by Jim Thompson
She gave me another of those thoughtful looks, her eyes narrowed behind the smoke. “Carl. It will be all right, won’t it? The sheriff—he—it’ll be all right?”
“Why not?” I said.
“You’re going to go to school here?”
“It would be pretty foolish not to,” I said. “Wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Skip it!” She laughed, irritably. “I guess I’m kind of goofy this morning.”
“It’s this town,” I said. “Sticking around a hole like this with nothing to do. You just weren’t built for it. You’ve got too much stuff for the place. I knew it the minute I saw you.”
“Did you, honey?” She patted my hand.
“I should think you could get some kind of singing job,” I said. “Something that would give you a better life.”
“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know,” she said. “If I had some clothes, the dough to look around with. Maybe I could, but I don’t know, Carl. I’ve been out of things so long. I don’t know whether I could work any more, even to get away from this.”
I nodded. I took another step. It was probably unnecessary, but it wasn’t any trouble and it could save a lot.
“You’re afraid, too, aren’t you,” I said, “that things might be made a little unpleasant for Jake Winroy’s wife?”
“Afraid?” She frowned, puzzledly. “Why should—?”
It had never occurred to her, apparently. And I could see it sink in on her now, sink and build and spread. It pushed the color out of her face, and her lips trembled.
“B-but it wasn’t my fault. They can’t blame me, Carl! H-how could they—they wouldn’t blame me, would they, Carl?”
“They shouldn’t,” I said. “I don’t suppose they would, if they knew how you felt.”
“Carl! What can I—My God, honey, I don’t know why I didn’t see that—”
I laughed softly. It was time to call a halt. Her imagination could talk a lot better to her than I could. “Gosh,” I said, “look at the time. Almost eleven o’clock, and we’re still fooling around with breakfast.”
“But, Carl. I—”
“Forget it.” I grinned at her. “What would I know about things like that? Now you run on to town.”
I stood up and began clearing away the dishes. After a long moment she got up, too, but she didn’t make any move toward the door.
I took her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake. “It’s like I said,” I told her. “The town’s getting on your nerves. You ought to run into the city for the weekend.”
She smiled weakly, still pale around the gills. “Run is right. I sure as hell couldn’t ride.”
“Maybe you could,” I said. “You got any kinfolks there? Anyone you ever visit?”
“Well, I have a sister over in the Bronx, but—”
“She’d yes for you? Give you an alibi in case Jake tried to check up?”
“Well, I don’t—Why should I—?” She frowned at me, blinking; and I thought maybe I’d figured her wrong or had crowded her too hard. Then she laughed softly, huskily. “Boy!” she said. “Did I say he was slick? But look, Carl. Won’t it look kind of funny if we both—?”
“We won’t,” I said. “You let me figure it out.”
“All right, Carl.” She nodded quickly. “You don’t—you won’t think I’m a tramp, will you? It’s just that—”
“No,” I said. “You’re not a tramp.”
“I’ll go along as long as I can with a person, but when I’m through, well, I’m through. I just don’t want any part of ’em any more. You understand Carl?”
“I understand,” I said. “Now, beat it, will you? Or you stay here and I’ll clear out. It doesn’t look good for the two of us to be hanging around here alone.”
“All right, honey. I’ll go right now. And—oh, yes, don’t bother about the dishes. Ruth can do them.”
“Will you get out of here?” I said.
And she laughed and kissed me, and got out.
I cleared up the dishes and put them away. I uncovered an old rusty hammer and went out into the back yard. There was part of a packing crate lying against the alley fence. I knocked some nails out of it, walked around to the front, and went to work on that gate.
There hadn’t been much of anything wrong with it in the beginning; a couple of nails in the hinges would have fixed it up fine. But just letting it go—trying to slam it when it couldn’t slam had damned near wrecked it.
I was still hard at it when Kendall came home from the bakery to lunch.
“Ah,” he said, approvingly, “I see you’re like me, Mr. Bigelow. You like to keep busy.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s something to pass the time.”
“I heard about your—uh—little difficulty last night. I’m glad to see you’re taking it in your stride. I—uh—don’t want to seem presumptuous, but I’ve taken a strong personal interest in you, Mr. Bigelow. I’d have been very disappointed if you’d allowed your plans to be upset by a drunken bum.”
I said, yeah, or thanks, or something of the kind.
“Well,” he said, “shall we go in? I think lunch must be ready.”
I told him I’d just finished breakfast. “I guess you’ll be the only one eating lunch, Mr. Kendall. Mrs. Winroy’s gone to town, and I don’t imagine Mr. Winroy will be here either.”
“I’ll tell Ruthie,” he said, quickly. “The poor child’s liable to go to a lot of trouble for nothing.”
He went on inside, and I went back to work. After a moment he came out again.
“Uh, Mr. Bigelow,” he called. “Do you know where Ruth might be?”
“I haven’t seen anything of her,” I said. “I didn’t know whether she was supposed to come home at noon.”
“Of course she is! Certainly.” He sounded a little annoyed. “She gets out of her last morning class at eleven, and she’s always here by eleven-thirty to start fixing lunch.”
“Well,” I said, and picked up my hammer again. He fidgeted on the porch uncertainly.
“I can’t understand it,” he frowned. “She’s always here by eleven-thirty. She has to be to fix lunch and get the beds made before she goes back to school.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I can see how she would.”
I finished working on the gate. I lit a cigarette, and sat down on the steps to rest.
Ruth. Ruthie. I’d dreaded facing her after last night. She’d asked for it, creeping in on me that way, and yeah, yeah, she’d wanted it, and she’d said it was all right. But someone defenseless, someone—a baby…
But now I wanted to see her. I wanted to see her more than anything in the world. It was like part of me was missing.
I puffed at the cigarette. I flipped it away, and lit up another one. I thought about her—me—swinging along on that crutch, head down, afraid to look at people, afraid to see them looking. You do all you can, and it’s still not enough. You keep your head down, knocking yourself out. You take all the shortcuts…
I got up and started around the house. I almost ran…Kendall had said she was always here by eleven-thirty. She had to be to do the things she had to do. And she’d have to race to do it. She’d have to take all the shortcuts.
I jerked the alley gate open, and looked up the line of high board fence. I looked just as she turned into the alley, pulling herself along on the fence, using the crutch as a cane.
For a moment I was sicker than I’d been when I first got up. Then, the sickness went away, gave way to anger. I ran to meet her, cursing the whole world and everybody in it.
“For Christ’s sake, honey!” I took the crutch out of her hand, and drew her arm around my shoulder. “Are you hurt? Stop a minute and get your br—”
“N-no!” she panted. “J-just let me l-lean on you s-so—”
Her face was smudged, and the left side of her coat was all dusty and dirty. Apparently the end piece of the crutch had worked loose, and she’d taken a hell of a fall.
“Where did it happ
en?” I said. “Why didn’t you ask someone for help? My God, baby, you shouldn’t—”
“H-hurry,” she gasped. “Please, C-carl.”
I hurried, letting her use me as a crutch. And I didn’t ask any more foolish questions. What difference did it make where the accident had happened, whether she’d been struggling for two blocks or six—two thousand miles or six thousand?
I got her across the back yard and up the steps. Hurrying, hurrying, the two of us one person. And her pounding heart, pounding so hard that it seemed to come right out through the skin, was my pounding heart.
I helped her into the kitchen and pushed her into a chair. She struggled to get up, and I pushed her down into it hard.
“Stay there!” I said. “Goddammit, stay there! If you don’t sit still, by God I’ll slough you!”
“I c-can’t! Mrs. W-winroy—”
“Listen to me!” I said. “Will you listen, Ruth? Everything’s going to be all right.”
“It w-won’t!” She was rocking in the chair, weeping helplessly. “Y-you don’t understand. Y-you don’t know how it is. She’ll f-fire me, and I j-just can’t—I’ve g-got t-to—”
I slapped her across the face, two quick hard slaps with the palm of my hand and the back of it.
“Want to listen?” I drew my hand back, ready to swing at her again. “Just tell me what you want to do. You want to listen or do I knock your head right off of your shoulders?”
“I—I’m”—she shuddered and gulped down a sob—“I’m l-listening, Carl.”
I found the whiskey bottle in the cupboard and poured out a stiff shot. I stood over her, watching her to see that she drank every last drop.
“Better, huh?” I grinned. “Now you’re going to eat something, and then you’re going to lie down.”
“No! I—”
“You have to be at school this afternoon? Have to? Sure, you don’t, and you’re not going to. Everything’s jake here. No one showed for lunch but Kendall and he won’t say anything. I’ll talk to him and see that he doesn’t.”
“Y-you don’t know! Mrs. Winroy—”
“She went downtown to get some money. She’ll get it if she has to take it out of Winroy’s hide, and after she gets it she’ll have to spend it. She won’t be home for a long time. I know, get me? I know exactly what she’ll do.”
“B-but”—she looked at me, curiously, a faint frown on her face—“I h-have to make—”
“Make the beds. What else?”
“Well. P-pick up the rooms a little.”
“What time do you usually get out of school?”
“Four.”
“Well, today maybe you cut a class. See what I mean? If she gets home before I think she will. You’re home early, and you’re hard at it when she gets here. Okay?”
“But I have to—”
“I’ll do it,” I said. “And don’t tell me I can’t. I’m a whiz at making beds and picking up. Now, I’ll fix you a little lunch and help you upstairs, and—”
“No, Carl! Just—just do the other. I’ll fix my own lunch. Honest, I will. I’ll do anything you say, but p-please—”
“How are you going to do it? What about your crutch?”
“I’ll fix it! I’ve done it before. I can tighten the screws with a case knife, and there’s some tape here and— Please, Carl!”
I didn’t argue with her. It was better to let her do a little something than to have her go hysterical again.
I gave her the crutch and a knife and the roll of tape.
There were two bedrooms downstairs, Ruth’s and an unoccupied one—I didn’t have to bother with them, of course. Upstairs there were four bedrooms, or, I should say, four rooms with beds in them. Because you couldn’t call the place Jake slept a real bedroom. It was more like a long, narrow closet, barely big enough for a bed and a chair and a lopsided chest of drawers. I guessed it had been a closet before Fay Winroy had stopped sleeping with him.
Since he hadn’t slept there the night before, there wasn’t much of anything to do to it. Nothing at all, in fact. But I went in and looked around—after I’d put my gloves on.
There was a half-empty fifth of port on the chest of drawers. Six-bits a bottle stuff. In the top drawer of the chest was a small white prescription box. I rocked it a little with the tip of one finger. I studied the label. Amyt. 5 gr. NO MORE THAN ONE IN ANY SIX HOUR PERIOD.
Five-grain amytal. Goofballs. Tricky stuff. You take one, and you forget that you’ve done it. So you take more…A few of those in that rotgut wine, and—?
Nothing. Not good enough. He might drink too little, and you’d only tip your hand. He might toss down too much, and throw it up.
No, it wasn’t good enough, but the basic idea was sound. It would have to be something like that, something that could logically happen to him because of what he was.
In the bottom drawer, there was a forty-five with a sawed-off barrel.
I looked it over, moving it with my finger tips, and saw that it was cleaned and loaded. I closed the drawer and left the room.
You didn’t really have to aim that gun for close-range shooting. All you had to do was pull the trigger and let it spray. And if you happen to be cleaning it when…
Huh-uh. It was too obvious. Whenever a man’s killed with something that’s made for killing—well, you see what I mean. People get ideas even where there’s nothing to get ideas about.
Mrs. Winroy’s room looked like a cyclone had struck it; it looked like she might have tried to see how big a mess she could make. I did a particularly good job on it, and went on to Mr. Kendall’s room.
Everything there was about as you’d expect it to be. Clothes all hung up. Bookcases stretching along one side of the room and halfway down another. About the only thing out of place was a book lying across the arm of an easy chair.
I picked it up after I’d finished doing the little work that had to be done, and saw that it was something called Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island by H.G. Wells. I read a few paragraphs at the place where it had been left open. It was about a guy who’d been picked up by a bunch of savages, and they were holding him prisoner down in a kind of canyon. And he was pretty worried about getting to be as crummy as they were, but he was more worried about something else. Just staying alive. I only ready those few paragraphs, like I’ve said, but I could see how it was going to turn out. When it came to a choice of being nice and dead or crummy and alive, the guy would work overtime at being a heel.
I crossed the hall to my own room. I was just finishing it up when I heard Ruth coming up the stairs.
She looked in all the other rooms first, making sure, I guess, that I’d done them up right.
I asked her how she was feeling. She said, “J-just fine,” and, “C-carl, I can’t tell you how much I—”
“What’s the use trying, then?” I grinned. “Come on, now, and I’ll help you downstairs. I want you to get some rest before Mrs. Winroy shows up.”
“But I’m all—I don’t need any—”
“I think you do,” I said. “You still look a little shaky to me.”
I took her back downstairs, making her put most of her weight on me. I made her lie down on her bed, and I sat down on the edge of it. And there wasn’t anything more I could do for her, and I couldn’t think of anything to say. But she lay there, looking at me as though she expected something more; and when I started to get up she put her hand over mine.
6
I think I’d better shove off,” I said. “I want to tell Mr. Kendall not to say anything about missing his lunch.”
“C-arl. Do you—?”
“What about him, anyway?” I said. “How long has he been boarding here?”
“Well”—she hesitated—“not very long. They didn’t start keeping boarders until this last fall.”
“And he moved in right away?”
“Well—yes. I mean, I think he was the one who gave them the idea of running a boarding house. You see, the way it is here, i
n a college town, you can’t have both girls and boys—men—living in the same place. So the place where he was living, all the boarders were boys and they were awfully noisy, I guess, and—”
“I see. The Winroys had plenty of room, so he asked them to take him in. And as long as they had the one boarder, they decided to go after some others.”
“Uh-huh. Only no one else would stay with them. I guess Mr. Kendall knew it would never be crowded here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I imagine he did. Well, I think I’ll go and see him, and—”
“Carl.” Her hand tightened on mine. “About last…I’m not sorry, Carl.”
“All right,” I said, trying to be firm and gentle at the same time. “I’m glad you’re not sorry, Ruthie, and there’s nothing for you to worry about. Now let’s just leave it at that, huh? Let’s make like it never happened.”
“B-but I—I thought—”
“It’s better that way, Ruthie. Mrs. Winroy might catch on. I’ve got an idea she wouldn’t like it.”
“B-but she didn’t last night. If w-we were careful and—”
She was blushing; she couldn’t look at me straight.
“Look,” I said, “that stuff won’t get you anything, kid. Nothing but trouble. You were doing all right before, weren’t you? Well, then—”
“Tell me something, Carl. Is it because of my—because I’m like I am?”
“I’ve told you why,” I said. “It’s just damned bad business. I haven’t got anything. I don’t know how long I’m going to be here. You can’t win, know what I mean? You ought to be doing your stepping out with one of the local boys—some nice steady guy you can marry some day and give you the kind of life you ought to have.”
She bit her lip, turning her head on the pillows until she was staring at the wall.
“Yes,” she said, slowly. “I suppose that’s what I’d better do. Start stepping out. Get married. Thank you.”
“Look,” I said. “All I’m trying to do is—”
“It’s my fault, Carl. I felt different around you. You seemed to like me, and you didn’t seem to notice how—notice anything. And I guess I thought it was because you—I don’t mean there’s anything wrong with you—but—”
