kathy and the dwarf were with me, Kathy abreast of me on one side, and the dwarf scuttling by me on the other side, his short legs going like piston rods as he passed me.
“Let go of him, Kramer, damn you!” he was yelling.
The butcher let go of Len, and Len almost collapsed, leaning back against the building. The dwarf got to Len first, and reached into Len’s vest pocket. He came out with a little box of pills. He handed them to me.
“Give him one, quick,” he said. “I can’t reach.”
I got the box open—they were nitro pills, I noticed—and got Len to take one.
“Take him across to my place,” the dwarf was saying. “Make him sit down and rest.”
And Kathy was on Len’s other side and we were helping him across the street.
The dwarf wasn’t with us. I saw that Len seemed to be breathing normally and making it all right, then I glanced back over my shoulder.
Again it was a conversation I couldn’t hear, but could see. The dwarf’s face, on a level with the butcher’s belt, was dark with fierce anger. There was smiling amusement on the butcher’s face, and again I felt that impact of evil.
The butcher said something. The dwarf took a step forward and kicked viciously at the butcher’s shin. He connected, too.
I almost stopped, thinking I’d have to let Kathy support Len while I ran back to rescue the foolhardy dwarf.
But the butcher didn’t make a move. Instead, he leaned back against the door post of his shop and laughed. Great peals of loud laughter that must have been audible a full block away. He didn’t even lean d
own to rub his kicked shin. He laughed.
He was still laughing when Kathy and I had taken Len through the open doorway of the restaurant. I turned around and the dwarf, his face almost purple with thwarted anger, was crossing the street after us, and the butcher still stood there laughing. It wasn’t a nice laugh at all. It made me want to kill him, and I’ve got a pretty even disposition myself.
We let Len down into one of the seats at a booth, and the dwarf was beside us, his face calm again. I glanced out through the window and saw that the butcher was gone, probably back into his shop. And the silence, after that laughter, seemed blessed.
“Shall I get Doc?” the dwarf asked Len.
Len Wilson shook his head. “I’m all right. That nitro pill fixed me up. Just let me sit and rest a minute or two.”
“Cup of coffee while you’re resting?”
“Sure,” Len said. “And make me a hamburger, will you, Joe? Haven’t eaten much.”
Kathy sat down across from Len in the booth and I went back with the dwarf named Joe. He went up the ramp that led to the raised area back of the counter and he again wasn’t a dwarf anymore. He was five feet tall and his eyes were higher than mine as I sat at one of the counter stools opposite the hamburger grill. He took a hamburger patty from the refrigerator and slapped it on the grill, and then I caught his eye.
“What,” I asked, jerking my thumb in the direction of the butcher shop, “was that?”
“That,” he said, “was Gerhard Kramer.” He made it sound like profanity.
“And who is Gerhard Kramer?”
“A nice guy,” he said, “if you listen to some people who think so. Most of us don’t. Some of us are pretty close to thinking he’s the devil himself.”
“Outside of a butcher,” I asked, “who is he? What was he?”
“Used to be with Corby’s circus. Sideshow magician and mentalist. He makes a better butcher. But he still keeps on with magic—only the black kind, the serious kind.”
“He really believes in it? Wax dolls and that sort of stuff?”
“You saw that doll, then? Well, he makes people believe he believes in it. Got half the town scared stiff of him.”
“Yet they buy in his store?”
He flipped over the hamburger frying on the grill. “They’re afraid not to, I guess, if it comes to that. Oh, and some of the women aren’t afraid of him. He’s attractive to women. He does all right. He owns a good share of the town. Probably likes cutting up dead animals or he wouldn’t have to run that shop. Yeah, he does all right.”
Something in his tone of voice made me ask, “Except what?”
He slit a bun and put the hamburger in it, drew a cup of coffee, and started around the counter with them. I stayed still. I knew he’d answer my question when he got back.
He came back and said, “Len’s wife, mister. That’s the one thing he wants and can’t have.”
“Dorothy?” I asked, surprised. I don’t know why I was surprised.
He looked so puzzled that I realized he hadn’t known that we had stopped at the Wilsons’ place on our way into Corbyville. He had thought that our first sight of Len had been across the street. I told him about it.
“Yes, Dorothy,” he said. “She was a town girl before she married Len. Kramer wanted her and Len took her out from under his nose. Kramer’s hated Len ever since. And, damn him, he’ll probably get her if Len isn’t more careful of himself. He’ll keel over and leave a clear field.”
“But won’t Dorothy Wilson have something to say about that?” I asked. “Would she marry a—a guy like Kramer?”
He looked gloomy. “I told you women like him. She likes him—can’t see anything wrong with him. Oh, I don’t mean she’d cheat on Len, or anything like that. But if Len would die, why, after a year or so—”
“And that doll,” I said. “That wax doll. Does that mean Kramer doesn’t want to wait till Len dies naturally, if he does? Does Kramer really believe in that kind of magic?”
The dwarf looked at me cynically. “Sometimes that kind of magic can work, mister,” he said. “You saw it blame near work just now, when he showed it to Len.”
I saw what he meant. I got up and went back to the front of the store. Len looked better, and Kathy was talking to him animatedly.
“I’ve just learned Len plays chess, Bill,” she said. “He’s a friend of Joe Laska—that’s the man who runs the restaurant here—and says they play a lot. We could have played a game out at Len’s house while we were there.”
“Sure,” I said, “only you didn’t. How’d you come out on the game with Joe? You were a knight ahead, I remember, and I see he put the board back, so I guess you finished the game.”
“Yes, we finished. We were coming out to join you just when—when the trouble started across the street.”
With Len sitting there I didn’t want to go into that; I’d tell Kathy later what it was all about. “Who won?” I asked quickly.
“Joe, darn him. That business of giving me the knight was a gambit. He checkmated me four moves later.”
Len grinned, a little weakly. “Joe’s a great guy for those gambits, lady. If you play with him again, watch out any time he offers you a piece for free.”
The dwarf came back then and said that he was going to get a car to take Len home. But I wouldn’t hear of that, of course. I made Len get into my car—he could walk all right by now—and Kathy and I drove him home.
Dorothy Wilson took a look at Len as he came through the door and took him off upstairs to put him to bed for the rest of the day. She had called back, asking us to wait, and we did.
But when she came down it turned out she had wanted us to wait so she could offer us something to eat, and we explained that we had just eaten in town. So Dorothy walked out to the car with us.
“Joe Laska phoned me,” she said. “He said—well, I gathered that Len tried again to start a fight with Gerry Kramer. Oh, I wish Len wouldn’t be so foolish. To hear Len—and Joe, too—talk, you’d think Gerry was a devil or something.”
Something made me ask, “And isn’t he?”
She laughed a little. “He’s one of the nicest men in town. The men around here don’t like him because he’s handsome and polished and—well, you know how small-town people are.”
“Oh,” I said.
“But he’s nice, really. Why, he holds a mortgage on this place of ours, overdue. He could put Len and me off any time he wanted, but he doesn’t, in spite of the way Len acts about him.”
I didn’t want to hear any more of it. I wanted to say, “Sure, he’d rather let Len stay on a farm and work himself to death than maybe go to a city somewhere and get a softer job where he could last a longer time.”
But I didn’t say it. I had no business to, just because I hadn’t liked a man’s face and his laugh.
We said good-by to Mrs. Wilson and drove off.
After a while, I said, “Women—” disgustedly, and then asked Kathy what she had thought of the butcher.
“I don’t really know,” she said. “He is good-looking all right, and maybe Mrs. Wilson is right, but—well, I wouldn’t trust him. There seemed to be something wrong about him, Bill. Something—uh—wicked, evil.”
And since she was smart enough to have seen that for herself, I told her, as we drove along, everything that I had seen and what Joe, the dwarf, had told me.
We talked about it quite a while. There had been something about that scene in front of the butcher shop, and about the situation back of it, that wasn’t going to be easy to forget. We wouldn’t have forgotten it, I’m sure, even if it had ended there.
But after a while it slid into the back of our minds. We were, after all, on our honeymoon.
We drove to New Orleans and spent a wonderful two weeks in the marvelous fall weather they have there, and I remember the warmth was all the more wonderful when we read in the papers that Illinois and Indiana had been having freezing weather and early snows.
We started driving
back then, leisurely. We didn’t plan our route from day to day, and I don’t know whether we would have driven through Corbyville at all, if we hadn’t happened to buy a Centralia newspaper in Metropolis, just after we’d crossed the Ohio River from Paducah.
There was a headline:
BUTCHER LYNCHED IN CORBYVILLE
And in that first story there wasn’t any play-up at all of the “Corbyville Horror” angle that made Sunday supplements all over the country. The lynching—it was the first in a long time in the State of Illinois—was the angle of the Centralia paper.
Apparently the reporters hadn’t actually been on the scene as yet, because there weren’t many details. I read the story out loud to Kathy, then she took the paper away from me and read it again to herself, while I sat and thought, and finished my coffee.
It seemed, according to the Centralia paper, that one Len Wilson, a farmer living just outside Corbyville, had died under rather mysterious circumstances, and that the people of the town blamed the local butcher, Gerhard Kramer, for Wilson’s death. The sheriff, summoned from Centralia, had refused, for lack of evidence, to arrest Kramer.
And while the sheriff was out at the farm a group of townsmen, who had already been out at the farm, yanked Gerhard Kramer out of his butcher shop and strung him up on the light pole right in front of the store. Sheriff’s deputies had been unable to find out who—outside, I suppose, of Kramer himself—had been involved in the lynching.
I paid our check in the restaurant and we went out and got in the car.
“Are you going through Corbyville?” Kathy asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I want to know what happened. Don’t you?”
“I guess so, Bill,” she said.
We got to Corbyville about two o’clock. It was a quiet town when we drove down the main street. It was unnaturally quiet.
I drove slowly. The butcher shop, I noticed, was closed, although there wasn’t any wreath on the door. The hamburger stand across from it, the dwarf’s place, was closed too. There, there was a sign on the door that read:
CLOSED TILL MONDAY
I drove on out to the Wilson farm.
There was still an inch of snow on the ground, and it was cold, unseasonably cold for early October. There were cars parked in front—four of them.
