The Far Cry

by Fredric Brown

  Names and dates! Actually, that’s what was wrong. That had been all he’d been able to get, and there was so much more.

  Maybe Luke—no, undoubtedly Luke was the better writer of the two of them, but Luke couldn't do it either. Not from the few and naked facts—and there was so much more—

  He stared again at one of the three paintings which were now again hanging on the wall. Nelson, why?

  He was pacing, then, back and forth the five steps each way the shed allowed him, wishing violently that he’d never undertaken to write up the murder. Why do people like to read about such things? Murder is a horrible word and a horrible thing; murder with a knife is abominable. Murder stories that are fictional are bad enough, but real murder; isn't it a perversion for people to want to read—or write—the bloody details of the real killing of a real human being?

  It's as bad for you—to want to write——

  But he didn't want to write about it; that was the whole trouble. That was what was wrong.

  If it wasn’t for the fact that he needed the money so badly to help pay his expenses for a wasted summer, to help preserve the small and diminishing balance that would be waiting to finance his reentry into business in the fall or winter— If it wasn't for the money he’d already invested in camera rental, films, prints, framing the pictures, the trip to Albuquerque—

  Hell, why not quit now before he got in any deeper? The thing was a gamble anyway; maybe Luke couldn't sell the damned story.

  But what if the printing of the pictures did find Jenny’s murderer—even now, after all this time?

  All right then, do it. But for God's sake get it over with, no matter what the form of the story you send Luke. And meanwhile, for Christ's sake, quit having to look at those paintings—

  He took them down and stacked them, face to the wall, in the corner behind the cot.

  Then he went out again into the bright sunshine and stood there, just outside the shed. The radio from the house was an unintelligible murmur.

  He wished Vi would go into town so he could take those remaining pictures. Maybe he could talk her into going to Taos this afternoon long enough for him to take them. If all the pictures were out of the way, off his mind, if only the story was holding him up, then maybe he could make up his mind to send it to Luke as it stood, to let Luke worry about it, or sell it.

  He managed to kill the rest of the morning doing nothing. He made his suggestion as soon as they'd finished a late lunch. He’d worked out a double-barreled reason for it. "Vi, why don't you drive to Taos this afternoon and see a movie? It’s Saturday, so there’s one playing. Do you good to get away for a change during the day."

  "All right, George; But won't you come along? I hate to go alone.”

  "I’ve got a headache, Vi. That’s one reason I want to get rid of you—so I can lie down in here and sleep it off; that cot out in the shed's not so comfortable as the bed. And if you were here, I’d have to ask you to keep the radio off so I could sleep, and you wouldn't like that."

  "All right, George.”

  "You run along now, then. I'll do the dishes, the few of them there are. And listen, if you want to stay in town to eat after the show, I can fry myself an egg or something. I know you get bored out here all the time. Take the rest of the day, and the evening if you want it, to get away for a change. Here's ten bucks."

  Expensive, those last two photographs—and a chance to be alone.

  He took them as soon as the sound of the car had died away down the road, and he took several shots of each so there wouldn't be any possibility of a slip-up this time.

  He finished off the roll of film with a few shots of scenery in different directions from the house and then got the roll out of the camera ready to take it to Taos. Too damn bad he'd had to give up the car to get rid of Vi, so he couldn't take the films in today. But maybe if he paid extra the shop would develop and dry and print the pictures while he waited or killed time in town tomorrow.

  Meanwhile, the story.

  He went back to the shed and sat down at the typewriter again, staring at the blank piece of paper in it.

  What was the lead sentence he wanted? He got as far as two words of it: “Jenny Ames—”

  The third word and the rest of the sentence wouldn’t come.

  Chapter Ten

  He jerked the paper out of his machine and crumpled it.

  The crime of murder is a meaningless thing, a mere statistic, unless the victim of that murder can be presented as a human being with a background and a history. Not as a name and a vague description.

  What, really, did he know of the victim of this murder of which he was trying to write? Her name That she was young, pretty, black-haired, that she wore a green dress the night she died. That she had been in love with the man who was to kill her and that she had come to Taos to marry him.

  But from where had she come? Why had no one missed her? She must have had friends if not relatives. No one is ever so utterly alone that he can have his name publicized across a continent and have no one come forward.

  It must be that Jenny Ames was not her true name; it was the only answer that made sense. Perhaps she had run away from home because her parents would not consent to her marrying Nelson and she'd changed her name so they couldn't trace her so easily.

  That almost made sense. Not quite. Unless she was under age—and, according to the coroner’s examination of her, she had been about twenty—why should she have feared pursuit? Her parents could not have annulled a marriage. And, anyway, wouldn't they have known Nelson’s name if they had refused to let Jenny marry him?

  Of course, despite that angle, age might have been a factor. Could it be that in New Mexico a girl cannot legally marry under the age of twenty-one without the consent of her parents? It hadn’t arisen in his own case; when he and Vi had been married in Santa Fe she’d been twenty-two, and besides her parents had been dead for some years; she didn’t even have any relatives living that he knew of. He’d have to ask Callahan or someone what the New Mexico law was.

  He found himself walking, out under the warm sun.

  Damn, if only he had the car. Besides taking the films, he could ask Callahan about that law and could ask him too how good a man the coroner had been—whether there was any chance that he had misjudged the girl’s age badly enough that she could have been less than eighteen.

  He was under a big cottonwood tree, the big cottonwood tree. He hadn’t intended to walk there; he hadn’t been paying any attention to where his walk was taking him.

  He stared down at the depression that had been a shallow grave.

  You thought you knew her name and description, he told himself; now you're not even sure you know her name.

  He sat down in the tree’s shade, leaning back against its rough trunk.

  Why did you change your name, Jenny?

  Damn it, he couldn't write that article with so little knowledge, so many gaps in the few things he did know. If he forced himself to write it the words would be meaningless things gibbering out of the pages.

  Who were you, Jenny?

  He walked back to the house. His head was beginning to ache, and that was funny in a way because a headache had been the excuse he'd given for not going with Vi; circumstances were making an honest man out of him. He found aspirins on the shelf back of the kitchen sink and took two of them.

  It was comparatively cool inside the house, much cooler than it was out in the wooden shed. Adobe is wonderful stuff for hot weather; it’s cool by day but holds what heat it has by night when the temperature drops outside.

  He tried to read for a while and couldn’t get interested. Damn it, he thought; he’d counted on reading as one of the things that would help the summer pass restfully and painlessly. Until recently he’d always been able to enjoy reading. Now, always, thoughts got between his eyes and the printed page. He threw down the book angrily.

  He called himself a damned fool, but that didn't help.

  He went out to
the shed and got his water colors and a block of paper and brought them into the house. Maybe he could paint. He tried it, doodling idly at first and then finding himself trying to paint the portrait of a beautiful blackhaired girl.

  But he wasn’t that good; a portrait takes much more draftsmanship than a landscape and draftsmanship had always been his weak point. A slight discrepancy in the shape of a mountain doesn’t matter but a slight one in the shape of a nose or an eye makes a portrait into a caricature. And water color is a very difficult medium for portraits, in any case.

  He tried several times, but each attempt was a little worse than its predecessor and after a while he gave up. But trying had accomplished something—in trying to visualize Jenny, he had built up in his mind a clear picture of her, even though he couldn't get that picture on paper. It probably wasn’t the way she really looked, of course, but did that really matter?

  He tore up the pieces of paper he'd spoiled—tore them into very small bits so they couldn’t possibly be jigsawed together again—and threw them into the wastebasket. He took his water colors back to the shed.

  The headache was still there, although it had dulled a bit. He took two more aspirins and then got a bottle of whisky and made himself a drink, a strong one. He sat sipping it.

  He thought, I'll go crazy if I can't read any more, if I can’t find anything to do.

  After a while the drink was gone and he made himself another. Outside, the shadows were getting long. Pretty soon there’d be a beautiful sunset—and nuts to bothering to go outside and look at it. When you’ve seen one sunset you’ve seen them all.

  If he only had the car. He could go somewhere, go anywhere and do anything. He probably should have gone to Taos with Vi, to the movie. Watching a movie doesn't take the effort of concentration that reading a book takes. Maybe he should—no, he would not descend to listening to the radio. He'd razzed Vi about her radio programs so long that he'd look silly, even to himself, if he started listening to radio now, even if he could find the comparatively few programs that weren’t too horrible.

  He poured another drink, straight this time; it was the only thing in the world he could think of to do.

  When Vi got home at eleven he was drunk, asleep on the bed.

  The next day was Sunday.

  It was a month, to the day, from the time he’d arrived in Taos—never dreaming, before he drove in, that he might decide to stay there. This morning he wondered why he’d made that decision.

  It was raining, for one thing. Not an honest hard rain but a slow dull drizzle from a gray sky, not much more than a mist really, but more unpleasant than a real rain. But the drizzle matched his mood and his mood grew worse when, shortly after lunch, Vi made the simultaneous discovery that there was no liquor in the house except a little wine, which she didn’t care for, and that it was Sunday and no liquor could be purchased anywhere.

  "George, why didn’t you get some more yesterday, before you drank everything in the house last night?”

  He said mildly, “Vi, you had the car. Afternoon and evening. You knew there was less than a bottle left. If you can’t get by a day without it, you should have got some."

  “I can, George, you know I can. You talk like I was a lush. It was you got drunk last night, not me. I don't drink any more than you do, not as much, and you know the doctor told you to go easy on drinking until you get well again and—"

  It went on and after a while he went out to the shed. He didn't want a drink himself, although probably by evening he would, but he wished to hell and back there was some whisky around, just to keep Vi shut up. There wasn’t a thing he wanted to do in the shed, and it was cool and uncomfortable there, but it was away from Vi's nagging and Vi’s radio.

  He lay down on the cot and tried to sleep for a while, although he knew that if he did sleep he wouldn't be able to sleep that night and that he'd regret taking a nap now. Damn Sundays, he thought, damn blue laws, damn a place where there was nowhere to go, nothing to do on a Sunday. If it weren't for this shed, his sanctuary—It's just like a little boy's playhouse, he thought, out here in the back yard where he can get away from people and think his own thoughts, imagine his own imaginings. But——

  What am I? What am I imagining? Why am I here, in a dull drizzle in Taos, earning no money when I need money, when the money I have won last too much longer? And if I’m not well now, I not going to get well; isn't this worry worse than the pressure of business, of working? Why don't I go back to Kansas City and get back to work so I’ll have something constructive to think about instead of living like this?

  He went to the window and stood staring out into the grayness and watching the thin rain fall onto the arid soil that absorbed it instantly as it struck, leaving no trace of moisture behind it. The ground underfoot, for walking, would be almost as dry as on a sunny day. Dry and unfertile soil, like himself, wasteland, haunted by the futile yearning of hungry coyotes.

  Maybe he should go back to the house for a hat and raincoat and take a walk. Better than standing here brooding. Maybe a walk to the cottonwood where Jenny's grave had been.

  But why? What was there now?

  Nothing.

  He went back to the house for his hat and coat and walked through the thin rain to the big tree, and there was nothing, no one, there, nothing but a place where a girl had been buried once for a short time, and that girl was long dead and why did he keep thinking and wondering about her?

  But it was dry under the tree and he sat there a while, leaning back against the big bole, staring at grayness within and without.

  He was living in Santa Fe, he thought, at the time Jenny Ames came through there on her way to be killed. She came through from Albuquerque and there was a wait of at least half an hour between buses. If he had happened to be at the bus station that day he might have met her, talked to her.

  He might have—but no, she was in love with the man to whom she was going, nothing that he could have said to her could have mattered. And—even if he had known then what he knew now—what could he possibly have done? Tell her that the man she was going to marry, as she thought, was going to murder her instead? She’d have thought he was crazy. And then? Get a ticket on the bus, follow her, try to protect her? She'd have called the police, of course.

  Daydream. Suppose he'd gone on the bus but without speaking to her, without trying to warn her; he could have managed to sit next to her, since that seat had been the last one taken. Carlotta Evers had been the last one on the bus and he could have beaten her to it. He, instead of Carlotta Evers, could have become acquainted with Jenny on her way to Taos. She'd have introduced him to Nelson and he could have pulled Nelson aside and said, "I know your plans; you’d better change them or I'll see that you're caught and go to the chair. If you don’t want that, tell Jenny it was all a mistake, her coming here and that you don't love her and can’t marry her.” He could have seen that she got a room in Taos. He could have—

  Weaver laughed out loud at the absurdity of what he was thinking.

  You don’t get second chances, knowing the future. There aren't any time machines that take you back to a point in time where you can change something that has already happened. You never know the future until it’s happened, and then it’s the past and it's unalterable.

  The drizzle had stopped. It startled him to look at his wrist watch and to see that it was almost four o’clock and that he'd been sitting here almost three hours. Vi would be furious if she'd got a lunch ready and then had tried to find him in the shed.

  He walked back rapidly and went into the house by the kitchen door.

  "That you, George?”

  “Yes, Vi.”

  "Getting hungry? I was just thinking about making us something.”

  It was all right, then; she hadn’t missed him.

  "Guess I can eat something,” he said. "Our breakfast was pretty late, but that was still some time ago ."

  She came out into the kitchen and he went on into the living room
and shut off the radio; it wasn't a soap opera, just a variety show, and she probably hadn't been listening and wouldn't miss it. She didn’t.

  The sound of something frying in a skillet. Vi fried everything; she didn’t seem to know that there were other ways of cooking things. Not that Weaver minded fried food, but he would have liked a change from it once in a while. But he'd long ago given up suggesting variety in Vi's cooking. Just as he'd given up worrying about the way she kept house, and tried not to notice. The table beside the chair she’d been sitting in was littered, the ash tray heaping, the open box of candy, magazines lying open, an empty glass— Vi must have decided that wine, after all, was better than nothing—the lipstick on the cigarette butts and the rim of the glass— Why did Vi wear lipstick when only the two of them were here alone? Certainly not for him. Certainly not because—out here miles from nowhere—someone might come. Just habit, it must be; she wore lipstick for the same reason she wore shoes and a dress. Or for the same reason he himself shaved every day—no, that was different; his face got itchy and uncomfortable if he went a day without shaving, even if he didn’t intend to leave the place.

  Had. Jenny Ames worn lipstick? Probably—almost all women do—but not as incessantly and as thickly as Vi. Sometimes even in her sleep if she went to bed too tight to remember to take it off, and then the pillow would be smeared with red in the morning.

  Were you sloppy, ]enny? No, I don think you were; you were young and neat and clean.

  The crumpled spread on the sofa, the mussed pillow, the calendar askew on the wall, the unswept floor. Through the open door of the bedroom one of Vi’s suitcases still on the floor, still not completely unpacked; she took things from it as she needed them and she hadn’t yet needed them all.

  Jenny, you wouldn’t have left a suitcase~

  Weaver sat up suddenly. Why hadn’t he thought of Jenny's suitcases before?

  What had happened to them?

  Surely they hadn’t been found; it would have been mentioned at the inquest, their contents described. Callahan would have mentioned it, and there would have been clues as to who and what Jenny had been. Even though it contains no written word, the contents of any suitcase tell much about its owner.