by Horace McCoy
‘A few minutes ago. You said before you met me you never even thought of failing… Well, it isn’t my fault. I can’t help it. I tried to kill myself once, but I didn’t and I’ve never had the nerve to try again… You want to do the world a favour?… ‘ she asked.
I did not say anything, listening to the ocean slosh against the pilings, feeling the pier rise and fall, and thinking that she was right about everything she had said.
Gloria was fumbling in her purse. When her hand came out it was holding a small pistol. I had never seen the pistol before, but I was not surprised. I was not in the least surprised.
‘Here—’ she said, offering it to me.
‘I don’t want it. Put it away,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s go back inside. I’m cold—’
‘Take it and pinch-hit for God,’ she said, pressing it into my hand. ‘Shoot me. It’s the only way to get me out of my misery.’
‘She’s right,’ I said to myself. ‘It’s the only way to get her out of her misery.’ When I was a little kid I used to spend the summers on my grandfather’s farm in Arkansas. One day I was standing by the smokehouse watching my grandmother making lye soap in a big iron kettle when my grandfather came across the yard, very excited. ‘Nellie broke her leg,’ my grandfather said. My grandmother and I went over the stile into the garden where my grandfather had been ploughing. Old Nellie was on the ground whimpering, still hitched to the plough. We stood there looking at her, just looking at her. My grandfather came back with the gun he had carried at Chickamauga Ridge. ‘She stepped in a hole,’ he said, patting Nellie’s head. My grandmother turned me around, facing the other way. I started crying. I heard a shot. I still hear that shot. I ran over and fell down on the ground, hugging her neck. I loved that horse. I hated my grandfather. I got up and went to him, beating his legs with my fists… Later that day he explained that he loved Nellie too, but that he had to shoot her. ‘It was the kindest thing to do,’ he said. ‘She was no more good. It was the only way to get her out of her misery… ‘
I had the pistol in my hand.
‘All right,’ I said to Gloria. ‘Say when.’
‘I’m ready.’
‘Where?—’
‘Right here. In the side of my head.’ The pier jumped as a big wave broke.
‘Now?—’
‘Now.’
I shot her.
The pier moved again, and the water made a sucking noise as it slipped back into the ocean. I threw the pistol over the railing.
One policeman sat in the rear with me while the other one drove. We were travelling very fast and the siren was blowing. It was the same kind of a siren they had used at the marathon dance when they wanted to wake us up.
‘Why did you kill her?’ the policeman in the rear seat asked.
‘She asked me to,’ I said.
‘You hear that, Ben?’
‘Ain’t he an obliging bastard?’ Ben said, over his shoulder.
‘Is that the only reason you got?’ the policeman in the rear seat asked.
‘They shoot horses, don’t they?’ I said.
… may God have mercy on your soul…
THE END