by Jim Thompson
He whipped out a note book, reached for his fountain pen—and looked at me. Then, he sighed and put the book back into his pocket.
“Well,” he said. “I think you’re making an awful mistake, but—”
“I can’t help it. I can’t do the other.”
“Yeah. Well…”
He stared down at the floor, frowning, scraping a foot against a crack in the tiles. He stood that way a long time, like he was thinking up another argument, and I began to get a little uneasy. I knew that it couldn’t be that way, that I couldn’t plead guilty. But when I thought about being out there, walking around free, well…
When I thought about that I couldn’t think much about anything else. Just getting out seemed to be enough—and I knew that it wasn’t.
“Y’know”—he looked up at me at last—“I should have my head examined, maybe, but I’ve just got a hunch. I think you’ll do it.”
“You don’t,” I said. “But thanks, anyway.”
“Would I lie to you? You’re the only guy that has hunches?” He took another quick glance at his watch. “I’ll be eating Christmas dinner with you, kid. We’ll get her to make a pie out of that goddam pumpkin. The three of us’ll eat together. We’ll do it, get me?”
“I get you,” I said.
“Now, I gotta run. So take it easy and stop acting like a horse’s ass, and—and…”
And he was gone.
I went back to my cot and lay down.
He’d been so convincing that, for a while, I believed that he meant what he’d said. I could close my eyes and see us eating dinner together, with him joking and cutting up and Donna leaning back and laughing, then turning and smiling at me. I…
I could see it for a little while.
Then, it faded away, and somehow it was worse than if I’d never seen it in my mind. There was nothing left but this, and I began to wonder if I was wrong. I began to wonder if there would ever be anything but this. And, gradually, as the days passed, I began to see that there couldn’t be anything else.
I’d get out, all right, I was sure of that. And I knew it wouldn’t be too long because I was going to see Pa there at the house, and they’d be foreclosing on him in a few months.
I’d be out, but staying out was another matter. Because I wouldn’t have that axe in my hands to chop wood.
Everyone would know who’d done it; and even if they didn’t know, even if I could figure out some way of getting away with it, I’d know. I couldn’t have anything to do with Donna. I wouldn’t let myself. So…
So it wouldn’t matter much whether I was here or not. Less than it mattered now. I wasn’t a murderer now, and it looked like I would be.
I’d be back. A man has to be someplace, and this would be where I belonged. I’d be here, as long as I lived.
I tried to talk myself into the notion that one part of the picture could come true and the other not. I tried to think of some way I could be out—be there in the doorway of the house—without using the axe. And I couldn’t talk myself into it; I couldn’t think of any.
The axe was there. I couldn’t get rid of it.
And I wasn’t going to be chopping any wood in the kitchen.
Once, a couple of weeks after he left, I almost wrote Kossmeyer. I almost told him to go ahead with the trial. Then I thought it over and I saw that that wouldn’t really change things at all. No matter how I got out, I’d still be out.
I’d still be there in the doorway with the axe in my hands.
Nothing could change that. I knew it as surely as I knew that I was going to leave here before the end of my first year.
And I did leave before the end of it.
I’d entered Sandstone in January.
I left in November.
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
20
I was in the hospital ten weeks, like I’ve said, and I still didn’t have much strength then. I couldn’t do anything in the way of real heavy work. But I wasn’t actually sick, and you didn’t stay in the hospital unless you were, so they worked out a kind of compromise.
They had a few cells on the hospital floor that they’d used for psychopathic cases. But they didn’t try to handle people like that any more; just shipped ’em to the insane asylum. So they put me in one of those cells.
The doctor looked in on me now and then, mostly then. I did a little leather-carving by way of work—whenever they thought to furnish me with the leather. All in all, it wasn’t too bad. I was a lot better off than most of the prisoners.
The window was way up near the ceiling, and the door was solid, instead of being barred. There was just a little porthole. But there wasn’t anything to see out the window but sandstone, and there sure wasn’t anything in the hospital I cared about seeing. After I got used to it, it suited me pretty well.
If I hadn’t had that axe in my mind, if I’d just been going free and there hadn’t been any axe…
November came.
And one morning, one forenoon rather—it was a couple of hours after breakfast—there was a rattle at the lock and the door swung open.
It was the warden and the doctor. They looked at me, sort of strained but smiling, like you might look at the town bum who’s suddenly struck it rich.
“Well, Carver,” the warden said. “I’ve got some news for you. Good news.”
“Have you?” I said.
“The best in the world, and let me say I’m mighty proud and happy for you! Why, I was just telling the doctor here that I always felt you…” He hesitated, the eyes in the big, hard red face wavering away from mine. “Well, here. Let you read about it for yourself.”
He handed me a newspaper, one of the Oklahoma City dailies. The story was spread across the front page, under a three-picture panel of me, Matthew Ontime and Abe Toolate:
A part-blood Creek Indian, Abe Toolate, confessed last night to the stabbing murder of wealthy plantation owner Matthew Ontime, also of Indian descent, for which another man was tried and convicted. The innocent man, 19-year-old Thomas Carver, has been in Sandstone State Reformatory since January of this year.
According to peace officers of Burdock County, where the sensational crime took place last November, Toolate had been acting peculiarly for several months. Late yesterday afternoon, they said, he came to the sheriff’s office and made a detailed confession to the murder. A former school custodian and town ne’er-do-well, he declared that he had killed Mr. Ontime in a moment of panic when the latter surprised him in the attempted theft of a pig from the plantation pens. The murder weapon was a knife which he had stolen from Carver, a high school senior, during his custodial employment.
Attachés of the governor’s office revealed that immediate steps were being taken to free Carver. They pointed out that, while the formality of a pardon would take several days, it was within the governor’s power to…
I looked up. The warden was grinning, his hand thrust out. I laid the newspaper in it.
“All right,” I said. “How soon can I leave?”
“Why, uh”—his grin faded. “Why, right away! But I thought we might have a little talk first. I’d like to see you leave here with the right perspective. I, uh I’m afraid you don’t understand that when the courts sentence a man to this institution, we have no, uh, discretion—we can only accord him the treatment which, uh…”
“I understand,” I said. “Don’t worry, warden.”
“Worry? Well, now…”
“I’m not going to talk,” I said. “It wouldn’t do any good. This place is like it is for just one reason—because the people don’t give a damn. If they did, they’d change it.”
His face flamed red. He whirled on the doctor.
“Get him out of here! By God, if I find him here an hour from now, someone’s going to—Get him out of here!”
They got me out within an hour. In stiff hard-toed shoes and a baggy black suit with fifty dollars in my pocket. Ten from the state, the rest—I don’t know who�
��d left that on deposit for me. Kossmeyer or Mr. Redbird or Miss Trumbull. I’d never spent any money, because I’d never had any canteen privileges.
I stood outside the high sandstone wall, not moving for a minute or two, somehow afraid to move. Then I began to feel the heat, and I slung my coat over my arm and headed down the road toward town.
It was a five-mile walk, and I’d just missed a bus when I got there. I went into a restaurant, and ordered pie and coffee.
The waitress slammed it down in front of me, staring cold-eyed at my suit. She turned away again, started to pick up the newspaper she’d laid on the back-bar. Then she paused and looked back at me.
The gum in her jaws moved excitedly.
“Why, say—you’re that”—she took a quick glance at the paper—“you’re that Carver fellow!”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Gosh, I was just readin’ about you! I’ll bet you’re sure glad to get out, ain’t cha?”
I nodded.
“You gonna sue the state? I betcha they’d have to pay you! You wasn’t in very long, o’ course, but…”
“I guess not,” I said. “Like you say, I wasn’t in very long.”
She drew back a little, looking down at the slopped-over coffee. “Y’know—well, you know how it is. Seems like they all come in here, and they all look alike.”
“Yes,” I said. “They all look alike.”
I was waiting outside when the bus came in. The driver sized me up as I climbed on and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “In the back, bud.”
I sat down on the long back seat. I saw the waitress standing at the restaurant window, tapping on the glass and holding up the newspaper.
The driver swung down to the walk and looked at it. He got back on the bus and came back to where I was.
“Sorry, bu—Mr. Carver. How about comin’ up front? Riding gets pretty rough over these wheels.”
I shook my head. He started to reach for my elbow.
“Aw, come on; sit up there aside of me. Glad to have you.”
“I think I like it better here,” I said. And I leaned back and closed my eyes.
A moment later the bus started with a jerk.
I kept my eyes closed most of the way to Chickasha, just opening them now and then, letting them get used to the sunlight gradually. I got off the bus at Chickasha, and bought myself some other shoes and a khaki shirt and pants. I left the prison clothes in the store, and caught another bus. I got into Oklahoma City around five.
I could have got another bus out right away, but I checked the schedules and saw that it would put me into Burdock City around midnight. That was too early. I’d be almost sure to run into someone who knew me if I got in at that time. So I had supper, walked around town a little while, then caught a bus.
It would get me into Burdock City a little after two in the morning. There shouldn’t be anyone up and around then; and by the time I walked out to the place, well… I wouldn’t have long to wait.
The sun was practically set by now, and the evening was cool. I sat next to the bus window, looking out, watching the fields rush by. I’d always liked the fall of the year, better even than the spring. I know it seems like a dead season to some people, with the green things gone or going and the land hard and tired-looking and the birds kind of quiet and soft-singing. But it’s never seemed that way to me at all. Me, well, I’ve never really felt that the green is gone. It’s there, right in the fields it came out of, and it’ll be right there when spring comes again, all rested and shined up prettier than ever.
The land, now, well I’ll tell you how I feel about that. It’s done a good job, as good as it was able to, anyway, and it’s got a right to look tired. It’d be pretty upsetting if it looked any other way. Yes, and the hardness is all right, too. It’s been through something pretty hard, and some of that hardness was bound to rub off. And sometimes a frown sets a lot better with you than a smile. Something that’s taken a beating, you don’t want to see it laugh. And just because it’s stopped laughing doesn’t mean it’ll never laugh again.
The birds… well, I reckon singing never sounds so good, none of the good things seem so good, as when you’ve been without ’em a while. And good things become bad mighty quick when you have too much of ’em. You start taking them for granted and then they begin getting on your nerves and the first thing you know you’re all out of temper, all ready to strike out and snap back at the very things you loved. You’re—well, I don’t know. Maybe you feel a little guilty, like you’re getting more than you’re entitled to. And a man may think that’s all to the good, but it never is. He’s never really content. Probably because, down in his heart, he knows there’s no bargains in life. Sooner or later, you pay for everything you get. I—
I like the fall.
I watched the fields rush by, the cotton—they were all through picking in some places—the corn and the cane.
I wondered if Pa had put in a crop on our ten acres, and I figured he probably would have. It would give him a nice little stake to move on with when the mortgage fell due, and…
But he wasn’t going to need any stake.
He wouldn’t be moving on.
It got dark. The bus lights came on, and I couldn’t see the fields any more. Just the towns we went through and the lights of the houses sitting back from the road.
I tried to sleep, but I didn’t seem to be able to keep my eyes closed. They kept coming open. There wasn’t much to see any more, but I went on looking anyway. I kind of felt like there might be something, and I’d miss it if I wasn’t looking.
There was a rest stop at Muskogee, and I had some more coffee and a piece of pie. And of course that finished me as far as sleeping was concerned. I’d had more coffee today—real coffee—than I got in a month at Sandstone. I felt like my eyelids were pushed back inside my head.
It was a couple of hours from Muskogee to Burdock City, but when we got there I was more wide awake than ever.
I got off, the only passenger that did. I headed down the side streets until I reached the edge of town and then I took to the fields.
I didn’t need to, I guess, because if I hadn’t been seen in town, and I hadn’t, I sure wasn’t likely to run into anyone out here. But I wanted to walk through them. I wanted to feel them under my feet, be close to the growing, rather the grown things.
It was too dark to see anything, but I didn’t need to see. You couldn’t have lost me out here. I knew my way, where there was a gully or ditch or a fence. I walked down the furrows, brushing against the dew-wet plants, moving from field to field, and I didn’t have a bit of trouble.
I began to walk slower.
I was almost there. This was part of our—his workings.
It hadn’t been picked yet, the cotton here. I reached down, brushing my hand along the plants, feeling their thickness. I picked myself a couple of bolls and pulled the cotton through my fingers.
It seemed to be a pretty good stand. Should make all of two bales to the acre. If it was picked at the right price and if something didn’t happen to the market—
I let the bolls drop from my fingers.
This wasn’t ours—his. It was some of the land we’d used to work for Ontime, part of the sharecrop forty.
Our ten acres lay next to this. I pushed down the top wire of the fence, straddled it and stepped over.
I took a few steps forward, quite a few, before I stopped, because I just couldn’t believe it was like this. That this was Johnson grass coming almost up to my waist, and that those were sunflowers striking me in the face.
I stopped dead in my tracks, angry, bewildered; not knowing quite what to think.
It just didn’t make sense, any way you looked at it. A kid could work ten acres if he had to. And if he, Pa, hadn’t wanted to work it, he could have shared it over to someone else. He could have done something with it—he hadn’t needed to let it go like this. You just couldn’t do like this.
You let Johnson gr
ass and sunflowers get a start like they had here, and you’d have to fight ’em for years to come. And they’d spread; you’d make it hard on everyone around you. Maybe the land wasn’t yours any more. Maybe you weren’t going to get any more out of it. But that wasn’t any excuse. You just didn’t do this if—
If you were even a tenth of a man.
If you gave a damn about anything.
It was like burning-off on a windy day. It was like, well, standing outside a privy and dirtying your clothes.
I pushed on through the field and came to the fence. I stepped over it and into the yard.
And it was the same way there, the same as the field. He’d—
I stopped thinking about it.
I found the door of the woodshed and went inside.
The whetstone was over the doorsill where it always was, and the axe, like always, was stuck in the chopping block. I jerked it free and sat down on the block, running my hand over the rusted blade. I clamped it between my knees, knocked the dust from the stone and began to whet it.
I’d done it in the picture. I had to do it now.
I moved the stone back and forth across the blade, stopping now and then to test the edge with my thumb. I turned it again and again, whetting it razor sharp, until it had a sweet ring to it when I tapped it with my nails. It was getting daylight now, and the blade glistened like silver.
But there was still time. I still had plenty of time. So I went to work on the head. I rubbed it with the stone, polishing away the grit and rust, and it began to shine like the blade.
I worked on and on, the light going brighter and brighter on the blade. And finally there wasn’t any more to do. There wasn’t a speck of rust or grit left. It was shiny as a mirror—I could have seen myself in it if I’d wanted to.
There was nothing more to do to it. Only with it.
I took it by the handle and went to the door.
I’d had a pretty good idea of how it would look out there, but seeing it was something else. Weeds, sunflowers, Johnson grass, filling the yard, growing right up to the porch and pushing up under it through the planks. And the house itself, sagging at one end where one of the foundation rocks had crumbled; the house, sunburned of its whitewash, windows dirty, one of them broken and stuffed with rags.