by Orrie Hitt
Joan disappeared inside the house and he walked toward the woods, trying not to hurry too much. A lump rose into his throat, getting bigger with almost every step. From a hired trapper he was turning into a killer. He wondered if he would ever forget this day, these moments during which he would cease to be a normal human being. He hoped that he could lose himself in Kitty’s body, making love to her until he was exhausted, and the money would always be there, a huge cornucopia of money that could never be emptied.
He thought of a dozen things as he continued along the ridge toward the big pine tree. He thought of the day his father had died, of the picture of his mother that he had lost, of the first time he had been with Joan, making her cry out in the pain of first love. He thought of other girls, of girls who had been good and girls who had been bad, and he thought of Mrs. Norton yelling at him about his room rent. It was crazy the things he thought about, things that had been buried deep in the back of his mind, things that seemed cloudy and unreal now.
He saw the pine, standing tall and straight, and he dropped down behind the ridge to keep out of sight. Some of the boys were shooting and he heard one of them yell happily.
It wasn’t too late to run, he told himself; it wasn’t too late to stop before he went too far. But it was too late. In his own mind Jennings was already long dead and he was married to Kitty, spending the days with her on some beach in Florida and the nights in a big double bed.
There was some brush on the opposite slope of the ridge, and he walked around it. Every day had been hot lately but this one seemed to be hotter than any of the others. Sweat poured down his face and he could feel it on his arms and legs. He put one hand to the front of his T-shirt and it was wet, just as though he had worn it out in the rain that morning. But this was something he had never dreamed of doing before, and he was bound to be nervous. Once he stopped, standing very still, and he thought he could see his heart hammering against his chest wall, pumping the blood through his veins like an engine gone mad.
He stood there, doubt racing through his mind. What if he missed Jennings? Jesus, he simply couldn’t miss. He had been brought up with a gun. They had had a rifle club in high school and he’d always been on the top of the scoring heap. He had been told that he ought to be able to get a job with a firearms company, demonstrating.
“Damn,” he muttered.
He had to get hold of himself, had to control his emotions. This was the most serious thing he had ever done. He couldn’t botch it. A twenty-two wasn’t a very big bullet, and it had to hit Jennings just right to do the trick. It had to be a brain shot. He had to drill Jennings good, just the way he would an animal or a snake, and then he had to run. The rest would be up to Kitty, the phoning for the police, the false tears, the dirty job of pointing a finger at the kids who were just fooling around.
There were, though, some things that he didn’t like about it. Carole’s knowledge that he had slept with Kitty, or her suspicion that he had, was one of them. And Joan’s condition didn’t help matters any. If the police looked far enough, if Carole and Joan talked, the police might become curious.
“I was in the woods,” he would tell them. “Trapping. That’s my job.”
Could they prove differently? Eddie didn’t think so. He would stay behind that big pine and nobody would see him, either when he fired the fatal shot or when he departed. The woods to the north were thick and he would soon lose himself. Then he would get rid of the gun in the swamp, hiding it in the mud, and when he got back to the house he would act surprised that Jennings was dead. He’d drift over to the county seat and hit into one of those jobs Joan had been talking about. Kitty had a car and they could meet nights, making love in some motel room or perhaps the car itself. It wasn’t important where, as long as they were together.
A crow drifted out of the pine tree and the shotgun blasted. The crow changed course and continued flying. The shotgun blasted again. The crow sailed on. He could imagine Jennings cursing, reloading the shotgun, his sadistic mind in turmoil.
Eddie approached the pine tree. He could see the gun leaning up against the trunk even before he got there. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with a shaking hand. The murder weapon, he thought. Death. Death for Frank Jennings. Freedom for Kitty. Money for Kitty. Freedom and money for both Kitty and Eddie. Freedom and money and a whole damned future of glitter and gold.
He hid behind the huge tree and fingered the gun to see if it was loaded. He didn’t have any shells with him and it would be hell if she hadn’t loaded it. But she had. The clip was full, the death bullet in the chamber.
Carefully he peered from behind the tree. Jennings was down there all right, not more than a hundred and twenty-five feet away, just sitting there in his wheel chair, holding the shotgun.
“Run through that patch of laurel,” Jennings shouted to his wife. “There’s a rabbit in there and I want to blast his guts out.”
Eddie could see Kitty on the other side of the laurel. She was looking toward the pine tree and when she saw him she sort of waved her hand.
“It’s only a little rabbit,” she called back.
“Did I ask you how big it was? I don’t care if it’s a day old. Just get it out here.”
Eddie didn’t like the idea of shooting downhill. When you shot downhill you were apt to hit higher on the target than you expected.
She came through the laurel, probably scratching her legs in the process, and the kids were having a ball just behind her. No doubt they were shooting deeper into the woods but nobody would ever be able to prove that. Nobody believed kids. Kids, when they were excited, were never quite sure what they did.
Eddie released the safety on the gun, then put it back on again. He had a clear view of Jennings and the shot would be a simple one. Jennings was sitting perfectly still, intent on killing the rabbit. But no rabbit came out. Just Kitty.
“Let’s move on,” Jennings said. “The rabbit probably went into a hole.”
Kitty glanced toward the tree again.
“I saw something on the ridge,” she said. “You stay here. Let me circle around and see if I can drive it down here.”
“What did it look like?”
“It might have been a deer.”
“I don’t care what it is. Just chase it out.”
Kitty went back through the laurel bushes and Eddie lost sight of her. Jennings remained a perfect target and still he did nothing about it. It was too easy to send a death bullet down there and, once sent, impossible to take it back. Death was such a final thing, and even for a man like Jennings it seemed terrible to Eddie. Maybe Jennings had it coming, but it didn’t mean that he, Eddie, had to do it. And yet …
Slowly the gun came up to his shoulders and he steadied it against the tree, his breath a streak of fire as he sucked air into his lungs. Jennings’ side was toward him, the right side, and he got the ear riding on top of the front sight, moved the sight ahead about a couple of inches and down an inch. The bullet should strike Jennings exactly in the temple, the lead slamming itself into his brain.
Eddie’s legs were weak, as though there were no bone beneath his knees at all. Each time his heart beat, the front sight of the gun went up and down a little, and the sweat that was gathering in his eyes didn’t help matters.
He hadn’t shot yet, but he could hear the explosion of the gun, and he could see Jennings slumping forward, falling face down on the ground. He could feel himself running, a killer on the loose, his only desire in life to escape the consequences of his act. But could he escape in the arms of a woman or with a bottle of booze? Even killing animals bothered him. What would it be like to have another man’s blood on his hands?
Quickly the gun came down and he got all the way behind the tree, leaning against the rough bark. He couldn’t do it.
“Eddie!”
She was below the crest of the ridge, watching him. With a great deal of effort he walked down to her.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” she d
emanded in a husky whisper. “You waiting for him to die of a heart attack or something?”
“I had the gun on him but — ”
“But what?”
“I couldn’t.” With his free hand he grabbed one of her arms. “This is insane, Kitty. There has to be another way.”
Her dark eyes flashed.
“There isn’t any other way, Eddie, and you know it. Here we’ve got it made — the kids here, Wilson in town — and you haven’t got the guts of a fish worm that’s been dead for a week.”
“Listen to me,” he pleaded. “For Christ’s sake, listen! We kill him and it’ll be with us the rest of our lives. We won’t be able to look at each other without seeing him, remembering what we did.”
“A couple of million dollars — ”
“It isn’t worth it. Can’t you see that, Kitty? There isn’t a life, no matter how bad, that’s worth it. If you’d only — ”
Cursing, she broke loose and grabbed the gun from his hand.
“I’ll get him,” she promised, plunging to the top of the ridge. “I’ll get him myself, you weak-brained infant.”
He reached her just as she got the gun to her shoulder, just in time to ruin her aim. Even so, the bullet came close to Jennings and he glanced toward the big pine tree in alarm.
“What’s going on?” he shouted.
“You’re going to get yours, you slob,” she screamed, fighting with Eddie for the gun, biting and kicking and scratching with her sharp fingernails.
Jennings must have sensed the danger because he threw the shotgun away and, like a wounded crab, began to wheel himself out of the woods, the muscles of his powerful arms corded in the sunlight.
“Help me!” Jennings hollered. “Somebody help me!”
But Eddie couldn’t help him. He was having all he could do to control Kitty. She fought like two cats in a barrel and the words she uttered came from the depths of the sewer, words that Eddie had seldom heard hardened men use.
“Let me go, you bastard,” she gasped. “Give me the gun and let me finish him off.”
“No. Use your head. You want to die for murder?”
“I want his money. I have to have his money. I married him for his money and neither you nor anyone else is going to stop me from getting it.”
“You’ll never get it, baby. You ran your race and you lost.”
When at last she knew it was no use she sank to the ground, sobbing. She wasn’t a pretty sight, her halter ripped from her body in the struggle for the gun, her shorts high and tight on her legs that had been scratched by the laurel bushes.
“Oh, you bastard,” she kept saying over and over again. “You rotten bastard, Eddie.”
He unloaded the gun and threw the shells away. The gun followed the shells into the undergrowth.
“Let’s get up to the house,” Eddie said gently. “We’d better talk to him.”
“Shut up.”
“Well, you just can’t lie there. The bullet was close and he knows what you were trying to do. We better see him before he calls the police.”
She sat up.
“You’re in it with me, Eddie.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t.”
“And I’ll tell him it was your idea. I’ll fix you just as I fixed Jim. He wouldn’t go through with it either. He was just as yellow as you are. All he wanted to do was give me a kid and I can’t have any kids.”
“But I thought — ”
“Oh, that was a stall, you stupid fool, you big clod of a farmer boy. I had an abortion when I was twenty and the woman did a miserable job. They had to take me to a hospital and they had to take out what I needed to have brats. It didn’t bother me. I didn’t want any, anyway. Brats just scream in your ears and you have to wipe their filthy noses.”
She had called him a clod and he guessed he had been one but, strangely enough, it didn’t bother him. She had given him her body and in exchange for that she had wanted the death of her husband. He saw it all now, as clearly as he saw the sun in the sky, a red and angry sun that spoke of more hot weather to come.
“You weren’t going to marry me,” he whispered, more to himself than to her.
She got to her feet and brushed herself off.
“You nuts or something, Eddie?”
“You’d have left me holding the bag, wouldn’t you?”
“If there was one to hold. But I’d have given you money. I could have afforded to. You take a few thousand out of a couple of million and you don’t even miss it.”
“How do you know? You never had a couple of million.”
He swung around, turning his back to her, and walked away. He saw his love for her for what it had been — nothing. Like a lot of men, he supposed, he had been thinking in terms of money, but there was more to life. There was the feeling of being wanted, of being needed, of sharing your days and nights with somebody who cared as much as you did. Of course there was sex, but sex was the expression of love and not the whole of it. Some nights you might not even think about it, but love was there just the same, the warmth and the tender goodness of it.
Eddie didn’t expect to find Jennings on the lawn but he was there all right. The only thing missing was the bottle.
“Thanks,” Jennings said. “I think I know what you did.”
“I was in on it from the start.”
“Were you?”
“Yes. Unfortunately.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Maybe the risk. I don’t know. How do you answer a question like that? You just seem to slide into these things and they seem so right at the time.”
Jennings dug a cigar out of his pocket.
“I won’t be needing a trapper,” he said as he held a match to the cigar.
“Sorry to hear that. I could use the job.”
“With the expenses you have coming up?”
“That’s it.”
“You never enjoyed your work, did you?”
“No. I thought it was wrong from the start. There are a few animals that should be killed, but not all of them.”
“None of them,” Jennings said.
“Suit yourself.”
“I saw it down there in the woods, wheeling myself out of there. I was trapped and I was frightened. I didn’t like it. If it hadn’t been for you she would have killed me, just the way I’ve killed animals.” Jennings puffed on the cigar. “It all started with the horse, the one that threw me. Maybe the horse wasn’t even to blame. Kitty was in back of me at the time, riding close, and she may have done something that caused the horse to buck. But I blamed the horse and I bought it and I had it killed. My injury made me want to kill everything that was a stupid, unreasoning animal and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. I’m not physically able to do it very well myself, so I hired others. But today, when I was trapped between that gun and death, I realized how the animals must feel. I thought animals were cruel — I kept telling myself that — but I found out that the human animal can be more cruel.”
“Cruel?” Eddie countered. “I saw her breasts. I saw the teeth marks and the bruises. I’d say you were cruel, Jennings.”
“I never touched her,” Jennings said. “She did the same thing when Jim was here. She did it to herself. I saw her then, and after I fired Jim I felt sure that he hadn’t done it. She was simply trying to arouse him as she aroused you.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m not going to the police, if that’s what you mean. I’ll settle a couple of hundred thousand dollars on her and she can get a divorce in another state. Maybe someday she’ll find herself and maybe she won’t. It isn’t my worry. In some ways she’s been a good wife to me, taking care of me because she insisted on doing it, but I can always hire a nurse.”
A few minutes later Eddie excused himself and walked toward his room over the garage.
He didn’t walk fast. It had been some day.
13
THE BUS to the county seat was old, and the seats ha
rd as bare boards. Not many people rode the bus and everyone wondered how the operator stayed in business.
“I’m glad to get away from Wildwood Acres,” Eddie said, sitting down beside Joan. “I’ve done a lot of crazy things in my life but what I did out there — or almost did — was crazier than any of them.”
“We all wander once in a while,” Joan said. “I guess it’s human nature.”
He glanced at Joan. She was a good kid, a nice girl, and she would make a fine wife. They had just come from her lawyer, and it wouldn’t be too long before she had her divorce from Paul. As soon as she was free Eddie would marry her, and he would never ask for another girl for the rest of his life.
“Mr. Jennings was nice about it,” she said. “I think he really loved Kitty, but he was glad to find out what kind of a girl she is. Wonder what she’ll do with all the money he’s giving her?”
“Squander it and go broke. Or maybe she’ll find another man. I don’t think I’ll worry about her. A girl like Kitty will always get along — by hook or crook. But I guess she was lucky and so was I. Jennings had enough on both of us to have us arrested.”
“Yes, he did.”
“But it took what happened to change him, and he’s glad of that. He won’t want to kill everything in sight anymore, and in a few years there’ll be more game on Wildwood Acres than any other place in the country.”
The ancient bus groaned as the driver pulled out into the street.
“I’m glad you didn’t take that five thousand dollars from Carole,” Joan said.
“I couldn’t. She knew what Kitty was, but I couldn’t touch the money. I didn’t earn it, really, and it was pretty dirty money. The five hundred dollar bonus Jennings gave to me is another story. I like to think I did earn that.”
“Well, it’ll help. And I thought it was very decent for Mr. Jennings to get you the job on the farm.”
“Yeah, he turned out okay.”
The farm was near the county seat, a dairy farm, and Jennings knew the owner. Eddie’s job would be in the barn, running the milking machines and caring for the cows, and Joan was to help out around the house as long as she could. There would be separate rooms for them, but after they were married they could move into a little furnished cottage on the farm. The pay was two seventy-five a month and their keep. It wasn’t a fortune, but it wasn’t bad. The manager of the farm was retiring in another year, and Eddie had a chance of working up into that.