Savage Night

by Jim Thompson

  “Well,” I said. “Speaking of work, I think it’s time I was getting busy on those dinner dishes.”

  We’d been sitting on the back steps while we talked. I stood up and held out my hand to her.

  She took it, and drew me back down on the steps.

  “Carl—”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “I—I wish I could tell you how much I—” She laughed sort of crankily, as though she was scolding herself. “Oh just listen to me! I guess I’ve gotten like Bill, completely out of the habit of handing out bouquets. But…you know what I mean, Carl.”

  “I hope I do,” I said. “I mean, I enjoy being with you and the sheriff so much I hope you—”

  “We do, Carl. We’ve never had any children, no one but ourselves to think about. Perhaps that’s been the…well, no matter. What can’t be cured must be endured. But I’ve thought—I seem to have had you on my mind ever since last Sunday, and I’ve thought that if things had been different, if we’d had a son, he’d have been just about your age now. H-he—he’d be like…if he was like I’ve always pictured him…he’d be like you. Someone who was polite and helpful and didn’t think I was the world’s biggest bore, and—”

  I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t trust my voice…Me, her son! Me!…And why couldn’t it have been that way, instead of the way it was?

  She was talking again. She was saying that she’d been “so angry at the way Bill acted last Sunday.”

  “It was all right,” I said. “He has to be pretty careful in the job he’s got.”

  “Careful, fiddlesticks!” she snapped. “It was not all right. I was never so angry in my life. I gave that man fits, Carl! I told him, ‘Bill Summers, if you’re going to be swayed by those Fields—someone who is obviously malicious and petty—instead of believing the evidence of your own eyes and ears, I’m—’ ”

  “The Fields!” I turned and looked at her. “What Fields? The only Fields I know are dead.”

  “I’m talking about their son, him and his family. The relatives she lived with when she went back to Iowa. Bill wired them, you know, at the time he wired—”

  “No,” I said, “I didn’t know. And maybe you’d better not tell me about it, Mrs. Summers. As long as the sheriff didn’t, I don’t think you should.”

  She hesitated. Then she said, softly, “You mean that, don’t you, Carl?”

  “I mean it,” I said.

  “I’m glad. I knew you’d feel that way. But he knows that I planned to tell you, and he doesn’t object at all. The whole thing was so completely ridiculous in the first place! Even if he couldn’t see the kind of young man you were at a glance, he had those wonderful wires about you from that judge and the chief of police and—”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t know why this son would say anything against me. I couldn’t have thought any more of a mother and father than I did of them. Why, Mrs. Fields wrote me right up to the time she died, and—”

  “I imagine that was a large part of the trouble. Jealousy. And you know how kinfolk can be when it comes to elderly people. No matter what you do, how much you do, they’re always convinced that you’ve abused the old folks. Imposed on them or swindled them or worse.”

  “But I—I just don’t see how—”

  “Honestly, Carl! Without ever having met you, I knew it was preposterous. They sent a five-hundred-word telegram back here, and it was simply filled with the worst possible…And, of course, Bill didn’t just swallow it whole, but he didn’t feel that he could disregard it completely. So—Oh, I suppose I shouldn’t even have mentioned it. But it was so unfair, Carl, it made me so angry that—”

  “Maybe you’d better tell me about it,” I said. “If you don’t mind.”

  She told me about it. I listened, sore at first, and then just sick. And I got sicker and sicker.

  They—this Fields character—had said that I’d stolen his mother and father blind all the time I was working for them, and then I’d gypped her out of the station, paid her about half what the place was worth. He said I’d just moved in on his folks and taken over, and they’d been too scared of me to complain. He said—he hinted—that I’d actually killed Mr. Fields; that I’d made him do all the hard heavy work until he keeled over from heart failure. He said I’d planned to do the same thing to the old lady, but she’d taken what I offered her so I’d let her go “completely broken in health.” He said…

  Everything. Every lousy thing that a smalltime stinker could think of to say.

  It was a lie, of course, every word of it. I’d worked for those people for peanuts, and I’d have stolen from myself quicker than I would have from them. I’d paid Mrs. Fields more than anyone else had offered when she put the place up for sale. I’d even done a big part of the housework for Mrs. Fields. I’d made Mr. Fields stay in bed, and I’d waited on him and done the other work besides. He’d hardly been out of bed for a year at the time he died, and she’d hardly stirred a hand, and…

  And this character said things like that about me.

  It made me sick. These people—those two people I’d cared more about than anything in the world, and…And this was the way it turned out.

  Mrs. Summers touched my arm. “Don’t feel badly, Carl. I know you were just as good and kind to those people as you could be and what he says doesn’t change the facts.”

  “I know,” I said. “I—” I told her how much I’d thought of the Fields and how I’d tried to show it, and she sat nodding sympathetically, murmuring an occasional, “Of course,” and, “Why, certainly you did,” and so on.

  And pretty soon it seemed like I wasn’t talking to her, by myself. I was arguing with myself. Because I knew what I’d done, but I wasn’t sure why I had done it. I’d thought I was, but now I didn’t know.

  He was lying, of course; the way he’d put things had been a lie. But a lie and a truth aren’t too far apart; you have to start with one to arrive at the other, and the two have a way of overlapping.

  You could say I had moved in on the Fields. They hadn’t really needed any help, and if they’d been younger and less good-hearted they probably wouldn’t have given me a job. You could say that I had made them work hard. Two people could get by fine on the little business their station was doing, but three couldn’t. And I’d saved them all the work I could, but still they’d had to work harder than they had before I came. You could say that I had stolen from them—just being there was stealing. You could say I had cheated Mrs. Fields on the price. Because all I had I’d got from them, and the place was worth a lot more to me than it would have been to an outsider. You could say…

  You could say that I’d planned it the way it had turned out; maybe without knowing that I was planning it.

  I couldn’t be sure that I hadn’t. All I could be sure of was that I’d been fighting for my life, and I’d found the perfect spot—the one place—to take cover. I’d had to have what they had. In a way, it had been me or them.

  Those six years I’d spent with them…Maybe they were like all the other years. Just crap. Nothing to feel kind of proud of or good about.

  “Carl…Please, Carl!”

  “I’m all right,” I said.

  “You’re sick. I can see it. Now, you’re coming right into the house with me and I’m going to fix you a cup of coffee, and you’re going to lie down on the lounge until—”

  “I think I’d better go home,” I said.

  I stood up and she stood up with me. And she looked almost as sick as I probably did. “Oh, I wish I hadn’t told you, Carl! I might have known how upset you’d be.”

  “No, it’s—I just think I’d better be going,” I said.

  “Let me call Bill. He can drive you.”

  “No, I’d rather you didn’t,” I said. “I—I want to walk around a little first.”

  She argued about it, looking and sounding like she might burst out crying any second. But finally she walked to the gate with me, and I got away.

>   I walked toward the house, the Winroys’, my eyes stinging behind the contact lenses; and it didn’t seem sunny or pleasant any more.

  I could hear Ruthie out in the kitchen. No one else seemed to be around. I went out there, reached the whiskey out of the cupboard and took a long drink out of the bottle. I put it back in the cupboard, and turned around.

  Ruthie was staring at me. She’d taken her hands out of the dishwater and was starting to reach for a towel. But somehow she never made it. She stared at me, and her face twisted as though a knife had been twisted in her; and she took a swing and a step on the crutch. Then her arms were around me and she was pressing me to her.

  “C-carl…oh, darling. What’s the—”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just a little sick at my stomach.”

  I grinned and pulled away from her. I gave her a little spank on the thigh, and I started to say, I did say, “Where’s—?” But I didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence. I heard Fay coming up the front steps, that firm I’m-really-something walk of hers. And by the time she got the front door open, I was in the hallway.

  I winked and jerked my head over my shoulder. “Just borrowed a drink of your whiskey, Mrs. Winroy. Had a sudden attack of stomach sickness.”

  “It’s perfectly all right, Carl.” She gave me back the wink. “Sick at your stomach, huh? Well, that’s what you get for eating with cops.”

  “That’s it,” I laughed. “Thanks for the whiskey.”

  “Not at all,” she said.

  I started up the stairs. About halfway up, I suddenly turned around.

  I wasn’t quite sick enough to catch her at it; she was already entering the dining room. But I knew she’d been looking at me, and when I got to my room I found out why.

  The back of my coat. The two white soapsuds prints of Ruthie’s hands.

  18

  Fay was an actress. The Man had been right about that. I didn’t know how much she’d been acting up until how, but she could have been doing it all the time. She was good, what I mean. A whole week had passed since she’d seen those handprints, and if I hadn’t known that she had seen them, I’d never have guessed that there was anything wrong.

  She’d come up to my room that night, that Sunday, and we’d kicked the gong around for almost an hour; and she’d never let on. We’d been together again on Wednesday—and I mean, together—and there still wasn’t any indication that she knew. She’d never done or said anything to show that she was hell-hot sore.

  She was waiting. She was going to let it all slide, convince me that she hadn’t seen anything, before she made her move.

  She waited a whole week, until the next Sunday night and…

  That week.

  I’d thought that school couldn’t be any worse than it’d been that Friday, but it was. Maybe it just seemed worse because there was so much more of it and so much less of me.

  That wire Mrs. Summers had told me about. This trouble with Fay. Ruthie. Kendall. Jake…

  Jake was at the house for almost every meal. A couple of mornings he even ate breakfast with Kendall and me. He was still hitting the jug pretty hard, but he didn’t seem to sag so much.

  He seemed to be getting bigger, and I was getting littler. Every day there was a little bit less of me.

  I said he was hitting the bottle pretty hard. But he wasn’t even in it with me. I had to nail down my breakfast every morning with a few drinks before I could go to school. And I had to have more in the afternoon before I could get to work, and at night…

  Thursday night I took a bottle up to my room with me, and I got half cockeyed. I got a notion in my head to go over and wake Kendall up and tell him I was too sick to go on. I’d tell him I wanted to take him up on that business of going to Canada in his car, and I knew he’d argue a little but not much, because if a guy was that far gone, there wasn’t much use in trying to use him. So he’d let me do it, and I’d go there, and in a few days someone from The Man would show up and…

  But I couldn’t get that drunk. It would have been too easy, and there was still a little hope left in me.

  I had to go on waiting and hoping, losing more of the little that was left of myself.

  It didn’t seem possible that I’d slipped so far, that so much had gone wrong in such a short length of time. I guess I’d been walking on the edge of a cliff for a long time, and it didn’t take a very big breeze to start me sliding.

  It was almost a relief to slide.

  Well…

  I got through the week. Sunday came again, and I kind of wanted to go to church and see Mrs. Summers again but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I got to thinking why about her—why I wanted to please her and make her face light up—and all I could think of was that I might be trying to pull something on her like I had on Mrs. Fields.

  I spent almost the whole day at the bakery; not just my shift but the day. I was actually there longer than Kendall was, and you had to go some to beat him.

  Finally, though, it was ten o’clock, and I hadn’t done anything but loaf for a couple of hours. So when he suggested knocking off, I didn’t have any excuse for staying.

  I showered and changed clothes. We walked home together.

  He said I was doing fine. “I’ve been able to turn in a very good report on you, Mr. Bigelow,” he said.

  “Swell,” I said.

  “Studies going satisfactorily? Nothing I can help you with? After all, we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that your job is only a means to an end. If it interferes with your school—the reason for your being here—why—”

  “I understand,” I said.

  We said good night and I turned in.

  I woke up a couple of hours later when Fay crawled into bed with me.

  She’d taken off her nightgown, and she snuggled up close to me, warm and soft and sweet-smelling.

  A little moonlight sifted past the edge of the window shades. It fell across the pillows, and I could see into her eyes. And they didn’t tell me a thing, as they should have. And because they didn’t, they told me a lot.

  I knew she was ready to spring it.

  “Carl—” she said. “I—I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “Well?”

  “It’s about Jake. H-he—he’s going to go back to jail until after the trial.”

  My guts sank into my stomach like a fist. Then a little laugh came out of me and I said, “You’re kidding.”

  She rolled her head on the pillows. “It’s the truth, honey, if he’s telling me the truth. Is it—is it bad?”

  “Bad,” I said. “Is it bad!”

  “I don’t mean he’s going right away, honey. Tonight’s the first time he’s mentioned it, and the way he hates jail it’ll probably take him a week to work himself up—”

  “But,” I said, “what—why is he doing it?”

  “Gosh, I just don’t know, honey.”

  “You told me he couldn’t take jail. You told me he’d never go back. He knew it wouldn’t change a damned thing.”

  “You told me that, too, honey. Remember?” She squirmed lazily against the sheets. “Scratch my back, will you, baby? You know. Down low there.”

  I didn’t scratch it. If I’d got a grip on her hide right then, I’d have pulled it off of her.

  “Fay,” I said. “Look at me.”

  “Mmmm?” She tilted her head and looked. “Like this, Carl?”

  “Jake’s been getting his nerve back. He’s in a lot better shape than he was when I came here. Why this sudden notion to go back to jail?”

  “I told you, honey, I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “You think he means it?”

  “I’m pretty sure he means it. Once he gets an idea in his head, like he did about you, you know, he never lets go.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “Is it ba—we can do it, now, can’t we Carl? Let’s kill him now and get it over with. The quicker it’s done the sooner we can be together. I know you’d probably
rather go on like this as long as you can, but—”

  “Why?” I said. “Why do you think I’d rather?”

  “Well, you would, wouldn’t you? You’re having a good time. You and your dear sweet little—t-trashy little—”

  I said: “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Never mind. The point is I’m not going to go on like this any longer. Even if you do want to.”

  She wouldn’t come all the way out with what was eating on her, and anyway I already knew. It would only lead to a brawl, and things were bad enough as they were.

  “I’ll tell you why I’d rather wait,” I said. “I was told to. And the guy who told me wasn’t talking to exercise his lungs.”

  “W-what do—” Her eyes shifted nervously. “I don’t see what difference it makes if—”

  “I told you. I spelled it out for you.”

  “Well, it doesn’t make any difference! I don’t care what anyone says. We can do it now just as well as not.”

  “All right. It doesn’t make any difference,” I said. “You said it doesn’t, so that settles that.”

  She looked at me sullenly. I reached across her to the reading stand and got a cigarette lighted.

  I let the match burn until the flame was almost to my finger tips. Then I dropped it, squarely between her breasts.

  “Oooof!” She slapped and brushed at the match, stifling the instinctive scream into a gasp. “Y-you!” she whispered. “W-why did you—?”

  “That’s the way acid feels,” I said. “Just a little like that. I imagine they’d start there and work up.”

  “B-but I—I haven’t—”

  “You’re in with me. If I get it, you get it. Only you’d be a lot more interesting to work on.”

  That was wrong, to throw that kind of scare into her. I shouldn’t make her think she had nothing to lose by pulling a doublecross. But…well, you see? For all I knew, she was already pulling one. Or on the point of doing it. And if I could make her see what it would cost her…