Colonel Rutherford's Colt

by Lucius Shepard

  “I have no intention of getting crazy with anyone,” said Ms. Snow with a tad more spine.

  “Whatever you say. All I’m asking is you don’t rush into things. Make an informed decision. Take a look at what you’re getting into.”

  Rita could hear the woman breathing, pictured her dabbing at perspiration, glancing nervously about.

  “This is making me very uncomfortable,” Ms. Snow said.

  “Well, it’s almost over, honey,” said Rita. “You have yourself a nice evening, now.”

  After breaking the connection, Rita thought of something else she might have said, but realized it wasn’t worth worrying about. The man in the Sonics cap had moved himself onto the stool next to hers. and when she came up he grinned and said, “Mind if I join ya?”

  “Depends what you mean by ‘join,’ ” she said.

  She sat and drained the last drop from her glass. “If you’re talking about hanging out and watching the game . . . maybe giving me a hug whenever the Hawks score, that’s fine. I get drunk enough, you might even get to second base. I’m in a funny mood and I wouldn’t mind a stranger’s hand on me. But you try more than that, you gonna be checking to see if you got all your fingers.”

  “Jesus!” The man leaned away as if to gain a clearer perspective on her. “I don’t think I ever heard a woman talk like that.”

  “You ain’t been talking to the right women.” Rita looked to the TV—the Jets were preparing to punt. “Dynasties,” she said. “That’s what it’s all about.”

  The man made a puzzled face.

  “Back when the NFL was really fucking great, what made it great was dynasties,” Rita said. “The Cowboys, the Niners. The Steelers. If you were a fan of theirs, you were high on the game all the time. If you wasn’t, you hated ’em ’cause they won, and hating them made it fun.” She caught sight of the man in the mirror back of the bar, hulking beside her, and gave him a playful poke in the chest. “You’re part of a dynasty, y’know?”

  “Me? How’s that?”

  “White people. You own the fucking world. You wasn’t around to hate, life wouldn’t make as much sense.”

  Jokingly, the man said, “You hate white people, how come you’re messing around with me?”

  “Takes all kinds, don’t it?” said Rita.

  * * *

  Ms. Snow’s residence turned out to be a pink-and-white house trailer parked in slot 14 of the Far West Motor Court, a dusty acreage just off the interstate surrounded by diseased-looking firs, each slot decorated with long flowerboxes, many filled with bottles and cans and paper trash. Jimmy parked behind Ms. Snow’s old Toyota wagon and sat with his hands on the wheel, watching her shadow moving behind the Venetian blinds. From the way she was bustling about, he had the idea she was cleaning the place. It was toil to think straight, as it always was toward the end of a story. He thought it might be a good idea to get some more of it out before talking to Ms. Snow—he didn’t want to confuse things.

  He drummed his fingers on the wheel, trying to find an entry, but the characters skittered out of reach, as if pissed because he hadn’t been paying them notice. A light switched on in another window of the trailer, one covered by a shade, and he could see Ms. Snow in clean silhouette against it. She removed her blouse and appeared to be washing her breasts and under her arms. It was a pretty sight. Relaxing. He leaned his elbow out the window and watched. The colonel would be prone to voyeurism of this sort. Sneaking up to Susan’s chambers while she was in the bath. Tiptoeing across the bedroom, holding his breath, positioning himself so he could peer in through the cracked door. At first he saw only a soapy drawn-up knee above the rim of the marble tub, but then Susan leaned forward to rinse the soap away and he was offered a view of her breasts and her face, poised and lovely in its concentration. He felt himself trembling like a hound on point and toyed with the idea of entering the bathroom and taking her. But the time was not ripe. He would have to go carefully with her, ease her back into their routine. Cautiously, he re-crossed the bedroom, slipped out into the hall, gently closing the door behind. When he looked up he found Susan’s maid staring at him from the head of the stair. She dropped into a curtsey and bowed her head, but he could tell she was hiding a smile. He approached and stood towering over her.

  “Does something amuse you, Lupe?” he asked.

  She kept her eyes lowered. “No, Señor.”

  “I prefer you address me as Colonel.”

  “Your pardon, Señ . . . Colonel.”

  He started down the stairs, stopped, and said without turning to her. “If you’re dissatisfied with your position, Lupe, I can easily make arrangements to send you back to Matanzas.”

  “Oh no, Señor! Colonel. I’m very happy!”

  “I’m sure you are,” he said. “But it does not make me happy to find you spying outside my wife’s bedchamber.”

  “Perdoneme, Señor.”

  “Colonel,” he said. “Try not to make that mistake again.”

  The colonel’s campaign to regain not so much his wife’s affections as her dutiful obedience went slowly, but that was no more than he had anticipated. He had realized from the moment he decided to rid himself of Carrasquel that Susan would be devastated by the act, and though this was regrettable, he hoped it would allow him to rebuild her according to his design, to grind and polish her until she shined as brightly and fit as perfectly into her setting as did the ruby in his signet ring. He had known she would hate him, but he believed he would be able to wear hate down until its effectiveness was no greater than the old stubborn streak that had long kept her from absolute compliance with his wishes; and now that she was emotionally in ruins, he thought that even the stubborn streak might prove malleable to his tactics.

  Gradually, over a period of weeks, he began to allow her to summon taxis and go shopping in Havana without escort. He wanted her to understand that her previous constraints had been illusory, and that it was her submissive nature that kept her from true freedom. When she would curse or otherwise abuse him, he would protest only that he had done what he had for love—Could she not see it?—and then would put on a hangdog look and walk away from confrontation. But soon he took to arguing his case with more vigor, offering the logic of his actions. His late arrival at the house, his shock on encountering Carrasquel, how the recognition of what was going on, come like lightning into his mind, had shattered the prudence of his normal temper and loosed a madman. If he could travel back to that night, he told her, even knowing of the affair, he would delay his arrival so as to avoid having blood on his hands. He did not expect her to believe him, though repetition might effect a climate in which belief might grow; but he did expect that hearing the story told over and over again would abet his overall strategy of erosion.

  Once the fierceness of her grief had abated, he began to bring her presents. Small ones, only. He did not wish to be perceived as offering bribes. Further, he expressed an interest in helping her gain a surer footing in life. He had not understood before, he said, how empty the days in Havana had been for her and suggested a variety of meaningful occupations: charity work, teaching in the embassy school, pastimes that would appeal to Susan’s compassion and divert her from brooding. In general, he presented himself as a husband who had neglected his wife due to career concerns, but who now sought to remedy those wrongs and repair the relationship. He was aware that Susan had evidence to the contrary, but again he thought that repetition would eventually cloud the facts and make the truth of the matter difficult for her to discern.

  All this, the colonel admitted to himself, was perhaps not the wisest of courses. Were he to cast his nets wide, he might well be able to secure a new wife superior to Susan in every way. She had been a constant disappointment, and even prior to the affair, he had not neglected the idea of divorce. The colonel could not quite isolate his motives in wanting to reclaim her. Certainly there was the question of appearances—an unstable marriage would have a deleterious effect on his career. Susan’s
undeniable physical charms were also a factor, as were the colonel’s presentiment of sexual anxiety attaching to the finding of her replacement, and various other related anxieties that he chose not to examine too closely. He had no doubt that the challenge posed by Susan’s collapse played into his competitive nature, but taken all in sum, these elements did not appear sufficiently compelling to sustain his endurance of a divided house and a hateful, vituperative wife.

  It was at this juncture that the colonel began to wonder if he had fallen in love with Susan, if that might be the reason underlying his devotion to her rehabilitation. The notion, at first, bemused him, but the longer he pondered it, the more persuaded by it he became. He had come to enjoy nourishing his wife, and why else would he so enjoy it, but that joy was implicit to the task? These thoughts incited a flurry of mental operations—reinterpretations of events, inversions of judgments made, crucial shifts in perspective—that resulted in a total refurbishing of his view of the situation. The process was not altogether clear to him. During its initial stages he recognized that it was a tactical evasion, a trail broken onto new philosophical ground that effected a spurious enlightenment; however, by the time the process had gotten into full swing, he had lost track of this recognition and arrived at the opinion that he was in the midst of psychological reshuffling produced by the powerful emotion of the past weeks. Before too long, his original apprehension that love might be at work in him had evolved into a conviction that this was precisely the case, and, indeed, had always been the case—his courtship and marriage to Susan had been a proceeding of love, deep and abiding, only he had not realized it at the time, being too preoccupied with base desire and the prospect of obtaining a beautiful wife who would suit the requirements dictated by his career. He had been an idiot, a pompous, unfeeling ass, yet Kismet had led him nonetheless to his intended companion. Buoyed by this understanding, the colonel pressed gifts and compliments and encouragements upon his wife, and displayed ceaseless good humor in the face of her sullen acceptance. He told her he loved her at every opportunity, provoking reactions that ranged from dismay to hysteria. Love, an emotion he heretofore had foolishly not aspired to embrace, would be the salvation of them both. It soothed the incidences of guilt that infrequently came to trouble him; it increased a hundredfold his confidence in the purity of his actions; and at last, on a night eleven weeks after the murder, it provided him the courage to visit Susan in her bedchamber.

  Armed, then, with love, and also with the knowledge that his campaign had drained much of the venom from Susan’s store, he entered the chamber at half past nine, dressed, as it happened, exactly as he had been on the morning of the murder—in braces, undershirt, and trousers. In his hand he carried the Colt, holstered to show he intended her no harm. A warm orange radiance issued from a bedside lamp with a shade fashioned of pumpkin-colored glass, shaped into leaf-like sections by lead mullions, and on the bed, a canopied white float enclosed in mosquito netting, Susan lay atop the covers, wearing a green silk robe and reading. When she saw the colonel, her features went slack and she said, “No,” in a weak voice and turned back to her book.

  Ignoring the rejection, the colonel pushed aside the netting and sat on the edge of the bed. Gently, so as not to disturb her. “I want you,” he said in a voice welling with emotion.

  Susan squeezed her eyes shut. “Please . . .”

  Keeping his voice pitched soft, he said, “I can’t live this way, Susan. I love you, I need to touch you.”

  She held the book so as to shield her breasts and shook her head slowly back and forth.

  “We have to move forward,” he said. “I understand that I’ve been neglectful. I was . . .”

  “Neglectful?” She laughed brokenly. “You think you have been neglectful?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Neglect is at the matter’s heart. And neglect had been father to . . .” He struggled with the word; she seemed so precious to him now, it wounded him to be reminded of their past. “Cruelty,” he went on. “I admit that I’ve been cruel. What was in my mind, I cannot recall. It strikes me now that I was afraid of you.”

  Disbelief in her face, she stared at him, lips parted, her blue eyes full of light. It was as if, he thought, she failed to recognize him, or—and this he hoped to be the case—she were seeing him anew.

  “I have always been somewhat unbending,” he said, lowering his head. “I was afraid of becoming . . . close. I thought you would not respect me if I were not Colonel Rutherford”—he made the name into an epithet. “And I feared also were I to divest myself of that pose, I might never inhabit it again and thus would lose the respect of everyone.” He made a fist and placed it against his temple. “It galls me to think of it. How I could have valued such an empty treasure as respect. It means nothing to me now. All I want is your forgiveness, your love.”

  At the word “love,” Susan’s dumbfounded expression collapsed into a stony mask. “I hate you!” she said in a witch’s whisper. “How can you come to me like this? God!”

  The colonel’s chest constricted, his eyes misted. He composed himself and said, “Very well. If you hate me . . . here.” He drew the Colt from its holster and laid it beside her hip. “Take it. Finish me. I will not live this way.”

  She stared avidly at the gun for a long moment; she glanced up at the colonel, then back to the gun.

  “Take it,” he said.

  Susan’s face appeared to crumble, then to become suffused with horror, and the colonel realized that she must have recognized the Colt to be the weapon with which he had shot Carrasquel.

  “Here.” He picked up the Colt and held the barrel to his chest. “All you need do is touch the trigger. The pressure required is very slight.”

  The fingers of her right hand, still pressed to the cover of her book, flexed, and he thought that she might accept his sacrifice; but she offered no gesture toward the gun and turned her head sharply away, so he could not read her expression.

  He set the Colt on the table, shifted nearer and leaned across her, bracing his right hand on the bed beside her waist—in effect, pinning her there. “We must go forward with our lives, Susan,” he said. “We cannot continue as we are.”

  Cautiously, he bent and kissed the angle of her neck. She stiffened. With gentle hands, he pried the book from her grasp, and it, too, he set aside. He kissed the point of her jaw, eliciting from his wife an indrawn breath, and undid the belt of her silk robe. She did not respond to his kisses, his touches, other than to comply with his more urgent movements—but he had not hoped for more. To do so would be premature. With tenderness and loving concern, he encouraged her to join with him, and when at last he lay between her legs and her flesh give way, the colonel felt an immeasurable, an altogether unprecedented, degree of satisfaction.

  * * *

  Except for a plastic baseball bat poking out from beneath the sofa, the living room of Ms. Snow’s trailer exhibited no sign of recent habitation. It was filled with yard-sale furniture, and the stained plywood paneling was decorated with wall hangings of the sort you might find in K-Mart: a tiger prowling a lurid red night through a black and gold jungle; an electric-looking Christ dying for the world’s sins; and, unexpectedly, John Lennon posed as an angel. The place was spotless, neat, plaid throw pillows arranged on a turquoise-colored sofa and magazines spread on the coffee table, just as you might find in a catalogue photo. Ms. Snow wore a pink housedress with little cherry blossoms all over, showing a hint of cleavage. She smelled of flowery water. She led Jimmy to the sofa, had him sit, and then perched at the opposite end, pushed up against the arm. “If I’d known you were coming,” she said, “I’d have gone to the store. All I have to offer you is juice and”—she smiled apologetically—“Kool-Aid.”

  “I’m okay,” Jimmy said, removing his hat.

  “Let me take that.”

  Before he could object, she snatched the hat from him and walked across the room to set it on the counter that divided living room from kitchen. He liked t
he way she moved. Quick but fluid. The pink dress flouncing with the roll of her hips. She sat back down and her smile flickered on. “Do you have some news for me?”

  The feathery dark hairs she had trained down beside her ears to create the effect of sideburns held his attention, and he let a few seconds go by before he answered. “Yeah,” he said. “Kinda.”

  Her posture smartened, and she looked at him with eagerness, knees together, hands clasped, waiting.

  “The professor faxed me a bid,” he said. “Seven thousand. And Borchard come back with seven-five.”

  “Seven thousand would be . . .” Ms. Snow cast her eyes to the ceiling, to heaven, and sighed. “Wonderful.”

  “That ain’t seven thousand for you, y’know. With my twenty percent, that gets you fifty-six hundred.”

  “It’s still more than I hoped to get,” she said firmly.

  “We can probably squeeze a little more. I figure the professor might go to eight, I talk it up right. Give you another eight hundred dollars.”

  She put a hand to her cleavage, as if to quell the beating of her heart, and he tracked the gesture. “I want to thank you, Mister . . .” She tipped her head, gave him an appealing look. “Is it okay if I call you Jimmy. Mister Guy is so . . .”

  “Sounds like a name they’d give a protein drink or something,” he said. “Yeah, Jimmy’s good.”

  “And I’m Loretta.”

  She stuck out her hand for a shake. It was like holding a piece of warm, delicately carved soapstone, soft and strong.

  “You’ve been a salvation, Jimmy. We’re going to keep you in our prayers from now on.”

  The “we” perplexed him—then he recalled the plastic bat.

  “Kids are asleep, huh?”

  “Yes! Thank God!” She hopped up off the couch and went for the kitchen. “I just remembered! I’ve got vodka. It’s been in the freezer so long, I’d forgotten all about it.” She opened the freezer. “Would you join me in a little celebration?”