by Jim Thompson
It was like being asleep when you were awake and awake when you were asleep. I’d pinch myself, figuratively speaking—I had to keep pinching myself. Then I’d wake up kind of in reverse; I’d go back into the nightmare I had to live in. And everything would be clear and reasonable.
But I still didn’t know how to go about doing it. I couldn’t figure out a way that would leave me in the clear or even reasonably in the clear. And I sure had to be on this one. I was Humpty-Dumpty, like Rothman had said, and I couldn’t jiggle around very much.
I couldn’t think of a way because it was a real toughie, and I had to keep remembering the why of it. But finally it came to me.
I found a way, because I had to. I couldn’t stall any longer.
It happened three days after my talk with Rothman. It was a payday Saturday, and I should have been working, but somehow I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do it. I’d stayed in the house all day with the shades drawn, pacing back and forth, wandering from room to room. And when night came I was still there. I was sitting in Dad’s office, with nothing on but the little desk light; and I heard these footsteps moving lightly across the porch, and the sound of the screen door opening.
It was way too early for Amy; but I wasn’t jittered any. I’d had people walk in before like this.
I stepped to the door of the office just as he came into the hall.
“I’m sorry, stranger,” I said. “The doctor doesn’t practice anymore. The sign’s just there for sentimental reasons.”
“That’s okay, bud”—he walked right toward me and I had to move back—“it’s just a little burn.”
“But I don’t—”
“A cigar burn,” he said. And he held his hand out, palm up.
And, at last, I recognized him.
He sat down in Dad’s big leather chair, grinning at me. He brushed his hand across the arm, knocking off the coffee cup and saucer I’d left there.
“We got some talking to do, bud, and I’m thirsty. You got some whiskey around? An unopened bottle? I ain’t no whiskey hog, understand, but some places I like to see a seal on a bottle.”
“I’ve got a phone around,” I said, “and the jail’s about six blocks away. Now, drag your ass out of here before you find yourself in it.”
“Huh-uh,” he said. “You want to use that phone, go right ahead, bud.”
I started to. I figured he’d be afraid to go through with it, and if he did, well, my word was still better than any bum’s. No one had anything on me, and I was still Lou Ford. And he wouldn’t get his mouth open before someone smacked a sap in it.
“Go ’head, bud, but it’ll cost you. It’ll sure cost you. And it won’t be just the price of a burned hand.”
I held on to the phone, but I didn’t lift the receiver. “Go on,” I said, “let’s have it.”
“I got interested in you, bud. I spent a year stretch on the Houston pea farm, and I seen a couple guys like you there; and I figured it might pay to watch you a little. So I followed you that night. I heard some of the talk you had with that labor fellow.…”
“And I reckon it meant a hell of a lot to you, didn’t it?” I said.
“No, sir,” he wagged his head, “hardly meant a thing to me. Fact is, it didn’t mean much to me a couple nights later when you came up to that old farm house where I was shacked up, and then cut cross-prairie to that little white house. That didn’t mean much neither, then…You say you had some whiskey, bud? An unopened bottle?”
I went into the laboratory, and got a pint of old prescription liquor from the stores cabinet. I brought it back with a glass; and he opened it and poured the glass half full.
“Have one on the house,” he said, and handed it to me.
I drank it; I needed it. I passed the glass back to him, and he dropped it on the floor with the cup and saucer. He took a big swig from the bottle, and smacked his lips.
“No, sir,” he went on, “it didn’t mean a thing, and I couldn’t stick around to figure it out. I hiked out of there, early Monday morning, and hit up the pipeline for a job. They put me with a jackhammer crew way the hell over on the Pecos, so far out I couldn’t make town my first payday. Just three of us there by ourselves cut off from the whole danged world. But this payday it was different. We’d finished up on the Pecos, and I got to come in. I caught up on the news, bud, and those things you’d done and said meant plenty.”
I nodded. I felt kind of glad. It was out of my hands, now, and the pieces were falling into place. I knew I had to do it, and how I was going to do it.
He took another swallow of whiskey and dug a cigarette from his shirt pocket. “I’m an understandin’ man, bud, and the law ain’t helped me none and I ain’t helpin’ it none. Unless I have to. What you figure it’s worth to you to go on living?”
“I—” I shook my head. I had to go slow. I couldn’t give in too easily. “I haven’t got much money,” I said. “Just what I make on my job.”
“You got this place. Must be worth a pretty tidy sum, too.”
“Yeah, but, hell,” I said. “It’s all I’ve got. If I’m not going to have a window left to throw it out of, there’s not much percentage in keeping you quiet.”
“You might change your mind about that, bud,” he said. But he didn’t sound too firm about it.
“Anyway,” I said, “it’s just not practical to sell it. People would wonder what I’d done with the money. I’d have to account for it to the government and pay a big chunk of taxes on it. For that matter—I reckon you’re in kind of a hurry—”
“You reckon right, bud.”
“Well, it would take quite a while to get rid of a place like this. I’d want to sell it to a doctor, someone who’d pay for my Dad’s practice and equipment. It’d be worth at least a third more that way, but the deal couldn’t be swung in a hurry.”
He studied me, suspiciously, trying to figure out how much if any I was stringing him. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t lying more’n a little bit.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I don’t know much about them things. Maybe—you reckon you could swing a loan on it?”
“Well, I’d sure hate to do that—”
“That ain’t what I asked you, bud.”
“But, look,” I said, making it good, “how would I pay it back out of my job? I just couldn’t do it. I probably wouldn’t get more than five thousand after they took out interest and brokerage fees. And I’d have to turn right around somewhere and swing another loan to pay off the first one, and—hell, that’s no way to do business. Now, if you’ll just give me four-five months to find someone who—”
“Huh-uh. How long it take you to swing this loan? A week?”
“Well…” I might have to give her a little longer than that. I wanted to give her longer. “I think that’d be a little bit quick. I’d say two weeks; but I’d sure hate—”
“Five thousand,” he said, sloshing the whiskey in the bottle. “Five thousand in two weeks. Two weeks from tonight. All right, bud, we’ll call that a deal. An’ it’ll be a deal, understand? I ain’t no hog about money or nothin’. I get the five thousand and that’s the last we’ll see of each other.”
I scowled and cussed, but I said, “Well, all right.”
He tucked the whiskey into his hip pocket, and stood up. “Okay, bud. I’m going back out to the pipeline tonight. This ain’t a very friendly place for easy-livin’ men, so I’ll stay out there another payday. But don’t get no notions about runnin’ out on me.”
“How the hell could I?” I said. “You think I’m crazy?”
“You ask unpleasant questions, bud, and you may get unpleasant answers. Just be here with that five grand two weeks from tonight and there won’t be no trouble.”
I gave him a clincher; I still felt I might be giving in too easy. “Maybe you’d better not come here,” I said. “Someone might see you and—”
“No one will. I’ll watch myself like I did tonight. I ain’t no more anxious for trouble
than you are.”
“Well,” I said, “I just thought it might be better if we—”
“Now, bud”—he shook his head—“what happened the last time you was out wanderin’ around old empty farm houses? It didn’t turn out so good, did it?”
“All right,” I said. “Suit yourself about it.”
“That’s just what I aim to do.” He glanced toward the clock. “We got it all straight, then. Five thousand, two weeks from tonight, nine o’clock. That’s it, and don’t slip up on it.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll get it,” I said.
He stood at the front door a moment, sizing up the situation outside. Then he slipped out and off of the porch, and disappeared in the trees on the lawn.
I grinned, feeling a little sorry for him. It was funny the way these people kept asking for it. Just latching onto you, no matter how you tried to brush them off, and almost telling you how they wanted it done. Why’d they all have to come to me to get killed? Why couldn’t they kill themselves?
I cleaned up the broken dishes in the office. I went upstairs and lay down and waited for Amy. I didn’t have long to wait.
I didn’t have long; and in a way she was the same as always, sort of snappy and trying not to be. But I could sense a difference, the stiffness that comes when you want to say or do something and don’t know how to begin. Or maybe she could sense it in me; maybe we sensed it in each other.
I guess that’s the way it was, because we both came out with it together. We spoke at the same time:
“Lou, why don’t we…”
“Amy, why don’t we…”
we said.
We laughed and said “bread and butter,” and then she spoke again.
“You do want to, don’t you, darling? Honest and truly?”
“Didn’t I just start to ask you?” I said.
“How—when do you—”
“Well, I was thinking a couple of weeks would—”
“Darling!” She kissed me. “That was just what I was going to say!”
There was just a little more. That last piece of the picture needed one more little push.
“What are you thinking about, darling?”
“Well, I was thinking we’ve always had to do kinda like people expected us to. I mean—Well, what were you thinking about?”
“You tell me first, Lou.”
“No, you tell me, Amy.”
“Well…”
“Well…”
“Why don’t we elope,” we said.
We laughed, and she threw her arms around me, snuggled up against me, sort of shivery but warm; so hard but so soft. And she whispered into my ear and I whispered into hers:
“Bread and butter…
“Bad luck, stay ’way from my darling.”
17
He showed up on, well, I guess it was the following Tuesday. The Tuesday after the Saturday the bum had shown up and Amy and I had decided to elope. He was a tall, stoop-shouldered guy with a face that seemed to be all bone and yellowish tightly drawn skin. He said his name was Dr. John Smith and that he was just passing through; he was just looking around in this section, and he’d heard—he’d thought, perhaps—that the house and the practice might be on the market.
It was around nine o’clock in the morning. By rights, I should have been headed for the courthouse. But I wasn’t knocking myself out, these days, to get downtown; and Dad had always laid himself out for any doctors that came around.
“I’ve thought about selling it, off and on,” I said, “but that’s about as far as it’s gone. I’ve never taken any steps in that direction. But come in, anyway. Doctors are always welcome in this house.”
I sat him down in the office and brought out a box of cigars, and got him some coffee. Then, I sat down with him and tried to visit. I can’t say that I liked him much. He kept staring at me out of his big yellow eyes like I was really some sort of curiosity, something to look at instead of to talk to. But—well, doctors get funny mannerisms. They live in an I’m-the-King world, where everyone else is wrong but them.
“You’re a general practitioner, Doctor Smith?” I said. “I wouldn’t want to discourage you, but I’m afraid the general practice field is pretty well the monopoly here of long-established doctors. Now—I haven’t thought too much about disposing of this place, but I might consider it—now, I do think there’s room for a good man in pediatrics or obstetrics.…”
I let it hang there, and he blinked and came out of his trance.
“As a matter of fact, I am interested in those fields, Mr. Ford. I would—uh—hesitate to call myself a specialist, but—uh—”
“I think you might find an opening here, then,” I said. “What’s been your experience in treating nephritis, Doctor? Would you say that inoculation with measles has sufficiently proven itself as a curative agent to warrant the inherent danger?”
“Well, uh—uh—” He crossed his legs. “Yes and no.”
I nodded seriously. “You feel that there are two sides to the question?”
“Well—uh—yes.”
“I see,” I said. “I’d never thought about it quite that way, but I can see that you’re right.”
“That’s your—uh—specialty, Mr. Ford? Children’s diseases?”
“I haven’t any specialty, doctor,” I laughed. “I’m living proof of the adage about the shoemaker’s son going barefooted. But I’ve always been interested in children, and I suppose the little I do know about medicine is confined to pediatrics.”
“I see. Well, uh, as a matter of fact, most of my work has been in—uh—geriatrics.”
“You should do well here, then,” I said. “We have a high percentage of elderly people in the population. Geriatrics, eh?”
“Well, uh, as a matter of fact…”
“You know Max Jacobsohn on Degenerative Diseases? What do you think of his theorem as to the ratio between decelerated activity and progressive senility? I can understand the basic concept, of course, but my math isn’t good enough to allow me to appreciate his formulae. Perhaps you’ll explain them to me?”
“Well, I—uh—it’s pretty complicated.…”
“I see. You feel, perhaps, that Jacobsohn’s approach may be a trifle empirical? Well, I was inclined to that belief myself, for a time, but I’m afraid it may have been because my own approach was too subjective. For instance. Is the condition pathological? Is it psycho-pathological? Is it psycho-pathological-psychosomatic? Yes, yes, yes. It can be one or two or all three—but in varying degrees, Doctor. Like it or not, we must contemplate an x factor. Now, to strike an equation—and you’ll pardon me for oversimplifying—let’s say that our cosine is…”
I went on smiling and talking, wishing that Max Jacobsohn was here to see him. From what I’d heard of Dr. Jacobsohn, he’d probably grab this guy by the seat of his pants and boot him out into the street.
“As a matter of fact,” he interrupted me, rubbing a big bony hand across his forehead, “I have a very bad headache. What do you do for headaches, Mr. Ford?”
“I never have them,” I said.
“Uh, oh? I thought perhaps that studying so much, sitting up late nights when you can’t—uh—sleep…”
“I never have any trouble sleeping,” I said.
“You don’t worry a lot? I mean that in a town such as this where there is so much gossip—uh—malicious gossip, you don’t feel that people are talking about you? It doesn’t—uh—seem unbearable at times?”
“You mean,” I said slowly, “do I feel persecuted? Well, as a matter of fact, I do, doctor. But I never worry about it. I can’t say that it doesn’t bother me, but—”
“Yes? Yes, Mr. Ford?”
“Well, whenever it gets too bad, I just step out and kill a few people. I frig them to death with a barbed-wire cob I have. After that I feel fine.”
I’d been trying to place him, and finally it had come to me. It’d been several years since I’d seen that big ugly mug in one of the out-of-town
papers, and the picture hadn’t been so good a resemblance. But I remembered it, now, and some of the story I’d read about him. He’d taken his degree at the University of Edinburgh at a time when we were admitting their graduates to practice. He’d killed half a dozen people before he picked up a jerkwater Ph.D., and edged into psychiatry.
Out on the West Coast, he’d worked himself into some staff job with the police. And then a big murder case had cropped up, and he’d gotten hog-wild raw with the wrong suspects—people who had the money and influence to fight back. He hadn’t lost his license, but he’d had to skip out fast. Now, well, I knew what he’d be doing now. What he’d have to be doing. Lunatics can’t vote, so why should the legislature vote a lot of money for them?
“As a matter of fact—uh—” It was just beginning to soak in on him. “I think I’d better—”
“Stick around,” I said. “I’ll show you that corncob. Or maybe you can show me something from your collection—those Japanese sex goods you used to flash around. What’d you do with that rubber phallus you had? The one you squirted into that high school kid’s face? Didn’t you have time to pack it when you jumped the Coast?”
“I’m a-afraid you have me confused w-with—”
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “I do. But you don’t have me confused. You wouldn’t know how to begin. You wouldn’t know shit from wild honey, so go back and sign your report that way. Sign it shitbird. And you’d better add a footnote to the effect that the next son-of-a-bitch they send out here is going to get kicked so hard he’ll be wearing his asshole for a collar.”
He backed out into the hall and toward the front door, the bones in his face wobbling and twitching under the tight yellow skin. I followed him grinning.
He stuck a hand out sideways and lifted his hat from the hall tree. He put it on backwards; and I laughed and took a quick step toward him. He almost fell out the door; and I picked up his briefcase and threw it into the yard.