by Isaac Asimov
“There’s no reason to discuss it,” he said.
“There’s every reason. Her father has a lot of influence in this town. If you think you can humiliate him without reprisal, you’re dangerously mistaken. If she takes something, why can’t you simply charge it to his account as you’ve done in the past?”
“Because it’s wrong, that’s why. I’ve compromised my principles long enough.”
I began to sweat. The room was oppressively hot, but that was only partly the reason. I was shaking with inner rage. The old fool couldn’t see beyond the end of his thin quivering nose. He would sacrifice the business and our future, his daughter’s and mine, and feel smugly sanctimonious. And for what? An insignificant little crime that would hurt nobody.
“You mustn’t judge the poor woman,” I said, trying to think of a way to avoid the clash that was sure to come. “Her father says it’s a sickness.”
“Rubbish. She’s a thief, and worse, she makes no attempt to hide it.” His jaw set obstinately. There was not a drop of perspiration on that cold forehead. “I tell you I have my principles, though your generation wouldn’t understand that. AH you value is the dollar.”
You should talk, I thought grimly. I’ve worked for him long enough to know how he cheats his customers. Nothing big or obvious — just a niggling penny here and there or merchandise a bit substandard. My one comfort was that he could not live forever. My wife was his only child, born late. If I hung on, the store would eventually be mine — a starting point for the ideas and plans that churned impatiently inside my head. I couldn’t allow him to throw everything away because of his single-minded morality.
He kept watch like a hangman waiting on the scaffold, but I began to feel a little hope. She walked up and down the aisles fingering things and dropping them back in the bins. Perhaps the whole thing would blow over. She didn’t always steal. It’s the weather, I told myself. For weeks the heat had clamped down like the lid on a boiling pot, shredding nerves and stroking tempers. Go away, I pleaded silently; make your purchase and get out of here.
It was too late for prayers. Her plump fingers had chosen their prize for the day, bold as brass. The old man sucked in his breath sharply and prepared to charge out of the office, but I grabbed him.
“I won’t let you do this,” I said.
“You can’t stop me.” He tried to shake me off, but I hung on tenaciously. “This is my store. I know you’re waiting anxiously for me to die so you can get your hands on it, but at present I am very much alive and I’ll do as I please.”
“Go ahead then,” I said recklessly, “but listen carefully. If you do this, I’m leaving. You spend a lot of time belittling me, but you’re not a stupid man. You’re crafty enough to recognize the amount of work I put into this store. The truth is, you can no longer handle the business alone.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped, but he hesitated.
“I have another opportunity.” It was a blatant lie, but I was desperate. “I’ll take it tomorrow. You’ll lose not only my help but your daughter and grandson as well.”
He licked his lips, but I could read nothing in those hooded, fish-gray eyes. It took every ounce of my will power to fold my arms and lean casually against a desk, to pretend I could breathe the hot soggy air.
“Well,” I said. “Exactly how much are your principles worth to you?”
He didn’t answer, just turned his back on me and went out to the counter where the woman waited with a few pennies’ worth of nails to legitimatize her visit. I thought his walk seemed slower than usual and his shoulders drooped, but I couldn’t be certain. I followed him with my heart thudding painfully against my ribs, convinced that I had made a ghastly mistake and ruined my future.
He accepted payment without a word or a look at her large shopping basket where the hatchet handle was plainly visible. He even managed a stiff nod and a “Good afternoon. Miss Lizzie,” while I breathed a shaky, victorious sigh and made a note to charge the stolen ax to Mr. Borden’s account.
The Stray Bullet
by Gary Brandner
There were plenty of empty stools in Leo’s, it being the Monday after Easter, but the kid followed Hickman all the way to the end of the bar and sat down next to him. Normally, Hickman would not have minded having company, but on this Monday evening he was tired and would have preferred to sit alone.
The kid looked to be about twenty-two or twenty-three, and he needed a shave. Hickman shifted his stool a fraction of an inch farther away and concentrated on the glassy stare of the deer’s head mounted behind the bar.
“Quiet night,” the kid said.
“Yeah,” Hickman grunted. He motioned to the bartender who was pulling on a red vest. “One of the usual, Leo.”
The bartender dropped ice cubes into a squat glass and poured whiskey over them. He set the drink in front of Hickman and turned to the kid.
“What’ll it be?”
“I’ll have a glass of beer,” the kid said.
“How about a sandwich, Mr. Hickman?” the bartender asked while he filled a glass from the beer tap.
“No, thanks, Leo. I’m trying to lose a few pounds.”
The bartender patted his own stomach. “That’s what I ought to do, but I’d rather be fat and happy than thin and miserable. As long as the girls don’t complain, right?”
“Sure,” said Hickman.
Leo picked up the money for the drinks and went down the bar to ring it up.
“This is my first trip to Los Angeles,” the kid said. “I’m from Oregon.”
“Nice state,” Hickman said. “Green. Rains a lot, though.”
The kid leaned over and peered intently into Hickman’s face. “Look, do you mind if I tell you a story? I have to tell it to somebody all the way through just one time. If you’re a hunter it should interest you. It’s a story about a stray bullet.”
Hickman studied the kid for a few moments. He was thin, almost frail, under the too-heavy checkered jacket. He had an unruly shock of brown hair and was overdue for a shave. His eyes had a pinched, hurting look.
“Okay,” Hickman said, “Let’s hear it.”
The kid signaled for Leo to bring each of them another drink, and began to speak in a tight voice.
“My name is Wesley Mize. Last September I was married in Portland to a girl named Judy who I knew ever since we were in grade school. She was blonde and cute with sky-blue eyes the size of half dollars.
“For our honeymoon I took a week off from my job in a sporting goods store. We planned to just drive around our own state. On the second day we were headed out Highway 58 east of Eugene when Judy spotted an old logging road leading off into the woods. She was sure there would be wild blackberries, which she loved, up that way, so I turned off the highway and drove as far as I could before the brush got too thick.
“We got out of the car and, sure enough, wild blackberries were everywhere. Judy laughed and danced around like a little girl. She got a plastic bucket out of the car and ran ahead of me to fill it up with the berries.
She went running up on top of a little rise then, and she turned to wave for me to come on. She said, ‘Hurry, Wes, come see what I found.’
“I started up to where she was waiting for me, but I never did see what she found. Just as I got to the rise where she was standing, a bullet went through her head and killed my wife of two days.”
“Hey, that’s terrible,” Hickman said, feeling that he should say something.
“I just about went crazy,” the kid went on. “I never heard the shot that killed her, but then there were three more in quick succession. I didn’t see where they hit. I just started running at the sound like I was chasing the devil. My foot got caught in some roots and I fell. It broke two bones in my right leg. Somehow, I don’t know how, I must have crawled back to Judy’s body, because that’s where they found me in shock about six hours later. If a patrolman hadn’t seen where our car turned off the highway and gone up to investigate, we
might both still be there.”
“That was lucky, anyway,” Hickman said.
“Was it?” Wesley Mize let the question hang between them like smoke. “I spent the next five months in the hospital while they tried to fit my leg back together. There wasn’t a single hour of those one hundred and forty-seven days that I didn’t wish it was me who died instead of Judy.”
“Couldn’t the police tell anything about who fired the shots?”
“Not much. They knew it was a 30–06 deer rifle. An empty whiskey bottle was found where the shots came from. They guessed the guy was shooting at an old signpost where the logging road turned off. Just having a little target practice. He hit the post three times. His first shot was the stray that killed Judy. He never even knew he hit anybody. There was a screen of brush right there and you couldn’t see to the road.”
“That’s really a tough break,” Hickman said. “It’s too bad you didn’t at least get a look at the guy’s car.”
“Oh, but I did. I not only got a look at his car, I read the California license number, and I saw the man who did the shooting. I saw his fat drunken face as he threw the bottle out and drove away. He was weaving all over the road. Probably didn’t remember a thing the next day. I was running after the car when I caught my foot and fell.”
“Then why couldn’t the police locate the man if you knew his license number and what he looked like?”
Wesley Mize stood up and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “I’ll tell you the rest of the story when I get back,” he said.
As the kid limped toward the Men’s Room, Leo came over to Hickman and leaned on the bar.
“That guy’s getting kind of loud,” he said. “Is he giving you any trouble?”
“No, I think he’s all right. He’s all unstrung about something that happened to his wife. I think he just wants to get the story off his chest.”
“If he starts to get out of line give me the high sign. I heard him say he’s from Oregon, and those people don’t much like us Californians. For my money they can keep their state.”
“It does rain a lot,” said Hickman.
The kid came back and sat on his stool. Leo gave him a hard look and sidled away down the bar.
“The reason the police didn’t catch the guy,” the kid said, picking right up on his story, “is that I didn’t tell them about seeing him.”
“What would you do that for?” Hickman asked. “Didn’t you want him punished?”
“That’s exactly why I did it. I want him punished, not slapped on the wrist. As soft as the courts are these days, they would probably let him off with a suspended sentence. That man destroyed the most beautiful thing in my world. There is only one punishment for what he did. He’s got to die.
“During those long months when I was in the hospital there was just one reason for me to live — so that I could come after the man who took my wife... and kill him.”
“You mean you’re going to try to find the guy yourself?”
“I mean I have found him. It was easy. I wrote to the California Department of Motor Vehicles and gave them the license number. They wrote back the name of the car’s owner. It turned out he lives here in Los Angeles.”
Hickman felt a sudden clutch of fear. “You have his address?”
“That’s right. I went to his house today. I waited until I saw him come out to make sure he was the one, then I followed him right here to this very bar.”
Hickman looked down and saw that the kid was holding a .45-caliber service automatic in his lap.
“Wait a minute, son,” Hickman cried, “you’re making a mistake!”
“No mistake,” the kid said.
As their voices rose, Leo came hurrying up the bar. When he reached the spot across from the seated men, Wesley Mize raised the big pistol and shot him in the face. Leo was knocked back against the rows of bottles, then he pitched forward, smacking against the bar as he fell.
Hickman sat as though welded to the bar stool. Wesley Mize laid the automatic on the damp surface of the bar and pushed it toward him.
“I won’t need this any more,” the kid said. “The stray bullet is home now.”
A Night Out with the Boys
by Elsin Ann Graffam
The lights were dim, so low I could hardly make out who was in the room with me. Annoyed, I picked my way to the center where the chairs were. The smoky air was as thick as my wife’s perfume, and about as breathable.
I pulled a metal folding chair out and sat next to a man I didn’t know. Squinting, I looked at every face in the room. Not one was familiar.
Adjusting my tie, the stupid, wide, garish tie Georgia had given me for Christmas, I stared at the glass ashtray in the hand of the man sitting next to me. The low-wattage lights were reflected in it, making, I thought, a rather interesting pattern. At least, it was more interesting than anything that had happened yet that evening.
I was a fool to have come, I thought, angry. When the letter came the week before, my wife had opened it.
“Look!” she’d said, handing me my opened mail. It was a small square of neatly printed white paper.
“It’s from that nice man down the block. It’s an invitation to a meeting of some sort. You’ll have to go!”
“Go? Meeting?” I asked, taking off my overcoat and reaching for the letter.
“You are Invited,” the paper read, “to the Annual Meeting of the Brierwood Men’s Club, to be Held at the Ram’s Room at Earle’s Restaurant, Sunday evening, January 8, at Eight o’clock.”
It was signed, “Yours in Brotherhood, Glenn Reynolds.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I hardly know the guy. And I’ve never heard of that club.”
“You’re going!” Georgia rasped. “It’s your chance to get in good with the neighbors. We’ve lived here two whole months and not a soul has dropped in to see us!”
“No wonder,” I thought. “They’ve heard enough of your whining and complaining the times they’ve run into you at the supermarket.”
“Maybe,” I said, “people here are just reserved.”
“Maybe people in the East just aren’t as friendly as the people you knew back home,” she said, sneering.
“Oh, Georgia, don’t start that up again! We left, didn’t we? I pulled up a lifetime of roots for you, didn’t I?”
“Are you trying to tell me it was my fault?! Because if you are, Mr. Forty and Foolish, you’ve got another think coming! It was entirely your fault, and you’re just lucky I didn’t leave you over it!”
“All right, Georgia.”
“Where would you be without Daddy’s money, Mr. Fathead? Where would you be without me?”
“I’m sorry, Georgia. I’m just tired, that’s all.”
She gave a smug little smile and went on. “You are going,” she nodded, making her dyed orange hair shake like an old mop. “Yes indeedly. You can wear your good dark brown suit and that new tie I gave you and...”
And she went on, planning my wardrobe, just as she’d planned every minute of my last fourteen years.
So the night of the eighth I was at the Annual Meeting of the Brierwood Men’s Club. Totally disgusted. What crazy kind of club had a meeting annually? A service club? Fraternal organization? Once a year?
It was almost eight when the men stopped filing into the room. They were, with hardly an exception, a sad-looking lot. I mean, they looked depressed. A gathering of funeral directors? A club for people who had failed at suicide and were contemplating it again?
“I think this is all of us, men,” Reynolds said, standing at the dais. “Yes. We can begin. Alphabetical order, as always. One minute.”
A sad, tired-looking man in his fifties stood up and went to the platform.
“Harry Adams. She, she...”
He wiped his brow nervously and went on.
“This year has been the worst ever for me. You’ve seen her. She’s so beautiful. I know you think I’m lucky. But I’m not, no, no. She’s b
een after me every minute to buy her this, buy her that, so she can impress all the neighbors. I don’t make enough money to be able to do this! But she threatened to leave me and take all I’ve got, which isn’t all that much any longer, if I don’t give in. So I took out a loan at the bank, told them it was for a new roof, bought her everything she wanted with the money. But it wasn’t enough. She wants more. A full-length mink coat, a two-carat diamond ring. I’ll have to go to another bank, get another loan for my roof. I’m running out of money, I’m running out of roofs...”
“One minute, Harry.”
Dejected, the little man left the platform and another took his place.
“Browning. She invited her mother to live with us. The old dame moved in last April. I could hardly put up with my wife, but now I’ve got two of them. Whining, nagging — in stereo, yet. You can’t imagine how it is, guys! I get home from work five minutes late, I’ve got two of them on my back. I forget my wife’s birthday, my mother-in-law lets me have it. I forget my mother-in-law’s birthday, my wife lets me have it.”
He looked over at Reynolds, sitting on the platform.
“More?”
“Ten seconds, Joe.”
“I just want to say I can’t stand it at home any longer! I’m not a young man any longer! I—”
“Minute, Joe.”
And it was another’s turn. I sat there rigid with fascination. What a great idea! Once a year, get together to complain about the wife! Get it out of the system, let it all out! And to think I hadn’t wanted to come!
Some guy named Dorman was on next. His wife had eaten herself up to two hundred and eighty pounds. And Flynn, his wife had gone to thirty doctors for her imagined ills. Herter, his wife refused to wear her false teeth around the house unless they had guests, and Klutz, his wife had wrecked his brand-new sports car three times in the year, down to Morgan, whose wife gave all of his comfortable old clothes to charity.
And then it was my turn. It wasn’t, you understand, that I wanted to impress anybody — but to be able to actually say it, to tell the world what she’d done to me — heaven!