Agreement to Kill

by Peter Rabe

  “Don’t get chippy, Jake. I seen you grow up, and all I …”

  Spinner stopped and turned on the sheriff without caring who would hear him.

  “You fronting for Dixon, like that Sloan bastard? I don’t thank you for it, just so you know. And I don’t scare.” Spinner bared his teeth with the strain in his face and went on. “A lot of things scare me, believe me, and half of them I don’t even know. But this thing I know, and it doesn’t scare me one bit I keep what I’ve got I want my place!” If Spinner’s voice hadn’t been so loud the sheriff might have thought Spinner sounded puzzled. “Hell!” Spinner shouted, “Hell. Why should I have to want something I already got!”

  He walked off abruptly and for a moment the sheriff stood still. He had forgotten what he had wanted to say before Spinner had started to talk. He grunted and went after Spinner. He’d just tell him the same thing again.

  “Wait up, Jake.”

  Spinner waited. They were off the square now, on a street dark with trees, and the sheriff couldn’t make out Spinner’s expression.

  “Just this, Jake. Keep to yourself and don’t set a bad example. I’m warning you. We got edgy days in this town right now. Dixon’s been edgy lately.”

  “I got my own troubles.”

  “But when Dixon’s got them he makes them everybody’s. And I don’t need to tell you he don’t like you in particular.”

  “Don’t tell me his troubles.”

  “I’m telling you yours. Sell out and get out, while Dixon’s still buying.”

  “I’m not worried he’ll drop his offer.”

  “He’s got troubles, I tell you. Out-of-town troubles, and he’s nasty enough to make all of us feel it So I’m telling you, Jake. You just came back home and you don’t know. That’s why I’m telling you.”

  Spinner felt his mood swing and he almost said thanks, but there was too much of a backlog of other things. He said, “I’ll look out for my own. I’ve learned that.”

  “And how good have you been at it? Tell me, how good?”

  Spinner didn’t want to think about that He killed the sick feeling that started to rise in him. A flat smile was on his face.

  “Maybe Dixon will die,” he said. “I got to have luck some time.”

  There was a short silence.

  “One wrong move,” said the sheriff, so low that Spinner could hardly hear. “One wrong move and I’ll be right behind you.”

  Spinner hadn’t meant his remark that way, but there was no time to correct it The sheriff walked off toward the square and Spinner turned the other way. He walked with his hands in his pockets and stared in front of him without really seeing. Once he spat He walked to the end of town and then angled back along the south end, meaning to walk till he was worn enough to lie down and to sleep without thought.

  He had not imagined it would be this bad, the fine edge between rage and despair. He walked with the fear riding his back that some small thing might break the balance….

  Half an hour after Spinner had watched the car turn off near the square, he watched it pass him again on the street He was walking in the south end of town now and a few minutes later Spinner saw Dixon’s house. It sat back from the street, though plainly visible, and the lighted French windows downstairs gave everything on the veranda the sharp lines of a silhouette.

  Dixon stepped into the light, stood for a moment, and was shot dead.

  Not very much later the sheriff was close after his man. Jake Spinner was running down the street, and the sheriff chased after him in his car. He had to sap Spinner unconscious, which was the only way he could take him in.

  CHAPTER 5

  He sat up to get the glare of the bulb out of his eyes. It hung over his head, in the ceiling, and when he sat up he swayed a little. He saw the black bars, the bare station room beyond, and the screen door to the outside. It took a while before he could focus beyond that. They stood on the other side of the door, and what Spinner saw mostly were foreheads, white where they pressed into the screen. The eyes were in shadow and Spinner could only feel them. There was no meaning in the faces. It made the silence unbearable.

  “He’s up.” The faces behind the door moved. “He’s sitting up.”

  Spinner heard a chair scrape and boots coming closer. The deputy opened the cell and said, “Come on out.”

  “You’re in deep,” said the sheriff. “He’s dead.”

  Spinner knew that. Dixon was dead, but nothing had changed for Spinner. Everything was as before. He did not even feel it was worse.

  “And resisting arrest,” added the deputy, as if it mattered.

  “Where’s the gun, Jake?”

  “How come you shot him?”

  “Where’d you get the gun, Jake?”

  “How come you went to see him?”

  Let them talk. Let them talk and don’t listen and get back the strength to keep them away, even the sick strength of hate.

  “I’ve known you all my life, Jake. You can’t get any worse now.”

  The old bastard with the voice like a father. The old bastard with the gun and the sap and the baleful eye, as if he were worried.

  “Why’d you do it, Jake?”

  “Listen to me,” said Spinner. It was his own voice and he was begging them.

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  But the deputy was licking a cigarette and the sheriff looked at the door.

  “Listen!” Spinner shouted.

  They didn’t. The screen door opened and Sloan stuck his head in.

  “We’re right out here, Sheriff, so if you need any help, any kind of help —

  • • •

  “Get out,” said the sheriff. “Slam that door shut, Teddy.”

  The deputy slammed the door and the sheriff took Spinner’s arm to lead him into the back room. There was a table and chairs, a small window, and behind the glass a white face, then two, then more.

  The sheriff yanked the shade over the window and sat down. Outside there was a slow murmuring.

  “Jake,” said the sheriff, “I can tie this thing up without your saying a word. You understand?”

  That’s what Spinner had needed. It shut his face, put steel over his insides, and gave him back his intent. “You listening?” he said.

  “Jake, before you …”

  “I didn’t kill that bastard. I’m glad somebody did, but I didn’t kill that bastard.”

  The sheriff didn’t want to hear. He wanted to say more, before Spinner got worse. “I can tie this up, I told you.” The sheriff stopped. There was a slow swell of voices outside and when it sank again it did not leave altogether.

  “Jake, listen to me.”

  Spinner had clamped his hands into each other, so they wouldn’t shake.

  The sheriff said, “Dixon’s dead. One thing, Jake. That means you’ll have a clean trial. It means nobody’s trying to tie you up any more. This town, Jake, without Dixon — ”

  He stopped again and the three men in the room looked at the covered window, as if they could see it there, the new garble of voices, the sudden swell and sinking of sound. But it stayed stronger now than in the beginning.

  The sheriff saw Spinner sweat.

  “Jake, you listening to me?”

  Even the sheriff’s low voice seemed frantic to Spinner. The covered window seemed alive with a terrible motion.

  “I’m trying to tell you, Jake, so you wouldn’t be scared — ”

  The old fatherly bastard pouring oil on the waters. The old fatherly bastard trying the old fatherly trick of bribing.

  Spinner was breathing hard, as if he had been running. The voices outside were chasing him, they were brewing his insides with acid.

  “Scared?” said the deputy.

  Spinner had an ache in his throat and he turned it into a laugh, a queer, hesitant laugh.

  “Listen to ‘em,” he said. The words were chasing out of him. “Listen to how happy they are about all of this! They’re so crazy happy about Dixon being dead they do
n’t want to stop there. They don’t …”

  “All right, Jake. All right now.”

  “Listen to the stupid …”

  “Don’t listen. Listen to me. Dixon made them stupid, but not forever, Jake!” The sheriff slapped his hand on the table and watched Spinner react It made Spinner turn and look at the sheriff. The sheriff saw the face set, and the eyes come back into focus.

  And at the same time the murmur outside seemed to die, the shaded window making the room a separate thing again.

  “Tell me what happened,” said the sheriff.

  Yes, tell him. For a moment Spinner felt a great gush of feeling inside, a feeling that opened him up and wanted to make him lean close to the man on the other side of the table.

  “How come you shot him?” said the deputy.

  Like the clank of a door or a whip at his heels. Spinner stiffened.

  “Just tell it, Jake. Unless we know — ”

  What he knew could save his life! Unless they knew, soon, now, it might be too late to save his life, and Spinner forgot the deputy, didn’t hear the voices outside, didn’t wonder about the sheriff, but talked, fast and eager.

  “I didn’t kill Dixon, but somebody did! Find him. This car came down the street twice. The same car I saw turn off by the square. That was the first time I saw it. He knew where he was going and he had out-of-town plates, same plates on the car on Dixon’s street, and right after I heard the Garand …”

  “How come you know it was a Garand?”

  “Shut up one minute!” The voices outside grew big again and Spinner started to shout. “The car drove on down the street, going south! I can show you. Maybe there’s time. Sloan, back in the bar, he was telling they just tore up the cutoff on the south end and somebody who didn’t know was driving out that way to get on the turnpike …”

  “How come you know it was a Garand, Jake?” The sheriff talked as if he hadn’t heard a thing.

  “Why shouldn’t I know? I shot one for more years than …”

  “Shut up,” said the sheriff. He leaned forward, listening.

  They heard the front door open and feet on the wooden floor. Not many, but hard and aggressive.

  The sheriff cursed and jumped out of his chair. He ran into the station room but before he could say anything Sloan was talking.

  “Sheriff,” he said, “I offered once and I’m offering again. Me and the boys …”

  “When I need help I call the state troopers. Any more crap out of you and your riff-raff and I’ll call the troopers right now. You open your mouth again, and I …”

  “You talking to me like that? You think you can pull that stuff like in the bar twice?”

  “Get out!” The sheriff yanked at his holster. “Either you …”

  “Pull that gun on me, huh? You know who’s out there, waiting for me? Citizens, you dried-up old coot. You got a notion now Old Dixon is dead …”

  “Out, you son of a bitch!”

  Sloan’s feet clattered when the sheriff pushed him, but Sloan kept on shouting.

  “I’m here to talk Dixon’s cause! I’m here — ”

  The door banged, the lock made two clicks, and the sheriff came back.

  “Bolt the back,” he said to the deputy, “and break out two rifles.”

  Then he stood in the doorway, one hand on his gun, looking up at the wall. The crowd outside the building was suddenly silent except for one voice. The words weren’t clear, but the pitch of it lashed back and forth like a whip.

  Spinner started to sweat The doubt pulled at him with an equal strength — that he must lose, and that he must not give up. In the stalemate he found the worst pain of all, that all this needn’t have happened, that if only they would believe him —

  Glass crashed and a stone beat through the window shade which flapped wildly, and tore.

  “Put him in the cell.” The sheriff ran past the deputy, who came up with two guns. The sheriff picked up the phone, a wild pounding shook the front door, and the sheriff yelled again, “Lock him in the cell.”

  It broke the stalemate for Spinner. He got up before the deputy was back in the room, stood next to him when the front door splintered. The deputy’s head snapped around at the crash and then he ran into the front room. Behind him the door slammed.

  Spinner flicked the lock, snapped off the light, and pushed the table under the window. The commotion was in front. The crowd would clog at the sight of the guns, they would stop at the door with the back pushing up to see the performance and the front men trying to gauge the danger. Maybe shots even — Spinner wasn’t waiting to hear. He knocked out the rest of the glass with a chair and lunged out of the window headfirst.

  The fall didn’t stop him. He raced across the back lot and headed back to the street where it had all started. He ran automatically because there was nothing else to decide.

  He didn’t go all the way back to the Dixon house, but turned to the end of the street that ran out into the country. He had gotten this far once before, running after the out-of-town car until the sheriff had caught up with him and the chase was over. The street became a gravelly road and Spinner continued running. The chase wasn’t over for him, and this time he was the hunter.

  • • •

  There had been a shot — a Garand, Spinner was sure — and before the fact had sunk in he had seen Dixon against the light on his porch, spinning suddenly, then falling with a thud. Spinner had stopped and without any transition he had felt the panic. Nothing worse could happen to him than Dixon’s being killed. He hadn’t thought about this but the panic had said it for him. And then the car. With the feeling of disorganized speed inside him Spinner had thought the car was going too slowly. It shifted with normal sound and headed out to the south end, but never going too fast or hunting for the best way out of town. It found its way steadily, which Spinner could see because the car lights had been on.

  The gravel made dry rattles under his feet and he swerved to the side of the road to let the grass absorb the fast thud of his feet His breathing was painful now. This is the way the car went As if the driver had been a native, knowing the short cuts out of town, avoiding the center, knowing the lanes that went through the fields and where the highway would be. If it was the same car he had seen near the square, if the driver wasn’t a native, if he had just come in, if if if — The effort of running kept Spinner from thinking too much, so the doubt never grew big. And what else could he have done? He would run just the same way to keep from dying of doubt. It had to be this way.

  Sloan had said they were cutting a road for the South End Development, worked until dark to cut it through there. Across from the highway? He must have meant that or else there was no sense in tearing through the south end land with road equipment, no sense tearing this lane in two in order to make an inroad from the highway for Dixon’s equipment.

  And no one driving a car into town from the north late in the evening — no matter how well he might know the country — could have known that Sloan and his crew had that evening torn up the lane on the south.

  He would find the marks in the fresh ground. Later, perhaps, they could find the same soil dragged onto the highway by the car’s tires, to show which way the car went, how much it weighed, or even fantastic things like the make and the color and the registration and the place of sale and the name of the owner and the reason for all that had happened.

  It wasn’t fantastic to Spinner. It was his life, and all he was running for.

  Slow now. If it is true, any part of it, it had to be true now.

  He smelled the loam.

  Spinner slowed and stopped. Sit down for a moment? It was sure now, he could smell the loam, he could stop and imagine that all the rest was just as true as the ground broken up on the other side of the rise. He could even lie down and go to sleep and imagine — He started to curse at himself and moved. But the new, faint smell stopped him rigid.

  The blood roared in his ears and his breath was the loudest of all. The s
mell was burnt rubber.

  There should be a sound, he should hear something, if his blood and his breath weren’t roaring in his ears.

  He crouched on the rise, squeezed low, and felt himself tremble at wheels spinning free and a motor making a useless whine.

  Spinner lay on his belly and when the trembling went away it slipped off smoothly and he took a deep breath. He almost laughed.

  The car had come down the short incline, and at the bottom, where the road was supposed to continue, had slid through the fresh loam and buckled into the ruts running sideways. The speed from the incline had pushed him there. The car had plowed through a pile of dirt that ran the length of the road bed. Even if he hadn’t been stuck in the ruts he couldn’t have made it back.

  Spinner grinned to himself and took his time. He crawled down very carefully, keeping out of the skyline, but it was more like a sport now. The car was headed the other way, and whoever was at the wheel kept gunning and idling the motor, on and off, on and off. Some time the man in the car would have to come out. He would open the door, walk to the back, and bend down to check how badly the wheels were digging in.

  Spinner sat crouched next to the car and tried thinking it out before it happened. He was a few feet away from his man, next to the spinning wheel and the burnt rubber stink strong in his face and the car trembling now and then. Just a few feet, he kept thinking, just a few feet — He tried forcing patience but it made things worse. Wait — a few feet — wait — a few feet — kept buzzing at him and the wheel at his right buzzed and spat dirt and the door a few feet ahead of him never opened. Spinner stared at it, and felt the muscles along his back swelling, arching him like a bow. The wheel whined and the car made lazy nods, not half trying. He found the door handle. Spinner jumped.

  The car confined his movements, but Spinner didn’t need much room. His concentrated violence had only one dimension — from himself to the man behind the wheel. A gun dropped to the floor, the clawing of the mark behind the wheel grew aimless, then both men staggered out into the open as if grown together, and Spinner never stopped. When Spinner swung and swung, the sharp pull in his neck was pleasure and when the other man struck back it was like a tonic.