The Postman Always Rings Twice

by James M. Cain

  “I’m telling you.”

  “If I was, I wouldn’t have got scared so easy. I was so scared, Frank.”

  “I was scared plenty, myself.”

  “You know what I wanted when the lights went out? Just you, Frank. I wasn’t any hell cat at all, then. I was just a little girl, afraid of the dark.”

  “I was there, wasn’t I?”

  “I loved you for it. If it hadn’t been for you, I don’t know what would have happened to us.”

  “Pretty good, wasn’t it? About how he slipped?”

  “And he believed it.”

  “Give me half a chance, I got it on the cops, every time. You got to have something to tell, that’s it. You got to fill in all those places, and yet have it as near the truth as you can get it. I know them. I’ve tangled with them, plenty.”

  “You fixed it. You’re always going to fix it for me, aren’t you, Frank?”

  “You’re the only one ever meant anything to me.”

  “I guess I really don’t want to be a hell cat.”

  “You’re my baby.”

  “That’s it, just your dumb baby. All right, Frank. I’ll listen to you, from now on. You be the brains, and I’ll work. I can work, Frank. And I work good. We’ll get along.”

  “Sure we will.”

  “Now shall we go to sleep?”

  “You think you can sleep all right?”

  “It’s the first time we ever slept together, Frank.”

  “You like it?”

  “It’s grand, just grand.”

  “Kiss me goodnight.”

  “It’s so sweet to be able to kiss you goodnight.”

  Next morning, the telephone waked us up. She answered it, and when she came up her eyes were shining. “Frank, guess what?”

  “What?”

  “His skull is fractured.”

  “Bad?”

  “No, but they’re keeping him there. They want him there for a week, maybe. We can sleep together again, tonight.”

  “Come here.”

  “Not now. We’ve got to get up. We’ve got to open the place up.”

  “Come here, before I sock you.”

  “You nut.”

  It was a happy week, all right. In the afternoon, she would drive in to the hospital, but the rest of the time we were together. We gave him a break, too. We kept the place open all the time, and went after the business, and got it. Of course it helped, that day when a hundred Sunday school kids showed up in three buses, and wanted a bunch of stuff to take out in the woods with them, but even without that we would have made plenty. The cash register didn’t know anything to tell on us, believe me it didn’t.

  Then one day, stead of her going in alone, we both went in, and after she came out of the hospital, we cut for the beach. They gave her a yellow suit and a red cap, and when she came out I didn’t know her at first. She looked like a little girl. It was the first time I ever really saw how young she was. We played in the sand, and then we went way out and let the swells rock us. I like my head to the waves, she liked her feet. We lay there, face to face, and held hands under water. I looked up at the sky. It was all you could see. I thought about God.

  “Frank.”

  “Yes?”

  “He’s coming home tomorrow. You know what that means?”

  “I know.”

  “I got to sleep with him, stead of you.”

  “You would, except that when he gets here we’re going to be gone.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  “Just you and me and the road, Cora.”

  “Just you and me and the road.”

  “Just a couple of tramps.”

  “Just a couple of gypsies, but we’ll be together.”

  “That’s it. We’ll be together.”

  Next morning, we packed up. Anyway, she packed. I had bought a suit, and I put that on, and it seemed to be about all. She put her things in a hatbox. When she got done with it, she handed it to me. “Put that in the car, will you?”

  “The car?”

  “Aren’t we taking the car?”

  “Not unless you want to spend the first night in jail, we’re not. Stealing a man’s wife, that’s nothing, but stealing his car, that’s larceny.”

  “Oh.”

  We started out. It was two miles to the bus stop, and we had to hike it. Every time a car went by, we would stand there with our hand stuck out, like a cigar store Indian, but none of them stopped. A man alone can get a ride, and a woman alone, if she’s fool enough to take it, but a man and a woman together don’t have much luck. After about twenty had gone by, she stopped. We had gone about a quarter of a mile.

  “Frank, I can’t.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “This is it.”

  “This is what?”

  “The road.”

  “You’re crazy. You’re tired, that’s all. Look. You wait here, and I’ll get somebody down the road to drive us in to the city. That’s what we ought to done anyhow. Then we’ll be all right.”

  “No, it’s not that. I’m not tired. I can’t, that’s all. At all.”

  “Don’t you want to be with me, Cora?”

  “You know I do.”

  “We can’t go back, you know. We can’t start up again, like it was before. You know that. You’ve got to come.”

  “I told you I wasn’t really a bum, Frank. I don’t feel like no gypsy. I don’t feel like nothing, only ashamed, that I’m out here asking for a ride.”

  “I told you. We’re getting a car in to the city.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then we’re there. Then we get going.”

  “No we don’t. We spend one night in a hotel, and then we start looking for a job. And living in a dump.”

  “Isn’t that a dump? What you just left?”

  “It’s different.”

  “Cora, you going to let it get your goat?”

  “It’s got it, Frank. I can’t go on. Goodbye.”

  “Will you listen to me a minute?”

  “Goodbye, Frank. I’m going back.”

  She kept tugging at the hatbox. I tried to hold on to it, anyway to carry it back for her, but she got it. She started back with it. She had looked nice when she started out, with a little blue suit and blue hat, but now she looked all battered, and her shoes were dusty, and she couldn’t even walk right, from crying. All of a sudden, I found out I was crying too.

  CHAPTER

  6

  I caught a ride to San Bernardino. It’s a railroad town, and I was going to hop a freight east. But I didn’t do it. I ran into a guy in a poolroom, and began playing him one ball in the side. He was the greatest job in the way of a sucker that God ever turned out, because he had a friend that could really play. The only trouble with him was, he couldn’t play good enough. I hung around with the pair of them a couple of weeks, and took $250 off them, all they had, and then I had to beat it out of town quick.

  I caught a truck for Mexicali, and then I got to thinking about my $250, and how with that much money we could go to the beach and sell hot dogs or something until we got a stake to take a crack at something bigger. So I dropped off, and caught a ride back to Glendale. I began hanging around the market where they bought their stuff, hoping I would bump into her. I even called her up a couple of times, but the Greek answered and I had to make out it was a wrong number.

  In between walking around the market, I hung around a poolroom, about a block down the street, One day a guy was practicing shots alone on one of the tables. You could tell he was new at it from the way he held his cue. I began practicing shots on the next table. I figured if $250 was enough for a hot dog stand, $350 would leave us sitting pretty.

  “How you say to a little one ball in the side?”

  “I never played that game much.”

  “Nothing to it. Just the one ball in the side pocket.”

  “Anyhow, you look too good for me.”

  “Me? I’m just
a punk.”

  “Oh well. If it’s just a friendly game.”

  We started to play, and I let him take three or four, just to feel good. I kept shaking my head, like I couldn’t understand it.

  “Too good for you, hey. Well, that’s a joke. But I swear, I’m really better than this. I can’t seem to get going. How you say we put $1 on it, just to make it lively?”

  “Oh well. I can’t lose much at a dollar.”

  We made it $1 a game, and I let him take four or five, maybe more. I shot like I was pretty nervous, and in between shots I would wipe off the palm of my hand with a handkerchief, like I must be sweating.

  “Well, it looks like I’m not doing so good. How about making it $5, so I can get my money back, and then we’ll go have a drink?”

  “Oh well. It’s just a friendly game, and I don’t want your money. Sure. We’ll make it $5, and then we’ll quit.”

  I let him take four or five more, and from the way I was acting, you would have thought I had heart failure and a couple more things besides. I was plenty blue around the gills.

  “Look. I got sense enough to know when I’m out of my class all right, but let’s make it $25, so I can break even, and then we’ll go have that drink.”

  “That’s pretty high for me.”

  “What the hell? You’re playing on my money, aren’t you?”

  “Oh well. All right. Make it $25.”

  Then was when I really started to shoot. I made shots that Hoppe couldn’t make. I banked them in from three cushions, I made billiard shots, I had my english working so the ball just floated around the table, I even called a jump shot and made it. He never made a shot that Blind Tom the Sightless Piano Player couldn’t have made. He miscued, he got himself all tangled up on position, he scratched, he put the one ball in the wrong pocket, he never even called a bank shot. And when I walked out of there, he had my $250 and a $3 watch that I had bought to keep track of when Cora might be driving in to the market. Oh, I was good all right. The only trouble was I wasn’t quite good enough.

  “Hey, Frank!”

  It was the Greek, running across the street at me before I had really got out the door.

  “Well Frank, you old son a gun, where you been, put her there, why you run away from me just a time I hurt my head I need you most?”

  We shook hands. He still had a bandage around his head and a funny look in his eyes, but he was all dressed up in a new suit, and had a black hat cocked over on the side of his head, and a purple necktie, and brown shoes, and his gold watch chain looped across his vest, and a big cigar in his hand.

  “Well, Nick! How you feeling, boy?”

  “Me, I feel fine, couldn’t feel better if was right out a the can, but why you run out on me? I sore as hell at you, you old son a gun.”

  “Well, you know me, Nick. I stay put a while, and then I got to ramble.”

  “You pick one hell of a time to ramble. What you do, hey? Come on, you don’t do nothing, you old son a gun, I know you, come on over while I buy’m steaks I tell you all about it.”

  “You alone?”

  “Don’t talk so dumb, who the hell you think keep a place open now you run out on me, hey? Sure I’m alone. Me a Cora never get to go out together now, one go, other have to stay.”

  “Well then, let’s walk over.”

  It took him an hour to buy the steaks, he was so busy telling me how his skull was fractured, how the docs never saw a fracture like it, what a hell of a time he’s had with his help, how he’s had two guys since I left and he fired one the day after he hired him, and the other one skipped after three days and took the inside of the cash register with him, and how he’d give anything to have me back.

  “Frank, I tell you what. We go to Santa Barbara tomorrow, me a Cora. Hell boy, we got to step out a little, hey? We go see a fiesta there, and you come with us. You like that, Frank? You come with us, we talk about you come back a work for me. You like a fiesta a Santa Barbara?”

  “Well, I hear it’s good.”

  “Is a girls, is a music, is a dance in streets, is swell. Come on, Frank, what you say?”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “Cora be sore as hell at me if I see you and no bring you out. Maybe she treat you snotty, but she think you fine fellow, Frank. Come on, we all three go. We have a hell of a time.”

  “O.K. If she’s willing, it’s a go.”

  There were eight or ten people in the lunchroom when we got there, and she was back in the kitchen, washing dishes as fast as she could, to get enough plates to serve them.

  “Hey. Hey Cora, look. Look who I bring.”

  “Well for heaven’s sake. Where did he come from?”

  “I see’m today a Glendale. He go to Santa Barbara with us.”

  “Hello, Cora. How you been?”

  “You’re quite a stranger around here.”

  She wiped her hands quick, and shook hands, but her hand was soapy. She went out front with an order, and me and the Greek sat down. He generally helped her with the orders, but he was all hot to show me something, and he let her do it all alone. It was a big scrapbook, and in the front of it he had pasted his naturalization certificate, and then his wedding certificate, and then his license to do business in Los Angeles County, and then a picture of himself in the Greek Army, and then a picture of him and Cora the day they got married, and then all the clippings about his accident. Those clippings in the regular papers, if you ask me, were more about the cat than they were about him, but anyway they had his name in them, and how he had been brought to the Glendale Hospital, and was expected to recover. The one in the Los Angeles Greek paper, though, was more about him than about the cat, and had a picture of him in it, in the dress suit he had when he was a waiter, and the story of his life. Then came the X-Rays. There were about a half dozen of them, because they took a new picture every day to see how he was getting along. How he had them fixed up was to paste two pages together, along the edges, and then cut out a square place in the middle, where the X-Ray was slipped in so you could hold it up to the light and look through it. After the X-Rays came the receipted hospital bills, the receipted doctors’ bills, and the receipted nurses’ bills. That rap on the conk cost him $322, believe it or not.

  “Is a nice, hey?”

  “Swell. It’s all there, right on the line.”

  “Of course, is a not done yet. I fix’m up red, a white, a blue, fix’m up fine. Look.”

  He showed me where he had put the fancy stuff on a couple of the pages. He had inked in the curlycues, and then colored it with red, white, and blue. Over the naturalization certificate, he had a couple of American flags, and an eagle, and over the Greek Army picture he had crossed Greek flags, and another eagle, and over his wedding certificate he had a couple of turtle doves on a twig. He hadn’t figured out yet what to put over the other stuff, but I said over the clippings he could put a cat with red, white, and blue fire coming out of its tail, and he thought that was pretty good. He didn’t get it, though, when I said he could have a buzzard over the Los Angeles County license, holding a couple of auctioneer’s flags that said Sale Today, and it didn’t look like it would really be worth while to try to explain it to him. But I got it, at last, why he was all dressed up, and not carrying out the chow like he used to, and acted so important. This Greek had had a fracture of the skull, and a thing like that don’t happen to a dumb cluck like him every day. He was like a wop that opens a drug store. Soon as he gets that thing that says Pharmacist, with a red seal on it, a wop puts on a gray suit, with black edges on the vest, and is so important he can’t even take time to mix the pills, and wouldn’t even touch a chocolate ice-cream soda. This Greek was all dressed up for the same reason. A big thing had happened in his life.

  It was pretty near supper time when I got her alone. He went up to wash, and the two of us were left in the kitchen.

  “You been thinking about me, Cora?”

  “Sure. I wouldn’t forget you all that quick.”r />
  “I thought about you a lot. How are you?”

  “Me? I’m all right.”

  “I called you up a couple of times, but he answered and I was afraid to talk to him. I made some money.”

  “Well, gee, I’m glad you’re getting along good.”

  “I made it, but then I lost it. I thought we could use it to get started with, but then I lost it.”

  “I declare, I don’t know where the money goes.”

  “You sure you think about me, Cora?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “You don’t act like it.”

  “Seems to me I’m acting all right.”

  “Have you got a kiss for me?”

  “We’ll be having supper pretty soon. You better get ready, if you’ve got any washing to do.”

  That’s the way it went. That’s the way it went all evening. The Greek got out some of his sweet wine, and sang a bunch of songs, and we sat around, and so far as she was concerned, I might just as well have been just a guy that used to work there, only she couldn’t quite remember his name. It was the worst flop of a homecoming you ever saw in your life.

  When it came to go to bed, I let them go up, and then I went outside to try and figure out whether to stay there and see if I couldn’t get going with her again, or blow and try to forget her. I walked quite a way off, and I don’t know how long it was, or how far away I was, but after a while I could hear a row going on in the place. I went back, and when I got close I could hear some of what they were saying. She was yelling like hell and saying I had to leave. He was mumbling something, probably that he wanted me to stay and go back to work. He was trying to shut her up, but I could tell she was yelling so I would hear it. If I had been in my room, where she thought I was, I could have heard it plain enough, and even where I was I could hear plenty.

  Then all of a sudden it stopped. I slipped in the kitchen, and stood there listening. But I couldn’t hear anything, because I was all shook up, and all I could get was the sound of my own heart, going bump-bump, bump-bump, bump-bump, like that. I thought that was a funny way for my heart to sound, and then all of a sudden I knew there was two hearts in that kitchen, and that was why it sounded so funny.