by Jim Thompson
Teddy was outraged. An amazing case-history, was she? An untapped treasure of sexual source material! Why—why—!
“This is a wonderful opportunity for you, Mrs. Corley. You’re still an attractive woman, and you have many years to live. Just give me your cooperation, and those years can be very good ones.”
“You sneaky son-of-a-bitch! Y-You-you-you-YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH!”
Teddy had stopped the outside hustling after that. There was just no telling what you might run into. She stayed in her apartment, and occasionally some former customer would drop by—someone who had been very young to begin with, and was still acceptably young. Occasionally, when the intervals between customers became too great, she would find surcease in a messenger or delivery boy, or a bill peddler or—or—or any youngster who chanced to stray near her door. Once she had tried to hook the fourteen-year-old kid who delivered the newspaper, and the little bastard had yelled and run home to his parents. There might have been plenty of trouble about it, but fortunately for her no one paid any attention to the complaints of niggers.
Today, she was standing nude in front of the living-room’s full-length mirror, fresh from her bath and critically admiring her body as she patted it dry with a towel, when she heard the knock on the door. It was one of those tricky little wise-guy knocks, a knock that suggested all sorts of exciting things to Teddy. Hastily, she snatched up a robe, her flesh already prickling with anticipation. She cracked the door open an inch, and peered out, and then she flung it open wide. And delight welled up in her until she almost laughed out loud.
Two of them! Not one but two! And what a two they were!
Black-haired, olive-skinned, and oh so beautifully, wonderfully young! Why, they hardly looked to be twenty, and they were laughing and carrying on like schoolboys. Their white linen jackets crackled with freshness, their shoes gleamed with polish and their trousers were flawlessly cleaned and creased. They were fresh and gay and boyish-looking, and yet they were obviously very much men. They were just what Teddy would have ordered if masculinity had been on order.
She didn’t know who had referred them to her. The word got around in time, and who the hell cared how they had got here? All that mattered was that they were here, and making the most of every delicious moment of their stay.
Frankie turned the latch on the door. He snickered, winking at Johnnie, and Johnnie snickered and winked at him. Then they greeted Teddy in unison.
“Hi,” they said.
“Hi,” Teddy said.
“Hi,” they said again. And then the three of them laughed together at having such good clean fun.
Teddy let the robe slide from her. She cast a provocative glance at them, and asked who would like to come in the bedroom with her first. They said they usually did everything together, but Teddy put on a little pout at that. She said she thought it would be much nicer, if they were good little daddies and were nice for their nice little mama, and maybe they’d better match for turns.
“Sure, we’ll flip for it,” Johnnie said. “What’ll you take, heads or tails?”
“Tails,” Frankie said.
“I’ll take tails too,” Johnnie said.
“Now, wait a minute,” Teddy laughed happily. “You both can’t take tails.”
They said of course they could; tail was what they had come for. And Teddy laughed again.
“I know, but—but you have to take different things, darlings. You see…”
They had been advancing casually, as the banter went on. Moving forward and sideways, so that they were now separated by several feet and she was forced to turn from one to the other. Thus, she was looking at Johnnie when Frankie spoke to her.
“How come,” he asked, snickering, “you’ve got your asshole under your nose?”
“What?” Teddy gasped. “What did you—”
“He asked you if you were a stud with tits,” Johnnie giggled, and she whirled in his direction.
“Now, look you two! Don’t you—”
Frankie suddenly slugged her in the guts. She turned white, a greenish white. The air went out of her with a rushing sound, and she doubled slowly and sank down on the floor, on her face. She felt paralyzed, unable even to groan. She still made no sound when Johnnie gave her a vigorous kick in the butt.
“See?” he cackled. “It came up tails. We both won.”
“She’s all ass,” Frankie said. “How can you tell the front from the back?”
He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her upright. Thrusting his face close to hers, he ordered her to come clean with him. “You ain’t really a dame, are you? Huh? You’re one of those bitchy studs, ain’t you?”
“Sure, she’s a dame,” Frankie said. “Look at them bubbies on her.”
Johnnie said that that didn’t mean anything; studs were always buying rubber bubs for themselves so that they could pass for dames. “Look,” he said. “See what I mean?” He swung his hand viciously, whipping it back and forth against Teddy’s breasts. She groaned at that—only breathlessness kept her from screaming—but Johnnie seemed not to hear her.
“She didn’t feel a thing, see? Because they ain’t the real thing. She’s just a phonied-up stud.”
“You think so, huh. Well, maybe…”
Frankie suddenly grabbed her by the breasts, and twisted. Again she tried to scream, and was stopped with another gut-punch. She fainted, and when she drifted back into consciousness, she was sitting on a burner of the kitchenette stove. They were holding hands with her—holding them with her fingers bent back toward her wrists. They spoke to her conspiratorially, as though letting her in on a delicious secret.
“Now, we’re going to cook it a little, know what I mean, honey? So if you ain’t a stud, you can holler and we’ll know you’re for real.”
“Naw, she’d better not holler. You better not, get me, tutz? We’ll just do our cooking, and she can tell us if it hurt afterwards.”
There was a click as a burner was flicked on. It was not the burner under Teddy, but she was convinced that it was. It clicked on and off, and each time she could feel the flame lick up her loins. She could feel it reach up inside her, and she smelled the cooking flesh, heard the crackling and the sizzling as the flames consumed her. She could not scream—there were always those torturously bent-over fingers, the hands drawn back to slug her in the breasts. She could only endure, the silent tears flooding over her face, her flank muscles jerking convulsively, her very womanhood burning, burning, burning…
“Because you’re not a dame, right? A dame don’t louse up her husband, does she? She don’t make things tough for her own kid.”
“Oh, no, no no no no no no no no no nononono…”
“She’s good to her husband, right? She gets herself a nice quiet divorce, and she never gives him no more trouble.”
“Oh, yes, yes yes yes yes yes yes yesyesyes…”
“You want to be a woman or a stud?”
“A woman, a woman woman woman woman woman woman.…”
Just short of the ultimate answer there is another, one that embodies all the truth and the glory, which justifies the life that is about to trade itself for death. One may see it but once, as the curtain closes on the stage of immediate concern. One sees it immediately for what it is, though it appears in many guises. Neither life nor death but something between the two as they suddenly become one.
There it is, the truth and the glory: In the space which separates the down-rushing body and the up-hurtling pavement, in the bridge linking the last yellow capsule and the one next to last, in the trillionth-inch between bullet and brain, in all those dark byways where man lifts his foot from life and steps across to death.
It must be there. Where else would it be when one has found it nowhere else? Why else would so many see it there?
So Teddy having not-quite-died, knew a happiness and a peace she had never known before. It was as though she had been drained of her filth as fear drove the hot urine from her body. All the shoddiness
, all the vicious and degenerate urges were gone, and she felt clean and reborn.
Lying in bed with the sheets tucked modestly around her, she looked up lovingly at Frankie and Johnnie, and they beamed down at her. They felt very good themselves, as comfortably satiated as though they had used her in a way she had so often been used. They were also pleased at having done their job so well.
“Now, about that divorce, honey…”
“Oh, I’m going to get it right away! Oh, I can hardly wait to do it. Oh, I—”
“Yeah, sure, sure you will, baby. But what about money? You got the dough to do it on?”
Teddy babbled happily that she had lots and lots of money, and she mentioned the amount. The smiles of Frankie and Johnnie faded, and they exchanged a look of bitterness. It was, of course, out of the question for them to take the dough. Downing would find out about it—he had an unbelievable talent for finding out the closest-kept secrets of his minions—and since he had not explicitly told them to rob Teddy, they would be charged with bad conduct. And how about that anyway?
Downing had instructed them only to scare the hell out of Teddy, to see to it that she never again made trouble for Mitch. That was all, so that was all they could do. But it was really a hell of a note, wasn’t it? Here was this lousy pig with a mattress full of dough, and they—
Wait a minute. Wait just a peanut-pickin’ minute!
They couldn’t whip her for the loot, but did that mean they couldn’t perform an act of simple justice? Did it mean that they had to leave the pig loaded, while they, fine young men that they were, were in relative want?
Frankie and Johnnie exchanged another glance, their eyes bright with malice. Then, they turned back to Teddy, and her smile abruptly faded and she began to tremble with terror.
“That’s not your dough,” Frankie said coldly. “You squeezed it out of Mitch.”
“B-B-But—”
“You’re a stud,” Johnnie said. “A broad don’t steal from her own husband.”
“B-But—but—”
“You’re goin’ to give it back to him,” Frankie said. “It’s his and you’re goin’ to give it back.”
“She better give it back,” Johnnie said. “She better move real fast about it.”
Teddy’s mouth worked, her two minds, conscious and unconscious, shouting contradictory orders. She must make no further trouble for Mitch—that thought had been firmly implanted in her. Yet what they were demanding would most certainly make trouble.
Do it. Don’t do it. Stay away from Mitch. Go near Mitch. What—what—
The boys loomed over her threateningly, classic examples of the danger of a little knowledge. She tried to explain, incoherent with fear, her two minds muddling one another. And Frankie and Johnnie were deaf to her words.
“What’re you tryin’ to pull, pig? Sure, you don’t make no trouble for Mitch. What about it? What’s givin’ him back his dough got to do with making trouble?”
“I—I—I—”
It was wrong. It was right wrong. Whatever they said—
“She likes the flame,” Frankie said. “All these studs like the flame.”
He flicked on his cigarette lighter, darted it at her. She started to scream, and Johnnie slapped her in the breasts.
“How about it, pig?” he said. “How’s it going to be? You going to take that dough back or not?”
Teddy said, “Oh, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes…”
She went to Houston that afternoon. Mitch was out of town, of course, so she gave the money to Red.
20
Big Spring.
The metropolis of nowhere. The beginning of Far West Texas.
Big Spring. Oil wells, refineries, tool and die works, machine shops, oil-well supply houses, big hotels, big banks, big stores, big people—in every sense of the word.
Walk softly here, stranger. Be nice. It takes time to get acquainted. What appears to be a hard-nosed attitude is simply frankness and economy of speech.
A merchant may tell you to go somewhere else if you don’t like his prices. But it’s a friendly suggestion, not an insult. A resident may stare at you a long time before answering a question—and he may simply shake his head and not answer at all. But he isn’t being impolite. He wants only to think over his answer carefully—and naturally it would be rude to show no interest in you—and if he finally decides he has nothing to say, then how can he say anything?
It’s an attitude born of the prairies, of the loneliness, of the infrequent necessities for speech since there were so few to speak to. It was born of the cattle industry, the distantly separated ranches, the need for deeds rather than words, the wisdom of carefully looking over all strangers.
You see, Big Spring was a cattle town not so many years ago. Just another wide place in a dusty road. A town like any other such town, built around the traditional courthouse square; its streets drifting with dust, its iron-awninged buildings baking under the incredible heat of summer, ice-painted with the North Pole blasts of winter.
That was how it looked when the two wildcatters first saw it—like the ass-end of Far Nowhere. The town, for its part, looked upon them with little more favor. The town had seen wildcatters—prospectors for oil—before, and this pair just didn’t fit the picture.
There was first of all their drilling rig; a cable-tool rig, naturally, since the rotary had not then been perfected. It was one of those big Star-30 machines, a so-called “portable” rig which occupied two railroad flatcars with its accessory equipment. None of the harum-scarum wildcatter breed had ever owned such a rig—an outfit worth a not-so-small fortune. And these two were the last people in the world who should have owned it.
They were a middling-old man and his son. The father wore the unmistakable stamp of defeat, a man who had drilled one dry hole too many. The kid looked mean and snotty and very sick, and he was all three and then some.
Into the rig and the job it had to do, the old man had sunk his home, his furniture, his insurance policies; every nickel he could beg and borrow. That still left a hell of a hump to get over, for an outfit and a job like this, so the kid had kicked in for it. The kid was a loner, he’d been one almost since the time he was old enough to walk. Some things had begun to happen to him about then that shouldn’t happen to kids, and maybe they could have been avoided and maybe they couldn’t have. But it was all the same to him. He didn’t ask for excuses, he didn’t give any. As far as he was concerned, the world was a shitpot with a barbed-wire handle and the further he could kick it the better he liked it. As far as he was concerned, he had plenty owing to him. And he was hell on wheels at collecting.
He was now nineteen years old. He was suffering from tuberculosis, bleeding ulcers, and chronic alcoholism.
Rig hands, drillers, and tool-dressers accompanied the old man and his son. Huge tractors were hitched onto the rig, and it was hauled eighteen miles out of town to the drill site. They had no road to haul it over, of course. A road had to be made, straight out across the tumbling prairie, up hills and over streams, through hub-high mud and sand.
It took a lot of money. They were in over their ears before they were ever rigged up. They started to drill, and the hole went down a hundred and twenty-five feet—and every inch of it was a high-priced waste of money. For the driller hadn’t known his stuff, and he’d got a crooked hole. And you can’t set casing in a crooked hole. You can’t—when you’re using cable tools—go down very far before your drill bit and stem drag on the side.
Wildcats are always Jonahs. You’re in unexplored territory, and you never know what you’re going to get into until you’ve already got into it and it’s too damned late. This particular wildcatter had enough hard luck for a hundred wells.
The boiler blew up. The rig caught on fire. The mast snapped. The tools were lost in the hole a dozen times. The drill cable bucked and whipped, cleanly slicing off a tool-dresser’s head.
The kid announced that he had gone his limit; he had nothing left but hi
s ass and his pants and they both had holes in them. His father said that they would manage some way, and he took over the financing from then on.
The well finally got drilled. It wasn’t a gusher but it was a very respectable producer. Diffidently, the old man asked his son what plans he had for the future.
“You mean what do I want to be when I grow up?” the kid said sarcastically. “What’s it to you, anyway? When were you ever interested in what I wanted to do?”
“Son, son…” the old man shook his head sadly. “Have I really been that bad?”
“Oh, hell, I guess not. But I’m just not much on talking about things. You talk about what you’re going to do, you never get it done.”
The father guessed that it was probably a slam at him. He had, possibly, always indulged too much in talk. “I suppose,” he said timidly, “you’ve been counting on having a lot of money?”
The kid said, why not? They’d brought in a good well, and they had hundreds of offsetting acres under lease. Conservatively, they were worth several million dollars. “But I’ll settle for a hundred and eighty-two thousand. I won’t live long enough to spend any more than that.”
“A hundred and eighty-two—Why that particular figure, son?”
“I’ve been keeping a little black book since I was seven years old. There are one hundred and eighty-two names in it, one for every rotten bastard who’s given me a hard time. I’ve shopped around, and I can get them bumped off for an average price of one thousand dollars.”
“Son—” The father shook his head, aghast. “What happened to you? How can you even think of such things?”