The Kill-Off

Jim Thompson

The Kill-Off

1:

KOSSMEYER

Mostly, she was a woman who loved scandal-and lived by it.

Luane Devore made a specialty of being impetuous, bold, headstrong and-she thought-sultry.

Mostly, though… It was Sunday, only two days after the season had opened, when Luane Devore telephoned. As usual, she sounded a little hysterical. As usual, she was confronted with a dire emergency which only I could handle. Significantly, however-or at least I thought it significant-she did not calm down when I told her to go to hell, and to stop acting like a damned fool.

"Please, Kossy," she burbled. "You must come! It's vitally important, darling. I can't talk about it over the telephone, but-"

"Why the hell can't you?" I cut in. "You talk about everything and everyone else over the phone. Now, lay off, Luane. I'm a lawyer, not a baby-sitter. I'm here on a vacation, and I'm not going to spend all my time listening to you moan and whine about a lot of imaginary problems."

She wept audibly. I felt a very small twinge of conscience. The Devore estate didn't amount to anything any more. It had been years since I'd gotten a nickel out of her. So… well, you see what I mean. When people don't have anything-when they can't do anything for you- you kind of have to go a little easy on 'em.

"Now, take it easy, honey," I said. "Be a big girl for Kossy. The world ain't going to come to an end if I don't dash up there right now. It ain't going to kill you, is it?"

"Yes," she said. "Yes, it is!" And then she hung up with a wild sob.

I hung up also. I came out of the bedroom, crossed the living room and returned to the kitchen. Rosa was at the stove, her back turned to me. She was talking, ostensibly mumbling to herself but actually addressing me. It is a habit of hers, one she has resorted to more and more frequently during the twenty-odd years of our marriage. I listened to the familiar words… bum… loafer… time-waster… thinks-nothing-of-his-wife-but… and for the first time in a long time I was affected by them. I began to get sore-angry and sad. And a little sick on the inside. "So I'm sorry," I said. "She's a client. She's in trouble. I've got no choice but to see her." "A client, he says," Rosa said. "So, of course, everything else he must drop. She is his only client, is she not? His first case?" "With a good lawyer," I said, "it is always the first case. Don't make such a production out of it, dammit. I'll be back in a little while." "In a little while, he says," Rosa said. "In a little while, he was going to help with the unpacking. He was going to help clean up the cottage, and take his wife bathing and-"

"I will," I said. "Goddammit, you want me to put it in writing?"

"Listen to him," she said. "Listen to the great attorney curse at his wife. See how he acts, the great attorney, when it is his wife he deals with."

"Listen to yourself," I said. "See how you act."

She turned around unwillingly. I stood up and put on a performance, watching her face slowly turn red then white. I am pretty good at such mimicry. Painfully good, you might say. I have a talent for it; and when a man is only five feet tall, when he has had no formal law education-damned little formal education of any kind-he leaves no talent undeveloped.

"This is you," I said. "Mrs. Abie. Why don't you go on TV? Go into vaudeville? They love those characters."

"N-now-" she smiled weakly. "I guess I'm not that bad, Mister Smarty."

"Mister Smarty," I said. "Now, there's a good line. You just keep it up, keep building on that stuff, and we'll be all fixed up. We'll be getting a nice offer for our property."

"Maybe," she snapped, "we'd better not wait for an offer. If you're ashamed of your own wife, if you're so worried about what your friends may think of me-"

"What I'm ashamed of is someone that isn't my wife. This character you've slipped into. Goddammit, you're supposed to amount to something, and yet half the time you-"

I stopped myself short.

She said, "Listen to him, listen to the great attorney…" And then she caught herself.

We stood staring at each other. After a long moment, I started to break the silence; and the first word was a swear word and the second one was an ain't. I broke off again. "Look at who's talking," I said. "Me, telling you how to behave!"

She laughed and put her arms around me, and I put mine around her. "But you're right, darling," she murmured. "I don't know how I ever got into the habit of carrying on that way. You stop me if I do it any more."

"And you stop me," I said.

She warmed up the breakfast coffee, and we both had a cup. Chatting and smoking a cigarette while we drank it. Then, I got the car out of the garage, and headed up the beach road toward town.

Manduwoc is a seacoast town, a few hours train-ride from New York City. It is too far from the city for commuting; there are no local industries. According to the last census, the population was 1,280 and I doubt that it has increased since then.

It used to be quite a resort town, back before the war, but the number of summer visitors has declined steadily in recent years. The natives got a little too independent; they leaned a little too heavily on the gypping. So, what with so many places closer to the population centers, Manduwoc began to go downhill.

The largest hotel here has been boarded up for the past two summers. Some business establishments have closed down permanently; and at least a third of the beach cottages are never rented. There is still a considerable influx of vacationers, but nothing like there used to be. Practically the only people who come here now are those who own property here. People who, generally speaking, are out to save money rather than spend it.

The town proper sits a few hundred yards back from the ocean. Built around a courthouse square, it is adjoined, on the land side, by an area of summer estates, and, on the sea side, by the usual resort installations. These last include the aforementioned hotels and cottages, a couple of seafood restaurants, a boat-and-bait concession, a dance pavilion and so on.

Our cottage, which we own, is about three miles out. The others-the rent-cottages, I should say-are all close-in. I was approaching them, row upon row of identical clapboard structures, when a man stepped out onto the road and began to trudge toward the village. He was tall, stoop-shouldered, very thin. He had a mop of gray-black hair, and his angular, intelligent face was almost a dead white.

I pulled the car even with him and stopped. He went on walking, looking straight ahead. I called to him, "Rags! Rags McGuire!" And, finally, after another hail or two, he turned around.

He was frowning, in a kind of fiercely absent way. He came toward me slowly, his features twisted in that vacant scowl. And, then, suddenly, his face lit up with a smile of friendliness and recognition.

"Kossy! How are you, boy?" He climbed into the seat with me. "Where you been hiding yourself?"

I said that Rosa and I were just getting settled down; we'd be dropping by the pavilion as soon as we were finished. He beamed and slapped me on the back, and said that was the Kossy kid. And then he went completely silent. It wasn't an awkward silence. Not seemingly, that is, on his part. But there was something about it, something about his smile-and his eyes-that made me more ill at ease than I have ever been in my life.

"I don't suppose-" I hesitated. "I mean, is Janie with the band this summer?"

He didn't say anything for several seconds. Then, he said no, she wasn't with him. He had a new vocalist. Janie was staying in the city with the kids.

"I figure that gives her enough to do," he added. "Just bringing the kids up right, y'know. After all, you take a couple of boys that age, and a woman don't have time to- Yeah? You were saying, Kossy?"

"Nothing," I said. "I mean-well, the boys are all right, then?"

"All right?" He looked bewildered for a moment. Then, he laughed amiably. "Oh, I guess you saw that little story in the papers, huh? Well, that wasn't Janie. That wasn't my family."

"I see," I said. "I'm certainly glad to hear it, Rags."

"Ain't it hell, though?" he said musingly. "A guy wants some publicity-he knocks himself out to get some-and he just can't swing it. But let something phony come along, something that won't do him no good, y'know, and he'll make the papers every time."

"Yeah," I said. "That's the way it seems to go, all right."

"I thought about suing them," he said. "But then I thought, what the hell? After all, it was a natural mistake. It was the same name- names-see? And Janie does have a rep for tipping the bottle."

I was almost convinced. In fact, I'm not at all sure that I wasn't. There were probably any number of small-time band leaders named McGuire. It would be easy to confuse one with another, particularly in a case where a story had to be written largely from newspaper files. And that had been the case in this instance. The two boys had died in the crash. Janie-if it was Janie-had lived, but she had been in a coma for days.

Rags had me drop him off in front of a bar. I drove on through town, wondering, worrying, then mentally shrugging. He wasn't a close friend-not a friend at all, really. Just a guy I'd got to know during the summers I'd come here. I liked him, like I like a lot of people. But he wasn't my business. Luane Devore was; and straightening her out would be headache enough for one day.

She lived in a two-story, brick box of a house on the land-side outskirts of Manduwoc. It sat a few hundred feet back from the road, at the apex of a wooded slope. The driveway curved up through an expanse of meticulously clipped, lushly green lawn; in the rear of the house, there was more lawn, stretching out fan-wise to the whitewashed gates and fences of the orchard, barnyard and pasture. I parked my car beneath the porte cochere and took a quick glance around the place.

A sleek Jersey grazed in the pasture. Several dozen Leghorns scratched and pecked industriously in the barnyard. A sow and half a dozen piglets wandered through the orchard, grunting and squealing contentedly as they gobbled the fallen fruit. Everything was as I remembered it from last season. Over all there was an air of peace and contentment, the evidence of loving care, of quiet pride in homely accomplishments.

You don't find that much any more-that kind of pride, I mean. People who will give everything they have to a humble, run-of-the- mill job. All the office boys want to be company presidents. All the store clerks want to be department heads. All the waitresses and waiters want to be any damned thing but what they are. And they all let you know it-the whole lazy, shiftless, indifferent, insolent lot. They can't do their own jobs well; rather, they won't do them. But, by God, they're going to have something better-the best! They're going to have it or else, and meanwhile it's a case of do as little as you can and grab as much as you can get.

So I stood there in the drive, looking around and feeling better the longer I looked. And, then, from an upstairs window, Luane Devore called down to me petulantly.

"Kossy? Kossy! What are you doing down there?"

"I'll be right up," I said. "Is the door unlocked?"

"Of course it's unlocked! It's always unlocked! You know that! How in the world could I-"

"Save it," I said. "Keep your pants on. I'll be right with you."

I went in through the front door, crossed a foyer floor that was waxed and polished to a mirror-like finish. I started up the stairs. They were polished to the same gleaming perfection as the floors, and I slipped perilously once when I stepped off of the carpet runner. For perhaps the thousandth time, I wondered how Ralph Devore found the time to maintain the house and grounds as he did. For he did do it all, everything that was done here and a hundred other things besides. Luane hadn't lifted a hand in years. It had been years since she had contributed a penny to maintaining the place.

There was a picture of them, Ralph and Luane, on the wall at the turn in the stairs. One of those enlarged, retouched photographs hung in an oval gilt frame. It had been taken twenty-two years before at the time of their marriage. In those days, Luane had resembled The da Bara-if you remember your silent-motion-picture stars- and Ralph looked a lot like that Spanish lad, Ramon Navarro.

Ralph still looked pretty much as he had then, but Luane did not. She was sixty-two now. He was forty.

Her bedroom extended across the front of the house, facing the town. Through its huge picture window, she could see just about everything that went on in Manduwoc. And judging by the gossip I'd heard (and she'd started), she not only saw everything that happened but a hell of a lot that didn't.

Her door was open. I went in and sat down, trying not to wrinkle my nose against that bedfast smell-the smell of stale sweat, stale food, rubbing alcohol, talcum and disinfectant. This was one room that Ralph could do nothing about. Luane hadn't left it since God knows when, and it was so cluttered you could hardly turn around it.

There was a huge television set on one side of the room. On the other side was a massive radio, and next to it an elaborate hi-fl phonograph. They were operated from a remote control panel on a bedside table. Almost completely circling the bed were other tables and benches, loaded down variously with magazines, books, candy boxes, cigarettes, carafes, an electric toaster, coffee pot, chafing dish, and cartons and cans of food. Thus surrounded, with everything imaginable at her fingertips, Luane could make do for herself during the long hours that Ralph was away. For that matter, she could have done so, anyhow. Because there was not a damned thing wrong with her. The local doctor said there wasn't. So did a diagnostician I'd once brought down from the city. The local man "treated" her since she insisted on it. But there was nothing at all wrong with her. Nothing but self-pity and selfishness, viciousness and fear: the urge to lash out at others from the sanctuary of the invalid's bed.

I sat down near the window, and lighted a cigar. She sniffed distastefully, and I sniffed right back at her. "All right," I said. "Let's get it over with. What's the matter now?"

Her mouth worked. She took a grayish handkerchief from beneath her pillow, and blew into it. "It-it's R-Ralph, Kossy. He's planning to kill me!"

"Yeah?" I said. "So what's wrong with that?"

"He is, Kossy! I know you don't believe me, but he is!"

"Swell," I said. "You tell him if he needs any help just to give me a ring."

She looked at me helplessly, big fat tears filling her eyes. I grinned and gave her a wink.

"You see?" I said. "You talk stupid to me, and I'll talk stupid to you. And where the hell will that get us?"

"But it's not-I mean, it's true, Kossy! Why would I say so if it wasn't?"

"Because you want attention. Excitement. And you're too damned no-account to go after it like other people do." I hadn't meant to get rough with her. But she needed it-she had to be brought to her senses. And, I admit, I just couldn't help it. I very seldom lose my temper. I may act like it, but I very seldom do. But this time it was no act. "How the hell can you do it?" I said. "Ain't you done enough to the poor guy already? You marry him when he's eighteen. You talk his father, your caretaker, into getting him to marry you-"

"I did not! I-I-"

"The hell you didn't! The old man was ignorant; he thought he was doing the right thing by his son. Setting him up so that he could get a good education and amount to something. But how did it turn out? Why-"

"I gave Ralph a good home! Every advantage! It's not my fault that-"

"You didn't give him anything," I said. "Ralph worked for everything he got, and he helped support you besides. And he's still working anywhere from ten to twenty-four hours a day. Oh, sure, you've tossed the dough around. You've thrown away the whole damned estate. But Ralph never got any of it. It all went for Luane Devore, and to hell with Ralph."

She cried some more. Then she pouted. Then she pulled the injured dignity stunt. She believed, she said, that Ralph was quite satisfied with the way she had treated him. He'd married her because he loved her. He hadn't wanted to go away to school. He was never happier than when he was working. Under the circumstances, then…

Her voice trailed away, a look of foolish embarrassment spreading over her flabby, talcum-caked face. I nodded slowly.

"That just about wraps it up, doesn't it, Luane? You've said it all yourself."

"Well…" She hesitated. "Perhaps I do worry, brood too much. But-"

"Let's pin it down tight. Wrap it up once and for all. Just what reason would Ralph have to kill you? This place- all that's left of the estate? Huh-uh. He has it now, practically speaking. He'll have it legally when you die. After all the years he's slaved here, worked to improve it, you couldn't will it to someone else. You could, of course, but it wouldn't hold up in court. I-Yeah?"

"I-nothing." She hesitated again. "I'm pretty sure she couldn't be the reason. After all, he's only known her a couple of days."

"Who?" I said.

"A girl at the dance pavilion. The vocalist with the band this year. I'd heard that Ralph was driving her around a lot, but, of course-"

"So who doesn't he drive around when he gets a chance?" I said. "It's a way of picking up a few bucks."

She nodded that that was so. She agreed that most of Ralph's haul-and-carry customers were women, since women were less inclined to walk than men.

"Anyway," she added thoughtfully, "if it was just another woman-well, that couldn't be the reason, could it? He could just run away with her. He could get a divorce. He wouldn't have to-to-"

"Of course, he wouldn't," I said. "And he doesn't want to, and he doesn't intend to. Where did you ever get the notion that he did, anyhow? Has he said anything, done anything, out of the way?"

She shook her head. She'd thought he'd been behaving rather oddly, and then she'd heard this gossip about the girl. And then she'd been feeling so poorly lately, sick to her stomach and unable to sleep nights, and-

The telephone rang. She broke off the recital of her various ailments, and snatched it up. She didn't talk long-not as long as she obviously wanted to. And what she did say was phrased obliquely. Still, with what I'd already heard in town, I was able to get the drift of the conversation.

She hung up the receiver. Keeping her eyes averted from mine, she thanked me for coming to see her. "I'm sorry to have bothered you, Kossy. I get so worried, you know, and then I get excited-"

"But you're all squared away now?" I said. "You know now that Ralph has no intention of killing you, that he never did have and never will have?"

"Yes, Kossy. And I can't tell you how much I-"

"Don't try," I said. "Don't tell me anything. Don't call me again. Because I'm not representing you any longer. You've gone too damned far this time."

"Why-why, Kossy." Her hand went to her mouth. "You're not angry with me j-just because…"

"I'm disgusted with you," I said. "You make me want to puke."

"But why? What did I do?" Her lower lip pulled down, piteously. "I lie here all day long, with nothing to do and no one to talk to… a sick, lonely old woman…"

She saw it wasn't going to work, that nothing she could say would square things between us. Her eyes glinted with sudden venom, and her whine shifted abruptly to a vicious snarl.

"All right, get out! Get out and stay out, and good riddance, you-you hook-nosed little shyster!"

"I'll give you a piece of advice first," I said. "You'd better stop telling those rotten lies about people before one of them stops you. Permanently, know what I mean?"

"Let them try!" she screamed. "I'd just like to see them try! I'll make things a lot hotter for 'em than they are now!"

I left. Her screeches and screams followed me down the stairs and out of the house.

I drove back to the cottage, and told Rosa the outcome of my visit. She listened to me, frowning.

"But, dear-do you think you should have done that? If she's that far gone, at the point where someone may kill her-"

"No one's going to, dammit," I said. "I was just trying to throw a scare into her. If anyone was going to kill her, they wouldn't have waited this long."

"But she's never gone this far before, has she?" Rosa shook her head. "I wish you hadn't done it. It-now, don't get angry-but it just isn't like you. She needs you, and when someone needs you…"

She smiled at me nervously. With a kind of nervous firmness. The cords in my throat began to tighten. I said what Luane Devore needed was a padded cell. She needed her tail kicked. She needed a psychiatrist, not a lawyer.

"What the hell?" I said. "Ain't I entitled to a vacation? I got to spend the whole goddamned summer with a poisoned-tongue maniac banging my ear? I don't get this," I said. "I thought you'd be pleased. First you raise hell because I'm going to see her, and now you raise hell because I'm not."

"So I talk a little," Rosa shrugged. "I'm a woman. That don't mean you should let me run your business."

I jumped up and danced around her. I puffed out my cheeks and rolled my eyes and fluttered my hands. "This is you," I said. "Mrs. Nutty Nonsense. You know so damned much, why ain't you a lawyer?"

"The great man," said Rosa. "Listen how the great attorney talks to his wife… I'm sorry, dear. You do whatever you think is right."

"And I'm sorry," I said. "I guess maybe I'm getting old. I guess things get on my nerves more than they used to. I guess-"

I guessed I might possibly have been a little hasty with Luane Devore.

"Don't let me influence you," Rosa said. "Don't do what you think I want you to. That way there is always trouble."

2:

RALPH DEVORE

The day I began thinking about killing Luane was the day the season opened. Which was also the day the dance pavilion opened, which was the day I met Danny Lee, who was the vocalist with Rags McGuire's orchestra. She was a she-vocalist even if her name was Danny. A lot of girl vocalists have boys' names. Take Janie, Rags' wife, who was always with the band until she had that bad accident-I mean, until this year, because there wasn't really any accident, Rags says. It was another party by the same name, and she is staying at home now to look after their boys who did not actually get killed after all. Well, Janie always sang under the name of Jan McGuire. I don't know why those girls do that, because everyone knows that they're girls-they do, anyway, as soon as they see them. And with Janie, you didn't even need to see her to know it. You could just feel it, I mean. You could just be in the same building with her, with your eyes closed maybe, and you'd know Janie was there. And, no, it wasn't because of her voice, because she had more kind of a man's voice than a woman's. What they call a contralto, or what they would call a contralto if she wasn't a pop singer. Because they don't seem to classify pop vocalists like they do the other kind. Rags was kidding when he said it-he used to kid around a lot-but he told me that Janie was the only girl singer in the country who wasn't a coloratura. Or, at least, a lyric soprano. He didn't know where the hell they all came from, he said, since there didn't used to be a coloratura come along more than once every ten years. Well, anyway, he can't say that any more; I mean, about Janie being the only girl who isn't a coloratura. Because Danny Lee isn't one either. She's got the same kind of voice that Janie had-only, well, kind of different-and she even kind of looks like Janie; only Rags gets sore when you say so, so I've never done it but once. Rags is awfully funny in some ways. Nice, you know, but funny. Now, me, when you like a person, when you think a lot of 'em, I think you ought to show it. I mean if you're me, you have to. You can't do anything else, and you wouldn't think of saying or doing anything to hurt them. But a lot of people are different, and Rags is one of them. Take with Janie. I know he thought the world of Janie, but he was all the time jumping on her. Always accusing her of something dirty. She couldn't look at anyone cross-eyed, just being pleasant, you know, without him saying she was running after the guy or something like that. And it just wasn't so. You wouldn't find a nicer girl than Janie in a month of Sundays. Oh, she drank a little, I guess. These last few years, she drank quite a bit. But-well, we'll leave that go a while.

Now, I was saying that I'd thought about killing Luane that first day of the season. But that isn't really the way it was. I mean, I didn't actually think about killing her. What I thought about was how it would be maybe if she wasn't there. I didn't want her not to be there exactly- -to be dead-but still, well, you know. I started off wondering how it would be if she was, and then after a while I began kind of half-wishing that she was. And then, finally, I thought about different ways that she might be. Because if she wasn't-dead, I mean-I didn't know what I was going to do. And you put yourself in my place, and I don't think you'd have known either.

Usually-during the winter, anyway-I lay around in bed until five-thirty or six in the morning. But that day was the first of the season, so I was up at four. I dressed in the dark, and slipped out into the starlight. I did the chores, sort of humming and grinning to myself, feeling as tickled as a kid on Christmas morning. I felt good, I'll tell you. It was dark and the air was pretty nippy at that hour of the morning, but still everything seemed bright to me and I had that nice warm feeling inside. It was like I'd been buried in a cave, and I'd finally managed to get out. And that was kind of the way it was, too, in a way. Because this last winter had really been a bad one. Take the engineer's job at the courthouse, firing the boilers; now that's always been my job-an hour morning and evening and an hour on Saturday morning-but last winter it wasn't mine. And the school custodian job-four hours a day and two days once a month-that had always been mine, too, and now it wasn't. I talked to the head of the county commissioners, and he sent me to the county attorney. And the way he explained it-about the boilers-was that the commissioners could be held liable for any money they spent in excess of what was necessary. So automatic boilers were being installed, and that was that. I tried to argue with him, but it didn't do any good. It didn't do any good when I talked to the president of the school board, Doctor Ashton. They were dividing my job up among some of the vocational students. I wouldn't be needed now or at any time in the future, Doc said. And he gave me one of those straight, hard-eyed looks like the county attorney had.

So there I was. A hundred and fifty dollars a month gone down the drain. Practically every bit of my winter income, except for a little wood-cutting and stuff like that. Well, sure, I'd always kept a pretty big garden, canned and dried a lot of stuff. And, of course, there were the pigs, and we had our own eggs and milk and so on. And, naturally, I had some money put by. But, you know, you just can't figure that way; I mean, you can't count on standing on rock bottom. You do that, say, and what happens if things get worse? If a rainy day comes along, and that water that's only been up to your chin goes over your nose? Money can go mighty fast when you don't have any coming in. Say you run in the hole five dollars a day, why in a year's time that's almost two thousand dollars. And say you're forty like I am, and you've got maybe twenty-five years to live unless you starve to death…! I tell you I was almost crazy with worry. Anyone would have been. But now it was the first day of the season, and all my worries were over-I thought. I'd just work a little harder, make enough to make up for what I didn't make during the winter, and everything would be fine. I mean, I thought it would be.

I finished my chores. Then, I spread a big tarp in the back of the Mercedes-Benz, and put my mower and tools inside. You're probably wondering what a man like me is doing with a Mercedes, them being worth so much money. But the point is they're only worth a lot when you're buying; you go to sell one it's a different story. I did get a pretty good offer or two for it, back when I first got it-two seasons ago-but I kind of held on, thinking I might get a better one. And, of course, I liked it a lot, too, and I did need a car to get around in, to haul myself and my tools and passengers during the season. So, maybe it was the wrong thing, but it looked to me like I couldn't really lose since I'd gotten it for nothing. So, well, I've still got it.

The man who did own it was a writes a motion-picture writer, who used to come up here for the season. He began having trouble with it right after I went to work for him, and he had me tinker on it for him; and it would run pretty good for a time and then it would go blooey again. He got pretty sore about it. I mean, he got sore at the car. One morning he got so mad he started to take an ax to it, and I guess he would have if I hadn't stopped him. Well, back then, there was a summer Rolls agency over at Atlantic Center-that's a pretty big place, probably ten times as big as Manduwoc. So I suggested to this writer that as long as he needed a car and he didn't like the Mercedes, why not let me tow him over there and see what kind of a trade-in he could get.

Well, you know how it is. Those dealers can stick just about any price tag on a car they want to. So this one said he could allow six thousand on the Mercedes (he just boosted the Rolls price that much), and the writer snapped him up on it. And as soon as he'd driven off, the dealer signed the Mercedes over to me. I tinkered with the motor a little. I've never had to touch it since.

Yes, this writer was pretty sore when he found out what had happened. He claimed I'd deliberately put the Mercedes on the blink, and he threatened to have both me and that dealer arrested. But he couldn't prove anything, so it didn't bother me that much. I mean, after all, a man that's got twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars to throw away on a car, has got blamed little to fuss about. And if he can't protect an investment like that, he shouldn't have it in the first place.

After I'd finished loading the Mercedes, I went in and did a quick job on the house. Which didn't take long since I'd slicked everything up good the night before. I ate breakfast, and then I fixed more breakfast and carried it up to Luane. We had a real nice talk while she ate. When she was through, I gave her a sponge bath, tickling her and teasing her until she was almost crying she laughed so hard. As a matter of fact, she did cry a little but not sad like she sometimes does. It was more kind of wondering, you know- like when you know something's true but you can't quite believe it.

"You like me, don't you?" she said. "You really do like me, don't you?"

"Well, sure," I said. "Of course. I don't need to tell you that."

"You've never regretted anything? Wished things had been different?"

"Regret what?" I said. "What would I want different?"

"Well-" She gestured. "To travel. See the world. Do something besides just work and eat and sleep."

"Why, I do a lot besides that," I said. "Anyway, what would I want to travel for when I've got everything I want right here?"

"Have you, darling?" She patted my cheek. "Do you have everything you want?"

I nodded. Maybe I didn't have everything I wanted right there in the house, her being pretty well along in years. But working like I do, I didn't have to hunt very hard to get it. Most of the time it was the other way around.

Well, anyway. I got her fixed up for the day with everything she might need, and then I left. Feeling good, like I said. Feeling like all my troubles were over. I drove up to Mr. J. B. Brockton's place, and started to work on the lawn. And in just about five minutes-just about the time it took him to get out of the house-all the good feeling was gone, and I knew I hadn't seen any trouble compared with what I was liable to.

"I'm sorry, Ralph," he said, sort of kicking at the grass with his toe. "I tried any number of times to reach you yesterday, but your phone was always tied up."

I shook my head. I just couldn't think of anything to say for a minute. He wasn't like some of the summer people I worked for- people who just order you around like you didn't have any feelings, and maybe make jokes about you-about the "natives"-in front of their company. He was more like a friend, you know. I liked him, and he went out of his way to show that he liked me. Why, just last season he'd given me a couple suits. Two hundred and fifty dollar suits, he said they were. And, of course, he was probably exaggerating a little. Because how could just a suit of clothes cost two hundred and fifty? But even if they only cost fifty or seventy-five, it was a mighty handsome gift. Not something you'd give to people unless you thought an awful lot of them.

"Mr. Brockton," I said. And that was as far as I could go for a minute. "Mr. Brockton, what's the matter?"

"Well, I'll tell you, Ralph," he said, not looking at me, still kicking at the grass. "Doctor Ashton's son got in touch with me by mail a week or so ago. I've decided to give the work to him."

Well. You could have pushed me over with a dew drop. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Bobbie Ashton?" I said. "Why-what would Bobbie be doing doing yard work? Why, he must have been joking you, Mr. Brockton! Doc Ashton, why, he always hires his own yard work done, so why would Bobbie-"

"I've already engaged him," Mr. Brockton said. "It's all settled. I'm sorry, Ralph." He hesitated a second; then he said, "I think Doctor Ashton is a good man. I think Bob is a fine boy."

"Well, so do I," I said. "You never heard me say anything else, Mr. Brockton."

"I like them," he said. "And I come here to rest, to enjoy myself. And I do not like-in fact, I refuse, Ralph-to be drawn into community quarrels."

I knew what the trouble was then. I knew there was nothing I could do about it. All I could do now was to get to some other place as fast as I could. So… so I made myself smile. I said I could see how he might feel, and that he shouldn't feel bad about it on my account. Then I started reloading the Mercedes.

"Ralph," he said. "Wait a minute."

"Yes, sir?" I turned back around.

"I can give you a job with my company. In one of our factories. Something that you could do, and that would pay quite well."

"Oh?" I said. "You mean in New York City, Mr. Brockton?"

"Or New Jersey. Newark. I think you'd like it, Ralph. I think it would be the best thing that ever happened to you."

"Yes, sir," I said. "I guess you're probably right, Mr. Brockton, and I sure do appreciate the offer. But I guess not."

"You guess not?" he said. "Why not?"

"Well, I-I just guess I hadn't better," I said. "You see, I never lived anywhere but here. I've never been any further away than Atlantic Center, and that was just for a couple of hours. And just being away that far, that little time, I was so rattled and mixed up it was two-three days before I could calm down."

"Oh, well," he shrugged. "You'd get over that."

"I guess not," I said. "I mean, I can't, Mr. Brockton. It's kind of like I was rooted here, like I was one of them- those-shrubs. You try to put me down somewhere else, and-"

"Oh, I'm not trying to! Far be it from me to persuade a man against his will."

He nodded, kind of huffy-like, and headed for the house. I drove away. I knew he was probably right. I kind of wished I could leave Manduwoc-just kind of, you know. And before that day was much older I was really wishing it, with hardly any kind-of at all. But there just wasn't any way that I could.

Luane would never leave here. Even if she would, what good would it do? Any place we went, people would laugh and talk about us like they'd always done here. There'd be the same stories. Well, not exactly the same, I guess, because outsiders wouldn't know about Pa. So they wouldn't be apt to say that Pa and Luane, well-that I was really her son instead of her husband. Or, her son as well as her husband. But however it was, it would be bad. And Luane would start striking back twice as hard, like she'd struck back here. Probably she'd do it anyhow, even if people did have the good manners and kindness to keep their mouths shut. Because she'd been the way she was now for so long, she'd lost the knack for being any other way.

I felt awful sorry for Luane. She'd sure given up a lot on my account. She was a lady, and she came from a proud old family. She'd been a good churchgoer and a charity worker, and everything like that. And then just because she wanted someone to love before she got too old for it, why there was all that dirtiness. Stuff that took the starch right out of you, and filled you up with something else. No, it didn't bother me too much; I guess I just didn't have enough sense to be bothered, and, of course, I never amounted to anything to begin with. But it did something pretty terrible to Luane. She didn't show it for a long time, except maybe a little around me. She had too much pride. But the hurt was there inside, festering and spreading, and finally breaking out. And then really getting bad. Getting a little worse the older she got.

I sure wished Luane could go away with me. I figured I could make out pretty fine with Luane. With someone like that, you know, someone who knew her way around and could tell you what to do-someone that really loved you and you could talk to, and-and…

Well, I guess I just hadn't wanted to face the facts there at Mr. J. B. Brockton's place. I mean, it was such an awful setback, I didn't feel like I could bear any more; I just couldn't admit that it would be the same way wherever else I went. Because what was I going to do if it was? How was I going to live? What would I do if I couldn't make out here, and I couldn't go any place else?

You can see how I'd be kind of stunned. So scared that I couldn't look at the truth even with my nose rubbed in it.

So, anyway, I went on to all the other estates. I made them all, just taking "no" for an answer at first, and then arguing and finally begging. And, of course, it was the same story everywhere. I was just wasting my breath and my time. They were sorry, sure; most of 'em said they were, anyhow. But Bobbie Ashton had asked for the work, and Doc Ashton was an influential man-and he treated most of them-so Bobbie was going to get it.

It was noon by the time I'd gone to the last place I could go to. I drove down to the beach and ate the lunch I'd packed that morning. Gulping it down, not really tasting it.

Twenty-five years, I thought. Twenty-five years, but no, a man like me would probably live a lot longer than that. Thirty-five or forty, probably. Maybe even fifty or sixty. Fifty or sixty years with everything going out and nothing coming in!

Yes, there was a little work around town, for the local residents, you know. But it wasn't worth bothering with. Just fifty cents here and a dollar there. Anyway, the kids had it all sewed up.

I wondered if it would do any good for me to talk to Bobbie, but I didn't wonder long. He'd made up his mind to run me out of town- -to get back at Luane through me.

Doc Ashton settled here a little short of seventeen years ago. His wife had died in childbirth, so he had this Negro wet nurse for Bobbie, the woman who still works for them as housekeeper. Doc was quite a young man then. The woman was young, too-in fact, she's still fairly young- and pretty good-looking, besides.

Well, Bobbie was sick when he got here, the colic or something. And he no sooner got over that than he was hit by something else. Every disease you ever heard of practically, why Bobbie had it. One right after another. Year after year. He couldn't play with other kids, couldn't go to school; he was hardly out of the house for almost twelve years. Then, finally, I guess because he'd had every blamed sickness there was to get, he didn't get any more. He began to shoot up and broaden out. All at once, he was just about the healthiest, huskiest-and handsomest-kid you ever saw in your life. And smart! You couldn't believe a kid could be that smart, and probably you won't find many that are.

I suppose he got a lot of it from all those books he'd read when he couldn't do anything else. But there was plenty more to Bobbie's smartness than book-learning. He just seemed to have been born with a head on him, a head with all the answers. He could do things without being told how or reading about 'em, or maybe even hearing of 'em before. Not just lessons, you know, but anything!

He went through eight grades of grammar school in a year. He went through high school in a year and a half. At least he could have gone through, if he hadn't dropped out the last semester. Now, it didn't look like he'd be going to college; he wouldn't be studying to be a doctor. And how Doc Ashton would be feeling about that, I hated to think.

I wadded up my lunch sack and put it in a trash basket. Then, I got a drink of water from one of the picnicker fountains, and drove up to the dance pavilion.

The big front doors were swung open. I went inside, circled around in front of the bandstand, and stopped in the doorway of Pete Pavlov's office. He was at his desk, bent over some papers. He glanced up, squirted a stream of tobacco into a spittoon and bent back over the papers again.

He's one of those round-faced, square-built men. About fifty, I guess. He wore khaki pants with both a belt and suspenders, and a blue work shirt with a black bow tie. His hair was parted on the side, and there was a blob of shaving soap up around one of the temples.

I waited. I began to get a little uneasy, even though I was practically sure that I had a job with him for the summer. Because any time Pete Pavlov could do anything to annoy people in Manduwoc, he was just about certain to do it. I mean, he'd go out of his way to get under their hides. And giving me work would get under 'em bad.

He didn't need to care what they thought of him; his business was all with the summer trade. He owned most of the rent cottages, and the pavilion, and two of the hotels, and oh, probably, two-thirds of the concession buildings. So to heck with Manduwoc, was the way he felt. The town people hadn't ever done anything for him. In fact, they'd always been kind of down on him, sort of resentful. Because even back when he was a day laborer, cleaning out cesspools or anything he could get to do, he was as independent as a hog on ice. He'd do a good day's work, but he wouldn't say thank-you for his pay. If anyone called him by his first name or just Pavlov, he'd do exactly the same thing with them. No matter who they were or how much money they had.

He straightened up from his desk, and looked at me. I smiled and said hello, and remarked that it was a nice day. I said, "I guess I better be getting to work, hadn't I, Pete?"

He waited for me to say something else. I didn't, because I was just too worried. Here was maybe another twenty-five dollars a week going down the hole. The only chance I had left for any income.

Pete kind of squirmed around in his chair, kind of scratching his rear, I guess. He leaned back and picked something out of his nose, and held it up and looked at it. And then he pushed his lips out, moved them in and out, while he stared down at his desk.

"Well, hell," he said. "I tell you how it is, Ralph. The way this goddamned summer business is going, I figure on hiring out myself."

I didn't say anything. I guessed things weren't as good for him as they used to be, but I knew he was still setting pretty. He had plenty, all right, Pete Pavlov did. It would take more than a few slack seasons to hurt him much.

"What are you looking like that for?" he said. "You think I'm a goddamned liar?" Then, his eyes flickered and shifted, and he let out a whoop of laughter, and slapped his hand down on his desk. "Well, you're right, by God! I wish you could have seen your face! Really had you going, didn't I?"

"Aw, no, you didn't," I said. "I knew you were joking all the time."

"You know what a broom looks like?" He waved me toward the door. "Well, see if you can find one that'll fit your hands."

I got out. I got busy on the rest rooms, and after a while, as he was leaving for downtown, he looked in on me. Stood around talking and joking for a few minutes. He asked about Luane, and said he was pretty goddamned hurt the way she never told any dirty stories about him. I laughed, kind of uncomfortable, and said I guessed that was his fault, not hers. Which was mainly the way it was, of course. Because how can you mud a man up when he's already covered himself with it? To annoy people, you know. What's the point in saying that a man does such and such or so and so when he lets 'em all know it himself?

He had a family, a wife and daughter, but Luane couldn't do much to dirty them, either. There just wasn't enough to them, you know, to hold dirt. They were dowdy and drab. They went around with their shoulders slumped and their heads bowed-like they might cut and run if you looked their way. No one was interested in them. There wasn't anything to be interested in. And if the time ever came when there was, well, I figured Luane would do some tall thinking before she gossiped about it.

You see, years ago-before Luane and I were married- her father gave Pete an awful raw deal. Cheated him out of a pile of money, and then placed it in Luane's name, so that Pete couldn't sue. Luane's always felt kind of guilty about it. She'd think a long time before she did anything else to hurt Pete or his family

"Well," Pete said. "I got a feeling that this may be a good season after all. The best damned season yet."

"I think it will, too," I said. "I think you're right, Pete."

He left. I finished with the washrooms, and went back to his office.

I pulled a chair up to the air-vent, took off the grate and crawled up inside the duct. I crawled through it slowly, squirming along on my stomach, brushing all the dust and cobwebs and dead bugs in front of me. It was so hot and stuffy I could hardly breathe, and I kept sneezing and bumping my head; and I was just about one big muddy smear of sweat and dust. I crawled through all the duct, the branches and the main, and came out at the rear of the building.

I dropped down to the roof of the blower shed. I started up the big four-horse motor, tightened the belt to the fan, and went in the back door of the men's room.

I looked at myself in the mirror, and, man, was I a mess! Dirt and cobwebs from head to foot. I started to turn on the water at one of the sinks, and then I stopped with my hand a couple of inches away-kind of frozen in the air. I stood that way for a few seconds, listening to the piano, to Rags, listening to her. Then I turned toward the door, picking up my broom sort of automatically, and went out into the ballroom.

It was pretty shadowed in there, and there was just the swivel-necked light on over the piano. So, for a second, I thought it was Janie up there singing. Then I started across the floor, and pretty soon I saw it was another girl. She had the same kind of voice as Janie, and the same kind of candy-colored hair. But she was quite a bit bigger. I don't mean she was any taller or that she probably weighed any more, but still she was bigger. In certain places, you know. You could see that she was without even half-way studying the matter. Because it was still pretty warm there in the ballroom, and Rags was stripped to the waist. And all she had on was a bra and a little skimpy pair of shorts.

I thought she was a mighty good singer, but I knew Rags wasn't pleased with her. I knew because he was putting her through Stardust, having her rehearse it when he'd always told me that no singer needed to. "That's one they can't bitch up, see?" he'd told me. "They can do it with all the others. But Stardust, huh-uh."

He brought his hands down on the keys suddenly. With just a big crash. She stopped singing and turned toward him, her face hard and sullen-looking.

"All right," Rags said. "You win, baby. I'll send for Liberace. Me, I'm too old to run races."

"I'm sorry," she mumbled, not looking a darned bit sorry.

"Never mind that sorry stuff," he said. "Your name's Lee, ain't it? Danny Lee, ain't it?"

"You know what it is," she said.

"I'm asking you," he said. "It's not Carmichael or Porter or Mercer, is it? This ain't your music, is it? You've got no right to bitch it up, have you? You're goddamned right, you haven't! It's theirs-they made it, and the way they made it is the way it should be. So cut out the embroidery. Cut out that bar-ahead stuff. Just get with it, and stay with it!"

He picked up his cigarette from the piano, and tucked it into the corner of his mouth. He brought his hands down on the keys. He seemed to kind of stroke them-the keys, I mean. But yet there was no running together. Every note came through, clear and firm, soft but sharp. So smooth and easy and sweet.

Danny Lee took a deep breath. She held it, the bra swelled full and tight. She was nodding her head with the music, tapping one toe. Listening, and then opening her mouth and letting her breath out in the Stardust words. Soft-husky. Pushing them out from down deep inside. Letting them float out with that husky softness, still warm and sweet from the place they'd been.

I looked at Rags. His eyes were closed, and there was a smile on his lips. I looked back at the girl, and I kind of frowned.

She didn't hardly have to move at all, to look like she was moving a lot. And she was moving a lot now. And if there was one thing that burned Rags McGuire up, it was that. He said it was cheap. He said singers who did that were acrobats.

Rags opened his eyes. His smile went away, and he lifted his hands from the keys and laid them in his lap. He didn't curse. He didn't yell. For a minute he hardly seemed to move, and the silence was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Then he motioned for her to come over to the piano. She hesitated, then went over, kind of dragging her feet, sullen and hard-faced, and watchful-looking.

And then Rags reamed her out-real hard. It was pretty rough.

She took her place again. Rags brought his hands down on the keys, and she began to sing. I moved in close. Rags gave me a little nod. I stood up close, drinking her voice in, drinking her in.

She finished the song. Without thinking how it might seem to Rags-like I might be butting in, you know-I busted out clapping. It had been so nice, I just had to.

Rags' eyes narrowed. Then he grinned and made a gesture toward me. "Okay, baby, take off," he said. "You've passed the acid test."

I guess he meant it as kind of an insult. Just to her, of course, because he and I are good friends, and always kidding around a lot. Anyway, she started down at me-and gosh, I'd forgot all about what a mess I was. And then she whirled around, bent over and stuck out her bottom at me. Kind of wiggled at me.

Rags let out a whoop. He whooped with laughter, banging his fists down on the top of the piano. Making so much noise that you couldn't hear what she was yelling, although I guess it was mostly cuss words.

He was still whooping and pounding as she marched back across the bandstand, and down the steps to the dressing room.

I grinned, or tried to. Feeling a little funny naturally, but not at all mad.

3:

RAGS MCGUIRE

I saw her for the first time about four months ago. It was in a place in Fort Worth, far out on West Seventh Street. I wasn't looking for her or it, or anything. I'd just started walking that night, and when I'd walked as far as I could I was in front of this place. So I went inside.

There was a small bar up front. In the rear was a latticed-off, open roof area, with a lot of tables and a crowd of beer drinkers. I sat down and ordered a stein.

The waitress came with it. Another woman came right behind her, and helped herself to a chair. She was a pretty wretched-looking bag; not that it would have meant anything to me if she hadn't been. I gave her a couple bucks, and said no, thanks. She went away, and the three-piece group on the bandstand-sax, piano and drums-went back to work.

They weren't good, of course, but they were Dixieland. They played the music, and that's something. They played the music-or tried to-and these days that's really something.

They did Sugar Blues and Wang Wang, and Goofus. There was a kitty on the bandstand, a replica of a cat's hat with a PLEASE FEED THE sign. So, at intermission, I sent the waitress up with a twenty-dollar bill.

I didn't notice that it was a twenty until it was in her hand. I'd meant to make it a five-which was a hell of a lot more than I could afford. Anything was a lot more than I could afford. But she already had it, and you don't hear the music much any more. So I let it go.

The waitress pointed me out to them. They all stood up and smiled and bowed to me, and for a moment I was stupid enough to think that they knew who I was. For, naturally, they didn't. They don't know you any more if you play the music. Only the players of crap, the atonal clashbang off-key stuff that Saint Vitus himself couldn't dance to. To these lads I was just a big spender. That's all I was to anyone in the place.

I saw the waitress go over to a table in the corner. There was a man seated at it, facing me, a guy with a beer-bleared face and a suit that must have cost all of eighteen dollars. There was also a girl, her back turned my way. The waitress whispered to her, and the girl got up. Her companion made noises of protest, and a burly, shirt-sleeved character who had been lurking in the vicinity, grabbed him by the collar and hustled him out.

The girl started toward the bandstand. There was a small burst of hand-clapping and stein-thumping. And my eyes snapped open and my heart pounded, and I half rose out of my chair. And then I settled back down again. Because, of course, it wasn't Janie. Janie wouldn't be in a joint like this, she wouldn't be hanging around with barflies. Anyway, I knew where Janie was, at home looking after the boys, whoring and guzzling and…

Janie was back in New York. I'd talked to her long distance that night-had her sing to me over the telephone. It was Melancholy Baby, one of our all-time hit recordings, one of the dozen-odd which still sell considerably-and thank God they do. Although I don't know who the hell buys them. Probably they all go to insane asylums, the patients there. It must be that way, the poor devils must all be locked up, since there seems to be nothing on the outside any more but tone-deaf morons.

Why, goddammit, I talked to a man a while back, one of those pseudo-erudite bastards who is mopping up with articles about modern "music," the so-called up-beat, "cool" crap. I said, let me ask you something. Suppose the printer started "interpreting" your articles. Suppose he started leaving out lines and putting in his own, suppose he threw away your punctuation and put in his own. How would you feel if he did that, an "interpretation" of your stuff?

I shouldn't have wasted my time on him, of course. I shouldn't even have spit on him. He called himself a music critic-a critic, by God!-and he'd never heard of Blue Steele!

The girl didn't look like Janie. Not the slightest. I'd only thought she did at the time.

She sang. It was Don't Get Around Much Any More, another old hit of Janie's and mine. And she bitched it up. Brother, did she bitch it! But when I closed my eyes…

She had a voice. She had what it took, raw and undeveloped as it was. And she hit you. That's the only way I can say it-she hit you. She brought out the goose bumps, like that first blast of air when you step into an air-conditioned room.

And God knows I don't expect much. I work for something good, I do my best to get it. But I don't really expect it.

I began to get a little excited. I did some fast mental calculations. I was working single at the moment, doing a series of club dates. And I was just squeaking by. But the resort season wasn't too far off, and I had some recording checks due; and it would be easy enough to whip together another band. I could just about swing it, I thought. A five man combo, including myself, and this girl. I couldn't make any money with it, not playing the music. I'd be very lucky, in fact, if I could break even. But I could do it-do something, by God, that needed to be done. Give this mixed-up world something that it ought to have, regardless of whether it knew it or wanted it.

She finished the song. She was at my table before I could motion to her. I was still wrapped up in my calculations. I heard her pitch, but it was a minute or two before it sank in on me. And perhaps I should have expected it; and perhaps, by God, I should not have. From some girls, yes. From any other girl. But not her, not someone with the music in them.

I wanted to spit on her. I wanted to break my stein, slash her throat with it so that she would never sing another word. Instead, I said, fine: I hated sleeping by myself.

I suppose my expression had startled her. At any rate, she drew back a little. She didn't mean that, she said. All she meant was that maybe I could buy her dinner some place and we could have a nice visit, since she was alone, too, and maybe I could help her buy a new dress because a drunk had spilt some beer on this one, and-

She was really a nice girl. She told me so herself. She was just doing this (temporarily, of course!) because her mother was awfully sick-a sick mother, no less!-and she had a couple of younger brothers to support, and her father was dead and crops had been awfully bad on this farm she came from. And so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. The only thing she spared me was the fine-old-Southern-family routine. If she'd pulled that I think I would have killed her.

I took a couple of twenties out of my wallet and riffled them.

She simpered around a little more, and then she went back to my hotel with me.

I looked at her, and suddenly I turned and ducked into the bathroom. I hunched over, hugging my stomach, feeling my guts twist and knot themselves, wanting to scream with the pain. I puked, and wept silently. And it was better, then. I washed my face, and went back into the bedroom.

I told her to get her clothes on. I told her what I could and would do for her.

All the clothes she'd need; good clothes. A year's contract at two hundred dollars a week. Yes, two hundred dollars a week. And a chance to make something of herself, a chance eventually to make two thousand, five thousand, ten thousand. More than a chance, an absolute certainty. Because I would make something of her; I would not let her fail.

She believed me. People usually do believe me if I care to make the effort. Still, she hung back, apparently too shocked by the break I was offering her to immediately accept it. I gave her twenty dollars, promised her another twenty to meet me at the club in the morning. She did so- we had the place to ourselves except for the cleaning people-and I gave her a sample of what I could do for her.

A good sample, because I wanted her firmly hooked. With what I had in mind, the two hundred a week might not be enough to hold her. That invalid mother and two brothers et cetera, notwithstanding. I wanted to give her a glimpse of the mint, boost her high enough up the wall so that even a whoring moron such as she could see it.

And I did.

I worked with her a couple hours. At the end of that time, she was no longer terrible, but merely bad. Which to her, of course, seemed nothing less than wonderful.

She was beaming and bubbling, and the sun seemed to have risen behind her eyes.

"I can hardly believe it!" she said. "It seems kind of like magic-like a beautiful dream!"

"The dream will get better," I said. "It will come true. Assuming, that is, that you want to accept my offer."

"Oh, I do! You know I do," she said. "I don't know how to thank you, Mr. McGuire."

I told her not to bother; she didn't owe me any thanks. We went back to my room, and I closed and locked the door.

She seemed to crumple a little, grow smaller, and the sun went out of her eyes. She stammered, that she wouldn't do it, then that she didn't want to. Finally, as I waited, she asked if she had to.

"I've never done anything like that before. Honestly, I haven't, Mr. McGuire! Only once, anyway, and it wasn't for money. I was in love with him, this boy back in my home town, and we were supposed to be married. And then he went away, and I thought I was pregnant so I left, and-"

"Never mind," I said. "If you don't want to…"

"And it'll be all right?" She looked at me anxiously. "You'll still-s-still-?"

I didn't say anything.

"W-Will it? Will it, Mr. McGuire? Please, please! If you only knew…"

If I only knew, believed, that she was really a good girl. If I only knew how much she wanted to sing, how much this meant to her. You know.

I shrugged, remained silent. But inside I was praying. And what I was praying was that she would tell me to go to hell. I could have got down and kissed her feet for that, if she had insisted on being what the good Lord had meant her to be or being nothing; keeping the music undefiled or keeping it silent where it was. If only it had meant that much to her, as much as it meant to me-

And it didn't. It never means as much, even a fraction as much, as it means to me. Not to Janie. Not to anyone.

No one cares about the music.

Except for me it would vanish, and there would be no more.

Slowly, she unbuttoned her dress. Slowly, she pulled it down off one shoulder. I stared at her grinning-wanting to yell and wanting to weep. And blackness swam up on me from the floor, dropped down over me from above.

I came out of it.

She was kneeling in front of me. My head was against her, and she was wet with my tears. And she was crying, and holding me.

"Mister McGuire… W-what's the matter, M-Mist- Oh, darling, baby, honey-lamb! What can I-"

She brushed her lips against my forehead, stroked my hair, whispering:

"Better now, sweetheart? Is Danny's dearest honey-pie bet-"

"You rotten, low-down little whore," I said.

Pete Pavlov was waiting at the station when we came in late Thursday night. The boys and Danny went on down to their cottages, and I went to his office with him.

I like Pete. I like his bluntness, his going straight to the point of a matter. There is no compromise about him. He knows what he wants and he will take nothing else, and whether it suits anyone else makes not the damnedest bit of difference to him.

He did not ask about Janie, nor the why of the new band. That was my business, and Pete minds his own business. He simply poured us a couple whopping drinks, tossed me a cigar and asked me if I knew where he could lay his hands on a fast ten or twenty thousand.

I said I wished I did. He shrugged and said he didn't really suppose I would, and just to forget he'd said anything. Then he said, "Excuse me, Mac"-Pete has always called me Mac-"Know I didn't need to tell you to keep quiet."

"That's okay," I said. "Things pretty bad, Pete?"

He said they were goddamned bad. So bad that he'd fire his hotels if he could collect on them. "Those goddamned insurance companies," he said. "Y'know, I figure that's why so many people get burned to death. Because the companies won't pay off on empty buildings. Guess I should have fired mine while they were open, but I kind of hated to take a chance on roasting someone."

I laughed, and shook my head. I hardly knew what to say. I knew what I should say, but I wasn't quite up to saying it, hard-pressed as I was.

He went on to explain his situation. He'd never borrowed any money locally. He'd always done business on a cash basis. Then, when things began to tighten up, he'd gone to some New York factors; and now the interest was murdering him.

"No usury laws when it comes to business loans, y'know. Did you know that? Well, that's the way she stands. I don't get up ten, twenty thousand, I'm just about going to be wiped out." He took a chew of tobacco, grunted sardonically. "Own damned fault, I guess. Too goddamned stubborn. Should have unloaded when things first started slipping."

"You couldn't have done it, Pete," I said. "If you knew how to give up, you'd never have got to where you are."

He said he guessed that was so. Guessed he didn't know how to lay down, and didn't want to learn.

"Pete," I said. "Look. Your contract is with the agency, and I can't cut the price. But I can rebate on it."

"Hell with you," he said. "You ugly, ornery over-grown, bastard."

He walked around the room, grunting that there were too damned many throats in need of cutting, without bleeding some dull-witted son-of-a-bitch like me who ought to have a guardian looking after him.

"Nope," he said, turning back around. "I ain't that bad off. If I was, I just wouldn't have signed up for you this year."

"Maybe you shouldn't have," I said. "And look, Pete. You can't break that contract, but if I should refuse to play-"

"Nope. No, now listen to me," he said. "I wouldn't do it, even if I didn't like to listen to that damned pounding of yours. I got to keep the pavilion open. Once I closed it, it'd be kind of a signal. I might as well paint a bullseye on my butt, and tell 'em all to start kicking."

We went on drinking and talking. Talking of things in general, and nothing much in particular. He said that when Kossmeyer came down the three of us ought to get together some night and have us a bull session. I said I'd like that-some time when I was feeling good and didn't have anything on my mind.

"I like him," I said. "He's a hell of an interesting little guy, and a nice one. But sometimes, y'know, Pete, I get a feeling that he ain't where I'm seeing him. I mean, he's right in front of me, but it seems like he's walking all around me. Looking me over. Staring through the back of my head."

Pete laughed. "He gives you that feeling too, huh? Ain't it funny, Mac? All the people there are in the world, and how many there are you can just sit down and cut loose and be yourself with."

I said it certainly was funny. Or tragic.

"Well, hell," he said, finally, "and three is seven. Daddy's gone and went to heaven. Guess you and me ought to be getting some sleep, Mac."

We said good-night, and he went off toward town, his chunky body moving in a straight line. I went to my cottage, feeling conscience-stricken and depressed by my failure to help him. By my failures period. Bitch and botch, that was me. In common honesty I ought to start billing myself that way: Bitch And Botch And His Band And Bitch. I could work up a theme song out of it, set it to the melody of- well, Goodie Goodie. Let's see, now. Tatuh ta ta turn, tatuh… I worked on that for a minute, and then swore softly to myself. I couldn't do anything right any more. Not the simplest, damnedest ordinary thing.

Take tonight, for example. My people were new here; there are rows and rows of cottages, all exactly alike. Yet I hadn't bothered to see that they got to the right ones, to see that they were comfortably settled. I'd just gone my own merry way-thinking only of myself-and to hell with them.

It didn't matter, of course, about Danny Lee. She could sleep on the beach for all I cared. But my men, poor bastards, were a different matter. They had enough to bear as it was-those sad, sad bastards. Just barely squeaking by, year after year. Working for the minimum, and tickled to death to get it. Big-talking and bragging, when they know- for certainly they must know-that they were unfitted to wipe a real musician's tail.

It must be very hard to maintain a masquerade like that. I felt very sorry for them, my men, and I was very gentle with them. They had no talent, nothing to build on, nothing to give. There can be nothing more terrible, it seems to me, than having nothing to give.

I unpacked my suitcases, and climbed into bed.

I fell asleep, slipping almost immediately into that old familiar dream where everyone in the band was me. I was on the trumpet, the sax-and-clarinet. I was on the trombone, at the drums, and, of course, the piano. All of us were me-the whole combo. And Danny Lee-Janie was the vocalist, but she-they were also me. And it was not perfect, the music was not quite perfect. But it was close, so close, by God! All we-I needed was a little more time-time is all it takes if you have it to work with-and…

I woke up.

It was a little after twelve, noon. The smell of coffee drifted through my window, along with snatches of conversation.

It came from the boys' cabin-they were batching together to save money. They were keeping their voices low, and our cottages, like the others, were thirty feet apart. ("Don't like to be crowded," Pete told me, "and don't figure anyone else does.") But sound carries farther around water:

"Did you hear what he said to me, claimin' I had a lip? Why, goddammit, I been playin' trumpet…"

"Hell, you got off easy! What about him asking me if I had rheumatism, and I needed a hammer to close the valves…?"

"The wild-eyed bastard is crazy, that's all! I leave it to you, Charlie. You ever hear me slide in or off a note? I ever have to feel for 'em? Why…"

They were all chiming in, trying to top one another. But the drummer finally got and held the floor. I listened to his complaints-the bitter low-pitched voice. And I was both startled and hurt.

Possibly I had seemed a little sharp to the others, but I certainly hadn't meant to. I had only been joking, trying to make light of something that could not be helped. With the drummer, however, I had been especially gentle-exceedingly careful to do or say nothing that might hurt his pride. He had nothing at all to feel bitter about that I could see.

It was true that I had joked with him, but in the mildest of ways. I had not so much corrected him as tried to get him to correct himself.

I had tossed him a bag of peanuts on one occasion. On a couple of others I had suddenly held a mirror in front of him, at the height of his idiotic, orgiastic contortions. I had had him look at himself, that was all. I had said nothing. It was pointless to say anything, since English was even more than a mystery to him than music, and I saw no necessity to. It seemed best simply to let him look at himself-at the man become monkey. And how that could possibly have made him sore, why he should blame me for the way he looked…

Well, the hell with it. He wasn't worth worrying about or bothering with. None of them were. Only Danny Lee- Danny Lee's voice. I wished to God I could have gotten hold of her a couple of years sooner. By now, she'd have been at the top, so good that she wouldn't have been caught dead in a place like this.

I shaved and bathed and dressed. I walked over to her cottage, and told her to show at the pavilion at two o'clock sharp.

Then I dropped in on the boys.

They saw or heard me coming, for their voices rose suddenly in awkward self-conscious conversation. I went in, and there was a stilted exchange of greetings, and a heavy silence. And then two of them offered me coffee at the same time.

I declined, said I was eating in town. "By the way," I added. "Can I do anything for you guys in town? Mail some letters to the local for you?"

They knew I'd heard them then. I looked at them smiling, one eyebrow cocked; glancing from one sheepish, reddening, silly face to another.

No one said a word. No one made a move. They almost seemed to have stopped breathing. And I stared at them, and suddenly I was sick with shame.

I mumbled that everything was Jake. I told them they'd better get out and have some fun; to rent a boat, buy some swim trunks- anything they needed-and to charge it to me.

"No rehearsal today," I said. "None any day."

I got out of there.

I ate and went to the pavilion, and went to work with Danny Lee.

After a while, Ralph Devore showed up.

Ralph's the handyman-janitor here. Also the floorman- the guy who moves around among the dancers, and maintains order and so on. He's a hell of a handsome guy, vaguely reminiscent of someone I seem to have seen in pictures. He has a convertible Mercedes, which, I understand, he got through some elaborate chiseling. And dressed up in those fancy duds he has (given to him by wealthy summer people) he looks like a matinee idol. But he wasn't dressed up now. Now, when Danny Lee was seeing him for the first time, he looked like Bowery Bill from Trashcan Hill.

She was so burned up when he gave her a hand-and I kidded her about it-that she flounced her butt at him.

She stomped off to the dressing room. Ralph and I chewed the fat a little. And I began to get a very sweet idea, a plan for giving Miss Danny her comeuppance. I could see that Ralph had fallen for her. He wanted her so bad he could taste it. So with him looking as he did-or could- and Danny being what she was…

I put it up to Ralph, giving him slightly less than the facts about Danny. I said that she not only looked like a nice girl, but she was one. Very nice. The sole support of her family, in fact. So how did that cut any ice? He wasn't going to rape her. He could just take her out, and leave the rest up to her. If she wanted to cut loose okay, and if not the same.

"Well…" He hesitated nervously. "It just don't somehow seem right, Rags; I mean, fooling a nice little girl like that. I don't like people foolin' me, and-"

"So where's the harm?" I said. "If she really wants to hang on to it, money won't make any difference to her. If it does make a difference-all the dough you're supposed to have-there's still no harm done. What she loses can't be worth much."

"Well, yeah," he said. "Yeah, but…"

I was afraid he was going to ask why my enthusiasm for the enterprise. But I needn't have worried. He was too absorbed in Danny, so hard hit that he was in kind of a trance. And vaguely, with part of my mind, I wondered about that.

Ralph had seen sexy babes before. Seen them and had them. They were invariably kitchen maids or shop-girls on an outing, but still they had what it took. All that Ralph, being married, was interested in.

"She looks kind of tough," he murmured absently. "Awful sweet, kind of, but tough. Like she could be plenty hard-boiled if she took the notion."

"Oh, well," I said. "Think what a hard time, she's had. Supporting an invalid mother and-"

"I bet she knows her way around, don't she?"

"And you'd win," I said. "She can take care of herself, Ralph. You won't be taking advantage of her at all."

"Well…" He squirmed indecisively. "I-I-What you want me to do?"

He had some good clothes in his car. I told him to get washed and change into them, while I fixed things up with Danny. "And hurry," I said, as he hesitated. "Get back here as fast as you can. You can't keep a high class girl like her waiting."

He snapped out of it, and hurried away.

I went down to the dressing room.

She was waiting there, sullen and defiant and a little afraid. I hadn't told her she could go to her cottage, so she waited. I looked at her sorrowfully, slowly shaking my head.

"Well, you really tore it that time, sister," I said. "You know who that guy was? Just about the richest man in this county. Owns most of the beach property around here. Has a big piece of this pavilion, as a matter of fact."

"I'll bet!" she said-but a trifle uncertainly. "Oh, sure."

"How did Pete Pavlov stack up to you?" I said. "Hardly a fashion-plate, huh? You just can't figure these local people that way, baby. They keep right on working after they get it. They don't go in for show while they're working."

She studied my face uncertainly, trying to read it. I took her by the elbow and led her to the window. "Who does that guy look like down there?" I said; for Ralph was just taking his clothes out of the Mercedes. "What do you think a buggy like that costs? You think an ordinary janitor would be driving it?"

She stiffened slightly; hell, that Mercedes even bowls me over. Then she shrugged with attempted indifference. So what, she asked. What did it mean to her if he was loaded.

"Just thought you'd like to know," I said. "Just thought you might like to meet him. He could do a lot for a gal if he took the notion to."

"Uh-huh," she said. "You just want to help me, I suppose! You're doing me favors!"

"Suit yourself." I picked up my shirt and began putting it on. "It's entirely up to you, baby. You do a little thinking, though, and maybe you'll remember me doing you a favor or two before. It maybe'll occur to you that I can't be any harder on you than I am on myself, and it ain't making me a penny."

"All right!" she snapped. "What do you want me to do about it? I've tried to thank you! I've-I've-"

"Never mind," I said. "I'm satisfied just to see you get ahead. That's all I've ever wanted."

I finished buttoning my shirt. I tucked the tails in, studying her out of the corner of my eye.

She was wavering-teetering one way, then the other. Wavering and then convinced, like the stupid moronic tramp she was. There was nothing in her head. Only in her throat.

And you could dump a thousand gallons of vinegar down it, and she'd still expect the next cup to be lemonade.

"Well," she said. "He did seem awfully nice. I mean, I couldn't tell what he looked like much, but he acted nice and respectful. And- and he clapped for me."

"He's a wonderful guy," I said. "One of the best."

"Well… well, I guess I ought to apologize, anyway," she said. "I ought to do that, even if he was only a janitor."

She preceded me up the steps. She started to open the door that leads out to the bandstand, and suddenly I put out my hand.

"Danny. Wait… baby."

It was the way I said it, the last word. A way I'd never thought I could say it. To her. She froze in her tracks, one foot on one step, the other, the shorts drawn high and tight upon her thighs. Then, her head moved and she looked slowly over her shoulder.

"W-what?" she stammered. "What did you cal-say?"

"Nothing," I said. "I guess I… nothing."

"Tell me," she said. "Tell me what you want, Rags."

"I want," I said. "I want…"

The unobtainable, that was all. The nonexistent. The that which never-would-be. I wanted it and I did not want it, for once achieved there would be nothing left to live for.

"I want you to get your butt out of my face," I said. "Fast. Before I kick it off of you."

4:

BOBBIE ASHTON

I finished at the Thorncastle estate about four-thirty in the afternoon, and Mr. Thorncastle-that fine, democratic fat-bottomed man- paid me off personally.

My bill came to twelve dollars. I looked at him from under my lashes as he paid it, and he added an extra five. Managing to stroke my hand in the process. He is a very juicy-looking character, this Thorncastle. I had some difficulty in getting away from him without kicking him in the groin.

Father was already at the table when I reached home. I washed hastily and joined him, begging his pardon for keeping him waiting. He snatched up his fork. Then he slammed it down, and asked me just how long I intended to keep up this nonsense.

"The yard work?" I said. "Why, permanently, perhaps. It would seem well suited to my station in life-you know, with so much racial discrimination-and-"

"Stop it!" His face whitened. "Don't ever let me hear you-"

"-and there's the money," I said. "A chance to advance myself financially."

"Like Ralph Devore, I suppose! Like the town odd-jobs man!"

I shrugged. The facts of the matter were under his nose even if he, like the rest of the town, was too dull-witted to see them. Ralph had earned approximately twenty-eight hundred dollars a year for the past twenty-two years. He had spent practically nothing. Ergo, he now had a minimum of fifty thousand dollars, and probably a great deal more.

He had it. He would have to. And now that his income was cut off, he would be worried frantic. For fifty thousand would not represent enough security to Ralph. Not fifty thousand or a hundred thousand. He would visualize its disappearing, vanishing into nothingness before his life span had run. He would be terrified, and his terror must certainly react terrifyingly upon Luane.

I wondered where he had hidden the money, since, naturally, he had hidden it-how else could he keep its possession a secret?-as, in his insecurity, he would feel that he had to.

Well, no matter where it was now. There was still this first stage of the game to play. When it was played out, I would concentrate on the money-locate and appropriate it. And watch what happened to Luane, then.

She had behaved very badly, Luane. She had made the serious mistake of telling the truth.

That was unfair; it was theft. The truth was mine-I had earned it painfully and it belonged to me. And now, after years of waiting and planning, it was worthless. A heap of rust, instead of the stout, sharp-pronged lever I was entitled to.

What good was the truth, now? How could I use it on him, now?

Not much. Not enough. Not nearly enough.

He was talking again, bumbling on with his nonsense about my returning to school whether I thought I was or not.

"You're going, understand? You're going to complete your education. You can finish up your high school here, or you can go away. And then you're going on to-"

"Am I?" I said.

"You certainly are! Why-what kind of a boy are you? Letting some gossips, some fool woman spoil your life! No one believes anything she says."

"Oh, yes, they do," I said. "Yes, they do, father. I could name at least three who do, right here in our own household."

He stared at me, his mouth trembling, the mist of fear and frustration in his eyes. I winked at him, hoping he would start blubbering. But of course he didn't. He has too much pride for that-too much dignity. Ah, what a proud, upright man my father is!

"You have to leave," he said slowly. "You must see that you have to leave this town. With your mind-with no outlet for your intelligence…"

"I'll think about it," I said. "I'll let you know what I decide."

"I said you'd leave! You'll do what I say!"

"I'll tell you what I'll do," I said. "Exactly, dear father, as I damned please. And if what pleases me doesn't please you, you know what you can do about it."

He stood up, abruptly, flinging his napkin to the table. He said, yes, he confounded well did know what he could do; and he'd just about reached the point where he was ready to do it.

"You mean you'd call in the authorities?" I said. "I'd hate to see you do that, father. I'd feel forced to go into the background of my supposed incorrigibility, and the result might be embarrassing for you."

I gave him a sunny smile. He whirled, and stamped away to his office.

He was back a moment later, his hat on, his medicine kit in one hand.

"Do one thing, at least," he said. "For your own good. Stay away from that Pavlov girl."

"Myra? Why should I stay away from her?" I said.

"Stay away from her," he repeated. "You know what Pete Pavlov's like. If-if you-he-"

"Yes?" I said. "I'm afraid I don't understand. What possible objection could Pavlov have to his daughter's going about with Doctor Ashton's well-bred, brilliant and, I might add, handsome son?"

"Please, Bob-" His voice sagged tiredly. "Please do it. Leave her alone."

I hesitated thoughtfully. After a long moment, I shrugged.

"Well, all right," I said. "If it means that much to you."

"Thank you. I-"

"I'll leave her alone," I said, "whenever I get ready to. Not before."

He didn't flinch or explode, much to my disappointment. Apparently he'd been partially prepared for the trick. He simply stared at me, hard-eyed, and when he spoke his voice was very, very quiet.

"I have one more thing to say," he said. "A considerable quantity of narcotics is missing from my stock. If I discover any further shortages, I'll see to it that you're punished- imprisoned or institutionalized. I'll do it regardless of what it does to me."

He turned and left.

I scraped up the dishes and carried them out into the kitchen.

Hattie was at the stove, her back turned to me. She stiffened as I went in, then turned part way around, trying to keep an eye on me while appearing occupied with her work.

Hattie is probably thirty-nine or forty now. She isn't as pretty as I remember her as a child-I thought she was the loveliest woman in the world then-but she is still something to take a second look at.

I put the dishes in the sink. I moved along the edge of the baseboard, smiling to myself, watching her neck muscles tighten as I moved out of her range of vision.

I was right behind her before fear forced her to whirl around. She pressed back against the stove, putting her hands out in a pushing- away gesture.

"Why, mother," I said. "What's the matter? You're not afraid of your own darling son, are you?"

"Go 'way!" Her eyes rolled whitely. "Lea' me alone, you hear?"

"But I just wanted a kiss," I said. "Just a kiss from my dear, sweet mother. After all, I haven't had one now, since-well, I was about three, wasn't I? A very long time for a child to go without a kiss from his own mother. I remember being rather heartbroken when-"

"D-don't!" she moaned. "You don't know nothin' about-Get outta here! I tell doctor on you, an' he-"

"You mean you're not my mother?" I said. "You're truly not?"

"N-no! I tol' you, ain't I? Ain't nothin', nobody! I-I-"

"Well, all right." I shrugged. "In that case..

I grabbed her suddenly, clamped her against me, pinning her arms to her sides. She gasped, moaned, struggled futilely. She didn't, of course, cry out for help.

"How about it," I said, "as long as you're not my mother. Keep it all in the family, huh? What do you say we-"

I let go of her, laughing.

I stepped back, wiping her spittle from my face.

"Why, Hattie," I said. "Why on earth did you do a thing like that? All I wanted was-What?" My heart did a painful skip-jump, and there was a choking lump in my throat. "What? I don't believe I understood you, Hattie."

She looked at me, lips curled back from her teeth. Eyes narrowed, steady, with contempt. With something beyond contempt, beyond disgust and hatred.

"You hear' me right," she said. "You couldn' do nothin'. Couldn' an' never will."

"Yes?" I said. "Are you very sure of that, my dearest mother?"

"Huh! Me, I tell you." She grinned a skull's grin. "Yeah, I ver' sure, aw right, my deares' son."

"And it amuses you," I said. "Well, I'll tell you, mother. Doubtless it is very funny, but I don't believe we'd better have any further displays of amusement. Not that I'd mind killing you, you understand. In fact, I'll probably get around to that eventually. But I have other projects afoot at the moment-more important projects, if I may say so without hurting your feelings-"

She moved suddenly, made a dash for her room. I followed her-it adjoins the kitchen-and leaned absently against the door. The locked door to my mother's room.

The door that had been locked for…

Yes, my recollection was right; it is always right. I had been about three the last time she had kissed me, the last time she had cuddled, babied, mother-and-babied me. I would have remembered it, even if I did not have almost total recall. For how could one forget such a fierce outpouring of love, the balm-like, soul-satisfying warmth of it?

Or forget its abrupt, never-to-be-again withdrawal?

Or the stupid, selfish, cruel, bewildering insistence that it had never been?

I was a very silly little boy. I was a very foolish, bad little boy, and I had better pray God to forgive me. I was not sweets or hon or darlin' or even Bobbie. I was Mister Bobbie-Master Robert. Mistah-Mastah Bobbie, a reborn stranger among strangers.

My continuing illnesses? Psychosomatic. The manifold masques of frustration.

My intelligence? Compensatory. For certainly I inherited none from either of them.

I listened at night, when they thought I was asleep. I asked a few questions, strategically spacing them months apart.

She'd had a child; she'd had to wet-nurse me. Where was that child? Dead? Well, where and when had he died? When and where had my mother died?

It was ridiculously simple. Only a matter of putting a few questions to a fatuous imbecile-my father-and an oversexed docile moron, my mother. And listening to them at night. Listening and wanting to shriek with laughter.

He'd be ruined if anyone found out. It would ruin my life, wreck all my chances.

It would be that way if. And what way did the blind, stupid, silly son-of-a-bitch think it was now? What worse way could it be than as it was now?

And, no, it did not need to be that way. Needn't and wouldn't have been for a man with courage and honesty and decency.

I had deduced the truth by the time I was five. Several years later, when I was able to be up and around-to post and receive letters secretly-I proved my deductions.

He, my father, had practiced in only one other state before coming to this one. It had no record of a birth to Mrs. James Ashton, or of the death of said Mrs. Ashton. There was, however, a record of the birth of a son to one Hattie Marie Smith (colored; unmarried; initial birth). And the attending physician was Dr. James Ashton.

Well?

Or perhaps I should say well!

As a matter of fact, I said goddammit, since the cigarette was scorching my fingers.

I dropped it to the floor, ground it out with my shoe and rapped on my mother's door.

"Mother," I said. "Mammy-" I knocked harder. "You heah me talkin' to you, mammy? Well, you sho bettah answer then, or your lul ol' boy gonna come in theah an' peel that soft putty hide right offen you. He do it, mammy. You knows all about him-doncha?-an' you knows he will. He gonna wait just five seconds, and then he's gonna bus' this heah ol' doah down an'…"

I looked at my wristwatch, began counting off the seconds aloud.

The bed creaked, and I heard a muffled croak. A dull, weary sound that was part sigh, part sob.

"Now, that's better," I said. "Listen closely, because this concerns you. It's my plan for finishing you off, you and my dearly beloved father… I am going to take you out to some deserted place, and bind you with chains. I shall so chain you that you will be apart from each other, and yet together. Inseparable yet touching. And you shall be stripped to your lustful hides. And in winter I shall douse you with ice- water, and in summer I shall smother you with blankets. And you shall shriek and shiver with the cold, and you shall scream and scorch with the heat. Yet you shall be voiceless and unheard.

"That will go on for seventeen years, mother. No, I'll be fair-deduct a couple of years. Then I'll bring you back here, pile you into bed together, and give you a sample of the hell that could never be hot enough for you. Set you on fire. Set the house on fire. Set the whole goddamned town on fire. Think of it, mammy! The whole population. Whole families, infants, children, mothers and fathers, grandparents and great-grandparents-all burning, all stacked together in lewd juxtaposition. And it shall come to pass, mammy. Yeah, verily. For to each thing there is a season, mammy, and a time-"

She was moaning peculiarly. Keening, I suppose you would say.

I listened absently, deciding that Pete Pavlov should be spared from my prospective holocaust.

No one else. At least, I could think of no one else at the moment. But certainly Pete Pavlov.

It was early, around eight o'clock, when I arrived at the dance pavilion. The bandstand was dark. The ticket booth-where Myra Pavlov serves as cashier-was closed. Only one of the ballroom chandeliers was burning. There was, however, a light in Pete's office. So I vaulted the turnstile, and started across the dance floor.

He was at his desk, counting a stack of bills. I was almost to the doorway when he looked up, startled, his hand darting toward an open desk drawer.

Then he saw it was I and he let out a disgusted grunt.

"Damn you, Bobbie. Better watch that sneakin' up on people. Might get your tail shot off."

I laughed and apologized. I said I hoped that if anyone ever did try to hold him up, he wouldn't try to stop them.

"You do, huh?" he said. "How come you hope that?"

"Why-why, because." I frowned innocently. "You have robbery insurance, haven't you? Well, why risk your life for some insurance company?"

I suspect, from the brief flicker in his eyes, the very slight change in facial expression, that he had entertained some such notion himself-that is, I should say, a fake robbery to collect on his insurance. He needed money, popular opinion notwithstanding. A robbery would be the simplest, most straightforward means of getting it. And he was a simple (I use the term flatteringly) straightforward man.

I would have been glad to help him perpetrate such a robbery. Broadly speaking, I would have done anything I could to help him. Unfortunately, however-although I respected him for it-he distrusted me instinctively.

So he treated me to a long, unblinking gaze. Then he grunted, spat in the spittoon and leaned back in his chair. He rocked back and forth in it, hands locked behind his head, looking down at the desk and then slowly raising his eyes to mine.

"I tell you," he said. "Used to be a hound dog around these parts. Fast-footedest goddammed dog you ever saw in your life. You know what happened to him?"

"I imagine he ran over himself," I said.

"Yup. Bashed his brains out with his own butt. Hell of a nice-looking dog, too, and he seemed smart as turpentine. Always wondered why he didn't know better'n to do a thing like that."

I smiled. Pete would not have wondered at all about the why of his allegorical dog. Nor the why of anything. Like myself, Pete's concern was with what things were, not how or why they had become that way.

He finished counting the money. He put it in a tin cash box, locked it up in his safe and came back to the desk. Sat down on a corner of it in front of me, one thick leg swung over the other.

"Well-" His hard, hazel-colored eyes rolled over on my face. "Figure on sleepin' in here tonight? Want me to move you in a bed?"

"I'm sorry." I got up reluctantly. "I was just-uh-"

"Yeah? Something on your mind?"

"N-no. No, I guess not," I said. "I just dropped by to say hello. I didn't have anything to do for a while, so I-"

He looked at me steadily. He spat at the spittoon without shifting his eyes. I cleared my throat, feeling a hot, embarrassing flush spread over my face.

He stood up suddenly, and started for the door. Spoke over his shoulder, his voice gruff.

"Ain't got nothing to do myself for a few minutes. Come on and I'll buy you a sody."

I followed him to a far corner of the ballroom; followed, since he kept a half-pace in front of me. I wanted to pay for the drinks, but he brushed my hand aside, dropped two dimes into the Coke machine himself.

He handed me a bottle. I thanked him and he grunted, jerking the cap on his own.

We stood facing the distant bandstand where the musicians were arriving. We stood side by side, almost touching each other. Separated by no more than a few inches-and silence.

He finished his drink, smacked his lips and dropped the bottle into the empty case. I finished mine reluctantly, disposed of the bottle as he had.

"Well…" He spoke as I straightened from the case; spoke, still looking out across the ballroom. "You and Myra steppin' out again tonight?"

I said, why, yes, we were. As soon as she got off work, that is. And after a moment, I added, "If that's all right with you, Mr. Pavlov."

"Know any reason why it shouldn't be?"

"Why-well, no," I said, "I guess not. I mean-"

"I'll tell you," he said. He hesitated, and belched. "I ain't got a goddamned bit of use for you. Never have had, far back as I can remember. But I guess you already know that?"

"Yes," I said. "And I can't tell you how sorry I am, Mr. Pavlov."

"Can't say I'm not sorry myself. Always rather like someone than dislike 'em." He belched again, mumbling something about the gas. "On the other hand, I got no real reason not to have no use for you. Nothing I can put my finger on. You've always been friendly and polite around me. I don't know of no dirty deals you've pulled, unless'n it's this stuff with Ralph, and I can't really call that dirty, considering. Might've gone off sideways like that myself when I was your age."

"I knew you'd understand," I said. "Mr. Pavlov, I-"

"I was sayin'-" He cut me off curtly. "I got no reason to feel like I do, and reasons are all I go by. People don't give me no trouble, I don't give them any. I rock along with 'em as long as they rock with me. And whether I like 'em or not don't figure in the matter. All right. I guess we understand each other. Now, I got to get busy."

He nodded curtly, and headed back toward his office.

I moved toward the exit.

Myra had come in while Pete and I were talking, and she called to me from the ticket booth. I looked her way blindly, my eyes stinging, misting. Not really hearing or seeing her. I went out without answering her, and sat down in my car.

I got a cigarette lighted. I took a few deep puffs, forcing away my disgusting self-pity. Recovering some of my normal objectiveness.

Pete detested me. It was fitting that he should-things being as they were. And I would not have had it any other way-things being as they were.

But what a pity, what a goddamned pity that they were that way! And why couldn't they have been another, the right and logical way?

Why couldn't my own dear father and mother, those encephalitic cretins, those gutless Jukesters, those lubricious lusus naturae-why couldn't they have had Myra inflicted upon them? Why should Pete have to suffer such a drab, spiritless wretch as she? Why couldn't they have had her, and why couldn't he have had-

Myra. A feeling of fury came over me every time I looked at her. I'd had some plans for her-vague but decidedly unpleasant-long before she came to the office that day a couple of months ago.

Father was away on some calls. I glanced at the notes on her file card.

This was her second trip. She was having menstrual difficulties-something that a good kick in the stomach or a dose of salts would have jarred her out of. But father, that wise and philanthropic Aesculapian, had set her up for a series of hormone shots.

She said she was in a hurry, so I prepared to administer the medication.

Yes, I do that: take care of routine patients. Rather, I did do it, until father became wary. I know a hell a lot more about medicine than he does. A hell of a lot more about everything than he does. In this case, for example, I knew that what Myra needed-deserved-was not hormone.

I gave her a hypodermic. She "flashed"-to use the slang expression; barely made it to the sink before she started vomiting. I told her it was perfectly all right, and gave her another shot.

Well, someone like that, someone with only part of a character, is made for the stuff. The stuff is made for them. She was hooked in less than a week. She doesn't go to father any more, but she does come to me.

I "treat" her now. I give her what she needs-and deserves. When I am ready to. And after certain ceremonies.

Ten-thirty came. Not more than five minutes later, which was as fast as she could make it, she was running toward the car. Begging before she had the door open.

I told her to shut up. I said that if she said one more word until I gave her permission, she would get nothing.

I had her well trained. She subsided, mouth twisting, gulping down the whimpers that rose in her throat.

I drove to a place about six miles up the beach-Happy Hollow, it is called, for reasons which you may guess. I suppose there is some such place in every community, dubbed with the same sly euphemism or a similar one.

It-this place-was not a hollow; not wholly, at least. Most of its area was hill, wooded and brushy, marked with innumerable trails and side-trails which terminated in tire marked, beach-like patches of sand.

I stopped at one of these patches. The only tire-marks were those of my own car.

I made her take her clothes off. I grabbed her. I shook her and slapped her and pinched her. I called her every name I could think of.

She didn't speak or cry out. But suddenly I stopped short, and gave her the shot. I was tired. There seemed no point in going on. Action and words, words and action- leading to nothing, arriving nowhere. It wasn't enough. There can be no real satisfaction without an objective.

Myra lay back in the seat, breathing in long deep breaths, eyes half shut. She didn't have a bad shape. In fact, without clothes on-she simply couldn't wear clothes-she shaped up quite beautifully. But only aesthetically, as far as I was concerned. I felt no desire for her.

I wanted to. My mind shrieked that I should. But the flesh could not hear it.

She dozed. I may have dozed myself, or perhaps I merely became lost in thought. At any rate, I snapped back to awareness suddenly, aroused by the dull lacing of light through the trees, the throb of a familiar motor.

Myra sat up abruptly. Stared at me, eyes wide with fright. I told her to sit still and be quiet. Just do what I told her to, and she'd be all right.

I listened to the motor, following the progress of the car. It stopped, with a final purring throb-throb, and I knew exactly where it had stopped.

I hesitated. I opened the door of the car.

"B-Bobbie…" A frightened whisper from Myra. "Where you going? I'm afraid to stay-"

I told her to shut up; I'd only be gone for a few minutes.

"B-but why? What're you going to-?"

"Nothing. I don't know. I mean-hell, just shut up!" I said.

I went down the trail a few yards. I branched off into another, and then another. I came to the end of it-near the end of it, and hunkered down in the shadows of the trees.

They weren't more than twenty feet away, Ralph Devore and that what's-her-name-the girl with the orchestra. I could see them clearly in the filtered moonlight. I could hear every word they said, every sound. And the way it looked and sounded…

I could hardly believe it, particularly of a guy like Ralph. Because when Ralph stepped out with 'em, it was for just one thing and he lost no time about getting it. Yet now with this girl-and, no, she certainly didn't hate him. She obviously felt the same way about him that he did her, and that way-

I didn't know what it was for a moment. Then, when I finally knew-remembered-realized-I refused to admit it. I grinned to myself, silently jeering them, jeering myself. Ralph was really making time, I thought. Here it was only the sixth week of the season, he'd only known this babe six weeks, and they were cutting up like a couple of newlyweds. Newlyweds, sans the sex angle. Which, of course, they'd soon be getting around to.

Maybe-I thought-I ought to do the silly jerk a favor. Go up to his house some night and bump off Luane. It could be made to look like an accident. And believe me, it would need to look damned little like one to leave Ralph in the clear. Father was the coroner, the county medical officer. As for the county attorney, Henry Clay Williams… I shook my head, choking back a laugh. You had to hand it to that goddamned Luane. She had a positively fiendish talent for tossing the knife, for plunging it into exactly the right spot to send the crap flying. Henry Clay Williams was a bachelor. Henry Clay Williams lived with his maiden sister. And Henry Clay Williams' sister had an abdominal tumor… which created a bulge normally created by a different kind of growth.

At any rate, and unless the job was done in front of witnesses, it would be ridiculously easy to get away with killing Luane. Just make it look like an accident, enough like one to give Brother Williams an out, and-

I leaned forward, straining to hear them, Ralph and the girl, for they were clinging even closer to each other than they had been, and their voices were consequently muffled:

"Don't you worry one bit, honey"-her. "I don't know how, but-but, gosh, there's got to be some way! I just love you so much, and you're so wonderful and-"

"Not wonderful 'nough for you"-him. Old love-'emand-scram Ralph, for God's sake! Why, he sounded practically articulate. "Ain't it funny, sweetheart? Here I am an old man-"

"You are not! You're the sweetest, darlingest, kindest, handsomest…"

"Anyways, I mean I lived all these years, and I reckon I never knew there was such a thing. Like love I mean. I guess I…"

I found that I was smiling. I scrubbed it away with my fist, scrubbed my eyes with my fist. But it kept coming back. That word, the one he'd spoken, the one I'd been ducking-it kept coming back. And I knew that there was no other word for what this was.

He wasn't going to pitch it to her. She wasn't going to hit him up for dough. They were in love-ah, simply, simply in love! Only- only!-in love. And, ah, the sweetness of it, the almost unbearable beauty and wonderment of it.

To be loved like that! More important, to love like that!

I smiled upon them, at them. Smiled like a loving god, happy in their happiness. Probably, I thought, I should kill them now. It would be such a wonderful way-time-to die.

I glanced around absently. I ran a hand back under the bushes, searching for a suitable club or rock. I could find none-nothing that would do the job with the instantaneousness necessary, nothing that was sufficiently sturdy or heavy.

I did locate a pointed, dagger-like stick, and I considered it for a moment. But a very little mental calculation established that it would never do. It wasn't long enough. It would never pass through that barrel-chest of Ralph's and go on into her bosom. And if I did not get them both at the same time, if I left one to live without the other-!

I almost wept at the thought.

A strange warmth spread over me. Spread down from my head and up from my feet. It increased, intensified, and I did not know what it was. How could I, never having experienced it before? And then at last I knew, and I knew what had brought it about.

I straightened up. I backed down the trail quietly, and then I turned and strode toward my car excitedly, my mind racing.

There could be nothing now, of course. Dope inhibits the sexual impulses, so she would have to be tapered off first. But that should be relatively easy; she should unhook almost as easily as she had been hooked. If I could just get the stuff to work with-and I would get it, by God! I'd kill that stupid son-of-a-bitch, my father, if he gave me any trouble…

I cut off the thought. Somehow the thought of parricide, entirely justifiable though it was, interfered with the other.

I would get what I needed in some way. That was all that mattered. And meanwhile I could be preparing her, laying the necessary groundwork. And meanwhile I knew.

I KNEW!

I reached the car. I climbed in, smiling.

She had her coat draped over her, but she was still undressed. I told her, lovingly, to get dressed. Lovingly, with tender pats and caresses, I started to help her.

"D-don't…!" She shivered. "What d-do you want?"

"Nothing," I said. "Only what you want, darling. Whatever you want, that's what I want."

She stared at me like a snake-charmed bird. Her teeth chattered. I took her in my arms, gently pressed my mouth against hers. I smiled softly, dreamily, stroking her hair.

"That's all I want, honey," I said. "Now, you tell me what you want."

"I w-want to go home. P-please, Bobbie. Just-"

"Look," I said. "I love you. I'd do anything in the world for you. I-"

I kissed her. I crushed her body against mine. And her lips were stiff and lifeless, and her body was like ice. And the glow was leaving me. The life and the resurrection were leaving me.

"D-don't," I said. "I mean, please. I only want to love you, only to love you and have you love me. That's all. Only sweetness and tenderness and-"

Suddenly I dug my fingers into her arms. I shook her until her silly stupid head almost flopped off.

I told her she'd better do what I said or I'd kill her.

"I'll do it, by God!" I slapped her in the face. "I'll beat your goddamned head off! You be nice to me, you moronic bitch! Be sweet, you slut! Y-you be gentle and tender and loving-you love me, DAMN YOU, YOU LOVE ME! Or I'll… I'll…"

5:

DR. JAMES ASHTON

It may ring false when I say SO, but I did love her. Back in the beginning and for several years afterward. It became impossible later on, will it as I would and despite anything I could do. For we could share nothing but a bed, and that less and less frequently. We could not share the most important thing we had. It was impossible-you see that, do you not? So the love went away.

But once long ago…

She was twenty-two or -three when she came to me. She was practically illiterate-a shabby, life-beaten slum dweller. There was a great deal of race prejudice in that state-there is still, unfortunately, so much everywhere- and Negroes got little if any schooling; they had no place to live but slums.

I hired her as my housekeeper. I paid her twice the pittance, the prevailing and starvation wage for Negro houseworkers. I gave her decent quarters, a clean attic room with a lavatory, there in my own house.

She was thin, undernourished. I saw to it that she got plenty of good wholesome food. She needed medical attention. I gave it to her- -taking time from paying patients to do so.

I shall never forget the day I examined her. I had suspected the beauty of her body, even in the shabby ill-fitting clothes I had first seen her in. But the revelation of it was almost more than the eyes could bear. Of all the nude women I had seen-professionally, of course-I had seen none to compare with her. She was like a statue, sculpted of ivory by one of the great masters. Even frail and half-starved, she-

But I digress.

She was very grateful for all I had done for her. Overflowing with gratitude. Her eyes followed me wherever I went, and in them there was that burning worship you see in a dog's eyes. I think that if I had ordered her to take poison she would have done so instantly.

I did not want her to feel that way. At least, I made it very clear to her that she owed me nothing. I had done no more than was decent, I explained. No more than one decent person should do for another-circumstances permitting. All I wanted of her, I said, was that she be happy and well, as such a fine young woman should be.

She would not have it so. I wanted-was more than willing to, at any rate-but not she. There was an immutable quality about her gratitude. Wherever I was, there was it: quietly omnipotent, passively resistant, a constant proffering. Impossible to dispose of; beyond, at least, my powers.

I did not wish to hurt her feelings. I could see no real harm in accepting what she was so anxious to give. It was all she had to give. And the gift of one's all is not lightly rejected.

Finally, around the middle of her second month of service with me, I accepted it.

There was no love in it that first time. None on my side, that is. It was merely a matter of saving her pride, and, of course-to a degree, at least-physical gratification. But after that, very quickly after that, the love came.

And it was only natural, I suppose, that it should.

I came from a very poor family; migrant sharecroppers. My parents had twelve children-three stillborn, five who died in early childhood. The largest house we ever lived in was two rooms. I was six or seven years old before I tasted cow's milk, or knew that there was such a thing as red meat. I was almost a grown man before I owned a complete set of clothes.

If it had not been for a plantation overseer's taking an interest in me, if he had not induced my father to let me remain with his family when my own moved on, I should probably have wound up like the rest of the brood. Like my living brothers and sisters… if they are living. Hoehands. Cotton-pickers. White trash.

Or, no, I do myself an injustice. I could never have been like them. I would have found some way to push myself up, overseer or no (and life with him, believe you me, was no bed of roses).

Through grade school, high school, college and medical school-in all that time, I cannot remember having a complete day of rest.

I worked my way every step of the way. I did nothing but work and study. I had no time for recreation, for girls. When I did have the time, when I was at last practicing and reasonably free from financial worry, I had no, well, knack with them. I was ill at ease around girls. I was incapable of the flippery-dippery and chitchat which they seemed to expect. I learned that one young lady I liked-and who, I thought, reciprocated my feeling-had referred to me as a "terrible stick."

So, there you have it. Hattie loved me. A woman more beautiful than any I had ever seen loved me. And I could be with her in the most intimate way-talk to her of the most intimate things (although she could not always answer intelligently)-and feel not a whit of awkwardness.

I fell in love with her deeply. It was inevitable that I should.

I was, of course, quite alarmed when I learned that she was pregnant. Alarmed and not a little angry. For she had failed to take the precautions I had prescribed and entrusted her to take. As I saw it, there was nothing for it but an abortion, even though she was three months along. But much to my chagrin, for she had always done as I wanted before, Hattie refused.

She was virtually tigerish in her refusal, threatening me with what she would do if I attempted to take the foetus from her. Then as I became firm-considerably shocked by her conduct-she turned to pleading. And I could not help feeling touched, nor the feeling that I had been taken sore advantage of.

The boy (she always spoke of him as a boy) would be able to "pass." After perhaps two hundred years of outrace-breeding, after eight generations, there would be a child of her blood who could pass for white… Couldn' I understand? Didn' I see why she jus' had to have it?

I relented. I could have insisted on the abortion, and she would have had to submit. But I did not insist. Except for me, the child would not have been born.

When the pregnancy began to show, I moved her out of the house. From that day on, until she gave birth, I called on her at least twice a week.

I could not go through such an experience now. There were times, even then, when I thought I could stand no more. A white man- a white doctor!-visiting in the Negro slums! Treating a Negro woman! It was unheard of, unprecedented-a soul-shaking, pride-trampling experience. White doctors did not treat Negroes. Generally speaking, no one did. They simply did without medical attention, administering to themselves, when it was necessary, with home remedies and patent nostrums; delivering their own babies or depending on midwives.

All in all, they seemed to get by fairly well in that manner-although, Negro vital statistics being what they are, or were, one cannot be sure. And in the good health she was enjoying, I think that Hattie could have gotten by quite well without me. But it apparently didn't occur to her to suggest it. She didn't suggest it, anyway; and I hardly felt able to.

For that matter, I don't know that I would have been willing to leave her untended. In fact, and on reflection, I am quite sure that I would not. I was deeply in love with her, deeply concerned for her and our child. Otherwise, I would not have done what I did when the birth became imminent.

Negroes were not treated by white doctors, as I have said. This meant that they were not admitted to white hospitals-and there were nothing but white hospitals. There was a ramshackle, poorly staffed county institution which admitted Negroes, but not unless it was absolutely impelled to. If a Negro was dying he might get in. If he did, he would probably never live to regret it.

Well. I was on the staff of one of the white hospitals. I had only recently obtained the appointment. I got Hattie admitted to it as a white woman, of Spanish-Indian descent.

I did that, knowing almost certainly that the fraud would be discovered. I loved her that much, thought that much of her-and, needless to say, the child.

They were giving her narrow-eyed looks from the moment she stepped through the door. They suspected her from the beginning; me and her. I could see that they did, see it and feel it. Then, when she was coming out of the anaesthesia, when she began to talk.

I shall never forget how they looked at me.

Or what the chief of staff said to me.

I was forced to remove her and the child the following day. I did not put it to an issue-how could I?-but if I had refused to remove them, I believe they would have been thrown out.

That was the end of my staff job, of course. The end of my practice, of everything in that state. Probably I can consider myself lucky that I wasn't lynched.

It was several days before I could nerve myself even to leave the house.

There was only one thing to do: relocate. Move to some place so remote and far away that no word of my secret would ever reach to it. Some place, yes-now that the die was cast-where Hattie could be accepted as my wife.

Down here where we were, they were always on the lookout for colored blood, expert at detecting it. But in a new location-the kind I had in mind-and with a little intensive coaching for Hattie, as to her speech and mannerisms… well, my plan seemed entirely feasible.

I believe it would have been, too, if circumstances had not turned out as they did.

I saw a practice advertised here at Manduwoc. I left Hattie and the boy behind, and came here to look at it.

It seemed to fit my needs to a t; in remoteness, in distance from that other state. It was not too big a thing financially, the town being as small as it was. But there was a large farm-trade area to draw from, and I was confident that a live-wire could double or even triple the present practice.

I decided to buy it. I went to Henry Clay Williams to have the papers drawn up.

Hank, I should say, was not then the county attorney. He was, in fact, only a few years out of law school. But he was a very shrewd man, very knowing; and he took an immediate liking to me. He looked upon me as a friend, as I did him. He was determined that I should get off on the right foot, and he knew how to go about it.

I owe a lot to Hank. More than any man I know of.

He was very adroit with his advice; he came out with it in a rather backhanded way. He'd lead with a feeler as to my notion on things; then, on the next time around, he'd move in with something a little stronger.

I mustn't think he was nosy, he said. Far be it from him to give a whoop what a man's politics or his religion or his race was. But there were still a hell of a lot of hidebound mossbacks around. People with foolish prejudices- shameful prejudices, in his opinion-although, of course, they had the same right to their ideas that he had to his. And the center of population for those people, by God- Hank gets pretty salty at times-seemed to be right here in Manduwoc!

I laughed. I said it was certainly unfortunate that people had to be that way.

"But what's a man going to do, Jim?" he said. "A man's got a living to make and wants to get somewhere, what can he do about 'em?"

"I guess there's nothing much he can do," I said. "It's a problem of education, evolution. Something that only time can take care of."

"I don't see how he can go around with a chip on his shoulder, do you, Jim?" he said. "Why, look, now. Some of my very best friends are-well, let's say, people that aren't exactly popular around here. My very best friends, Jim. But a man can't live off his friends, can he? That wouldn't be fair to them, would it? He has to live with the community as a whole, doesn't he?"

"That's the way it is," I said. "It's too bad, but-"

"It's outrageous," he said. "Absolutely outrageous, Jim. Why, my blood actually boils sometimes at some of the carryings-on in this town. I don't mean that they're not good people, understand? The salt of the earth in many respects. They're just narrow-minded, and they don't want to broaden. And if you try to buck 'em, give 'em the slightest reason to get their claws into you-hell, they don't actually need a real reason, if you know what I mean- why, they'll rip you apart. I've seen it happen, Jim. There's a man here in town, now, a Bohunk contractor name of Pete Pavlov. He…"

"I see," I said. "I understand what you mean, Hank."

"And you think I've got the right slant, Jim? You agree with me?"

"Oh, absolutely," I said. "There's no question about it. Now, there is one thing-in view of what you've told me. As I've mentioned, my wife died recently, and-"

"A great loss, I'm sure. My deepest sympathies to you, Jim."

"-and I have our infant son to take care of," I said. "Or, I should say, I have a Ne-nigger woman taking care of him. A wet nurse. I suppose I could get another one for him, but-"

"Oh, well," Hank shrugged. "She's a southern nigger, isn't she? Knows her place? Well, that'll be all right. After all, no one could expect you to take a baby away from its nurse."

"Well, I certainly wouldn't want to," I said.

"And you don't have to. As long as she stays in her place-and I guess you'll see to that, won't you? ha-ha- she'll get along fine."

I don't see how I could have done anything else. I certainly had no easy row to hoe myself. It is only in recent years that I have been able to take things a little easy. Before that it was work, work, work, until all hours of the day and night. Fighting to hold onto the old practice, to build it into something really worthwhile. Fighting to be someone, to build something… for nothing. I had no time for them, the boy and her. No time, at least, on many days. Perhaps-to be entirely truthful-I did not want time for them. And if I did not, I hardly see how I can be faulted for it.

It was awkward being with her, even in intimacy. She made me feel uncomfortable, guilty, hypocritical. I had become something here, and I was rapidly becoming more. I was a big frog in a little puddle. A deacon in the church. A director of the bank. A pillar in the community. Yet here I was, sleeping with a Negro wench!

I would have stopped it even if it had not become dangerous. My conscience would not have allowed me to continue.

As for the boy, I did-and do, I am afraid-love him… as I did her, so long ago. He was my own flesh and blood, my only son. And I loved him, as I loved her. But like her, although in a different way, he made me uncomfortable. It distressed me to be around him.

I cannot say why, exactly, but I am confident of one thing. It was not a matter of resentment.

I did not blame him, an innocent child, for my own tragic and irremediable error. If I could lay the whole truth before him, I might be able to make him understand. But naturally I cannot do that. It is impossible for him to be absolutely sure of the truth. He may guess and suspect and think, but he cannot know. He can only know if I admit it, so of course I never will.

Probably, he wouldn't understand, anyway. He wouldn't allow himself to. He is too selfish, too filled with self-pity- yes, despite his arrogant manner. If he understood, he could not play the martyr. He would have no justification for his vileness and viciousness-assuming, that is, that it could be justified. For certainly, whatever I may or may not have done, such conduct could never be justified.

I don't know how such a-a creature could be my son.

I don't know what to do about him.

I have no control over him whatsoever. I can't-and he knows I can't-appeal to the authorities for help. And, no, it isn't because of the scandalous, fiendish lies he would tell. I can be hurt by scandal, of course; in fact, I have been hurt. But not greatly. I am too thoroughly entrenched here. Everyone knows too well where Dr. James Ashton stands, and what he stands for.

I have not taken the stringent measures (which I doubtless should have) because I love him. I can't cause him hurt, regardless of how much he deserves it. Also, as you may have surmised, I am afraid of him.

It is a hideous thing to live in terror of one's own son, but I do. I try to keep it concealed, to carry on, to maintain some semblance of father-and-son relationship, but it is becoming increasingly difficult. I am terrified of him, more and more every day. And he is very well aware of the fact. I have the frightful feeling at times that he can read my mind. At times, I am almost sure that he can. He seems to know what I am going to do even before I know it myself. Nonsensical as it sounds, he does know. So, I have not taken the steps which I doubtless should have. I have avoided seriously contemplating such steps. He would kill me before I could carry them out.

He is capable of it. He has threatened to-to kill both Hattie and me.

To be fair to him, if that is the right word, he has made no such threats recently. There were occasions recently when I was hopeful that he might be coming to his senses. But…

About three weeks ago, I thought I saw signs that he was losing interest in that degrading yard work. He was leaving later in the mornings, returning earlier at night. He apparently felt-I thought-that he had cheapened me all he could by doing such work, and was now on the point of dropping it.

I asked him to do so. "Not on my account," I said. "I know it's useless to appeal to you on those grounds. Just do it for yourself. Just think of what it looks like for a boy of your background, and intelligence to-"

"I'm considering it," he said. "I may possibly do it, if you don't urge me to it."

"Well, that's fine," I said. For, God pity me, there was some comfort-a relative lot-in even such an insolent, heartless reply as that. "You don't have to do that kind of work, or any work. I'll be delighted to give you any money that you need."

"Don't be offensive," he said. "Don't bother me."

He said it quite mildly. I felt considerably encouraged.

Then, I came home the following night to find every drawer, every cabinet, in my office had been opened and rummaged through. No, he hadn't broken them open. He had simply picked all the locks.

Now, he was seated in my chair, his feet up on my desk, absently smoking a cigarette.

I was so angry that for a moment I forgot my terror. I told him that he had better explain himself, and promptly, or he would have serious cause to regret it.

"Where is the stuff?" he said. "In your safety-deposit box?"

"It's where you'll never-what stuff?" I said. "I've warned you, Bobbie, you-"

"I had an idea it was," he nodded. "Well, it looks like I'll just have to buy some."

He got up and started to leave. I grabbed him and whirled him around. "You rotten, filthy scum!" I said. "I'll tell you what you'll do, and what will happen to you if you don't! You'll-"

"Let go of me," he said.

"I'll let go of you! I'll drag you straight down to the courthouse! I'll-"

I let go of him suddenly. The fiendish sadistic whelp had crushed his cigarette into my wrist.

"Don't ever do anything like that again," he said calmly. "Do you understand me, father?"

"Bobbie… son," I said. "For God's sake, what do you want? What are you trying to do? That-that girl-"

"Don't interfere with me," he said.

He drove into the city the next day. He has made one other trip in since then. For what purpose, I needn't explain.

How he manages it I don't know. How a seventeen-year-old boy in a strange city can promptly locate a narcotics peddler and make a purchase, I don't know.

Perhaps he doesn't buy it. God-and I know I'm being ridiculous-he may make it! I have an insane notion that he could, if he wanted to. Anything that is mean and vicious, rotten, cruel, filthy, senseless…!

He is still doing the yard work, of course. Degrading himself, playing the flunkey, to buy dope for her.

If I could discover his motive, I might be able to do something. But what possible motive could he have? The girl is completely undesirable. As intelligent and handsome as he is, he could have his way with virtually any girl in town, without the deadly risk he is running. For it is a deadly one. It would be so, even without the complication of narcotics. Pete has only to find them together-in a certain way-and that will be the end.

Pete will kill him. Pete might even kill me.

I have almost driven myself crazy wondering what to do, but I can think of nothing. I can only wait, go on as I always have and wait- -watch helplessly while doom approaches.

And Luane is responsible. Bobbie was always somewhat peculiar, withdrawn, but except for that sluttish old hypochondriac it would never have happened.

I broke with her last week. I may have to tolerate him, but I do not have to put up with her.

I told her there was nothing at all wrong with her, that I would not under any circumstances visit her again, that if she wanted a doctor she would have to call another (the nearest is twenty miles away). Then I walked out, leaving her to whine and complain to her own filthy self.

I should have done that long ago. I forebore only because it might seem that I was bothered by her slander, and thus lend weight to it.

Bobbie seemed pleased when I mentioned the matter casually at the dinner table.

"That was very wise of you," he said. "I'd expected you to do it sooner."

"Well," I said, "as a matter of fact, I had been con-"

"But, no, I can see that this way is Bette" he said. "It eliminates you pretty conclusively from the potential list of suspects. Now, if you'd cut her off sooner, let it be known that you were no longer going near her place before you established that you held no grudge against her… "

"Stop it!" I said. "What are you talking about, anyway? I refuse to listen to any more such nonsense!"

"Why, of course." He winked at me, grinning. "It isn't very discreet, is it? And we don't need to talk, do we, dear father?"

I have been wondering lately if he is really my son. Wondering idly, wishfully perhaps, but still speculating on the matter. After all, if she would hop into bed with me so quickly, why not with another? How do I know what she was doing during the hours when I was away from the house? Obviously, she was of not much account. A woman who would behave as shamelessly as she did, tempting me until I could withstand it no longer, playing upon my kindness and sense of honor…

Well, never mind. He is my son. I know it. And I would be the last man in the world to attempt to evade my responsibilities. But that changes nothing, as far as she is concerned.

She had better not complain to me any more about Bobbie's abuse. Not one word. Or I personally will give her something to complain about. I would send her packing if I dared to, which regrettably I don't. It would look bad, as though the scandal had hit home. It would look like I was afraid-on the run.

So things stand; to this sorry, unbearable state I have come. Chained to a Negro woman-and I am not responsible to her. Inflicted with a son who-who-well, at least he isn't a Negro. Not really. If a Negro was only one-sixteenth white, would you call him a white man? Well, it's the same proposition. It's-

It's unbearable. Maddening. Completely unjust.

I don't know what I would do without the comfort of Hank Williams' friendship. I spend much of my free time with him, and he spends much of his with me. We understand each other. He admires and respects me. He is glad that I have gotten ahead, even though his own success has been somewhat modest. True, he seems unaware that he hasn't gotten on-he seems to have forgotten that he ever talked of being senator or governor. But, no matter. He is my friend, and he has proved it in many ways. If he wishes to be a little smug, boastful, I can bear with it easily. Never in any way do I let on that his "success" wears a striking resemblance to failure.

We were talking the other night about our early days here. And he, as he is wont to do, passed some remark as to his progress since then. I said that his was a career to be proud of, that very few lawyers had risen so high in so brief a time. He beamed and smirked; and then with that earnest warmth which only he is capable of, he said that he owed his success to me.

"Well," I said. "I've certainly boosted you whenever I could, but I'm afraid I-"

"Remember our first talk together? The day I was drawing up those papers for you?"

"Why, yes," I said. "Of course I remember. You set me straight here, saw that-"

"Sure! Uh-hah. You sly old rascal you!" He threw back his head, and laughed. "I set you straight. A country bumpkin, a small town lawyer, set a big city doctor straight. He told him how to get on in the world!"

I didn't say anything. I was too bewildered. For I had told him nothing that day. Nothing until I had pretty well ascertained his own feelings.

"Oh, I understood you, all right!" he laughed. "Naturally, you couldn't come straight out with it; you had to spar around a little, make sure of how I felt first. But…"

He winked at me, grinning. I stared at him, feeling my hands tighten on the arms of my chair; then, as the murderous hatred drained out of me, feeling them slowly relax and grow limp.

He had done me no injury. His intelligence, his moral stamina, that vaguely concrete thing called character-all had been stunted at the outset. Perhaps they would have amounted to little, regardless; perhaps environment and heredity would have dwarfed them, without the withering assistance of our long-ago, initial conversation.

At any rate, he had not harmed me; he had not changed me one whit from what I essentially was. Others, doubtless, many others, but not me.

If anything, it was the other way around.

He was frowning slightly, looking a little uncomfortable and puzzled. He repeated his phrase about my having had to spar around with him, until I was sure of how he felt.

"And how did you feel, Hank?" I said. "Basically-deep down in your heart?"

"Oh, well," he shrugged. "You don't need to ask that, Jim. You know how I stand on those things."

"But back then," I insisted, "right back in the beginning. Tell me, Hank. I really want to know."

"We-el-" He hesitated, and spread his hands. "You know, Jim. About like most people, I guess. A lot of people, anyway. Kind of on the fence, and wishing I could stay there. But knowing I had to jump one way or the other, and knowing I was pretty well stuck on the side I jumped to. I-well, you know what I mean, Jim. It's kind of hard to put into words."

"I see," I said. "I hoped… I mean, I thought that was probably the way you felt."

"Well," he said; and, after a moment, again, "Well."

He studied me a trifle nervously; then, unable to read my expression, he gave out with that bluffly amiable, give-me-approval laugh of his.

It was a hearty laugh, but one that he was ready to immediately modulate. His face was flushed with high good humor: a mask of good-fellowish hilarity which could, at the wink of an eye, with practiced effortlessness, become the essence of gravity, sobriety, seriousness.

I laughed along with him. With him, and at myself. Our laughter filled the room, flowed out through the windows into the night; echoing and reechoing, sending endless ripples on and on through the darkness. It remained with us, the laughter, and it departed from us. Floating out across the town, across hill and dale, across field and stream, across mountain and prairie, across the night-lost farm houses, the hamlets and villages and towns, the bustling, tower-twinkling cities. Across-around-the world, and back again.

We laughed, and the whole world laughed.

Or should I say jeered?

Suddenly I got up and went to the window. Stood there unseeing, though my eyes were wider than they had ever been, my back turned to him.

And where there had been uproar, there was now silence. Almost absolute silence.

He could not stand that, of course. After almost twenty years, it dawned on me that he could not. Whenever there is silence, he must fill it. With something. With anything. So, after he had regained his guffaw-drained breath, after he had achieved a self-satisfactory evaluation of my mood, he spoke again. Went back to the subject of our conversation.

"Well, anyway, Jim. As I was saying, I'm eternally grateful to you. I hate to think what might have happened if we hadn't had that talk."

I winced, unable to answer him for a moment. Immediately his voice tightened, notched upward with anxiety.

"Jim… Jim? Don't you look at it that way, too, Jim? Don't you kind of hate to think-"

"Oh, yes-" I found my voice. "Yes, indeed, Hank. On the other hand…"

"Yeah? What were you going to say, Jim?"

"Nothing," I said. "Just that I doubt that it would have changed anything. Not with men like us."

6:

MARMADUKE "GOOFY" GANNDER

(INCOMPETENT)

When I awakened it was morning, and I was lying on the green pavement of The City of Wonderful People, and a hideous hangover held me in its thrall.

I sat up by degrees, shaking and shuddering. I massaged my eyes, wondering, yea, even marveling, over the complete non- wonderment of the situation. For lo! I invariably have a hangover in the morning, even as it is invariably morning when I awaken: and likewise, to complete the sequence of non-marvelousness, I invariably awaken in The City of Wonderful People.

"Hell," I thought (fervently); "the same today, yesterday and-Ouch!"

I said the last aloud, adding a prayerful expletive, For the sunlight had stabbed into my eyes, speared fierily into my head like a crown of thorns. In my agony, I rocked back and forth for a moment; and then I staggered to my feet and stumbled over to Grandma's bed.

It was not a very nice bed, compared to those of the City's other inhabitants. Untended, except for my inept ministrations, it was protected only by an oblong border of wine bottles, which seemed constantly to be getting broken. And it was sunken in uncomfortably: and the grass was withered and brown-yeah, generously fertilized as it obviously was by untold numbers of dogs, cats and rodents. The headboard of the bedstead was of weathered, worm-eaten wood, a dwarfed phallus-like object bearing only her name and the word "Spinster": painfully, or perhaps, painlessly, free of eulogy.

I studied the bleak inscription, thinking, as I often do when not occupied with other matters, that I should do something about it. I had considered substituting the words "Human Being," with possibly a suffixed "Believe It Or Not." But Grandma had not liked that: she had considered it no compliment. And she had made no bones-no pun intended-about letting me know it.

I sat facing her bed, my head bowed against the sun, staring down into the sunken hummock. The grass rustled restlessly, whispering in the wind; and after a time there was a dry, snorting chuckle.

"Well?" Grandma said. "Penny for your thoughts."

"Now, that-" I forced a smile. "Now, that is the sort of thing that brings on inflation."

Grandma snickered. She asked me how I was getting along with my book.

I said fine, that, in fact, I had finished it.

"Well, let's hear some of it," Grandma said. "Start right with the beginning."

"Certainly, Grandma," I said. "Certainly… 'Once upon a time, there were two billion and a half bastards who lived in a jungle, which weighed approximately six sextillion, four hundred and fifty quintillion short tons. Though they were all brothers, these bastards, their sole occupation was fratricide. Though the jungle abounded in wondrous fruits, their sole food was dirt. Though their potential for knowledge was unlimited, they knew but one thing. And what they knew was only what they did not know. And what they did not know was what was enough."

I stopped speaking.

Grandma stirred impatiently. "Well, go on."

"That's all there is," I said.

"But I thought you said you'd finished. That's no more than you had before."

"It's all there is," I repeated. "As I see it, there is nothing more to say."

We were silent for a time. Without talk to divert me, my hangover began to return, crept slowly up through my body and over my head. Shaking me, sickening me, gnawing at me inside and out like some hateful and invisible reptile.

Grandma snickered sympathetically. "Pretty sick, aren't you?"

"A little," I said. "Something I took internally seems to have disagreed with me. Or, I should say-in all fairness- I disagreed with it. It was entirely friendly and tractable until I removed it from the bottle."

"You know what to do about it," Grandma said. "You know what you've got to do."

"I don't know whether I can make it," I said. "Rather, I have a strong suspicion that I can't make it."

"You've got to," Grandma said, "so stop wasting good breath. Stop talking and start moving."

I groaned piteously, making futile motions of arising. The flesh was willing, but also weak. And as for spirit, I had none whatsoever.

"Verily, Grandma," I moaned. "Verily, verily. I would swap my soul to Satan for one good drink."

"Cheapskate," said Grandma. "Now, cut out the gab and get on your way."

I nodded miserably. Somehow, I managed to get to my feet. "I shall do as you say, Grandma," I said.

Grandma made no reply. Presumably she had returned to her well-earned sleep.

I turned and tried to tiptoe away from her. I lost my balance and fell flat on my face, and minutes passed before I could pick myself up again. Finally, after several similar fallings and pickings-up, I reached the road to town.

A truck was coming from the opposite direction. It looked like Joe Henderson's, and it was. I swung an arm, limply, thumb upraised, in the gesture as old as hitchhiking. Joe slowed down, and came to a stop. Then, as I reached for the door, he jabbed one finger into the air, and roared away.

I walked on, more strengthened, more firm in my purpose than otherwise. I wondered what loss Joe could suffer that could not be recouped by insurance, and I decided that the tires of his truck would be a very good bet.

Another farm truck drove up behind me-Dutch Eaton's. Dutch stopped and leaned out, asked me solicitously if I was tired of walking.

"Yes," I said, "but please spare me the suggestion that I run a while. It was not very amusing even when I first heard it, back during my cradle days."

His fat face reddened with anger. He sputtered, "Why, you crazy, low-down-!"

"Listen," I said. "Listen, listen, Mr. Eaton. What is it that is gutless, brainless and moves around on wheels? A swine, Mr. Eaton. A pig in overalls."

He had been easing the door open. Now, he sprang out with a furious roar, and, whirling, I also sprang. I am almost always equal to such emergencies. Weak though I may have been a moment before, the strength and the agility to save myself invariably come to me. And they did now.

So I leaped the ditch, and vaulted easily over the fence. I walked on up into the orchard in the rear of the Devore estate, listening to Dutch curse me, and, finally, drive away.

Temporarily, I was so absorbed in thought that I almost forgot my hangover. In a sense, I had reason to be grateful to Dutch Eaton and Joe Henderson. Yet I must confess that the emotion I felt for them was very far from gratitude.

Joe and Dutch, I thought. They had been on bad terms with one another for years. What would be the result, say, if Joe's tires should be slashed on the same night that Dutch's barn burned down?

"Lord World forgive me," I murmured, "for their minds are even as those of a Paleolithic foetus, and I know all too damned well what I do."

I had passed through the orchard by now, and arrived at the barnyard. Moving boldly but quietly, I went through the gate, crossed the barnyard and backyard, and entered the back door of the house.

No, there was no danger. I knew that, having visited the place several times before. Ralph would be away. Luane would be in bed, and her bedroom was on the front. As long as I was quiet, and no one can be more quiet than I, I could prowl the downstairs at will.

I stopped inside the door a moment, listening. Faintly, from upstairs, Luane's voice drifted down to me as she talked over the telephone:

"… course, I hate to say anything either. Far be it from me to say a word about anyone, and you know it, Mabel. But a thing like that-a young girl lifting her skirts for a nigger-and that father of hers, always acting so high and mighty…"

I hesitated, feeling vaguely impelled to do something. Knowing that if anything could ever have been done, it was too late now. Pete Pavlov would soon hear the gossip. As soon as he ascertained its truth, he would act. And there could be no doubt about how he would act- what he would do.

I frowned, shrugged, and pushed the matter out of my mind; mentally disconnecting the vicious whine of Luane's voice. I could not help the inevitable. On the other hand, I hoped, I could help myself to a drink; and my need for one was growing.

I opened the cupboard, a familiar section of it. I studied the several bottles of flavoring extract, my mouth watering. And then miserably, having noted the labels, I turned away. There was no end, apparently, to Ralph's skimping. Since my last visit, he had substituted cheap, nonalcoholic extracts for the fine, invigorating brands he had previously stocked.

I looked through the other cupboards. I hesitated over a large bottle of floor polish: then, insufficiently intrigued by its five per cent alcoholic content, I turned away again. Finally, I lifted a trap door in the floor, and went down into the cellar.

I had no luck there, either. Ralph's cider was freshly made-still sweet; and he had done his canning as expertly as he did everything else. Out of all the endless jars of fruit and vegetables, there was not a one that was beginning to ferment.

I went back up into the kitchen. Sweat pouring off of me, my nerves screaming for the balm of drink. I went through the connecting door to the front hall, and stood at the foot of the stairs.

There would be plenty to drink up there. Rubbing alcohol. Female tonic. Liniment. Perhaps even something that was made to be drunk. And if Luane would only go to sleep, if she would cease her poisonous spewing for only a few minutes.

But, obviously, she would not. Already she had another party on the wire, and when she had finished with that one she would immediately ring up another. And so on throughout the day. She would never stop-unless she was stopped. As well she deserved to be, aside from my crying need. But I could not envision myself now in the role of stopper, and being unable to I could not act as such.

Another day, perhaps. Some other day, or night, when thirst and hopelessness brought me here again.

I left the house. I retraced my steps through the orchard, and walked toward town, turning eventually into the alley that ran behind Doctor Ashton's house.

Doctor Ashton would not be at home at this hour, nor would he assist me if he was. As for his son, Bobbie, who doubtless was also away, I had accepted his help but once, and that once was more than enough. I still shuddered when I recalled the experience. What he gave me, that angel-faced phlegmatic fiend, I do not know. But it practically removed my bowels, and nausea shook me like a terrier-shaken rat for the ensuing three days.

I could look for nothing, then, from Ashton or his son. But the Negro woman, Hattie, would be at home; she never went anywhere. And doubtless out of superstition- a kind of awe of the so-called insane-she had given me drink several times in the past.

I knocked on the back door. There was a sluff-sluff of house slippers, and then she was standing at the screen, looking out at me dully.

"Go 'way," she said, before I could speak. "Go 'way and stay 'way. Don't want no more truck with you."

I read the tone of her voice, the reason behind her attitude. At least, I believe I did. I told her she was completely mistaken if she believed I was bad luck.

"Listen, listen, Miss Hattie," I said. "You see this caul in my left eye? Now, I'm sure you know that a man with a caul in his eye-"

"I knows you an' 'at eye bettah be moving," she said. "You an' it want to go on keepin' company. Get now, you heah me? Get along, crazy man!"

"Please," I said. "Please do not refer to me as crazy. I have a document in my pocket, signed by the state's chief psychiatrist, certifying to my sanity. Now, surely, and even though our mental hospitals are crowded to twice their capacity, he wouldn't have declared me sane if-"

"Okay," she cut in flatly. "Okay. You stays right there, an' I gives you a drink, awright."

She turned away from the screen. I could not see what she was doing, but I heard water gushing into what apparently was a large flat pan.

Hastily, I got off the steps and moved back into the yard. "Listen, listen," I said. "You don't need to do that. I'm leaving right now."

She came to the door again, eyes sparkling in malicious triumph. She said that I had better leave, and stay left.

"But you had better not," I said. "Listen, listen, Miss Hattie. Leave the house at no time. Particularly do not leave it at night. Great evil will befall you if you do."

A trace of fear tightened the contours of her off-ivory face. "Huh! What make you think I goin' anywhere?"

"Listen, listen," I said. "Because it is so written that you may, and that great and dreadful evil will result. So it is written. But listen, listen. If I had a drink-a very large one-I could doubtless change the writing."

I had been too eager. She let out a grunt of relief and unbelief, and returned to the kitchen.

I continued on my dreary, drinkless way.

Frequently, or I should say occasionally, I have had some success at the courthouse. There are always a number of loafers around; also, needless to say-and if you will excuse the redundancy-the county office-holders. So I went there today, hoping to amuse them as I sometimes had in the past. To titillate and entertain them with my wisdom, and thus obtain a few coins. Alas, however! Alas, and verily, and lo. Seldom have I been appreciated less than on this day, the day when my need was greatest.

I was chased out of office after office. I was brushed aside, cursed out, elbowed and shoved along by one loafer after another… I had been unwilling to call on Pete Pavlov except as a last resort, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it was quite a long walk across town to the beach area; an almost intolerable walk for one in my condition. For another, I had called upon him so often in the past that further appeals would not only be embarrassing, but were apt to prove fruitless.

There was nothing else to do now, however; and when there is nothing else to do I do what there is nothing else to do.

Shaking and wobbling, I walked the several blocks through town, entered the dance pavilion and crossed the wide, waxed floor to the door of his office. He was bent over an account ledger, cursing and mumbling to himself now and then as he turned its pages. I waited, nervously, my hands twitching and trembling even as the leaves of an aspen.

Not many people will agree with me, but Mr. Pavlov is a very kindly, soft-hearted man. On the other hand-and everyone will agree with me on this-he is no fool. And the merest hint, intentional or no, that he might be will send him into an icy rage.

He looked up at last, took the tobacco cud from his mouth, and dropped it into a convenient gaboon. "What the hell you want?" he said, wiping his hand on his pants. "As if I didn't know."

"Listen, listen, Mr. Pavlov," I said. "Humiliated and embarrassed though I am, I find myself impelled to-"

He yanked open a desk drawer, took out a bottle and glass and poured me a drink. I gulped it, and extended the glass. He returned it and the bottle to the drawer.

"Tell you what I'll do with you," he said. "I'll-no, you listen-listen for a change! You go back there in the john and wash up-and use some soap, by God, get me?-and I'll stake you to a square meal."

I said, certainly, certainly, yessir: I could certainly use a good meal. "You can give me the price of the meal now, Mr. Pavlov. That will save time and time is money, and-"

"And the farmer hauled another load away," said Mr. Pavlov. "Just keep on standing there, arguing with me, and you won't get nothing but a kick in the butt."

He meant it; Mr. Pavlov always means what he says. I departed hastily for the washroom. After all, this was the best offer I had had all day-the meal, I mean, not the kick-and I had a notion that it might be improved upon.

I washed thoroughly: my hands, wrists and those portions of my face that were not covered by beard. It was probably as clean as I have been during the thirty years of my existence.

I returned to the office, where Mr. Pavlov complimented me reservedly.

"Looks like you got a few coats of rust off. Why don't you chop that damned hair and them whiskers off, too? Ought to, by God, or else buy yourself a bedsheet and sandals."

"Listen, Mr. Pavlov," I said. "I will do whatever you say. If you would like to give me the money for a barber-or a bedsheet and sandals-along with the price of a meal, I will-"

"I ain't giving you a nickel," said Mr. Pavlov. "I'll take you to a restaurant and pay your check myself."

I protested that he was being unfair: it was implicit in our agreement that I should spend the money on liquor. He grunted, studying me with thoughtfully narrowed eyes.

"Shut up a minute," he said. "Goddammit, if I give you another drink, will you shut up and let me think?"

"Listen, Mr. Pavlov," I said. "For another drink, I would-would-"

I broke off helplessly. What wouldn't one do when he is slowly being crucified?

I snatched the drink from his hand. I took it at a gulp, noting that he had left the bottle on the desk in front of him.

"Huh-uh," he said, as I extended my glass. "Not now, anyways. I got something to say to you, and I want to be damned sure you understand."

"Listen," I said. "I understand much better when I'm drinking. The more I drink the more my understanding increases."

"Shut up!" There was a whip-like crack to his voice. "Now, here's what I was going to say, and you'd better not repeat it, see? Don't ever peep a word about it to anyone. Suppose I was to give you something of mine. Kind of let you take it away from me. I mean, nobody would know that it was you that took it, but-Goddammit, are you listening to me?"

"Certainly, certainly, yessir," I said. "If you were thinking about pouring a drink for yourself, Mr. Pavlov, I will take one, too."

"Dammit, this is important to you," he said. "There'd be a nice piece of change in it for you, and all you'd have to do is-" He broke off with a disgusted grunt. "Hell! I must be going out of my mind to even think about it."

"You appear very depressed, Mr. Pavlov," I said. "Allow me to pour a drink for you."

"Pour one for yourself," he snarled, with unaccustomed naivete. "Then you're gettin' the hell out of here to a restaurant."

It was a quart bottle, and it was practically full.

I picked it up, and ran.

I hated to do it, naturally. It was not only ungrateful, but also shortsighted; in eating the golden egg, figuratively speaking, I was destroying a future hen. I did it because I could not help myself. Because it was another nothing-else-to-do.

When a man is drowning, he snatches at bottles.

I ran, making a wild leap toward the door. And I tripped over the door sill, the bottle shot from my hands, and it and I crashed resoundingly against the ballroom floor.

I scrambled forward on my stomach, began to lap at one of the precious puddles of liquor.

Mr. Pavlov suddenly kicked me in the tail, sent me scooting across the polished boards. He yanked me to my feet, eyes raging, and jerked me around facing him.

"A fine son-of-a-bitch you turned out to be! Now, get to hell out of here! Get out fast, and take plenty of time about showing up again."

"Certainly," I said. "But listen, listen, Mr. Pavlov. I-"

"Listen, hell! I said to clear out!"

"I will, I am," I said, backing out of his reach. "But please listen, Mr. Pavlov. I will be glad to assist you in a fake holdup. More than glad. You have been very good to me, and I will welcome the opportunity to do something for you."

He had been moving toward me, threateningly. Now he stopped dead in his tracks, his face flushing, eyes wavering away from mine.

"What the hell you talkin' about?" he said, with attempted roughness. "You better not go talkin' that way to anyone else!"

"You know I won't," I said. "I don't blame you for distrusting me after the exhibition I just put on, but-"

He snorted half-heartedly. He said, "You're crazy. Crazy and drunk. You don't know what you're sayin'."

"Yes, sir," I said. "And I don't know what you said. I didn't hear you. I wasn't listening."

I turned and left. I went out onto the boardwalk, wondering if this after all was not the original sin, the one we all suffer for: the failure to attribute to others the motives which we claim for ourselves. The inexcusable failure to do so.

True, I was not very prepossessing, either in appearance or actions. I was not, but neither was he. He was every bit as unreassuring in his way as I was in mine. And as you are in yours. We were both disguised. The materials were different, but they had all come from the same loom. My eccentricity and drunkenness. His roughness, rudeness and outright brutality.

We had to be disguised. Both of us, all of us. Yet obvious as the fact was, he would not see it. He would not look through my guise, as I had looked through his, to the man beneath. He would not look through his own, which would have done practically as well.

It was too bad, and he would be punished for it-as who is not?

And I was in need of more-much, much more-to drink.

Down at the end of the walk, a girl was standing at the rail, looking idly out to sea. I squinted my eyes, shaded them with my hand. After a moment, she turned her head a little, and I recognized her as the vocalist with the band.

She was clad in bathing garb, but a robe was draped over the rail at her side. It seemed reasonable to assume that the robe would have a pocket in it, and that the pocket would have something in it also.

I walked down to where she stood. I harrumphed for her attention and executed a low bow, toppling momentarily to one knee in the process.

"Listen, listen," I said. "How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O, my princess. Thy-"

I broke off abruptly, noting that her feet were bare. I glanced at her midriff, and began anew:

"'Thy navel is like-'"

"You get away from me, you nasty thing, you!" she said. "Go on, now! I don't give money to beggars."

"But who else would you give money to?" I said. "Not, surely, to people with money."

"You leave me alone!" Her voice rose. "I'll scream if you don't!"

"Very well," I said, and I moved back up the boardwalk. "Oh, verily, very well. But beware the night, madam. Lo, and a ho-ho-ho, beware the night."

The warning seemed justified. Molded as she was, the night could hold quite as much danger for her as it did delight.

Ahead of me, I saw Mr. Pavlov come out of the pavilion and swagger away toward town. Studying him, his high-held head, the proud set of his shoulders, the hurt I had felt over his caution in talking to me was suddenly no more.

He had behaved thusly I knew-I knew-because he actually did not intend to perpetrate a fake holdup. He neither intended to nor would. He might think the contrary, go so far as to plan the deed. But he would never actually go through with it.

He was as incapable of dishonesty, of anything but absolute uprightness, as I was of sobriety.

He turned and entered the post-office building. I crossed to the other side of the street, continued on for another block and suddenly lurched, and remained lurched, against a corner lamppost.

People passed by, grinning and laughing at me. I closed my eyes, and murmured alternate threats and pleadings to the Lord World.

Halfway down the block, there was a grocery store. Mr. Kossmeyer, the lawyer who comes here every summer, was parked in front of it, loading some groceries into the back seat of his car.

I pushed myself away from the lamppost, and stepped down into the gutter. I walked down to where Mr. Kossmeyer was, and tapped him on the shoulder.

He jumped, cursed and banged his head. Then, he turned around and saw that it was I.

"Oh, hello, Ganny," he said. "I mean-uh-Judas."

"Oh, that's all right, Mr. Kossmeyer," I laughed. "I know I'm not really Judas. That was just a crazy notion I had."

"Well, that's fine. Glad you've snapped out of it," Mr. Kossmeyer said.

"I'm really Noah," I said. "That's who I really am, Mr. Kossmeyer."

"I see," he said. "Well, you shouldn't have to travel very far to round up your animals."

He sounded rather wary. Disinterested. His hand moved toward the front door of his car.

"Listen, Mr. Kossmeyer," I said. "Listen. I'm accepting contributions for an ark, materials or their monetary equivalent. Planks are a dollar each, Mr. Kossmeyer."

"They ain't the only thing," said Mr. Kossmeyer. "So is a quart of wine."

He seemed a lot smarter than he used to be. Summer a year ago, I sold him a reservation to the Last Supper.

"Listen, Mr. Kossmeyer, listen," I said. "All the world's a stage, and all the actors, audience; and the wise man casteth no stink bombs. Doesn't that stir you, Mr. Kossmeyer?" I said.

"Only to a limited degree," said Mr. Kossmeyer. "Only to a limited degree, Noah. I feel nothing at all in the area of my hip pocket."

"Listen, Mr. Kossmeyer, listen," I said. "They've got a new resident out in The City of Wonderful People. They've got a man that's TRULY HUMBLE. He's TRULY HUMBLE, but he always acted like the snootiest, most stuck-up man in town. You know why he acted that way? You know why, Mr. Kossmeyer? Because he was so lonesome for company. The planks are really only ninety-eight cents, Mr. Kossmeyer, and I can bring back the change from a dollar."

"A little more finesse," said Mr. Kossmeyer. "A little more english on the cue ball."

"Listen," I said. "Listen, Mr. Kossmeyer. I'm thinking about digging him up, and putting him on television. There ought to be millions in it, don't you think so? A TRULY HUMBLE man, just think of it, Mr. Kossmeyer!"

"I think I'll drive you down to the library," said Mr. Kossmeyer, "and lead you to the history section."

"I could put falsies on him, Mr. Kossmeyer," I said. "I could teach him to sing and dance. I could-listen, Mr. Kossmeyer, listen, listen. There's a couple of other new residents out in The City of Wonderful People. They're MOTHER AND FATHER, and they're the most wonderful of all. Listen, Mr. Kossmeyer, listen. They're DUTIFUL AND LOVING PARENTS, they're GODFEARING AND LOYAL, they're HONEST and KINDLY and STEADFAST and GENEROUS and MERCIFUL and TOLERANT and WISE and-"

"What the hell they got, for God's sake?" said Mr. Kossmeyer. "A tombstone or a billboard?"

"Listen, Mr. Kossmeyer," I said. "Listen. It's the teensiest stone you ever saw. Not much bigger than a cigarette package. I figure that fellow who writes on the heads of pins must have done the inscription. It's practically impossible to read it, Mr. Kossmeyer. Virtually impossible. They've got all those virtues, yet no one can see them. You know why it's that way? You know why, Mr. Kossmeyer? Listen, listen, listen. It's supposed to be symbolic. It's symbolic, Mr. Kossmeyer, and I just remembered you can get a pretty good grade of plank for- "

"Listen, Noah, listen, listen," said Mr. Kossmeyer. "Which is the shortest way to that building-supply store?"

7:

HATTIE

I guess I just don't think no more. Not no real thinking, only little old keyhole kind.

Reckon you know what I mean. Reckon you know what it does to a body. May be a mighty big room, but you sure ain't going to see much of it. And you keep looking through that keyhole long enough, nothing ain't never going to look big to you.

Get to where that eye of yours just won't spread out.

Used to think pretty tolerable, way back when, long long time ago. Back when Mr. Doctor was talking to me and teaching me, and telling me stuff. Seemed like I was just thinking all the time, and thinking more all the time. Big thinking. Almost could fee! my brain getting bigger. Then, we comes here and that was the end of that and the beginning of the other.

Mr. Doctor stopped; stopped himself from pushing me on, and stopped me from pushing. Just wouldn't do, he said. Got to be in a certain place, so I got to fit in that place. Don't do nothing that would maybe look like I don't belong in that place. Just sink down in it, and don't never raise my head above it.

Too bad and he sure hates it, Mr. Doctor said. But that's the way it's got to be. And what good's it going to do me, he said, filling my head full of a lot of stuff I wasn't never going to use?

Guess he right, all right. Anyways, he stop with me. Me, I didn't put up no fuss about it. Catch me arguing with Mr. Doctor. Never did it but the once, long long time ago, and maybe that used all my arguing up. Took all my fighting for the one battle, maybe. And maybe I just didn't see no call to fight.

Don't work up no sweat going down hill. Awful easy thing to do, and that little old keyhole at the bottom, it don't bother you at all.

Can't think no more. Ain't got the words for it. Mr. Doctor, he tell me one time back when he was telling me things, he tell me the mind can't go no farther than a person's 'cabulary. You got to have the words or you can't talk, and you got to have 'em or you can't think. No words, no thinking. Just kind of feeling.

Me, I get hungry. I get cold and hot. I get scared, and sick. Mostly, I get scared and sick. Scared-sick, kind of together. And not doing no real thinking about it. Just feeling it and wishing it wasn't, and knowing it's going to go right on being. A lot worse maybe.

Because he, that boy, he acting nice now. He trying to pretend being friendly. And that boy, he act that way, you sure better watch out for him. He sure about to get you then.

He come out in the kitchen other night after supper. Right there with me before I know it. And he smile and sweet-talk, and say he going to help me with the dishes.

"Go 'way," I said. "You lea' me alone, hear?"

"Well, we'll let the dishes go," he said. "Let's go in your bedroom, mother. I have something I want to talk to you about."

"Huh-uh. No, suh," I said. "You ain't gettin' me in no bedroom."

"I'm sure you don't mean that," he said. "You're my mother. Every mother is interested in her son's problems."

I go in the bedroom with him. Scared not to. He got his mind made up, and that boy make up his mind, you sure better not get in his way.

Meanest boy in the world, that boy. Just plain lowdown rattlesnake mean.

I get on bed. Get way back against the wall with my legs drawn up under me. He sit down on chair at side of bed. He takes out a cigarette, and then he looks at me, and asks if it's all right he could smoke.

I don't say nothing. Just keep my eyes on him, just watching and waiting.

"Oh, excuse me, mother," he said. "Allow me."

He stick a cigarette at me. He strike a match and hold it out, and me I put that cigarette in my mouth and puff it lit. Had to. Scared to death if I don't, and scared if I do.

I take a puff or two, so's he won't go for me. Then, he start talking, ain't watching me close, I squeeze it down in my fingers and let it go out.

"Now, it's a money problem I wanted to discuss with you, mother," he said. "Largely one of money. I don't suppose you have a considerable sum you might lend me?"

"Huh," I said. "Where I get any money?"

"I'd probably need several thousand dollars," he said. "There'd be some traveling to do. I'd need enough to get reestablished, for two people to live on, for an extended period."

"Why'n't you go away?" I said. "How I get any money, I don't draw no wages? You want money you knows who to go to."

He look at me a little while. He look right on through my head it seem like, and I figure he's really about to come after me. Figure I really make one big mistake in kind of talking back to him. But what else I do, anyhow? Can't be nothing much but back-talk when you talk to him.

Can't think no more.

Can't do nothing, and can't do something.

Scared if I do and scared if I don't.

He go on looking at me, and I know my time really come. Then, he say, that's perfectly all right, mother. Say he really didn't expect me to have any money, but he thought he should ask. Say it might've hurt my feelings, him needing money and not giving his mother the 'tunity to help.

Crazy-mean, that boy. He nice and polite that way, he crazy-meaner than ever.

"But you're quite right, mother," he said. "I do know where to get it. Or, more accurately, I know where I could lay my hands on a large amount of money. The difficulty is that there is another person who needs it-who will need it, I should say. His situation is quite similar to my own, and it would place him in a position practically as difficult as mine if he didn't have it. So under the circumstances- what do you think I should do, mother?"

"Huh?" I said. "What? What you talkin' about, boy?"

"I'm sorry," he said. "Please don't feel I don't trust you, mother; it isn't that at all. It's just that you might be placed in a very compromising situation if I gave you any details, spoke in anything but the most general terms. And I believe you can advise me quite as well on that basis. What's your best opinion, mother? If you were in my place, would you feel justified in extricating yourself from an untenable position at this other man's expense?"

What I think? Me-what I think? What I got to think with? Or listen with, or talk with?

That mean boy, I see him too well'n too close-plenty too close, a mean-crazy boy like him-but I sure don't hear him. Might as well be talking a zillion miles away.

"Lea' me alone," I said. "Why you all the time devilin' me? I ain't done nothin' to you."

"Relatively," he nodded. "Yes, I see. Relatively, you have done nothing. And, of course, you meant that as an answer to my question. You did mean it so, didn't you, mother?"

"Fo' God's sake," I said. "Fo' God's sake, jus'-"

"I suppose it's always that way, don't you, mother? It's inevitable. There are certain rigid requirements for being one's self, a tenable self. They may not be violated, despite any exigencies, regardless of the temptation and the nominal ease with which violations could be accomplished. Otherwise, he becomes another. And how, if he cannot cope with the problems of his own self-live in pride and contentment within its framework-can he dwell in that other? Obviously, he can't. He loses identity. He may have been little, but now he is nothing. He doesn't know what he is. Yes, you're absolutely right, mother. I'm so glad you could advise me out of the background of your experience."

Don't know what he talking about.

Don't want to know.

"Now, there's another thing I wanted to ask you about, mother," he said. "Since I can't help myself-am past the point of help, let's say-should I help this other man? Should I remove an obstacle in the path to the solution of his problem? I have nothing to lose. It would help him immensely. In fact, he might not be able to bring himself to do it. Or if he did, he might suffer from regrets. It might cast a pall over the goal he achieves by so doing. How do you feel about it, mother? Do you think I should help him or not?"

How do I feel? What he care? What do I think? Think nothing. Just think nothing.

Can't.

Him, he might be talkin' about killing someone, and I wouldn't know it.

He look at me, one of them pretty-smooth eyebrows cocked up, them even pretty-white teeth showing; kind of smiling and kind of frowning. And I know he as mean crazy as they come-you just look at that boy and you see he is. But for maybe a second or two I don't see it. What I see is sort of a picture that all at once just popped up out of nowhere, that kinda seemed to wooze out of my eyes and spread itself over him. And me-I-I almost laugh out loud.

I think-thought, "Why, my heavens, Hattie, what in the world has come over you? How can you be afraid of this fine young man, your son? What…?"

The picture go away, back wherever crazy place it come from. Me, she, the me that'd thought them words go back to the same place. Nothing but the regular me, now, and it don't do no thinking. Don't see nothing but through that bitty old keyhole. Just sees meanest boy that ever lived.

He been that way for years. I watch it coming on him. Oh, sure, he don't do nothing with it for a long time. He wait until he big and strong. But I see it all right, he let you see it. He nice and polite all the time, but he let you see it; make you know what you can 'spect. Poke it right at you.

"Yes, mother?" he said. "Can you answer my question?"

"Go 'way?" I said. "How I know? I-me-"

"Why, of course," he said. "Naturally, you wouldn't know. It's not something a person can advise another about, is it? The individual concerned has to make his own decision. Thank you, very much, mother. I can't tell you what a comfort it's been to talk over my problems with you. Now, I see you're looking a little tired, so perhaps I'd better…"

He stand up. He put one knee on the bed, and start to lean over toward me. Smiling that pretty white-teeth smile, fastening on to me with them soft brown eyes. An'…

Knew I was going to get it then. He had been playing around, all politey and smiley, and now he going to do it. Something mean. Something bad. Had to be, because there couldn't be no other be. Couldn't think of no other. Couldn't think no more but little old keyhole stuff.

Don't know what I going to do. House almost in a block by itself, and I yell my lungs out and no one hear me. No good yelling. Couldn't do it Nihau, scarred-sick as I was. Couldn't do nothing Nihau. Just ain't nothing to do but wait, and hope he won't be too mean. No meaner than I can stand.

Can't move. Feel like I frozen, I that stiff and cold. Can't hardly see nothing. Just kind of a white blur moving toward me, pushing right against my face. Then, I can't really see nothing. Just feel something, sort of soft and warm, pressing me on the forehead.

It go away. I get my eyes open somehow, and he standing back on the floor again.

"Good-night, mother," he said. "I hope you sleep well, and please don't worry about anything. After all, there's no longer anything to worry about, is there?"

He stand there and smile, and I figure he really going to get me now. He just been playing around so far, but now he through. Can't scare me no worse, so now he going to get me.

He turn around and leave. He close the door real gentle-like. But, me, I ain't being fooled. Ain't going to get me out there where he probably hiding, all set and waiting for me. Just about bound to be.

Why he act like he do if he ain't up to something? Why he make all that talk at me? Why he keep calling me mother and be so nicey- nice, and-an' kiss me goodnight?

Huh! Me, I know that boy. Seen that meanness coming on him a long, long time. He up to something all right. Fixing to get me.

I hear front door open. Hear it close.

I hear his car starting up, going away.

And all at once, I just flop over on my face and cry. Because he ain't got me, and he ain't going to. Him or nobody else.

Can't.

Just ain't nothing to get.

8:

LUANE DEVORE

It was Monday night. The dance pavilion is closed for business that night, but of course Ralph still has things to do there. Or things to do somewhere.

It was a little after eight, a little after dark. I heard the front door open quietly.

I hadn't heard Ralph's car, but I naturally assumed it was Ralph. The house is well-insulated. If he had driven up the old lane from the rear-as he sometimes does-I wouldn't have heard the car.

I turned around slightly in the bed. I waited a second, listening, and then I called, "Ralph?"

There wasn't any answer. I called again, and there still wasn't any. I made myself smile, forced a laugh into my voice.

Ralph is such a tease, you know. He's always playing funny little jokes, doing things to make you laugh. I suppose he seems pretty dull and stodgy to most people, but he's really worlds of fun. And it's always that sweet, silly puppyish kind. Even while you're laughing, you get a lump in your throat and you want to take him in your arms and pet him.

Oh, I can understand his attraction for women. His looks and youthfulness are only part of it. Mostly, it's because you enjoy being around him. Because he's so funny and sweet and simple and…

"Ralph!" I called. "You answer me now, you bad, bad boy. Luane will be terribly angry with you, if you don't."

He didn't answer. He-whoever it was-didn't. But I heard the floor creak. I heard more creaks, coming nearer, moving slowly up the stairs.

Just the creaks, sounds; not footsteps. Nothing I could identify.

I called one more time. Then, I swung my feet out of bed and… and sat there motionless. Half paralyzed with fear, helpless even if I was not so badly frightened.

The phone was out of order. As he-this person- doubtless knew. It was useless to yell. And if I locked the door, well, it could be forced. And then I would be trapped in here, in this one crowded, cluttered room, with even less chance of saving myself than I had now.

I got up, took an uncertain step toward the door. I hesitated, stared slowly around the room. And suddenly I was almost calm.

Save myself! I thought. Save myself!

Now, surely I should know how to do that.

Kossy came to see me the first Sunday of the season. I had called him, indicating that there was something I wanted to talk to him about when he had the time- strictly at his own convenience. And he raced right over. He didn't hurry on my account, of course. Catch one of those people doing anything for you unless there's a dollar in it. Probably he thought Ralph would be here, and he could load up on a lot of free eggs and fruit and vegetables.

Oh, well. I suppose I am exaggerating a little. Kossy really doesn't seem to care about money; he'll treat you just about the same way, whether he's getting a fat fee or nothing. And I suppose my call may have sounded rather urgent. But-

But why should he care about money? I wouldn't either if I had all he's got. Why should he blame me, a poor, helpless sick old woman for sounding a little excited?

He was very mean and insulting. Not that he usually isn't. As soon as I was convinced that there was nothing to worry about, I ordered him out of the house. I should have done it long before, because I'd heard some pretty unpleasant stories about that man. How he'd cheated and swindled people right out of their eyeteeth. I can't say just who I heard them from, but they're all over town. And where there's so much smoke, there must be some fire.

At any rate, he not only insulted me, but he gave me some very bad advice. Because I most certainly did have something to worry about! He convinced me temporarily-and against my will-that I hadn't. But I knew better. The season was only two days old, and I'd already seen it in Ralph-seen it in the way he talked and acted and looked. And that was only the beginning.

He came home late that night, very late, I should say, since he is always out working as long as he can find work to do. I sleep a lot during the day, however, so I was awake.

He fixed a snack for me; he was too tired to eat, himself, he said. He was going to go straight to bed-in fact, he got a little stubborn about it. But I cried a little and pointed out how lonesome it was for me all day by myself, so we talked a while.

I studied him, listening to what he said, noticing what he didn't. I began to worry again. I began to get frightened.

I hardly slept a wink all night. I hardly slept a wink any night, because Ralph didn't change back to what he had been-he kept going farther and farther the other way.

I was practically out of my mind by the end of the week. I was going to call Kossy, but I didn't have to. He came to see me. As of course, I should have known he would. Catch him letting go of a good thing! He's probably building up his bill, so that he can attach this property.

Anyway, he was afraid not to come. He knew what I could do if I took the notion. I've never said anything about him yet, mind you- hardly anything-but if he wanted to be mean and ugly, I certainly had a right to defend myself!

I cried a little, and told him about Ralph. He sat and stared at me like I was some strange kind of animal, instead of a poor, sick, helpless old woman who needed comfort and sympathy. And then he said that he'd be goddamned.

"Kossy, darling," I said. "I've asked you so many times please not to use-"

"I tell you what I won't use," he said. "I won't use any words you ain't used ten thousand times yourself. I hadn't ought to bother with you at all, but as long as I am I'll-"

"All right, Kossy, dear," I said. "I'm just an old woman. I can't stop you if you insist."

"Luane," he said. "For God's sake-Aaah, nuts-" he said, and threw up his hands. "Never mind. Let me see if I got this straight. Ralph is seeing this girl every night; you're sure of that. But he isn't sleeping with her. And you're bothered because he isn't!"

I said, no, Ralph wasn't. "He always has before," I said. "He's a-always been honest before-c-come home and told me about it afterwards."

"But-but-" He waved his hands again. "You mean you want it that way? You want him to make these babes?"

"W-well. I don't really want him to," I said. "But it wouldn't be fair to stop him, since I-well, you know. And as long as he tells me about it…"

He gave me an odd look, as if he was a little sick at his stomach. He said something about, yes, he could see how I might enjoy that.