Three by Cain

by James M. Cain

  “We can’t do it, Wash.”

  “Why not?”

  “In the first place, it’s a funeral, and it’s entitled not to be busted up by any shooting. And in the second place, if I start anything like that, I got to leave Danny, and they’ll find some way to get back at me by getting back on him.”

  “I’d forgot about that.”

  He marched up and down by the creek, snapping his fingers, and then pretty soon he went in the cabin and came out with my rifle.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t do any more than I have to. But we still got that little lookout back of his cabin, that I can get to up through the woods without being seen, and when he gets back from the church we’re going to start right where we left off. I’m going to throw down on him, and he’s coming with me, and he’s going right off to jail, where he was headed before. What he’s forgot is that he’s still the kidnapper of my boy, and if Blount’s where I’ve got to take him, I got all day, and not any stuff about Danny not having a name is going to stop me this time. He’ll have a name in plenty time for the grand jury to do their stuff.”

  And he went up the path through the woods. But when he came back he was alone.

  “Jess, you remember why we picked that spot?”

  “So we could hear.”

  “And I heard everything. I could hear every word the preacher said, and the hymns they sung, and somebody crying. And then, when I crept out to the bank of the gully and looked down, I could see them all. They came out of the church, six men, carrying a little gray casket.”

  “Made from a tool chest they stole.”

  ‘That’s just about it. They had taken two pieces of rope, and stapled them along each side, so they had handholds. They carried it to the graveyard back of the church, and there they had some more preaching. Then they lowered it with two other pieces of rope into the grave. Then it broke up. And then I got my gun ready, because here came Moke, up the gully to his shack, alone. But Kady called him, and came running up to say good-by. He didn’t pay much attention to her, and said he had heard she was going to get married, and he’d see her at the wedding. And she said she had decided to get married in town, in Carbon City, the first I had heard of it.”

  “First I heard of it too.”

  “She had wanted it in that little church.”

  “Until they kicked me out.”

  “That’s probably it. So he said all right, he’d come to the cabin, and ride in to the church with her. She said there might not be room. He said he’d go in on the bus. And then, Jess, do you know what she said?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “She said, ‘Moke, at my wedding I only want friends, though I’ve tried to treat you as decent as I know how on account of my mother. And if you show up, I’m going to ask Jess to do to you exactly what you did to him. Keep you out, if he’s got to take a rifle to do it. Good-by and good luck, but from now on, you keep out of my life.’ ”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “What could he say?”

  “He took it?”

  “He turned around and went in his shack. And Jess, maybe you think I’m a yellow quitting dog, but that satisfies me if it does you.”

  “It satisfies me.”

  “Then to hell with him.”

  “Like she said, let’s kick him out of our life.”

  We shook hands, and he ran in to hang up the rifle again, before the girls got back and Kady found out what he’d been up to.

  “Jess, are you happy?”

  “For the first time in my life.”

  “Me too, I just can’t believe it. Is it wrong to feel like that, the very same night you buried your mother?”

  “Why would it be?”

  “Maybe this is how it should be, Jess. That one part of my life should begin just when the other part ends. Because if there’s one part of me I’ve got to fight, like you always told me, it’s no trouble to figure out where it came from. And that part we just buried. And tomorrow, I start a new life. With the other part of me. And it’s no trouble to figure out where that came from, either. You gave in a little bit, Jess. But no more than you had to, to keep me home, and out of the devilment I was sliding into. On the big things, you fought it out, and made me fight it out. If I’m beholden to anybody for anything, it’s to you for that, Jess. I’ll always be.”

  She put her hand in mine, with the moon hanging over the woods and making the creek look like silver. “I love you, Kady.”

  “And I love you, Jess. And I’m so proud of you.”

  “I hate it that you’re going, but I’m glad.”

  “I’ve cost you money, Jess.”

  “No, you haven’t.”

  “That still and all.”

  “That still, so far as I’m concerned, it’s not even up there. We took in some money, a lot more than we spent. I blew out a lot of stumps, to put more corn in, and they were on my own land, and now I’ve got the new clearing, and I can grow more on it. I can put in more stock any time I want, and I got the cash to buy it. So stop talking about costing me money, or saying any more about it. We broke the law, but nobody’s the worse off, and it all worked in together to bring us both a whole lot more happiness than we were ever going to have if we’d never met up and did like we did.”

  “You like Wash?”

  “He’s a fine boy.”

  “You coming to see us?”

  “Any time I’m asked.”

  “You will be, because he loves you.”

  “I want Jane with us.”

  “Me too.”

  We went to the window and called, and Jane slipped on a dress and came out, and that was the first it came to us there was no more home in Blount, now that Belle had died and Moke had left it. And then we decided that Jane should move in and live with me, and that made it wonderful. “And specially with me here, because you can have Kady lend us Danny now and then, when she’s going up to Philadelphia to visit her rich friends, and I can take care of him and you can teach him how to ride.”

  She was laughing at me, but I wouldn’t have it that way. “It’s not on account of Danny at all. It’s on account of you, Jane. On account of both of us. We’ll be happy.”

  “But we’ll have Danny, sometimes.”

  “Then all right.”

  Kady got to laughing by then, and we all started laughing, and then we all got some Coca-Cola and drank it, and held hands.

  “And I’m glad of one thing.”

  “What’s that, Kady?”

  “That I’m not going to be married in that church up there, where we held the funeral today. That’s what I’m trying to get away from. The one I picked out, the Methodist Church in Carbon, is pretty. It’s gray stone, with a square tower in front, and it’s what I’m going to.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And I’ve ordered flowers.”

  “What kind?”

  Jane was so excited we were going to have regular flowers from a florist she had a flutter in her eyes. And when Kady told us how they were going to put lilies and things all around inside, I was glad too, and it seemed to me that was really the right place for her to go, and it was all going to turn out wonderful.

  C H A P T E R

  9

  I was up before dawn, and got all my feeding and milking and cleaning done, and put on my best suit, and we had our breakfast. Then I took a rest while they worked, because they had to get Danny ready and get dressed themselves. Then women began dropping by from all up and down the creek, and they had to have it explained to them all over again, how Wash would come out around noon and take the girls and Danny in, while I would follow along in the truck, so I could take Jane back, while Kady and Wash would go over to the hotel with Danny and change into other clothes, so they could drive off some place. So then there was a lot of talk about the flowers Wash was going to bring, and I had never worn one in my life, but I thought for Kady’s wedding I would put one in my buttonhole. So I knew where some wild roses were, dow
n the creek a way, at the edge of a piece of woods, and started down there. But I didn’t more than get started when up on the mountainside I saw something move. Now so far as I was concerned, that still up there I knew nothing about, had never seen, and never heard of. But that was so far as I was concerned. So far as an officer was concerned maybe I was the fellow that lived closest to it. Or maybe I had left something up there and forgotten about it.Or maybe when I talked to him I’d have got a funny look on my face. I had to know who it was, because there was no regular business anybody could have up there, fifteen feet from the shaft mouth, but nowhere near anything else.

  I crossed the creek on some stones, kept under the cliff so I couldn’t be seen, and hit the path that led up to the timbered drift, the one we had used to roll our stuff into after we hauled it up on a block and falls from the road. About a hundred feet inside was a tool chest where I kept extra lamps, water, carbide, canned beans, and some dynamite, in case I had to shoot the tunnel down and get out quick through the shaft. It was the first I had been there since Jane came with Danny, and already I hated it that I had ever had anything to do with the liquor. Because the mash I had left fermenting was so high it turned your stomach to smell it, and the rats that had come in for our grain almost knocked me down jumping off the bins to get out of my way. You don’t kill rats in a mine, because if something’s going to happen they know it before God knows it, and the way they run out with men right on their tail, they’re called the miner’s best friend. Just the same, they turned my stomach worse than the smell.

  I watched for a minute, but I didn’t see anything so I started up the ladder, first putting out the light. Then I came down and took off my shoes. Then I went up again, and when I got to the top I raised my head easy, because if a deputy marshal would have me covered, or what would be there, I didn’t exactly know. But it was no officer. It was Moke, and across his knees was the same Winchester Ed Blue had thrown on me the day before, when he wouldn’t let me in the church. And where he was sitting was the one spot on the mountainside where he could cover a sharp bend in the road, where I’d have to come almost to a stop, on my way in to the wedding. I held my breath, because if he ever saw me I’d never make it down the ladder before he stepped over and plugged me. And then my heart stopped beating, and I almost fell down the shaft. Because it was hot, and he had taken off the jumper of his denims, so he was bare from the waist up. And I could see why Belle had fought with him over Danny, why he had kidnapped the boy, why he hated Wash, and all the rest of it, or thought I could.

  By his navel was the butterfly.

  When I got back to the cabin both girls were up the road with Danny, saying good-by to a woman that lived up the creek. Jane had on a dress, but Kady had on nothing but shoes and stockings and pants, with nothing over them but a blue checked apron she had slipped on to go out in. I waited while the woman, that was named Liza Minden, told it how she had known all the Blounts before Wash’s father had owned a mine or anything, and how they were wonderful people, and Kady was going to like them fine. And the more she went on, the crazier I got. I took down my rifle and loaded it, and waited some more. Then I went to the window—and leveled it, and drew a bead on her. I meant to shoot her through the heart for what she was, a rotten little slut that would even go to bed with her own father if he would let her, and that had already gone to bed with her mother’s lover, and was getting ready to marry a boy that was no more relation to the child she said was his than a possum was. But when I sighted the gun I couldn’t pull the trigger. I went outside, so I wouldn’t see her any more, and my feet lifted high off the ground when I walked, like I had just been hung and was dancing on air.

  “Jess, you’re crazy.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Everybody’s got birthmarks.”

  “Wash, if the birthmark was all, I might not pay any attention to it either. But it’s not. Ever since Jane got here and found the boy in his shack, I’ve been trying to figure out why he kidnapped him, and so have you and so has everybody. Ever since Belle came in that night, I’ve been trying to figure out what she was doing there, and since she tried to kill Moke, I’ve been trying to figure out why. So have you, so has Jane, so has everybody. All right, now we know. He kidnapped Danny because Danny’s his child, and he knew it from the birthmark and so did Belle, and so did Kady. But Jane got him back, and then Kady had the chance to marry you, if she could ever keep it dark about this other thing. But Belle knew Moke better than anybody else knew him. She knew if it was the last chance he had, Moke would spill it. And she didn’t have much longer to live anyhow, so she came up here to stop him, the only way she knew. And what the hell do you mean, everybody has birthmarks? How could a baby and a man have a birthmark like that and it not mean anything?”

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed in his hotel room, all dressed for the wedding except for his coat, that was on the back of a chair with a carnation in the buttonhole, and two boxes of flowers in the same chair. He lit a cigarette and smoked a long time. Then he said: “Listen, Jess, it just can’t be true. In the first place she’s not that kind of a girl. And if she was that kind of a girl, she couldn’t be that kind of a girl with Moke. And he’s old enough to be her father. He’s almost as old as you are, Jess.”

  “He’s thirty-nine.”

  “Then she couldn’t fool around with him.”

  “Yes, she could.”

  “Jess, I say she couldn’t.”

  He snapped that at me with a killer light in his eye, and I don’t know what kind of a look I had in my eye when I slung it back at him, but it must have said something, because he staggered back against the wall and said, “Jesus Christ.”

  “You think I’m just fooling?”

  He lit another cigarette and thought a while, and said: “Then I’ve got to kill him, Jess.”

  “That I won’t let you do.”

  “I wasn’t asking you.”

  “You don’t know where he is and I won’t tell you and even if you did know you couldn’t get to him without a guide. And by the time you find one, if you can find one, he’ll be dead, because I’m going to kill him on my way back.”

  “She’s the mother of my—”

  He broke off and looked at me, and I think it was the first time he got it through his head, the meaning of what I had told him.

  “I really got nothing to do with it, have I?”

  “Not a thing in this world.”

  “Unless— ”

  “You killed her, is that it?”

  He didn’t answer me. He just went and looked out the window, but that was what he had started to say. “Well, Wash, I tried it, but I couldn’t.”

  “I could.”

  “Him, that’ll be different.”

  There came a ring on his buzzer and he opened the door. It was his father and mother. His father was tall, like he was, with gray hair and a brown, sunburned face. But his mother was pink and pretty and sweet, and went over to him and kissed him and asked if the bride was here, and where was the baby, and lots more stuff like that. He said who I was, and both of them shook hands, and said they had hoped I’d be able to get to the wedding.

  “There won’t be any wedding, Mom.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry you took the trip for nothing. Now we’re going home.”

  C H A P T E R

  10

  When I got near the bend I stopped, hid the truck back of the old filling station, got the rifle out, and crossed the creek on the pillars of the old bridge. I kept on up on the other side, keeping under the cliff and out of sight from above till I came to the path. Then I crept up the mountainside without making any noise at all. When I came to the drift I went in, opened the tool chest, refilled the lamp, lit it, and set it down. I cut off about six feet of fuse, rolled it up, and stuck it in my pocket. I put a box of caps in there with it. I stuck a couple of sticks of dynamite in my pocket on the other side. Then I went on in. When I came to the shaft I laid out powd
er, fuse, and caps on a scaffold, and put my shoes beside them, tied to a scantling against rats. Then I picked up the rifle and started up the ladder. When I lifted my head out he had moved, with the sun, about six feet away from where he had been before, but that put him facing me more, and made it better. He was eating beans out of a can with his knife, and I let him finish them up before I raised my gun. I drew my bead right on the butterfly. He doubled up when I pulled the trigger, and held on to his stomach, and kicked like a cat trying to shake papers off its feet, and drew his breath in and out fast like a dog in the summer time, except instead of heat that made him do that, it was pain. That suited me fine. I stepped out, picked up his rifle from where he had set it down to eat, and sat down to watch him twitch.

  “You dirty son of a bitch.”

  “Hello, Moke.”

  “God, that would be like you, Jess, to shoot me in the belly and then go on and leave me here to die.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go off and leave you, if that’s all that’s worrying you. There’s buzzards up there, and I couldn’t have them flying around to tip anybody off.”

  “Couldn’t you shoot me through the heart?”

  “I shoot you where you got it coming.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I let you off once, because I thought neither you nor the woman was worth it. But now you went too far, and I got to tach you to lay off my daughter.”

  “Your what?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Say, that’s a joke.”

  “I shot you in the butterfly. That’s what little Danny’s got, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you did for your country? Leave a poor little kid that’s birthmarked like you? Well, you don’t do it with my daughter and live to tell about it.”

  “Kady never done nothing with me.”

  “I’ll attend to her, later.”

  “You going to attend to Danny?”

  “I’ll take care of him, anyway.”