by Jim Thompson
“Certainly, certainly.” Mr. Kendall pushed back his chair. “Shall we take our coffee into the living room, Mr. Bigelow?”
“Why don’t you take Carl’s cup for him?” she said. “I’d like to speak to him for a moment.”
“Certainly. Of course,” he said.
He took our cups and crossed the hall into the living room. I followed her out onto the porch.
It was dark out there. She stood up close to me. “You stinker,” she said accusingly, half laughing. “I heard you giving him the rib…So I’m putting a strain on myself, am I?”
“Hell,” I said, “you couldn’t expect me to pass up an opening like that. As a matter of fact, when it comes to an attractive opening I—”
She snickered. “But look, Carl—honey…”
“Yeah?” I said. I brought my hands up to her hips.
“I’ve got to run downtown for a while, honey. I’ll get back as soon as I can, but if Jake shows up while I’m gone, don’t—well, don’t pay any attention to him.”
“That could be quite a job,” I said.
“I mean he’s almost sure to be drunk. He always is when he’s late this way. But it’s all talk with him; he hasn’t got any real guts. Just don’t pay any attention to anything he says, and everything will be all right.”
I said I’d do my best. There was nothing else I could say. She gave me a quick hard kiss. Then she wiped my mouth with her handkerchief and started down the steps.
“Remember, Carl. Just don’t pay attention to him.”
“I’ll remember,” I said.
Mr. Kendall was waiting, worriedly, afraid that my coffee would be cold. I said it was fine, just the way I liked it, and he leaned back and relaxed. He started talking about finding a job for me—he’d taken in for granted that I’d need one. He moved from the subject of a job for me to that of his own job. As I got it, he was the manager of the place, the kind of manager who doesn’t have the title and who works all hours for a few bucks more than the regular hired hands get.
I believe he was all set to take the night off by way of giving me a full and complete history of the baking industry. As it worked out, though, he hadn’t been spouting for more than ten or fifteen minutes when Jake Winroy arrived.
You’ve seen pictures of Jake, of course; anyone who reads the newspapers has. But the pictures you’ve seen were probably taken when he was still in there punching. For the Jake you’ve seen and the one I saw were two different people.
He was a tall guy, around six feet, I guess, and his normal weight was around two hundred pounds. But he couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and forty now. The skin on his face hung in folds. It seemed to tug at his mouth, drawing it downward; it tugged down at the pouches of his eyes. Even his nose dropped. It sagged out of his face like a melting candle in a pan of dirty tallow. He was stooped, curve-shouldered. His chin almost touched his neck, and his neck seemed to bend and wobble from the weight of his head.
He was very drunk, of course. He had every right to be. Because he was dead, the same as; and I guess he knew it.
He got snagged coming through the gate—I’d known damned well that gate would snag someone—and when he yanked himself free he went sprawling and stumbling almost to the porch. He got up the steps, falling back two for every one he took, it sounded like. He came across the porch in a kind of staggering rush. He staggered into the hall. He stood weaving and swaying there a moment, blinking his eyes and trying to get his bearings.
“Mr. Winroy!” Mr. Kendall edged toward him nervously. “Would you—uh—may I help you to bed, Mr. Winroy?”
“B-bed?” Jake hiccuped. “W-hhh-hoo y-you?”
“Now, you know very well who I am, sir!”
“S-sure. I k-now, but duh-duh duh d-you? Betcha c-can’ tell me, can you?”
Mr. Kendall’s mouth tightened. “Would you like to come over to the bakery with me for a while, Mr. Bigelow?”
“I think I’ll go up to my room,” I said. “I—”
And Jake jumped like he’d been shot.
He jumped and whirled at the sound of my voice. He looked at me, wild-eyed, and one of his long, veined hands came up, pointing. “W-who y-you?”
“This is Mr. Bigelow,” said Mr. Kendall. “Your new boarder.”
“Oh, yeah? Yeah!” He took a step backward, keeping his eyes fixed on me. “B-boarder, huh? So h-he-s the new b-boarder, huh? Oh, y-yeah?”
“Of course, he’s the new boarder!” Kendall snapped. “A very fine young man, and you’re certainly doing your best to make him uncomfortable! Now, why—”
“Oh, yuh-yeah? Yeah!” He kept on edging toward the door, edging backward in a sort of half crouch. His eyes peered out at me wildly through the tumbled strands of his greasy black hair. “N-new b-boarder. Makin’ h-huh-him uncomfortable. Huh-him uncomfortable! Oh, y-yeah?”
It was like a broken record—a broken record with a rasping, worn-out needle. He made me think of some wild sick animal, trapped in a corner.
“Oh, y-yeah? Yeah!” He didn’t seem to be able to stop it. All he could do was back up, back, back, back…
“This is disgusting, sir! You know quite well you’ve been expecting Mr. Bigelow. I was present when you talked about it with Mrs. Winroy.”
“Oh, y-yeah? Yeah! ’S-spectin’ Mr. Bigelow, yeah? ’S-spectin’ Mr. B-Bigger-low…”
His back touched against the screen door.
And he tripped on the lintel, plunged stumbling across the porch and went crashing down the steps. He turned a complete somersault on the way down.
“Oh, my goodness!” Mr. Kendall snapped on the porch light. “Oh, my goodness!” He’s probably killed himself!”
Wringing his hands, he scuttled across the porch and started down the steps. And I sauntered after him. But Jake Winroy wasn’t dead, and he didn’t want any help from me.
“Nnnnuh-NO!” he yelled. “N-NUHNUH—NO!…”
He rolled to his feet. He sprang awkwardly toward the gate, and he tripped and went down again. He picked himself up and shot staggering into the road.
He took off right down the middle of it toward town. Arms flapping, legs weaving and wobbling crazily. Running, because there was nothing to do but run.
I felt pretty sorry for him. He didn’t need to let his house look like it did, and I couldn’t excuse him for it. But I still felt sorry.
“Please don’t let this upset you, Mr. Bigelow.” Kendall touched my arm. “He simply goes a little crazy when he gets too much liquor in him.”
“Sure,” I said. “I understand. My father was a pretty heavy drinker…Let’s get the light off, huh?”
I jerked my head over my shoulder. A bunch a yokels had come out of the bar and were staring across the street at us.
I turned the light off, and we stood on the porch talking a few minutes. He said he hoped Ruthie hadn’t been alarmed. He invited me to the bakery again, and I turned him down.
He stuffed tobacco into his pipe, puffed at it nervously. “I can’t tell you how much I admired your self-possession, Mr. Bigelow. I’m afraid I—I’ve always thought I was pretty cool and collected, but—”
“You are,” I said. “You were swell. It’s just that you’re not used to drunks.”
“You say your—uh—your father—?”
It was strange that I’d mentioned it. I mean, there wasn’t any harm in mentioning it; but it had been so long ago, more than thirty years ago.
“Of course, I don’t remember anything about it,” I said. “That was back in 1930 and I was only a baby at the time; but my mother—” That was one lie I had to pound home. My age.
“Tsk, tsk! Poor woman. How terrible for her!”
“He was a coal miner,” I said. “Over around McAlester, Oklahoma. The union didn’t amount to much in those days, and I don’t need to tell you there was a depression. About the only work a man could get was in the wildcats, working without inspection. Stripping pillars—”
I paused a moment,
remembering. Remembering the stooped back, and the glaring fear-maddened eyes. Remembering the choked sounds at night, the sobbing screams.
“He got the idea that we were trying to kill him,” I said. “If we spilled a little meal, or tore our clothes or something like that, he’d beat the tar out of us…Out of the others, I mean. I was only a baby.”
“Yes? But I don’t understand why—”
“It’s simple,” I said. “Anyway, it was simple enough to him. It seemed to him that we were trying to keep him in the mines. Keeping him from getting away. Using up stuff as fast as we could so that he’d have to stay down there under the ground…until he was buried under it.”
Mr. Kendall tsk-tsk’ed again. “Wretched! Poor deluded fellow. As if you could help—”
“We couldn’t help it,” I nodded, “but that didn’t make it any better for him. He had to work in the mines, and when a man has to do something he does it. But that doesn’t make it any easier. You might even say it was twice as hard that way. You’re not brave or noble or unselfish or any of the things a man likes to think he is. You’re just a cornered rat, and you start acting like one.”
“Mmm. You seem to be an unusually introspective young man, Mr. Bigelow. You say your father died of drink?”
“No,” I said. “He died in the mines. There was so much rock on top of him that it took a week to dig him out.”
Mr. Kendall shoved off for the bakery after a few more tsks and how-terribles, and I went back in the house. Then I sauntered on back to the kitchen.
She was bent over the sink, the crutch gripped under her armpit, washing what looked like about a thousand dishes. Apparently, Mrs. Winroy had saved them up for her while she’d been away—them and every other dirty job.
I hung my coat over a chair and rolled up my sleeves. I picked up a big spoon and began scraping the pans out.
I got them all scraped into one pan, and started for the back door with it.
She hadn’t looked at me since I’d come into the room, and she didn’t look at me now. But she did manage to speak. The words came out in a rush like a kid who’s nerved to recite a poem and has to do it fast or not at all.
“The g-garbage can’s at the side of the porch—”
“You mean they don’t have any chickens?” I said. “Why, they ought to have some chickens to feed it to.”
“Y-yes,” she said.
“It’s a shame to waste food this way. With all the hungry people there are in the world.”
“I—I think so, too,” she said, sort of breathless.
That was all she was up to for the moment. She was blushing like a house afire, and her head was ducked so far over the sink I was afraid she would fall in. I took the garbage outside and scraped it out slowly.
I knew how she felt. Why wouldn’t I know how it felt to be a kind of joke, to have people tell you off kind of like it was what you were made for? You never get used to it, but you get to where you don’t expect anything else.
She was still pretty shocked by the idea of having talked to me when I went back inside. But being shocked didn’t keep her from liking it. She said I s-shouldn’t be helping her wipe the dishes—then, pointed out a towel to me. She said h-hadn’t I better put an apron on; she did it for me, her fingers trembling but lingering.
We stood wiping the dishes together, our arms touching now and then. The first few times it happened, she jerked hers away like she’d brushed against a hot stove. Then, pretty soon, she wasn’t jerking away. And, once, when my elbow brushed her breast, it seemed to me that she sort of leaned into it.
Studying her out of the corner of my eyes, I saw that I’d been right about her left hand. The fingers were splayed. She didn’t have the full use of it, and she kept trying to hide it from me. Even with that, though, and her leg—whatever was wrong with her leg—she had plenty on the ball.
All that hard work and deep breathing had put breasts on her like daddy-come-to-church. And swinging around on that crutch hadn’t done her rear end any harm. If you saw it by itself, you might have thought it belonged to a Shetland pony. But I don’t mean it was big. It was the way it was put on her: the way it hinged into the flat stomach and the narrow waist. It was as though she’d been given a break there for all the places she’d been shortchanged.
I got her to talking. I got her to laughing. I draped another dishtowel over my head and started prancing around; and she leaned back against the drainboard, giggling and blushing and protesting.
“S-stop, now, Carl—” Her eyes were shining. The sun had come up behind them, and was shining out at me. “Y-you stop, now—”
“Stop what?” I said, pouring it on all the harder. “What do you want me to stop, Ruth? You mean this or this?”
I kept it up, sizing her up while I did it, and I changed my mind about a couple of things. I decided I wasn’t going to give her any tips on dressing. I wasn’t going to fix her up with a compact and a permanent. Because any dolling up she did need, she’d do for herself, and she didn’t really need any.
Then, suddenly, she wasn’t laughing any more. She stopped and stood staring over my shoulder.
I knew what it must be. I’d had a hunch it was coming. I turned slowly around, and I was damned careful to keep my hands away from my sides.
I can’t say whether he’d rung the doorbell and we hadn’t heard him, or whether he’d just walked in without ringing. But there he was—a tall rawboned guy with sharp but friendly blue eyes, and a graying coffee-stained mustache.
“Havin’ quite a time for yourself, hey, kids?” he said. “Well, that’s fine. Nothing I like better’n to see young folks enjoying themselves.”
Ruth’s mouth opened and closed. I waited, smiling.
“Been meaning to get out and see your folks, Miss Dorne,” he went on. “Hear you got a new baby out there…Don’t believe I’ve ever met you, young fellow. I’m Bill Summers—Sheriff Summers.”
“How do you do, sheriff,” I said, and I shook hands with him. “I’m Carl Bigelow.”
“Hope I didn’t startle you folks just now. Dropped over to see a fellow named—Bigelow! You say you’re Carl Bigelow?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Is there something wrong, sheriff?”
He looked me over slowly, frowning, taking in the apron and the dishtowel on my head; looking like he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or start cussing.
“I reckon we’ve got some talking to do, Bigelow…Darn that Jake Winroy’s hide, anyway!”
4
We were in my room. Mrs. Winroy had come in a couple of minutes behind him, and she’d blown her lid so high we’d had to come upstairs.
“I just can’t understand it,” I said. “Mr. Winroy’s known I was coming for several weeks. If he didn’t want me here, why in the world didn’t—”
“Well, o’course, he hadn’t seen you then. What with seein’ you and connecting you up with a name that sounds kinda like yours—well, I can see where it might give him a little start. A man that’s in the fix Jake Winroy’s in.”
“If anyone’s got a right to feel upset, it’s me. I can tell you this, sheriff. If I’d known that James C. Winroy was Jake Winroy, I wouldn’t be here now.”
“Uh-huh, sure.” He shook his head sympathetically. “But I was kind of wonderin’ about that, son. Why did you come here, anyway? All the way from Arizona to a place like Peardale.”
“That was it partly,” I shrugged. “Because it was a long way from Arizona. As long as I was making a fresh start, I thought I’d better make a clean break of it. It’s not easy to make something out of yourself around people who remember you when you weren’t anything.”
“Uh-huh. Yeah?”
“That was only part of it, of course,” I said. “This was cheap, and the school would accept me as a special student. There aren’t many colleges that will, you know. If you don’t have a high-school education, you’re out of luck.” I laughed shortly, making it sound pretty grim and dispirited. “It seems pret
ty crazy to me, now. I’d dreamed about it for years—getting myself a little education and landing a good job and—and—But I guess I should have known better.”
“Aw, now, son”—he cleared his throat, looking troubled—“don’t take it that way. I know there ain’t no sense to this, and I don’t like it a bit better than you do. But I ain’t got no choice, Jake Winroy being what he is. Now you just help me out and we’ll get this settled in no time.”
“I’ll tell you anything I can, Sheriff Summers,” I said.
“Swell. What about kinfolks?”
“My father’s dead. My mother and the rest of the family—I don’t know about them. We started splitting up right after Dad died. It’s been so long ago that I’ve even forgotten what they looked like.”
“Uh-huh?” he said. “Yeah?”
I started talking. Nothing I told him could be checked, but I could see he believed me; and it would have been strange if he hadn’t. The story was pretty much true, you see. It was practically gospel, except for the dates. There was a hell of a depression in the Oklahoma coal fields in the early twenties. There were strikes and the militia was called in, and no one had money enough for grub, let alone doctors and undertakers. And there was plenty to think about besides birth and death certificates.
I told him how we’d drifted over into Arkansas, picking cotton, and then on down into the Rio Grande Valley for the fruit, and then over into the Imperial for the stoop crops…Sticking together, at first, then splitting up for a day or two at a time to follow the work. Splitting up and staying split up.
I’d sold newspapers in Houston. I’d caddied in Dallas. I’d hustled programs and pop in Kansas City. And in Denver, in front of the Brown Palace Hotel, I’d put the bite on a big flashy-looking guy for coffee money. And he’d said, “Jesus, Charlie, you don’t remember me? I’m your brother, Luke—”
But I left that part out, of course.
“Uh-huh”—he cut in on me. I’d given him so much he was getting tired. “When did you go to Arizona?”
“December of ’44. I’ve never been real sure of my birthdate, but I’d just turned sixteen as near as I can figure it. Anyway”—I made a point of being careful about it—“I don’t see how I could have been more than seventeen.”
