by Peter Rabe
“That’s damn little luggage for a salesman,” he said.
“What I use for business,” said Jordan, “is in the trunk of the car. I don’t need that in my room,” and then he went inside.
Upstairs, he sat in his room for a while. He sat near the window which opened on the house next to him, a yard with a chicken coop, and in the distance, the back of Kemp’s apartment. It was ten in the morning and Jordan did some of the routine things.
He laid out toilet stuff, but not all of it. He laid out enough to make an impression, but he did not leave his hairbrush out or his razor. They were things which carried traces of him and which he would not want to leave behind. The toothpaste was new, the toothbrush was new, and the razor blades. He left those out but he wiped them. He put some shirts on a chair and they were new too. They had no laundry marks and they were not his size.
He had a twenty-five caliber target pistol and a thirty-eight Magnum. For the Magnum, because of the racket, he also had a silencer. He looked at the guns for a moment and thought that the smaller gun would be all he’d need. There would be time to aim and no need for a big slam. The target pistol would still make less sound, even counting the silencer on the Magnum, though he worried a while about the pitch. The report of the target gun had a high pitch, where the Magnum didn’t. The Magnum was louder, but with the silencer it did not sound like a gun shot so much. Jordan could not decide and locked up the suitcase. He would think about it and decide later. This did not make him nervous. This was part of the craft.
He put the suitcase into the closet, locked the closet. He left the room and locked it. He drove partway out of town where all the filling stations lined the road. He filled the tank at one, got oil and air at another. In a garage one street over he had all the spark plugs changed because he did not like the sound of the motor in idle. He had the points cleaned and asked for a battery check. The battery was new but the check was routine. One cell needed water.
He drove out of town a short way and ate lunch on the road. He did not want to run into Kemp or Kemp’s man any more. After lunch he smoked a cigarette and looked out of the window. There was a potato field and some cows behind a fence to one side. The sun was high and bright now.
He went back to his room and slept for two hours. When he got up he washed his face and then sat by the window. He clipped his fingernails and he chewed on a cigarette. After he had looked out of the window a while, he noticed that the coop down below was not for chickens. There were pigeons inside.
He lay down on the bed again, got up a short time later. He looked at the new tube of toothpaste, at the shirts, and once at the suitcase in the closet. He sat down again, by the sink this time. He had the window in back of him and watched a drop from the faucet. It was mid-afternoon and the waiting was worse than the job.
He made tiny turns on the head of the faucet and tried for a rate of drip which was just before the point where the drops slid together to make a thin stream. Between that time and evening he managed this twice.
“Those were lousy french fries,” said Kemp.
He lay down on the bed and put his shoes up on the baseboard.
“I said those were lousy french fries.”
“Yeah. Yeah, they were,” said Paul.
There was an evening wind and the curtain moved. Paul hitched around in his chair so that the curtain would not reach him.
“You read that magazine yesterday,” said Kemp. In a while he said, “Paul.”
“Yeah?”
“You read that magazine yesterday. How often you read the same thing before you get it?”
Paul put the magazine down and pulled a cigarette out of his pocket. He did not take the pack out of his pocket but just one cigarette.
“I was looking at the pictures is all.”
He lit the cigarette and picked up the magazine again.
“It’s quarter to seven,” said Kemp.
“Huh?”
“What in hell’s the matter with you, Paul?”
“Nothing.” He sighed and looked at his cigarette. “Those were lousy french fries,” he said.
Kemp pulled his legs up and pushed the shoes off his feet. Then he dropped them on the floor. “It’s quarter to seven. You’ll be late for the movie.”
“Yeah. The movie.” Paul stretched in the chair and said, “I don’t think I’ll go. I wanna read this magazine.”
“Ohforchristsakes,” said Kemp.
Paul looked at Kemp, waiting for more, but nothing came.
“What’s the matter with you,” he said. “Why you riding me?”
“What’s the matter with me?”
“Yeah. If I wanna sit here and read a magazine….”
“You can’t read.”
“Now listen, Kemp—”
“You listen. You go to the movies. You go to the movies and just figure it’s going to be maybe one more week like this and no more. So go to the movies.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going to think about you sitting in the movie, for God’s sake! Now beat it!”
“Listen, Kemp—”
Kemp groaned. Then he said Paul shouldn’t put on so and how much worse it would be if he, Paul, had to make a living selling buttons, for instance, instead of resting his butt in a movie and being able to look forward to a very bright future in no more than a week or so.
“You know what I think of that guy, don’t you?” said Paul.
“He’s not your type is what you want to say.”
“He’s a creep.”
“Leave him alone. Rest yourself.”
“Did you ever see any of the buttons he’s selling?”
“No. Buttons are very small.”
“Now listen, Kemp. I been trying to tell….”
“You’re going stir crazy,” said Kemp. “Go talk to Betty.”
“Listen, Kemp. You ever see a salesman before what never brags about his loot or the territories or what in hell they brag about all the time?”
“We’re no customers is the reason.”
“I been trying to tell you….”
“Go to the movies.”
“You know something, Kemp? I wouldn’t buy nothing from him, you know that? He—what in the hell is the word—he don’t come out. You know what I mean?”
“Shy?”
“Shy? He ain’t shy, man. I don’t know what but he ain’t that way.”
“No,” said Kemp. “He isn’t really shy.”
“So? Like I been telling you!”
“Go to the movies, Paul.”
Paul gave up. He did not want to talk any more about something which he wasn’t certain about, and he had no way of dealing with Kemp when he took the tone of the older man.
“I’m going to the movies,” Paul said.
“Why, how you think of those things?”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Spend the evening, Paul. I’m going to just waste it away.”
“You staying here?”
“Yeah, I’m staying here and I want to stay here alone!”
“All right,” said Paul. “I’m going.”
He left. He felt less sure about everything than before, and for a moment he stood in front of the house on the street. He looked up the street and down the street but not as if looking for something but like one who did not know what to look for and feeling sullen about it. His good will had been insulted. He could not tell Kemp about it but he would make somebody feel this. Go sit in the diner? He looked across and saw the girl Betty through the windows in front. To hell with her, he said. Go to the movies and to hell with all this. I’ll go to the diner with Kemp afterwards. Like always. And the button man might even be there. Go to the movies now and then the button man. That’s the ticket. The evening all planned and no problems about any of it. Sit in the dark in the movie, that’s no problem, and later the button man, in the diner, that’ll be just as good.
Paul walked down the street, toward the square,
and he even felt something like interest. He did not think he had seen this movie before and that would mean almost two hours of entertainment. The street was dark and the square up ahead was lit up. Maybe the movie would be something funny. Maybe a cops and robbers thing and he’d laugh while the yokels sat there with the kiss of drama all over them. Or a big, bad syndicate thing, he’d laugh.
He was late for the movie but he stood near the ticket booth for a moment and looked at the girl behind the glass. She thinks she’s a movie star. She looks at everybody like they’re a scout and treats everybody like they aren’t. She’s going to rot here. She’s going to have a white-eyed miner for a husband and ten slug-colored babies. He said nothing to her when he bought his ticket because ignoring her hairdo and make-up would be even worse. Yessir, he thought, this is the life I’m getting away from.
“I give you enough for two tickets, honey. Where’s my two tickets?”
“Oh—I thought—I didn’t see anybody….”
“Gimme two tickets, honey. One seat’s for my feet.” He bought two tickets and laughed. Then he saw Jordan.
Paul walked a ways into the movie because he hadn’t quite realized anything yet but then he stopped and looked out again.
The button man. The creep son of a bitch on the side of the square, standing there with that wet butt in his mouth. And no sample case either. Going home? Not going home. He’s thinking about going into the movie to beef up his life for the evening. Not the movie.
Walking. Who’s the button man? Nobody knows the button man, not even Kemp. What I don’t like I don’t like and the button man fits into that dandy.
Why Third. Who does the son of a bitch know on Third? Betty. Everybody loves Betty.
And me with two tickets paid for in my pocket and creeping after the button man loving Betty. Who’d love a thing with a wet butt in his face….
Son of a bitch, he’s cagey. If he don’t act like a stranger in town. If he don’t act like he didn’t know Betty from nothing, with his back to the diner and looking the other way. Who does he know?
Kemp.
To sell Kemp buttons, and he don’t carry a sample case. To ask about renting that room and he’s got it rented already. To hang around and be a pain in the neck because who in hell is anybody with a name like Smith….
Not Kemp? Just a walk, then, which is worse yet. The button man takes a walk where he knows people on the same street and he doesn’t stop to see either of them. He doesn’t stop to see either of them because he doesn’t like to be followed. Just for that….
Then Paul kept his distance and stayed in the dark to see what the other one would do. He watched Jordan go to the end of the block and turn down the street which joined Fourth. Paul didn’t follow. He crossed by the apartment building, through the back, past the pigeon coop and he stood in the dark drive where he could see Jordan come down the street.
Have a word with him now? He’s thin and a button salesman but like Kemp said, not really shy. Not really a button salesman, maybe….
He watched Jordan open the trunk of his car and take out a suitcase which he took into the house.
Time to go through his samples? That is the same suitcase he took into the room that same afternoon…. Leaving, then, staying….
Jordan came out again very soon and got into his car. What a sweet-sounding motor, thought Paul. What a weird thing to watch somebody move, not know what the man does, and to dislike the son of a bitch right from the start and then more so the less he made sense. With a sweet-sounding motor like that he drives like a funeral….
Slow enough to walk, thought Paul, and he walked. He rounded the corner to Third when Jordan’s car crept up to the apartment building. There it stopped.
Paul started to run.
And this time the bastard saw me for sure, thought Paul, because why should he take off like that. A type like that and he takes off with the tires squealing. That don’t fit, Smith don’t fit, the buttons don’t fit…. He ran to the lot where the diner stood and where his car was parked. He jumped in and then he thought that son of a bitch should hear this—the kind of noise he, Paul, was making; how the motor let out a scream and the gravel shot out and the whine when the car hauled over and into the street. And that’s all for you, button man….
And now he’s running and he’s driving as if he knew the road and the countryside well. He’s running from me hell-bent-for-leather.
When Paul realized this he stopped wondering who Smith was; he stopped turning it back and forth in his mind if he was salesman, or grifter, or a man who had come down to wheedle a deal, or had come casing even, because now the other one ran and Paul after him with never a doubt he would make it. And if I can’t talk to him, he said to himself, then you will, Anna-Lee, and he squeezed his left arm into his side so he could feel the holster.
The car up ahead didn’t cut speed at all when it turned. It leaned so heavily into the turn that Paul held his breath for a moment. Then he braked very sharply because he didn’t know the road which the one up ahead was taking. Black top and two lanes and plenty of bumps. The two tail lights up ahead bounded up and down. Break a spring, you bastard, but nothing else. I’ll break the rest for you, button man….
Then the car was gone.
Paul gunned and had to fight the wheel when he came into the bend of the road and what pulled him through, so it seemed, was the sight of the red lights up ahead again. Steady as…. He had stopped, that’s why! Slammed into the side of the road with one door hanging open, with the lights still on, with one front wheel almost hanging over where the embankment dropped off and the bridge railing started. Why the door open? He fell out that way. Why had he been running? Because I was after him.
Paul grinned and stopped his car so that it slammed down on the frame.
“Smith?”
He could look down the embankment but at the bottom he saw only dark.
“Smith? Hey, button man!”
“Yes?”
He thought he could see him now, down by the culvert which went under the bridge.
“Come on out!”
He could see Smith standing there and that man would have looked the same had he stood on a street. Smith looks weird standing in weeds up to his knees.
“Don’t be scared, boy. I come to buy buttons. Smith?”
“Yes?”
“Where are you?”
“Here.”
“I got all night, Smith. You hear me?” and he moved toward the bridge so that his shadow stretched out ahead of him.
Smith doesn’t move. No sir, but now he does. Back, he does, and afraid of my shadow. Yessir, that one scares….
“Smith, little buddy, can you see me clear?”
“Yes.”
“Oh my God, you sound all choked up.”
This time no answer. Oh my God, how I hate the bastard.
“Little button buddy, here I am. For a sample—”
Then it spat so fast, Paul barely heard all the sound that went with it.
Oh my God, oh my God, how I hate, he thought, and was finished.
9
High angle shot, thought Jordan. Chest or head? Hard telling, with the headlight glare making false borders around his shape, and the foreshortened angle.
He put the gun in his pocket and climbed up the bank, through the dry weeds.
With the kind of jerk he had given, I think it was chest.
Paul, on his back, was dead, of course, and the jacket had slid up into bunches and the pants had pushed up to his calves. How that always happens. Chest. Like I thought.
First, Jordan moved the cars. He moved Paul’s car to the other side of the bridge and well onto the soft shoulder. He turned the lights off and left the key in the ignition. Then he walked back and moved his own car to the other end of the bridge, also well off the road. This way, the cars would not alarm any motorist.
Jordan got out of his car and after he had closed the door, leaned against it for a moment. Dark and hot and I�
�ll lean here for a moment and then go back. The rest can be as simple as it’s been so far, because it needs no planning, because all I have to do is grab him by the back of the jacket and drag him down to the culvert. Done.
Jordan walked away from the car and back to the bridge.
But he’s lying on his back and can’t be grabbed by the back of the jacket.
Jordan held out his hand for the railing and when he touched it—he knew he would touch it—gave a start.
He’s dead, so don’t worry. This almost made Jordan giggle, though he did not let himself. It stayed a sharp, fluttery tickle in his throat.
Jordan slowed on the bridge because he could now see the body on the soft shoulder.
Though this is not a job as jobs go. None of it fitting the habits. Everything I do now is with the props gone. That new.
He worked his hand along the railing and walked like a blind man. He could see well enough now, but did not want to.
And even the job as jobs go hadn’t been all that good. It had gone easily, because of the habits, but the habits had not been quite good enough for all that was needed. For instance, he thought, and then, for instance, again. I’m calmer already, he thought. But I got him at the right time for the best light but not at the right time for the best drop. He should have stood closer to the edge so he’d drop down the incline all by himself.
Jordan stopped. He could see it lying there, crabbed out with arms and legs the way they always do. He would now have to touch it.
His scalp moved on his skull, and he thought he could feel his skull tight and hard over the inside of his head. He had an upsetting image—all of him curled soft into the inside of the skull. But it’s the second time. This is not the first…. He started to sweat, thin and quick, when he saw that it was worse now and not easier.
Then he moved because it became impossible to do nothing.
Jordan bent down and touched. He thought about the time after this time, all done with this, never again this, and so registered very little of what he was doing or what the body was doing, but the worst moments came through.
He touched the jacket high up and yanked. A dead arm swung around and hit Jordan’s ankle. After his gasp the breath came out of Jordan’s throat, shocking him with the sound because it was like a giggle. But his throat felt all right after that, without the strain in it.