Manhunt. Volume 3, Number 7, July, 1955

You Can’t Kill Her by C. B. Gilford

Jassie wanted Sarah to be happy — so he stopped her from shooting her drunken husband.

Jassie thought about her little white neck, and he thought about the coarse, rough hemp of the hangman’s noose coiling fatally around the soft, smooth, creamy-pale skin of it. That was why he pressed listening against the thin clapboard wall and wondered what he could do to save her.

It was a quiet night, lacking even animal sounds from out in the brush. There was no wind in the air, and the stars wheeled noiselessly through the sky. So Jassie could hear the two of them. He knew exactly what they said and what they did.

He knew, for instance, from the sound of the gurgling liquid, that Van was drinking. And he knew, to the ounce, how much. Half of what had been in the bottle. Enough to make even Van a little drunk.

And Sarah. It was harder to tell about her. There was the rustle of her skirt whenever she moved, and the muffled groan of floorboards complaining against her small weight. And when she sat, the sofa squeaked but once, and once again when she rose from it. In between times she must have stayed very still, looking at Van and listening to the same gurgling that Jassie heard.

Though she said very little, the tone of her words spoke a vast meaning. Shame, loathing. Bitter ingredients boiling and fermenting into hatred.

“Van,” she said once, “we can’t afford so much whiskey.”

“It’s cheaper here than in town,” he told her, and poured again.

Then later she asked him, for the thousandth time that Jassie had heard, “Why do you do it?”

He didn’t answer.

“This happens every night,” she went on. “This is all you do. Why? Why does it always have to be like this?”

His face must have been sneering, because he said, “A man’s got to have entertainment. It’s too far to go to town every night. I’ve got to have some entertainment, don’t I?”

Jassie felt the insult as keenly as she must have, and he cursed wordlessly to himself. But Sarah? She walked again, in Jassie’s direction, to the mirror that hung on that part of the wall where Jassie was listening. He heard her quick breathing, almost the beating of her heart. She was inspecting herself in the mirror.

The mirror would be kinder than Van. For Sarah was beautiful, and the mirror couldn’t lie. It would remind her that her hair was still dark and shining, unbleached by the scorching sun, and that her skin was still unmarred by six months of the desert wind. But small comfort for a woman like Sarah. Sarah needed more than a mirror to compliment and love her.

She walked again, across the room. Her steps seemed hurried, swift.

“Where are you going?” Van demanded.

The question halted her. “Outside,” she said.

He laughed, set down the bottle, and fought his way to his feet. “What for?” he persisted.

“Fresh air,” she told him. “This place stinks of you and your sour whiskey.”

Van moved then, crashing over a chair in his path. He got hold of her, because the door didn’t open though her skirt rustled angrily with her own violent motion. And when he had her, all sound ended, except their breathing, harsh and mingled.

Van’s bad breath being exhaled into her face. She would not ask him for release. Only her proud silence could be so eloquent of her nausea and disgust.

“I know where you’re going,” Van sniggered. “I just want to tell you that I’m not so dumb I don’t know where you’re going. You’re heading out back to pay Jassie a little visit.”

Pressed hard against the wall, Jassie’s big body shuddered. It was the passage of a vague, undefined, dimly realized longing. Anger overwhelmed it. Sarah was a good wife, so far as Jassie knew.

Sarah was angry also. Her voice was taut, like stretched steel wire. “I’ll likely go visiting some day,” she said. “But it won’t be with Jassie.”

She’d never threatened Van that way before. It surprised him, because he sucked in his breath audibly. Then came the sound of a blow, sharp, almost like a shot. Van’s big, calloused hand cracking hard against Sarah’s soft round cheek.

After that, the sounds were confusing to Jassie. There was a struggle of some kind. Van cursing, maybe trying to strike her again. Sarah fighting to get free of him. Van was drunk, unsteady. Sarah was agile and desperate. Jassie thought of the shotgun cradled on the wall near the front door. The thought terrified him.

He left his lean-to shed and ran. He could move fast, despite his great bulk and his limping, uneven gait. He ran around the house, careless of noise because he knew he would not be heard over the din inside. But when he reached the door he slowed, became cautious and silent as a cat. He used the knob with creeping patience, pushed the door ajar enough to see within.

And as he did, he heard Van say, in a scared, different voice, “Put that down, Sarah! Put it down!”

Sarah was nearest the door, but her back was turned to Jassie. She had the shotgun sure enough. It looked huge in her tiny grip, and were she to fire it, its rearward thrust would maul her soft body. The muzzle of the thing yawned toward Van. Over Sarah’s shoulder Jassie could see him, his face pale under its deep burn, his eyes bleary but suddenly sober, as if he’d just been awakened from his drunken stupor to find the Day of Judgment had arrived.

He saw Jassie. He was smart. Smart enough not to betray the thing he saw to Sarah. But his eyes gave clear instructions. “Grab her, Jassie.”

But it wasn’t for him that Jassie moved. It was for Sarah and her beautiful soft white neck, to save it from the cruel rope.

One step took Jassie to her. One of his hands snaked past her cheek and pushed the barrel of the gun aside. The other circled her across her shoulders, tightened in a sudden vise and held her.

She couldn’t pull the trigger, but she fought him. He realized her teeth had sunk themselves into the flesh of his forearm. Still he felt no pain. He was too aware of her writhing body pressed against his own. The fact of it sent chaos through his brain, left it helpless to direct his muscles. He could only hold her there.

So it was Van who took the gun away. Van, trembling from his release from fear. He grabbed the weapon from her, put it in its proper place. And then, quickly, to stop his trembling, he crossed to the table and poured himself a bracing drink.

And not till then did Sarah cease to squirm. Jassie felt her become limp and yielding. That was what allowed him to let her go. She dropped from his grasp, to the floor at his feet. And there she sobbed, great heaving sobs that shook her like a leaf in the wind.

“Thanks, Jassie,” Van said when he’d had his drink.

Jassie remained, confused, staring down at Sarah, till Van came over to him and told him, “You can go now, Jassie. I can take care of things here now.”

He went, and heard the door shut behind him. He walked aimlessly about while his wits came slowly back to him. Gradually he got to know that his arm hurt a little, and he explored the drying blood that Sarah’s teeth had drawn. But pain had never mattered much to him.

It was a long time, perhaps an hour, before he tired of trying to find company in the desolate stars and crept miserably back to the lean-to at the rear of the house. The lean-to wasn’t much of a shelter, for its board walls leaked air. He was seldom aware of that deficiency, and least of all at this moment. He moved his bed close against the house itself not to escape the drafts, but to listen again.

For a while he could hear nothing. Then finally Sarah. Her sobbing hadn’t stopped completely. The tiny choking sounds came infrequently and very softly.

And Van’s voice, saying to her, over and over, “Stop it, Sarah... you’ve got to stop it...” The words were spoken in little more than a whisper. He must have been near her, kneeling on the floor beside her perhaps.

Maybe it was toward midnight that the sobs came to an end, and the whispers changed, became strident, took on a new kind of urgency. “Come on, Sarah... please... let’s forget everything... start all over again... come on...”

“No,” was the answer she kept repeating.

“I love you, Sarah.”

“No, you don’t. Don’t pretend.”

“Well anyway, you’re my wife, Sarah. Don’t forget that.” Anger was creeping into his voice again. Already he seemed to have forgotten how the shotgun looked pointed at his belly. “Come on, Sarah.” Hardly a plea any longer. More of an order.

“No, Van. Never again.”

“Don’t say no to me. I’m your husband.”

There were confused sounds again. Possibly he had picked her up and was carrying her. But she must not have struggled. The fight had emptied out of her.

Jassie listened. He heard the door into the far room opening. Then it shut again. Afterwards there were other sounds that Jassie might have heard. But he put his fingers in his ears and rolled away from the wall. This was something he couldn’t save her from. And there was a great disturbance in him that he couldn’t comprehend.

In the morning the sun woke Jassie as it always did. Mechanically, without thinking that anything should be different on this morning, he did his early chores, made the rounds of the pens. It was what he had been taught to do.

When he came into the kitchen to get his breakfast just before seven o’clock, he found Sarah there alone. It never occurred to him to be embarrassed, and he scarcely noticed whether her attitude toward him had changed. She’d always been somewhat afraid and shy of him.

“Where’s Van?” he asked her.

“Still asleep,” she said. “He always sleeps late when he’s been drinking.”

When she was filling his plate she saw the teeth marks on his arm. “Is that what I did?” she questioned him. She paled a little, and seemed horrified that she could have inflicted such a wound.

He nodded.

Without further hesitation she brought things to repair the damage, water, a wash cloth, antiseptic and bandages. He sat placidly while she worked. If she hurt him at all in the process, he gave no sign. He was too fascinated with the deftness of her small, soft hands. He had never seen her head bent quite so close to him. He admired the luster of her hair. And her neck, slim, delicate, so white...

She caught him looking at her that way, and her customary fear of him brightened in her eyes. Her fingers worked even faster after that. She seemed glad when she was finished, but she sat opposite him nevertheless, and ate her own breakfast.

Finally, when the food was gone, she asked him another question. “Jassie, why did you stop me last night?”

He looked at her, but he knew no words to explain.

“Why did you want to save Van’s life?” she pursued. “Do you like him?”

“No,” he admitted. “I don’t like him.”

“Then why did you do it, Jassie?” She was persistent, relentless.

He thought for a while, and then a lie occurred to him, a lie that was part truth. “If Van was dead, I wouldn’t have a job. Where would I go?”

She didn’t seem to know whether to believe that. “There ought to be plenty of jobs for someone like you. You’re big and strong... I found that out last night. You’re stronger than Van.”

“Yes, I’m strong,” he agreed with a smile. He liked to be told that. He was proud of his strength.

“I don’t know why I should be asking you questions,” she said. She wasn’t really talking to him. She was thinking aloud. “I should be asking myself. What am I doing here? Why should I be spending my life in a place like this? With a drunkard and... and you...”

She looked at him, letting her revulsion and her instinctive wariness of him show in her face. Then suddenly she laughed. “When I wanted to go outdoors last night,” she went on, “Van accused me of wanting to go to you...”

She left the table with a sudden movement, and crossed to the window. Then she laughed again, even more bitterly. “Ye gods... from the frying pan to the fire.”

Jassie sat still at the table and tried to understand. He said nothing because he couldn’t understand. Instead he let his eyes admire her. She was small, like a toy. It was her smallness which most fascinated Jassie. Her smallness and her beautiful little white neck...

“I could leave,” she was saying. “I could leave any time. I can drive the truck. I could get in it right now and leave this place... But I can’t. I don’t want to go back to being what I was before. That’s why I married Van... No, I can’t do that. I haven’t got the courage. I have it only when he’s like the way he was last night, when he drinks... I have courage then. But then I get mad at him and I want to kill him...”

She turned around to him, showing her lovely, innocent, childlike face. “I guess I’ll never leave here on my own,” she said. “But some day... some day I’ll kill him...”

“No!” Jassie spoke finally. His fear for her made the word explode out of his mouth. He got up from the table and walked toward her slowly. “No. You mustn’t do that.”

She shrank away from his advance, but she argued defiantly. “Why not? What have I got to lose? Tell me that. What can I lose?”

He had gotten very close to her. Her back was against the window and she could move no farther. He towered over her, looked down on her, his face just inches above hers.

“You mustn’t do it,” he repeated with a desperate emphasis. “If you do it, they’ll say you murdered him. And they’ll take you to a prison... and there’ll be a rope... I’ve seen it... it’s a big, thick rope, with a loop and a knot... they’ll put it over your head, and you’ll stand on a place where the floor falls open... and when you drop through, the rope will tighten... around your neck...”

His fingers, heavy and strong though they were, went out and caressed her soft, white neck with the tenderness of a lover, the daintiness of a girl. Her eyes never left his, and she didn’t move, seeming to be afraid that were she to move the fingers might behave quite differently.

“You mustn’t kill him, Sarah,” he repeated with a kind of sternness. “You mustn’t kill him.”

And they were standing there like that, in a mutual fascination born of different emotions in each of them, when Van’s voice sounded at Jassie’s back. “I’ll take my breakfast now, Sarah.”

Jassie removed his fingers and retreated a few steps away from her. He had a vague sense of having been caught doing something wrong. But still he didn’t quite understand the ugly look in Van’s bloodshot eyes as he sat down at the table. Nor did he understand the sudden crimsoning in Sarah’s pale cheeks. She didn’t move at all. She just stood and stared at her husband.

“Van,” she said.

“What?”

“What do you think you saw?”

He made no answer. He just smiled, with a smile that was a sneer.

“I asked you,” she pressed him. “What do you think you saw just now... Jassie and me?”

“Nothing, nothing I didn’t expect to see.”

Now a fury began to drain the blood from her cheeks. Her voice thinned and started to tremble. “Say what you mean,” she demanded.

He didn’t relax his smile. But his eyes were malevolent. “You haven’t changed, Sarah,” he said.

Jassie watched them and listened to them. He could feel Sarah’s anger even though he did not know all of the reasons for it. He saw her turn away, saw her small fists clenching and unclenching.

Then Van spoke to him. “You’re kind of dumb, Jassie,” he said. “You should have let her kill me last night. Then you could have had her all to yourself.”

Van didn’t understand Jassie, any more than Jassie understood them. Even if he had noticed some things about Jassie now, like for instance the way the blood pounded visibly in the corded veins of Jassie’s big hands, he would probably have misinterpreted such portents. But he didn’t notice. He preferred to taunt Sarah.

“How low do you think I am?” she was asking him.

“About right where I found you. As I said, you haven’t changed, Sarah.”

She whirled back to face him then. She didn’t say anything. Just looked at him. There was more in her eyes than words could have said. And what he saw there made Jassie afraid.

But all she did was to go to the stove and begin fixing Van’s breakfast. Jassie watched her, lingering longest on her delicate, graceful, snowy-white neck.

“Get out of here, Jassie,” Van said.

Jassie hesitated. Sarah said nothing. Then he went. But something had happened inside him. He knew finally what he was going to do.

He lay on his cot in the lean-to shed. He had come there right after he had left the kitchen, and he hadn’t stirred in the hour that had passed since. But he’d been busy. Not with his hands. With thoughts.

Thinking didn’t come easy to Jassie. It never had. And most of the time his life didn’t require thinking. So he had never gotten the habit. But now he was doing the biggest job of thinking he’d ever done. The thing that spurred him to this immense task was a horrible vision that he couldn’t empty out of his mind — the vision of a hemp rope around Sarah’s neck.

He didn’t move when he heard his name called. He was almost certain he would hear it sooner or later. Now it pleased him to have predicted so accurately. Van calling. “Jassie!”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t do anything. There was nothing to do. His preparations had been made, inside his brain.

“Jassie! Dammit, there’s work to do.”

Yes, there was work to do. But not yet.

He could hear Van slamming around through the outbuildings. Looking for him, no doubt. Imagining that he could be found hiding or napping under or behind something. A stream of curses drifted to Jassie on the breeze.

Then at last, after his search in the outbuildings was complete, Van started coming. Jassie knew that he would, and was pleased again. He could hear Van’s boots approaching over the hard earth. But he lay still.

And he was there when Van lurched into the doorway and blocked out the image of the sun. Jassie lay in the shadow and stared back at his employer.

“What the hell!” Van said.

Jassie remained silent, calculating many things, like Van’s strength and the distance between them.

“Get up!” Van said, through his teeth. He swayed on the threshold. Some of the haze and fog of last night’s whiskey still unsteadied his movements, clouded his eyes. And he’d been angry even before he’d arrived.

“I pay you for working, Jassie,” he snarled. “Not for lying there thinking what you’d like’ to be doing with my wife.”

He hurled himself into the lean-to, toward Jassie. Jassie let him come. He let him come all the way, even to getting his fingers around Jassie’s throat, his knee into Jassie’s belly.

Then Jassie reacted. With a surge of legs and back muscles he rolled off the cot. Van had been on top of him. Now suddenly he was underneath. Jassie’s fingers tore at the other’s wrists, broke the hold that was shutting off his breath. Van learned then how strong Jassie was.

“Let me up, Jassie,” he said.

Jassie didn’t feel he owed Van an explanation for what he was doing. And he didn’t want to wait to give it. His thick fingers, which had been so gentle on Sarah’s neck, made a steel noose around her husband’s. Once the fingers found their place, Van didn’t talk or breathe any more. His eyes didn’t question the why of this. They only spoke of the terror of knowing there was no more air. And they stayed open, with the terror frozen in them, when Jassie was finished.

He did not move Van’s body. When he crawled from off it, he saw there was no need to. This was the best way for Van to be found, just as he was now.

Jassie sat down on the end of the cot and waited. He waited for Sarah. He knew that eventually she would have to come. It never occurred to him to go and fetch her. He could afford to be patient now. And he had a kind of animal patience as a compensation for his small, insufficient brain.

Time passed, on toward noon. He had not expected her to come immediately. Very likely she would think that the two men were working together somewhere. Only when they didn’t return for lunch would she begin to wonder, and then to search. So Jassie waited and watched the progress of the sun by the shadows of things outside.

He didn’t mind staying with the dead body. Jassie knew what death was, and it held no fears for him. Van’s staring, protruding eyes made no accusations that Jassie was aware of. His innocence was intact and his conscience was clear.

He watched the creeping of the shadows across the ground. When the sun stood high, he heard Sarah stirring in the kitchen. Jassie sat and listened, thinking without emotion that some of the food she was preparing would go uneaten.

The busy noises ceased after a while. Now she was waiting too. Jassie knew somehow that her patience wouldn’t be as enduring as his. He was correct again. In less than half an hour he heard the opening and closing of the door.

From where he sat he could see most of the yard. After a moment he saw her cross it. She was wearing her wide-brimmed bonnet, and Jassie approved of that. He didn’t want the sun to molest the whiteness of her skin. She wandered among the outbuildings. She would see that they could not have gone far, because the truck was still there. Several times she called out, “Van.” And once, “Jassie.” Somehow he didn’t care to answer her summons. He wanted her to come here and see for herself what he had done and how he had done it. If he had wanted things any other way, he would have gone to her before this.

And he knew, as he had known everything else, that she would come to the lean-to sooner or later.

He saw her now as she came, across the dusty yard. She didn’t see him at first, because she was walking in bright sunlight and he was still sitting on the end of the cot in the interior shadows. But she saw him just before she arrived at the doorway. And she must not have seen the body, because she came right ahead, right to the threshold, saying, “Jassie, where is Van?”

She saw it then, and she stopped abruptly. Her eyes widened. Her breath caught in her throat and seemed to stay there. She stood still as a statue and didn’t say anything.

Jassie talked. He told her everything. “I killed him, Sarah. I know you’re glad he’s dead. And I know you wanted to do it. But I had to be the one. Because I didn’t want them to hang you. It’s all right if they hang me.”

He spoke earnestly. But he couldn’t tell whether she was listening. She gave no sign that she was. She kept looking at the body, couldn’t seem to take her eyes away from it.

“Now everything’s all right, Sarah,” he went on. “That’s why I wanted to kill him here. So they’d find the body here and know it was me. And I wanted to kill him the way I did, choking him with my two hands, so he’d be killed in a way that they’d know you couldn’t have done it to him. That way they’d know it was me too. You see, I figured all that out, Sarah. I can do that, you see, because I know how they work when they’re deciding who killed somebody.”

If she heard him, she gave not a twitch of response. Perhaps there wasn’t room in her mind at this moment for anything except plans of her own.

“Now here’s all you have to do, Sarah,” he was telling her. “You can drive the truck, remember. So you drive it into town now and tell the Sheriff that the hired hand has killed your husband. And I’ll wait right here for the Sheriff to come and look at the body and pick me up. And I’ll tell him too that I killed Van, you see. That way there can’t be a mistake. Nobody’ll think that you killed him. That way they won’t hang you. They won’t put a rope around your little neck...”

He stood up for the first time, and took just one step toward her. But it was enough to jar her back to life again. It was as if she hadn’t even breathed all the time Jassie was talking. Now the breath was released, and it came out in a scream.

Or perhaps it was just because he had reached out and touched her soft little white neck with the fingers which had stopped the breath forever in Van.

She screamed and ran from him. She lifted her skirt and ran as if the devil were behind her. Jassie didn’t understand, but it did occur to him that very possibly she hadn’t been listening to him.

Then he would have to explain it again. He would have to tell her to get the truck and go after the Sheriff. So he ran after her. He didn’t run as fast as he might have. He didn’t try to catch her exactly, because there wasn’t any place she could go to get away from him.

When she ran around toward the front of the house he followered her. When he arrived there, he saw that she must have gone inside. But she’d left the door open, and he started to follow. He didn’t see her standing in the middle of the living room with the shotgun in her hands until he was well past the threshold.

The blast ripped into his chest and belly, but there was no pain. He only knew that he could go no farther and that he would have to lie down there on the floor and die.

“You got to tell them, Sarah...” He was on his knees, and he tottered there for a moment. “...Tell them you shot me because I was trying to kill you too. It looks that way, you see. That’s all right. Because they won’t hang you that way...”

He perhaps would have had something else to say to her, but she fired the second barrel.

And he needn’t have worried about it at all. They didn’t put a rope around her little white neck. Nobody thought about doing anything like that, because of the other thing that Jassie had neglected to tell her.

The Sheriff had to tell her after he found out about it himself. “This guy was a killer. He murdered a man and a woman in cold blood, and then a guard when he escaped off the train. Your husband made it four. You’d have made five...”

He was wrong, of course. About the last part anyway. But then Jassie had kind of planned it that way.