by Jim Thompson
I sat on the edge of the bed smoking until eight o’clock. Then, I went downstairs to the kitchen.
I turned the light on in the pantry, moving the door back and forth until I had it like I wanted it. Until there was just enough light in the kitchen. I looked around, making sure that all the blinds were drawn, and went into Dad’s office.
I took down the concordance to the Bible and removed the four hundred dollars in marked money, Elmer’s money. I dumped the drawers of Dad’s desk on the floor. I turned off the light, pulled the door almost shut, and went back into the kitchen.
The evening newspaper was spread out on the table. I slid a butcher knife under it, and—And it was that time. I heard her coming.
She came up the back steps and across the porch, and banged and fumbled around for a minute getting the door open. She came in, out of breath kind of and out of temper, and pushed the door shut behind her. And she saw me standing there, not saying anything because I’d forgotten why and I was trying to remember. And, finally, I did remember.
So—or did I mention it already?—on Saturday night, the fifth of April, 1952, at a few minutes before nine o’clock I killed Amy Stanton.
Or maybe you could call it suicide.
19
She saw me and it startled her for a second. Then she dropped her two traveling cases on the floor and gave one of ’em a kick, and brushed a wisp of hair from her eyes.
“Well!” she snapped. “I don’t suppose it would occur to you to give me a little help! Why didn’t you leave the car in the garage, anyway?”
I shook my head. I didn’t say anything.
“I’ll swear, Lou Ford! Sometimes I think—And you’re not even ready yet! You’re always talking about how slow I am, and here you stand, on your own wedding night of all things, and you haven’t—” She stopped suddenly, her mouth shut tight, her breasts rising and falling. And I heard the kitchen clock tick ten times before she spoke again. “I’m sorry, darling,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t say anything more, Amy,” I said. “Just don’t say anything more.”
She smiled and came toward me with her arms held out. “I won’t darling. I won’t ever say anything like that again. But I do want to tell you how much—”
“Sure,” I said. “You want to pour your heart out to me.”
And I hit her in the guts as hard as I could.
My fist went back against her spine, and the flesh closed around it to the wrist. I jerked back on it, I had to jerk, and she flopped forward from the waist, like she was hinged.
Her hat fell off, and her head went clear down and touched the floor. And then she toppled over, completely over, like a kid turning a somersault. She lay on her back, eyes bulging, rolling her head from side to side.
She was wearing a white blouse and a light cream-colored suit; a new one, I reckon, because I didn’t remember seeing it before. I got my hand in the front of the blouse, and ripped it down to the waist. I jerked the skirt up over her head, and she jerked and shook all over; and there was a funny sound like she was trying to laugh.
And then I saw the puddle spreading out under her.
I sat down and tried to read the paper. I tried to keep my eyes on it. But the light wasn’t very good, not good enough to read by, and she kept moving around. It looked like she couldn’t lie still.
Once I felt something touch my boot, and I looked down and it was her hand. It was moving back and forth across the toe of my boot. It moved up along the ankle and the leg, and somehow I was afraid to move away. And then her fingers were at the top, clutching down inside; and I almost couldn’t move. I stood up and tried to jerk away, and the fingers held on.
I dragged her two-three feet before I could break away.
Her fingers kept on moving, sliding and crawling back and forth, and finally they got ahold of her purse and held on. They dragged it down inside of her skirt, and I couldn’t see it or her hands anymore.
Well, that was all right. It would look better to have her hanging on to her purse. And I grinned a little, thinking about it. It was so much like her, you know, to latch onto her purse. She’d always been so tight, and…and I guess she’d had to be.
There wasn’t a better family in town than the Stantons. But both her folks had been ailing for years, and they didn’t have much anymore aside from their home. She’d had to be tight, like any damned fool ought to have known; because there wasn’t any other way of being, and that’s all any of us ever are: what we have to be. And I guessed it hadn’t been very funny when I’d kidded her dead-pan, and acted surprised when she got mad.
I guess that stuff she’d brought to me when I was sick wasn’t really crap. It was as good as she knew how to fix. I guess that dog of theirs didn’t have to chase horses unless’n he wanted the exercise. I—
Why the hell didn’t he come? Hell, she hadn’t had a real breath now in almost thirty minutes, and it was hard as hell on her. I knew how hard it was and I held my own breath for a while because we’d always done things together, and…
He came.
I’d locked the front screen, so that he couldn’t just walk in, and I heard him tugging at it.
I gave her two hard kicks in the head and she rose off the floor, her skirt falling down off of her face, and I knew there wouldn’t be any doubt about her. She was dead on the night of—Then I went and opened the door and let him in.
I pushed the roll of marked twenties on him and said, “Stick this in your pocket. I’ve got the rest back in the kitchen,” and I started back there.
I knew he would put the money in his pocket, and you do too if you can remember back when you were a kid. You’d walk up to a guy and say, “Here, hold this,” and probably he’d pulled the same gag himself; he’d know you were handing him a horse turd or a prickly pear or a dead mouse. But if you pulled it fast enough, he’d do just what you told him.
I pulled it fast, and headed right back toward the kitchen. And he was right on my heels, because he didn’t want me to get too far away from him.
There was just a little light, like I’ve said. I was between him and her. He was right behind me, watching me instead of anything else, and we went into the kitchen and I stepped aside quickly.
He almost stepped on her stomach. I guess his foot did touch it for a split second.
He pulled it back, staring down at her like his eyes were steel and she was a magnet. He tried to tug them away, and they’d just roll, going all-white in his head, and finally he got them away.
He looked at me and his lips shook as though he’d been playing a juice-harp, and he said:
“Yeeeeeeee!”
It was a hell of a funny sound, like a siren with a slippy chain that can’t quite get started. “Yeeeeee!” he said. “Yeeeeee!” It sounded funny as hell, and he looked funny as hell.
Did you ever see one of those two-bit jazz singers? You know, trying to put something across with their bodies that they haven’t got the voice to do? They lean back from the waist a little with their heads hanging forward and their hands held up about even with their ribs and swinging limp. And they sort of wobble and roll on their hips.
That’s the way he looked, and he kept making that damned funny noise, his lips quivering ninety to the minute and his eyes rolling all-white.
I laughed and laughed, he looked and sounded so funny I couldn’t help it. Then, I remembered what he’d done and I stopped laughing, and got mad—sore all over.
“You son-of-a-bitch,” I said. “I was going to marry that poor little girl. We were going to elope and she caught you going through the house and you tried to…”
I stopped, because he hadn’t done it at all. But he could have done it. He could’ve done it just as easy as not. The son-of-a-bitch could have, but he was just like everyone else. He was too nicey-nice and pretendsy to do anything really hard. But he’d stand back and crack the whip over me, keep moving around me every way I turned so that I couldn’t get away no matter w
hat I did, and it was always now-don’t-you-do-nothin’-bud; but they kept cracking that old whip all the time they were sayin’ it. And they—he’d done it all right; and I wasn’t going to take the blame. I could be just as tricky and pretendsy as they were.
I could…
I went blind ma—angry seeing him so pretendsy shocked, “Yeeing!” and shivering and doing that screwy dance with his hands—hell, he hadn’t had to watch her hands!—and white-rolling his eyes. What right did he have to act like that? I was the one that should have been acting that way, but, oh, no, I couldn’t. That was their—his right to act that way, and I had to hold in and do all the dirty work.
I was as mad as all hell.
I snatched the butcher knife from under the newspaper, and made for him.
And my foot slipped where she’d been lying.
I went sprawling, almost knocking him over backwards if he hadn’t moved, and the knife flew out of my hands.
I couldn’t have moved a finger for a minute. I was laid out flat, helpless, without any weapon. And I could have maybe rolled a little and put my arms around her, and we’d have been together like we’d always been.
But do you think he’d do it? Do you think he’d pick up that knife and use it, just a little thing like that that wouldn’t have been a bit of trouble? Oh, hell, no, oh, God, no, oh, Christ and Mary and all the Saints…?
No.
All he could do was beat it, just like they always did.
I grabbed up the knife and took off after the heartless son-of-a-bitch.
He was out to the street sidewalk by the time I got to the front door; the dirty bastard had sneaked a head start on me. When I got out to the walk, he was better’n a half-block away, heading toward the center of town. I took after him as fast as I could go.
That wasn’t very fast on account of the boots. I’ve seen plenty of men out here that never walked fifty miles altogether in their lives. But he wasn’t moving very fast either. He was sort of skipping, jerky, rather than running or walking. He was skipping and tossing his head, and his hair was flying. And he still had his elbows held in at his sides, with his hands doing that funny floppy dance, and he kept saying—it was louder now—that old siren was warming up—he kept saying, kind of screaming:
“Yeeeee! Yeeeeee! Yeeeeeeeeee…!”
He was skipping and flopping his hands and tossing his head like one of those holy roller preachers at a brushwood’s revival meeting. “Yeeeing!” and gone-to-Jesus and all you miserable sinners get right with Gawd like I went and done.
The dirty son-of-a-bitch! How low down can you get?
“MUR-DER!” I yelled. “Stop him, stop him! He killed Amy Stanton! MUR-DER…!”
I yelled at the top of my lungs and I kept yelling. And windows started banging up and doors slammed. And people ran down off their porches. And that snapped him out of that crap—some of it.
He skipped out into the middle of the street, and started moving faster. But I moved faster, too, because it was still dirt in this block, just one short of the business district, and boots are meant for dirt.
He saw that I was gaining a little on him, and he tried to come out of that floppy skippy stuff, but it didn’t look like he could quite make it. Maybe he was using too much steam with that “Yeeeeing!”
“MURDER!” I yelled. “MUR-DER! Stop him! He killed Amy Stanton…!”
And everything was happening awful fast. It just sounds like it was a long time, because I’m not leaving out anything. I’m trying to tell you exactly how it was, so’s you’ll be sure to understand.
Looking up ahead, into the business district, it looked like a whole army of automobiles was bearing down on us. Then, suddenly, it was like a big plow had come down the street, pushing all those cars into the curb.
That’s the way people are here in this section. That’s the way they get. You don’t see them rushing into the middle of a commotion to find out what’s happening. There’s men that are paid to do that and they do it prompt, without any fuss or feathers. And the folks know that no one’s going to feel sorry for ’em if they get in the way of a gun or a bullet.
“Yeeeeee! Yeeeeee! Yeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” he screamed, skipping and flopping.
“MUR-DER! He killed Amy Stanton.…”
And up ahead a little old roadster swung crossways with the intersection and stopped, and Jeff Plummer climbed out.
He reached down on the floor and took out a Winchester. Taking his time, easy-like. He leaned back against the fender, one boot heel hooked through the wheel spokes, and brought the gun up to his shoulder.
“Halt!” he called.
He called out the one time and then he fired, because the bum had started to skip toward the side of the street; and a man sure ought to know better than that.
The bum stumbled and went down, grabbing at his knee. But he got up again and he was still jerking and flopping his hands, and it looked like he was reaching into his clothes. And a man really hadn’t ought to do that. He hadn’t even ought to look anything like that.
Jeff fired three times, shifting his aim easy-like with each shot, and the bum was dropping with the first one, but all three got him. By the time he hit the dirt he didn’t have much left in the way of a head.
I fell down on top of him and began beating him, and they had their hands full dragging me off. I babbled out the story—how I’d been upstairs getting ready and I’d heard some commotion but I hadn’t thought much of it. And—
And I didn’t have to tell it too good. They all seemed to understand how it was.
A doctor pushed through the crowd, Dr. Zweilman, and he gave me a shot in the arm; and then they took me home.
20
I woke up a little after nine the next morning.
My mouth was sticky and my throat dry from the morphine—I don’t know why he hadn’t used hyoscine like any damned fool should have—and all I could think of right then was how thirsty I was.
I stood in the bathroom, gulping down glass after glass of water, and pretty soon it began to bounce on me. (I’m telling you almost anything is better than morphine.) But after a while it stopped. I drank a couple glasses more, and they stayed down. And I scrubbed my face in hot and cold water, and combed my hair.
Then I went back and sat down on the bed, wondering who’d undressed me; and all at once it hit me. Not about her. I wouldn’t think about that. But—well, this.
I shouldn’t have been alone. Your friends don’t leave you alone at a time like that. I’d lost the girl I was going to marry, and I’d been through a terrible experience. And they’d left me alone. There wasn’t anyone around to comfort me, or wait on me or just sit and shake their heads and say it was God’s will and she was happy, and I—a man that’s been through something like that needs those things. He needs all the help and comfort he can get, and I’ve never held back when one of my friends was bereaved. Why, hell, I—a man isn’t himself when one of these disasters strikes. He might do something to himself, and the least people can do is have a nurse around. And…
But there wasn’t any nurse around. I got up and looked through the other bedrooms, just to make sure.
And I wasn’t doing anything to myself. They’d never done anything for me, and I wasn’t doing anything for them.
I went downstairs and…and the kitchen had been cleaned up. There was no one there but me. I started to make some coffee, and then I thought I heard someone out in front, someone cough. And I was so all-fired glad I felt the tears come to my eyes. I turned off the coffee and went to the front door and opened it.
Jeff Plummer was sitting on the steps.
He was sitting sideways, his back to a porch post. He slanted a glance at me, then let his eyes go straight again, without turning his head.
“Gosh, Jeff,” I said. “How long you been out here? Why didn’t you knock?”
“Been here quite a spell,” he said. And he fingered a stick of gum from his shirt pocket and began to unwrap it. “Yes, sir,
I been here quite a spell.”
“Well, come on in! I was just—”
“Kinda like it where I am,” he said. “Air smells real good. Been smellin’ real good, anyways.”
He put the gum in his mouth. He folded the wrapper into a neat little square and tucked it back into his pocket.
“Yes, sir,” he said, “it’s been smellin’ real good, and that’s a fact.”
I felt like I was nailed there in the doorway. I had to stand there and wait, watch his jaws move on that gum, look at him not looking at me. Never looking at me.
“Has there…hasn’t anyone been—?”
“Told ’em you wasn’t up to it,” he said. “Told ’em you was all broke up about Bob Maples.”
“Well, I—Bob?”
“Shot hisself around midnight last night. Yes, sir, pore ol’ Bob killed hisself, and I reckon he had to. I reckon I know just how he felt.”
And he still didn’t look at me.
I closed the door.
I leaned against it, my eyes aching, my head pounding; and I ticked them off with the pounding that reached from my head to my heart…Joyce, Elmer, Johnnie Pappas, Amy, the…Him, Bob Maples…But he hadn’t known anything! He couldn’t have known, had any real proof. He’d just jumped to conclusions like they were jumping. He couldn’t wait for me to explain like, hell, I’d’ve been glad to do. Hadn’t I always been glad to explain? But he couldn’t wait; he’d made up his mind without any proof, like they’d made up theirs.
Just because I’d been around when a few people got killed, just because I happened to be around…
They couldn’t know anything, because I was the only one who could tell ’em—show ’em—and I never had.
And I sure as hell wasn’t going to.
Actually, well, logically, and you can’t do away with logic, there wasn’t anything. Existence and proof are inseparables. You have to have the second to have the first.
I held on to that thought, and I fixed myself a nice big breakfast. But I couldn’t eat but a little bit. That darned morphine had taken all my appetite, just like it always does. About all I could get down was part of a piece of toast and two-three cups of coffee.
