by Cave, Hugh
He reached the dirt road at last and stood there, stamping his legs up and down to knock the clinging gray funereal stuff off his boots. He looked back and saw the pinprick of light a long way off, and it terrified him because it was still glittering malevolently and still pointing. He faced toward the city—miles and miles away, where people would be talking and streetcars would be grumbling and windows would be illuminated with colored lights, and there would be hundreds and hundreds of sheltering black doorways where he could hide. And he ran.
He ran on and on until the dirt road was a paved highway with car tracks and street lights blinking. Then, because his legs were heavy, he stopped running and stumbled along at a walk. He followed the tracks until he came to houses and sidewalks. The street lights huddled closer together. A lumbering trolley car went past him. Automobiles rolled out of the dark, stared at him accusingly with round white eyes, and droned away again. People passed him and glanced at him because his face was gaunt and sweaty and heaving up and down in torment.
He walked by two huge oil vats that were lit up with floodlights. When he passed them he cringed against an iron railing and tried to cower away from the glare. He wanted lights because the darkness clutched out for him with invisible fingers; and he wanted darkness because lights pointed into his face and screamed at him. He walked on and on.
He reached the city slums. A clock on a big building said half-past nine and grinned at him. He scuffed along a dirty sidewalk and presently he opened a door that said POOL on it in red letters; and he went in and sat on a bench in the darkest corner.
He crouched there without looking up, listening to the click-click-click of little round balls hitting each other, and listening to the murmur of men's voices.
For a long while he heard these sounds without looking toward them; then he lifted his head and saw four bright hanging lights over four green-topped rectangular tables which were like patches of green grass. He watched the little balls rolling on the grass and clicking into one another and rolling away again. No one bothered with him. No one came near him or spoke to him or even knew he was there.
He found courage in the four lights and in the noise of the balls. The lights were shaded on top and were not pointing at him like Mulvahey's light; and the balls weren't screeching "Blood! Murder! Washington Jeffers!" They were tinkling like bits of glass. They were even winking at him and whispering. "Who'm gonna know? Who'm gonna know anyhow?"
Another illusion came to him then. The balls were all alike; they were all round and the same size; they all said the same thing. Other things were alike, too. The four hanging lamps were alike, and the four tables were alike, and the men in the room were alike.
He remembered that he and Mulvahey were the same way. He and Mulvahey were brothers; they looked like each other. He was a little stronger than Mulvahey and a little heavier, but no one ever noticed that. No one ever went to the dump yard shanty except Washington Jeffers, and Washington Jeffers was dead now. Who was going to know?
The idea simmered and took deeper root. The lights winked again out of one eye and said, "Sho' 'nough, Jum Peters, sho' 'nough. Who am gonna know, 'ceptin' Cerema?"
He considered it vaguely at first, just to think about something. The more he thought, the more the details dovetailed into each other, until all the significant points of the plan were in proper order, leading straight from the start to the conclusion.
"If'n I kills Mulvahey," he thought, "an' hides Mulvahey unner de deepes' part er de dump whar no one'm gonna ever fin' it—"
He looked up at the lights, and the lights nodded their approval.
"An' if'n I stays right in de shanty wid Cerema an' tells de p'lice w'en dey come dat I is Mulvahey an' dat Jum Peters done kill dat Washinnun Jeffers an' done run away—"
He listened to the clink of the balls and the murmur of voices, and they said over again: "Who'm gonna know? Who'm gonna know anyhow?"
He got up then and walked across the room and went out. While he strode along the sidewalk, back the way he had come, the conception burned up into his head and blazed out of his eyes. He began to run again. He kept running until he was far past the two illuminated oil vats.
"If'n I tells de p'lice I is Mulvahey, an' I tells dem Jum Peters done kill Washinnun Jeffers an' run away, dey is gwine go lookin' foh Jum Peters foh ebber an' ebber. Who'm gonna know de trut'?"
Cerema would know. He thought of that. But Cerema could be easily silenced. And if he killed Mulvahey, Cerema would be his woman without dispute. He could have her and take her and live with her. There would be no need to creep back at noonday out of the dump and stifle her voice and break her supple body in his arms to subdue it. He could own her.
By the time he reached the car-track terminals and the end of the paved road, he had every step warily schemed. He would circle the dump like a scavenger dog, belly to the ground and eyes alert. He would make certain first that only Cererna and Mulvahey were inside the shanty. If someone else was there, he would burrow a hole in the sticky ashes and hide himself until Cerema and Mulvahey were alone. Then he would get hold of a thick, heavy, flinty wooden bludgeon and sneak up to the door and fall upon Mulvahey before Mulvahey could cry out.
Then he would tote Mulvahey's body out into the blackest, oldest, meanest part of the dump and dig a deep, deep hole under the refuse, and bury Mulvahey where not even the carrion rats would get to him. After that he would put on Mulvahey's clothes and go back to the shanty and tell the police when they came that Jum Peters had killed Washington Jeffers and run away.
This brought a new thought and a new glint to his eyes.
"If'n de p'lice am' foun' out yit—an' mos' likely day ain'—day am' gwine be no need foh tuh mek b'lieve I is Mulvahey a-tall," he muttered in time to his hurrying footbeats. "Day am' gwine know nuttin' foh a long time, 'til some'un tells 'em Washinnun Jeffers am' come home. Den dey gonna come an' fin' Washinnun Jeffers daid on de fib' an' me standin' dar an' Mulvahey gone. Dey'm gonna say tuh me, 'Whar'm Mulvahey? Who done dis killin'?' An' I'se gonna say, 'Mulvahey done dis kuhn' an' run away, da's wot!' An' how'm dey gonna know?"
That was the best plan of all, he pondered. The police would hurry out and seek Mulvahey for killing Washington Jeffers, and Mulvahey would be utterly dead and buried where they could never discover him. And after a few days, when they didn't find Mulvahey at all, they would give up and forget about it.
"Am' likely dey gonna trubble demsel's 'bout'n ol' Washinnun Jeffers. Him jus' ol' nigger, da's all. Him jus' no-'coun'."
But supposing the police had already visited the shanty and found Mulvahey alive and Washington Jeffers dead? No, they wouldn't have come so soon; no one ever came to the shanty except Washington Jeffers and sometimes Washington Jeffers' little girl to bring him home at night. But still, if the police had heard the noise when he and Mulvahey had fought each other—
In that case he would have to revert to the first plan. He would have to put Mulvahey out of the way after the police had gone. Then, when the police came back, he would be Mulvahey. They wouldn't know, because he and Mulvahey looked like each other, except that Mulvahey was skinnier; and the police wouldn't notice that.
His boots sucked through soft sand now. There were no more street lights and no more sidewalk. The darkness united indefinitely with the dead extremities of the dump yard. A black, uneven, vicious anomaly of shadow merging into a jutted expanse of no-man's-land, and the metastasis was completed. A long way off the single light of the shanty blinked and winked, gutting the dark. Jum Peters groped toward it.
Now he skulked with jackal cunning along the edge of the yard. He pursued no straight, undeviating course toward the light, but with the shanty as his objective he crouched and ran from one skeletonic heap of filth to the next, darting in and out of cover, a bulging, misshapen beast on a mission of horror. Once he paused to grip a wooden cudgel, and a moment later he exchanged the cudgel in preference for a sharp-rimmed slab of corroded iron.
On hands
and knees, from the end of the yard opposite the open entrance, he crawled to the shanty wall and listened. He heard Mulvahey's voice alone, and later Cerema's.
"If'n wot you'm sayin' is Gawd's trut', Cerema," Mulvahey was talking, "I'se sho' glad foh hab dat nigger run 'way. Does I know befoh, I sho' kills him daid foh playin' 'roun' someun else's 'oman. But looka heuh at dis bel' buckle! Am' it sparkle!"
"Sho' 'nough it sparkle. I wonner does dey fin' Jum Peters, Mulvahey? If'n dey does—"
"Mo'n likely dat off'cer gits him befoh dis night'm ovuh, honey. Serve him right foh playin' 'roun' you."
Jum Peters listened and was satisfied. He edged to the doorway and groped silently to his feet. He lifted the iron truncheon high.
It was too simple, too competent. Three quick steps; the hammer thudded; Cerema screamed; Mulvahey fell. Jum Peters closed the door and said harshly: "Shut up, you Cerema, an' lissen."
Cerema retreated goggle-eyed until the side of the bed stopped her. She clung there with both hands, stiff as a stick, unable to twist her eyes from Jum Peters' advancing hulk.
"Does de p'lice come heuh yit?" Jum Peters demanded, grasping her arm. "Does dey?"
She nodded frantically. Her eyes contemplated his face with abject terror: two wide-open glittering needle-ends rimmed with white.
"Y-yes, dey done come."
"Who brung dem? You?"
"Not me! I never brung nobody!"
"Who, den?"
"Ol' Washinnun Jeffers' chile come heuh foh tuh take her pappy tub home, an' her see Washinnun Jeffers layin' heuh daid, an' her run home an' tells. An' den a p'liceman comes heuh an' fin's out you done kill Washinnun Jeffers an' says him gwine fin' you an' goes out 'gain quick. I never bring'm!"
"You'm my woman f'um now on," Jum Peters said triumphantly. "Git a shubble."
"Foh—foh wot?"
"Git a shubble like I tell you! Else I gwine smash yoh haid in!"
Cerema scuttled across the room. Jum Peters went to Mulvahey's dead body and looked down at it. He scowled when he saw his belt, his belt with the glittering buckle, fastened around Mulvahey's middle, outside Mulvahey's black coat where everyone could see it. The belt didn't fit Mulvahey anyway, and that filled Jum Peters with a peculiarly vicious satisfaction. The belt was too big for Mulvahey; the end of the strap extended four inches, four holes extra, beyond the gleaming buckle. It hung down like a mongrel's tail punctured in four places. Four inches of tail, Jum Peters thought; and he grinned bitterly.
He removed Mulvahey's clothes then and removed his own clothes and exchanged them for Mulvahey's. He fixed the belt around his new coat tenderly, and he grinned again when he noticed that the strap was not too big for him. There wasn't any dog's tail hanging down. There wasn't even half an inch extra leather. The belt fitted precisely. And it ought to, because it was his belt, not Mulvahey's.
He lifted Mulvahey's carcass over his shoulder then and strode to the door with it.
"You Cerema," he said, "you bring dat shubble. Come 'long."
He carried Mulvahey out into the dump, and Cerema walked behind him with the shovel in the crook of her elbow, with her head bent and her feet shuffling. Instinctively Jum Peters picked a path through the intricate darkness, finding a way through dormant stacks of smelly filth. Deep into the dump he intruded, selecting his route by instinctive habit until he reached the most desolate terrain of the yard. There he dropped Mulvahey's corpse on the base of a slag pile and said thickly:
"Gib dat shubble heuh, woman."
Cerema relinquished her implement sluggishly, as if she would withhold it from his eager hands as long as she could. He snatched it and worked feverishly. The sodden ashes came up in bleak, sticky clumps; the hole penetrated under the slope of the stack, deeper with every thrust of Jum Peters' boot on the heel of the spade.
He dug by the feel of it, because the hole was too black to be visible. When it was long enough and wide enough to hold Mulvahey's body with the limp legs folded underneath, and deep enough to reach the shovel handle when Jum Peters groped down to find bottom, Jum Peters ceased digging and cast the corpse into it. Then he filled the grave and scraped loose ashes over it to make it appear natural.
"F'um now on," he told Cerema, "I is Mulvahey. I isn't Jum Peters no mo'. You calls me Mulvahey an' you keeps yuh mout' shut 'bout dis heuh us jus' done. W'en dat p'lice off'cer comes back an' asks mo' questuns, you let'm t'ink Jum Peters am' come back no mo' ebber, an' you calls me Mulvahey jus' like I is Mulvahey. Does you unnerstan'?"
Cerema inclined her head fearfully. She followed him back to the shanty then, pacing after him like a woman already dead and walking to her grave. Jum Peters lingered on the threshold to kick the muck from his boots and replace the shovel in its accustomed place. Then he went in and sat in his own chair.
The table was still broken in two pieces and lying on the floor with its legs extending toward the roof like a killed rat turned over on its back to expire. The two carpets were still spread together on the linoleum; but the waterbugs were not in evidence, nor were the four-legged, sleek-backed rodents from the dump. That was strange, for the shanty was quiet, almost as deathly silent as the dump yard and the fearsome swell of "nuttin' Ian'" out beyond; and Washington Jeffers' carcass had been dragged against the wall and lay there like a curled-up monkey with its face hidden.
"Dat p'liceman say him a-comin' back heuh tonight?" Jum Peters demanded.
"Yes," Cerema said, "him a-comin'."
Jum Peters said: "Look heuh close at me, Cerema. Does I look like Mulvahey 'nough so dat man am' gwine know no diff'rence?"
"I reck'n."
"Him look at Mulvahey hard-like w'en him come heuh befoh?"
"No. Him jus' as' some questuns an' go right out'n agin."
"Huh? Has I got Mulvahey's clo'es on me jus' like Mulvahey hissel' had dem on, Cerema?"
"Yes, you has."
"I'se bigger'n Mulvahey, huh?"
"Not 'nough bigger foh mek notice."
"I'se fouh bel'-holes bigger," Jum Peters grinned. "Looka heuh."
Cerema twisted her rabbit eyes toward the belt. She nodded and said nothing. Jum Peters relaxed in his chair.
For a long time after that, the shanty was very still, Jum Peters thought. The stillness was as thick and blodgy as if someone Big and Almighty had shoveled wet slag all over it and into it and made a grave of it. It couldn't be any stiller even in Mulvahey's hole. The light went dim every so often and caused curious little grays to parade across the floor in procession, like pallbearers returning sadly from a cemetery. Jum Peters couldn't get his mind away from them and they made him fidgety and nervous. He inspected himself again and again and again to be sure that he was wearing Mulvahey's clothes just as Mulvahey had worn them.
After a while he got up and disconnected the electric light and rummaged in the wooden box behind the stove until he found a candle stump. He lighted the candle with a match, and his fingers shook. He tipped the candle and held it over the stove until the melted wax fell drip . . . drip . . . drip . . . drip . . . like the shovelfuls of filth falling into Mulvahey's grave hole. The wax made a mushy pool on the black iron, and he set the candle upright in it.
He felt more secure after that. The policeman couldn't stare at him so closely and intently without Mulvahey's accusing electric light hanging over him. The candle flame was not so terribly immutable and unflinching; it flickered and wavered and winked reassuringly like the lights in the pool parlor. It whispered the same thing: "Who'm gonna know? Who'm gonna know anyhow?"
He ruminated over the details again. Mulvahey's body they would never discover. The policeman wouldn't have looked closely at Mulvahey in the excitement of uncovering a murder; therefore he wouldn't recognize any change when he returned. Cerema would keep her mouth closed; she was afraid to open it. They would search for Jum Peters until they didn't find him; then they would give up. No flaw was evident in the entire schedule. No possible flaw.
The candle sputtered. Jum Peters went t
o the door and looked out and went back to his chair again.
"Him a-comin'?" Cerema said tensely. "Him a-comin' heuh, Jum Peters?"
"Can' see nuttin'," he growled. "Wha's my name, woman?"
"M-Mulvahey."
"Don' you fergit dat. Speak dat name agin."
"Mulvahey," she whispered.
After that the policeman came.
The policeman was Irish and block-shouldered and had a blunt-cornered face as fixed in its expression as the angular walls of the shanty. His blue uniform distended the doorway. He carried a night-stick in his right hand.
He peered at Cerema and glanced casually at Jum Peters. He strode into the middle of the linoleum floor.
"He ain't come back here, hey?" he demanded.
"No suh," Jum Peters said. "He am'."
"And you got no idea at all where he might've got to?"
"No sub. Him 'ud run 'way mos' anyw'eres 'ceptin' 'crost dat debbie-lan' out'n dar."
"Yeah? Well, we ain't found no sign of him yet, but we'll get him. I'll have a look around here. Might get an idea, maybe."
Jum Peters sat stiff in his chair. Cerema stood stiff against the wooden bed end. The policeman strolled indifferently across the room.
The policeman stopped and stood quite still and looked curiously at the candle. He swung around sharply and stared at the dangling electric light bulb, and at Jum Peters. His thick-soled boots grated on the floor and grated on Jum Peters' nerves as he turned. Jum Peters stopped breathing and looked helplessly into his eyes.
"What happened to the light?" the policeman demanded.
"It—it done wen' out'n orduh, sub," Jum Peters gulped. "De wires—"
"Oh."
The policeman moved again. He peered at the stove, peered behind the stove, peered into Cerema's immobile face as he slouched past. He peered at the bed, raised the brown blankets and peered under the bed. He jerked around again. He glared at Jum Peters again.