The New Black Mask (No 8)

To Florida Robert Sampson

“To Florida,” Robert Sampson says, “is the story of a man headed straight to hell who refuses every opportunity to change his course.” This is Robert Sampson’s second appearance in NBM; his “Rain in Pinton County” appeared in number 5. “From the Dark Side,” the third volume in Sampson’s study of the pulp, is scheduled for publication in December 1986. It deals with series detectives from 1905 to 1930.

Music blared as a ton of pink rocks flattened the orange bear. He sat up bonelessly, rubbing mauve stars from his head, and marched off the television screen, aggressive and undaunted.

Teller, not watching the bear’s problem, started recounting the money. His fingers danced through the stack of twenties like hunger in motion, like a love song, caressing.

A purple boxing glove belted the bear across a yellow room. Laughter screamed.

Teller glanced up, then down. His face was insolently wary, the face of a kid grown up to find out it was all a lie. He wore heavy sideburns, very black, and a lot of undisciplined mustache. He was on the short side of thirty, and looked soiled and a little crazy.

The apartment door bumped open. A girl’s voice said apologetically, “Whoops, slipped, I guess.” She backed into the room, angular and ugly, almost twenty. She wore blue jeans and a dirty pink sweatshirt. A big gray yam purse, striped blue-yellow-green, had slipped to the crook of her arm. She clutched two sacks of groceries.

“Jerry, can you grab a sack?”

“Dump ’em on the table.”

“They’re slipping.” She sidled crabwise across the room, showing too many teeth in a mouth like a frog’s. She thumped the sacks on a green painted table holding an air conditioner and the remains of last night’s Kwik-Karry Chicken. The window behind the table puffed cold air at her.

Jerry said to his hands, “You know what? I’m fixing to take me down to good old Florida and have a time.” He stroked the money. “I’m gonna drink me some beer and soak up some of that sun.”

“Yea, Florida,” she said. And speaking saw the money in his hands. All the expression flattened out of her face. “Is that yours?”

“Mine.” Their eyes met. “What you think, Sue Ann? Want to run down to Florida?”

She eyed the money, wary, surprised. “You got enough maybe we could give Mr. Davidson some? For the rent. He keeps calling.”

“He gave me this.” His quick fingers doubled over the bills, thrust them into the pocket of his shirt.

“He didn’t.”

“Go look in the kitchen and see. But don’t squeal, now. Don’t you squeal.”

“He wants we should pay him something.”

“Look there in the kitchen.”

She looked into the kitchen and her shoulders lifted slowly and slowly settled.

“Is he dead?”

“Naw.”

“I mean, really, is he dead?”

“I told you no. I just tapped him. Not even hard.”

“His one eye’s open.”

“So he sleeps with one eye open.”

She swung around to look at him. Apprehension twisted in her face like a snake in a bottle. “If you hurt him, we better not let anybody know.”

“We’re gonna be gone. I got his car keys. I’m cuttin’ out.” He waited for her enthusiasm and his face hardened when it did not come. “I figured you were so hot to run down to Florida.”

“To Florida. Well, I guess... sure...”

He heaved up from the recliner, boot heels cracking on the uncarpeted floor. “You get yourself together.” He grinned, watching her mind stumble after his words. “I want to go get me some of that good beer.”

“Jerry, you’re sure Mr. Davidson’s all right, aren’t you?”

“I said he was OK. Get packed.”

“Should I put a blanket over him?”

“You just let him be, now.” He pulled her to him with one arm, pressing hard, but that didn’t reassure her much.

She went into the bedroom and began opening and closing drawers. He shook his head and, grinning, went to the table, and heaved up the air conditioner. It was a small window model, the simulated wooden front very new. Through the open window he could see out along Holmes Avenue, glowing with spring dogwood, white and pink. Above the flowering branches spread a pale blue sky, featureless as painted wood.

He carried the air conditioner out into the hallway. From the back apartment, a radio hammered rock, violent and forlorn, into the dim air. He used two fingers to open the front door, carried the air conditioner across the porch, along a cracked brown concrete walk, to the light blue Toyota parked by the curb in the bright morning sunlight. He dumped the conditioner into the back seat and straightened up, working his fingers.

“Jesus is Lord, and salvation is at hand,” said a voice at his right ear.

Behind him on the sidewalk stood a hook-nosed old ruin, all bone and wrinkles, holding out a printed tract. “Let me give you the Lord’s word, brother. It ain’t too late for the word.”

“Ain’t that nice.” He stepped around the scarecrow, who smelled sourly of upset stomach. As he climbed the porch steps, the old voice called, “All sins forgiven in the bosom of Jesus, brother.”

In the apartment bedroom, she had pulled out all their clothing. The bed was piled with stuff that looked and smelled like specials at the Saturday flea-market.

She told him, “I don’t know what to take.”

“All of it.”

“All of it?” She snatched up a pair of shoes.

“You think we’re coming back here?”

Confusion blurred her face. “You got to open the filling station tomorrow, Jerry.”

“You think so, huh?”

He loaded two cardboard boxes of his own clothing into the Toyota’s trunk. The old boy with the wet eyes was talking Jesus at a house up the street. When he reentered the apartment, she was still staring at the clothing, jerking her arms. Impatience twisted his mouth.

“You ready?”

“Not yet. Not yet.” She blundered into uncoordinated motion.

“Like a scared blind hen,” he muttered, stepping into the kitchen.

It was a long, dirty room painted pink. A narrow window spilled sunshine across unwashed dishes, paper sacks, fruit peelings, empty cans, a squadron of flies. The room stunk sourly of garbage and cigarettes. Old Man Davidson lay on the floor by the sink, his head in a jumble of beer cans. One eye glimmered palely under a sagging lid. He was a sharp-nosed runt with reddish hair. His mouth lolled open and a fly tilted and curved above the lard-colored lips.

“Show you to bad-mouth me,” Jerry said to the figure on the floor.

In half an hour, he hustled her out the door, her arms dripping loose clothing. He put on a wide-brimmed brown hat, banded with pheasant feathers, and a shabby leather coat with the hunting knife tucked down in one pocket. It was tough that the television was too big to load into the car. “Hell with you,” he said and closed the door.

No one called good-bye. He fed the Toyota gas and they eased off between the exuberant dogwoods.

Half a block down the street, she clutched his arm. “I forgot the groceries.”

“Let ’em sit.”

“They’ll spoil.”

“So what?”

Thin brown fingers slipped across her mouth. “I used all our food stamps on them. Got some ribs for you.”

“Now, that was nice.”

“They were for you.”

He said in a flat, rapid voice, “Look, if we drive back, maybe somebody sees us in his car. You ever think of that? Then what you going to tell them?”

She stared at him, brown eyes blankly confused.

“What you going to say?”

“I... Well...”

“You got to think about that.”

She said faintly, “I just didn’t want them to spoil.”

“Well, OK. We’ll just go on.”

“I’m sorry, Jerry. I didn’t think about the car and... and all.”

“Shoot, you don’t have to think. You just sit there and have you a good time. We’re going to Florida.”

The Toyota shot around a yellow truck and picked up speed past rows of Victorian houses built close together, painted in shades of green and brown. They looked orderly and neat, like old women waiting for relatives on visiting day.

At the Friendly station, they stopped for gas and he bought a six-pack of Old Jack beer at the carryout. They drove north, then, along streets of grimy stores, small and set far apart with dust-gray windows and trash spilled along the sidewalk. The stores were replaced by narrow fields, still brown, stippled with weed stalks and bordered by trees blurred with new green. Beyond the trees, small hills humped up, dark with cedar, dappled by the dull rose and white of flowering trees.

“It’s just so beautiful,” Sue Ann said.

“Here we are,” he said.

He slewed the Toyota onto a gravel apron, jerked to a stop before a building the shape and color of a dirty sugar cube. Above the open door slanted a hand-painted sign:

In the doorway under the sign leaned a fat man without much hair, his circular face tarnished red-brown by years of sun. He watched Jerry work the air conditioner off the backseat.

“You jus’ come in here right now,” the fat man said.

Jerry plunged past him, banged the air conditioner onto a scarred wooden counter. The little room was hot, smelling disagreeably of rubber and cardboard. Orange boxes of auto parts packed the wall shelves. The floor was patched with flattened coffee cans, blue and red against silver-gray wood.

Jerry said, “Wanna sell me this air conditioner.”

The fat man worked his belly behind the counter. “It works, does it?”

“You give it a feel. Probably still cold.”

Thick brown hands deftly unfastened the grill. “She looks nice and clean.”

A door opened in back and a big old man, gone to bone and loose gray skin, limped into the room. The effort of moving thickened his breath. He inched over to a wooden chair by the counter, lowered himself into it joint by joint, said in a remote voice, “She’s getting cold out there, Dandy.”

Jerry said, “How much you fixing to give me for this beauty? Worth three hundred dollars, easy.”

“Oh, now, then,” Dandy said. He grinned at his fat hands. “It’s early for air conditioners.”

The old man grunted, spit at a blue can, looked at the air conditioner with sour suspicion.

Jerry said, “I got to get rid of it. They broke my lease.”

Fat fingers snapped the grill into place. “What do you think, Mr. Stafford?”

The old man sniffed, grunted, painfully extended his legs. “Expect she’s stole.”

“Like hell,” Jerry said, jerking his head. “What’s with you?”

“Couldn’t be nothin’ like that,” Dandy said. “I know this young fellow. He’s been in here before.”

“You know it,” Jerry said. Back stiff, hands jammed into his pockets, he stood without moving, watching them, grinning very slightly.

“Tell you what,” Dandy said. “You maybe got the bill of sale, I could give you, like, say fifty dollars.”

Stafford said in his sick old voice. “We don’t need no stole stuff.”

“Why don’t you shut up your mouth?” Jerry said to him.

Dandy said, very quickly, “No need to holler, son.”

“You want this or not?”

“Fifty dollar the best I can do.”

“No way, man. Hell with that.” White light leaped into his eyes. “I wouldn’t carry’ this thing across the street for fifty dollars.”

“We don’t hold none with thieving,” Stafford said, loudly triumphant.

“It’s worth one hundred dollars, easy,” Jerry said.

Dandy shook his head. “Not to me.”

Stafford yelped, “Get that stole thing out of here right now.”

Jerry made a small, bitter sound. He put his chin down on his chest, and a tremor, beginning at his hips, shook upward through his chest, shoulders, neck. His eyes became not quite human.

In a soft voice, he said, “Who asking you?” Then, very loudly, “Who asking you?” The sides of his mouth grew wet. “And so damn what?”

He jerked the air conditioner up from the counter. Held it poised. Wheeled left and flung the machine into the old man’s lap. Stafford shrieked as the chair legs snapped off. He slapped against the counter screaming and pitched heavily onto the floor, hands clawing his legs. “They’s broke.”

Jerry flipped the hunting knife from his jacket pocket and slashed backhand at Dandy. The fat man banged himself back against the shelves. Orange boxes slipped thumping into the aisle.

Jerry leaned across the counter, his eyes intent, yellow-tan teeth showing under his mustache. He whipped the knife around, splitting Dandy’s tan shirt. As he slashed, he made a thick, grunting sound. Dandy squealed frantically as a thin, red line ran across the top of his shoulder.

Jerry got over the counter, fell into the aisle. His body felt hot and slow. Hunched over, he moved toward Dandy, knife blade out in front of him, a bright splinter.

Dandy said in a voice full of wonder, “Oh, this is a terrible thing.” His eyes were round. As Jerry moved toward him, he jerked a rack of cans thunderously into the aisle.

Jerry stumbled over a can, fell, hitting one knee. Taking small, quick steps, Dandy shuffled back from the knife. He got to the rear door. His eyes, round in a round pale face, stared past the edge of the door as it whacked shut.

“You better watch,” Jerry yelled. Jerking around, still holding the knife out before him, he darted back along the littered aisle, snatched the cash box from under the counter.

The box, chained to the shelf, snapped out of his hands. Change sprayed into the aisle among boxes and cans and broken glass. He clawed up a five, a one, another one. Dimes glinted among orange boxes. He found a quarter, a ten, two nickels. Urgency choked him.

He swung over the counter in one hard twist. The old man lay contorted against the counter, eyes rolled up, mouth open exposing his dull yellow tongue. He breathed like a compressor. The air conditioner canted across one leg.

Two steps to the door and out. Seven steps long across the crunching gravel, fury in his legs, rage lifting his shoulders. He felt laughter like hot fat boiling in his chest and throat.

He slid behind the wheel. Sue Ann gaped at him, excited, “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?”

“No damn thing.”

The Toyota leaped away spewing gravel. “They tried to cheat me.”

As the car skidded onto the highway, Dandy appeared at the side of the building. His arms were extended and from hands clenched before his face projected the dark snout of a revolver. Then a screen of bushes lashed past, hiding him.

“Cheated me, by God.” His boot rammed the accelerator.

Gray-shaded clouds skated sedately across a pale sky. Beneath the clouds spread calm fields, furred with new light green. From Stafford’s dirty sugar-cube the road was a lean gray strip stretched north past a small housing development, a small store. Beyond the fields rose a sudden hill studded with the brick buildings of A & M College, sober, dull red blocks following the hill’s contours like bird nests along a cliff. Hill and buildings looked neatly peaceful as a European travel poster.

The Toyota hammered north, eighty miles an hour. Wheels jittered on the road. Fields reeled past. The pedestrian overpass swelled toward them, was over them, shrank behind. The car leaped, floated above a small rise, light as blowing leaves.

“Oh, my God, Jerry, what is it?”

Down the road by the lumber yard, a fat yellow truck wallowed onto the highway.

“Oh, Jerry!”

He tapped the brakes, cut left, cut back across an oncoming pickup, the driver’s face shocked.

“Cheated me,” he yelled. Tapped the brakes. They slid through a four-way stop, jerked left. Accelerated past shabby apartments screened by vivid forsythia. On the main highway, he slowed, turned south.

“Jerry, what happened?”

He said, “I made them remember me.”

His eyes were white stones.

Five miles down the road, rolling west at thirty-five miles an hour through streets lined endlessly with small houses. Each had its own yard, its own driveway, its own bush. He yawned, as dull-headed as if he had slept. A black child in a red cap waved at them.

“I was so scared,” she told him. “You looked so funny.”

“How’d I look funny?”

“You just did.”

He gulped beer from a can. “You’re OK, Lu Ann. You’re nuts, but you’re OK. I think you’re fine, you know that?”

“You scared me.”

She looked like no one he had ever seen before. The lumpy face shone with tear smears. The big teeth, the loose dull hair belonged to a stranger. Only her voice was familiar, stumbling, hesitating, the voice of a confused child.

“...please don’t say that. It’s what Daddy said.”

“What?” he asked her.

“He looked at me. He looked at Momma. He said...” The thin voice faltered and shook, unsteady with shame. “Said, ‘You take that dumbnut brat with you, too.’ He said that. My daddy. ‘Take your ugly brat with you.’ He’s in Saint Louis now. I won’t forget him saying that.”

His empty beer can clattered behind the seat. “Open me another one.”

“Am I ugly?”

“You?”

“Yes, am I ugly?”

“Shoot,” he said, “where’s that beer?”

“You don’t have to say I’m pretty. I know I’m not pretty. I know what pretty is, like on television, all shiny like there’s sun on them.”

“You’re all right,” he said, sucking beer.

“But he didn’t ought to say that. Was your daddy nice?”

At last, Jerry said, “He played him some games with us.”

“What like?”

“Held up his two fists all closed together. Says, ‘Which hand’s the candy in, kid?’ So you guessed. You guess wrong — bamo! He fetch you one up the side of the head.”

“That’s awful.”

“Never was any candy. Not in either hand. He tells me, ‘Don’t expect nothing cause that’s what you’re going to get. ’ ” He clattered the empty can into the rear. “That’s right, too. You better know it. Both hands empty, all the time.”

“That’s terrible.”

Her face disgusted him. It was brainless, narrow, and brown, shapeless, the teeth ledged in a loose pale mouth. Now, at last, he remembered her name. “Give me one of them beers, Sue Ann.”

Twenty miles west of Huntsville the highway intersected I-65 South. Between ploughed fields a broad concrete strip undulated beneath a filmy white sky. The Toyota began to eat miles.

“Now we’re going down to Florida,” he said.

“Yea, Florida.” She leaned toward him, fingers closing over his right arm, a disagreeable soft pressure. “You glad you’re taking me to Florida, Jerry?”

“Oh, God, yes.”

“I’m sorry they cheated you.”

“Took that air conditioner in and they say, ‘Why this looks like you stole it, we’re gonna call the police.’ Said, ‘You better leave that old air conditioner here, we’ll call the police.’ ”

“You showed them.”

“I showed them good. I messed them up good.” In his mind the old man screamed as the pale highway flowed toward them. “You bet I did.”

“You didn’t hurt them?”

“Damn right I did.”

“You shouldn’t do that, Jerry. That isn’t right.”

“OK for them to hurt me, though,” he said, stiff-voiced.

“No, no. I mean...” She struggled with the soft stuff of her mind. “It’s in the Bible. Don’t be mean, that’s what it says.”

“Your tongue’s sure bubbling.”

“Well, you shouldn’t. I don’t think people are really mean. Like my daddy. He just yells. When he’s drunk, he’s sweet.”

He burst into laughter. “You’re somebody, you sure are, Sue Ann.”

She pulled back from him. “Now don’t you laugh at me.”

“Listen,” he said, “nobody’s got candy in their hands. You just remember that.”

“I’d give you some candy.”

“I guess you’d try, wouldn’t you?”

“You know I would.”

Under their wheels, the road down Alabama pulsed like a concrete heart.

“This thing’s a gas hog,” he said. “We better pull her in and fill up.”

They pulled off the highway and wound through a complicated series of small roads to a combination filling station, restaurant, and general store, spreading out under a bright orange roof. He gave her five dollars and she went inside, among the strange voices, and bought crackers, two large coffees, and four comic books with shiny girls wet-faced on the glowing covers. As she came out, he hurried up to her, white-faced and tight-lipped as if he had just smelled hell.

“You come on here.”

They drove around back of the restaurant and parked by a big square trash container. “That damn Dandy,” he said. “Look here.”

Two bullet holes punched the light blue metal, one above the license plate, the other over a taillight. Impact had dimpled the metal and the edges showed raw and clean. There was a strong smell of gasoline.

He said savagely, “Just creased the tank. Put a big old crack in it. It’s been slopping out gas all this time.”

She goggled at him, making inconsequential sounds.

“That Dandy fellow. I didn’t even hear him shooting.”

“Can... can we fix it?”

“Shoot. Can’t run along showing bullet holes. Turn on the lights at night, maybe blow the whole back out of her.”

Fingers crept over her teeth. “Who’s Dandy?” she asked faintly.

“Might tape it. Probably work right loose. Tank’ll hold maybe four gallon. But shoot — I’m not going to drive all over Florida sticking gas in this sucker every hour.”

“Can’t we go to Florida?”

“Will you shut up?”

“Please don’t be mad, Jerry.”

“Don’t you start whining. Give me a hand.”

They unloaded the trunk, piling reeking cardboard boxes by the side of the car. Under the floor mat shone a pungent skin of gasoline.

“Better not chance it,” he said at last. “Give her a spark, she’ll flare up like the sun in a sack.”

As they stared into the trunk, a dirty station wagon rolled past behind them, packed to the windows with staring children and luggage.

“I gotta get me another car,” Jerry said. Briefly his long arms beat at his sides, a furious sudden violence.

In their inconspicuous place behind the road stop, they waited in a numb paralysis of time, the journey compromised. From out front engines sounded, voices rose, and doors slammed and reslammed, a purposeful outcry of activity emphasizing their inactivity and isolation. Limp in the Toyota, Sue Ann fingered through a comic book. Alone by the dumpster, Jerry fidgeted, a wolf watching empty plains, glancing impatiently off toward the main parking area.

After a long time, a black Lincoln, arrogantly polished, rolled past with three people inside. It was followed by a red Ford with a young woman driving.

“Hey, can you give me a hand?” he called.

She drove slowly by, not looking around. He snarled after her and waited. After another ten minutes, a truck full of ropes eased past.

“Hey, can you give me a hand? Just need a second.”

Then a small tan station wagon drew to a stop and a thin-faced young man with glasses and neat dark hair leaned out and asked, “Trouble?” in a cheerful voice.

“Look,” Jerry said, “I need three hands for a second and I only got two.”

The young man elevated his eyebrows and, grinning, pushed open the car door. “Like the way you said that.” He was long-legged, long-armed, and walked with shoulders bent forward, as if being tall bothered him. He left the engine of the wagon running.

“This is a problem,” Jerry said.

The tall man said, “You sure got a gas leak.” And then, in an interested voice, “Those bullet holes?”

Jerry took a blackjack out of his hip pocket and hit the tall man hard on the side of the head above the right ear. The blow made a solid, single sound. His glasses flew off. Long legs buckled, folding him over the edge of the trunk. His head and shoulders dropped inside. Jerry shuffled sideways, struck twice more. He placed the blows carefully, leaning into them. He tried to heave the tall man into the trunk, could not turn the body. Legs dangled.

Grunting with the effort, he hauled the tall man out and wrapped both arms around his body. He lugged the limp figure along the side of the Toyota. Sue Ann stared at him, face convulsed.

“Get out of there,” he snarled at her.

She leaped away, scattering comic books on the cement.

He stuffed the body onto the seat, fought the long legs into the compartment. The head flopped over to expose an ear webbed with blood. From the rear, he jerked out a gray blanket, threw it over the body, pulled the head right, hiding the scarlet ear.

She was crowded against him, breath loud. “Is he dead? Is he dead, Jerry?”

“No, no.”

“Oh, Jerry.”

“Get that car loaded.”

“Oh, Jerry.”

He came at her, furious and tall, shoved her violently against the Toyota. She yelped as her head cracked against the glass. “Listen to me. Move.”

They tumbled boxes into the station wagon. They jerked their possessions from the backseat, rushing between the cars, stuffing sacks, armloads of coats, shoes, fishing rods blindly into any unfilled space.

A Volkswagen pulled in behind the wagon, blasted its horn. “Get this thing outta the street, buddy.”

“Go on around.”

“Dumb jerks parking in the road.”

The Volkswagen snarled around the wagon and was gone. Sweat iced his body; his fingers were lengths of marble.

“Let’s go,” he said to her.

“Oh, no,” she said, backing away. “No no no.”

He said in a soft distant voice, “Sue Ann, get in that car or I am going to have to hurt you bad.”

Her mouth fell open. She went back from him, taking small uneven steps as if moving ankle-deep through a marsh. She tottered around the car, got in. He darted back to the Toyota and, leaning in the driver’s side, fumbled under the gray blanket until he found the tall man’s wallet He locked all the doors. Stuffing the wallet into his pocket, he swung into the station wagon, eased it away from the building, down the road, turned left, moving with precise care, went down the clipped access road to I-65. The wagon handled fine. Sue Ann, staring and white, slumped in the corner.

The fingers of his right hand felt greasy. Making a fist, he saw the back of his hand smeared darkly with blood.

From the car radio a slow voice whined the lyrics of “Whiskey Woman.”

Behind the voice pulsed guitar, bass, drums, filling the interior of the automobile with urgent pressure. Over that sound their intense voices went back and forth, birds riding a heavy wind.

“You did. You beat on him.”

“I had to.”

“Oh, you didn’t have to. Take away your hand. It’s bloody.”

He clenched the fist, lifted it, rotated it before her face. “You see blood? You tell me, you see blood?”

“You beat on him and beat and beat. I heard you.”

He said thick-voiced, “You shut up and hear me. I had to get us a car. Us with a shot-up old bomb, the police maybe lookin’.”

“Police?”

In the southwest, mouse-gray clouds ledged in the silver sky.

“You don’t know anything at all, do you? You sit there like a dummy, big grin on your dummy face, don’t know a thing.”

Fear came between them and she strained away from him, her back against the door, feet jamming the floor.

“We need a car, I took us a car. Nobody going to give us a car. Nobody going to give us anything. You need it, you go and get it.”

“You was always so nice.”

“I’m same as I always was.”

“No, you’re not.” She stared at him and it was like looking into a long tunnel with a fire burning in it, far back. “You’re glad you hit him.”

“I didn’t and you wouldn’t be in this car right now, going to Florida, going to have you some fun.”

She began to cry. Country rock poured from the radio. They were building in the fields beyond the highway, orange iron skeletons rising in the sun, with trucks shuttling back and forth and men small among the shining beams.

Eyes on the fields, she said, “You don’t like me any more.”

“I don’t want to hear that. I’m not going to listen to that all the way to Florida.”

“It isn’t right.”

He felt the shaking begin then, the glorious deep trembling that would build and rise, wave on rich wave, half fear, half joy, a terrible exhilaration lifting him out of himself to tower gigantic, invincible, striding, and magnificent.

“It’s what I do.”

Her voice, muffled, wept. “But you hurt them, Jerry.”

“Shoot,” he said, feeling his body stretch and grow. “I busted their heads. Didn’t hurt them. Didn’t feel a thing. Old Davidson, too.”

“Mr. Davidson?”

He said, with cold satisfaction, “I knocked his head loose of his shoulders. Him with his mouth — ‘Gimmie, gimmie, you pay.’ Him with a big fat wallet and a nice blue car.”

“He’s a nice man.”

“He’s nothing now. He’s dead on the floor with his head cracked.”

“Dead?” she asked. “Dead?” Her mouth went quite square and bloodless.

He began to laugh. “You wanting to put a blanket on a dead man.”

“I want to go home. I want to go home, Jerry.”

He laughed.

“You let me out.”

She was across the seat then, snatching at the wheel, jerking it toward her. The car reeled right. He smashed her hand away as the metallic shriek of tires cut above the music. The world outside weaved and bobbed. He drove the back of his hand against her face, wrenched the wheel, accelerated, felt the skidding berme under the tires and the pop of stones flung against the body, felt the sheering lurch back onto the highway. Fought the wheel, tapped the brakes as the station wagon steadied. Struck past her snatching arms.

He slammed her forehead, her ear, drove her back, hands up before her face, smashing the hands back into her face. Awkward blows, slow and deliberate as if he were pounding nails.

She made a thin, high sound, like tearing flesh.

Steady on the road, the wagon lost speed as he pumped the brakes. They swerved to a stop on the shoulder.

“You get out,” he said.

She squealed thinly, without sense, brown eyes rolling.

“Don’t hurt me, Jerry.”

He showed her the point of the knife. It glittered unsteadily in the sunlight, the hot tip jittering in arcs and circles, trembling with a dreadful eagerness. She grew quite still.

“Out that door, Sue Ann.”

“Please please please please.”

He yelled at her. “I’ll do it if you make me. I don’t want to.”

The door opened. She sprawled out onto the shoulder, one hand before her face, palm out. She slipped and fell heavily, crying out.

Leaning across the seat he said, along the length of the knife. “Now you stay gone.”

“Jerry, dear.”

The door slammed. The station wagon leaped forward, kicking up dirt. It picked up speed, rushing south, full of towering mindless power. In the rear mirror he saw her staring after him, her figure dwindling, hidden by a gentle rise, reappearing smaller as the road rose again, still motionless, a huddle of pink by the white highway. Perhaps looking after him.

Five miles down the road, he saw her gray yam purse on the floor. He cranked down the window. After a moment’s hesitation, he opened the purse, opened the worn brown wallet inside. It contained a dime, a nickel, seven pennies. He shook the change onto the seat, dropped the wallet into the purse. Then he hurled the purse from the window. It bounded among the road weeds, leaping flying twisting.

The sun was low now. It was hard to see where the purse had gone.

He drove in silence for ten miles, listening to the radio.

At last he said, “She could have come on to Florida if she wanted to.”

He began to sing softly with the music. He had a pleasant baritone voice, warm and with a sort of lilt to it.