Nothing More Than Murder

by Jim Thompson

  The film was wet. As it passed through the reel it sent a fine spray over the motor. The spray formed a trickle that ran down the pear-shaped back of the motor.

  The cord sparked.

  The trickle of water seemed to catch fire.

  There was a flash as if someone had tossed a barrel of yellow paint into the room.

  I struck out with my hand, and something seemed to grab it and push my arm back into my shoulder. A streak of lightning shot across the table. There were a couple of pinwheels of fire at each end. Then, a loud pop and darkness; and the sound of the broken film whipping against the table.

  And Elizabeth crying.

  I found the cord and jerked it loose. I fumbled along the wall until I found the circuit breaker, and the lights came on again.

  I turned them off and opened the door. I picked up Elizabeth and carried her back to the house and into the kitchen. I put my foot up on a chair, and pulled her over my knee, and whaled the tar out of her.

  She stopped crying and laughing, and really began to cry.

  Some way she got turned around and put her arms around my neck.

  8

  You wouldn’t think we’d have been hungry, but we were. We ate some sandwiches and coffee; and afterward she made me go upstairs to the bathroom with her to get my hand fixed up.

  It wasn’t a bad burn; it just looked bad. But she insisted on doping it all up, so I let her.

  “What’d you want to do a crazy thing like that for?” I asked. I’d asked her about umpteen times already.

  “You know why,” she said.

  “No, I don’t, either.”

  “Well, you do,” she said. Like a little girl. And she did look like one then. Her skin was always so clear you could almost see through it, and now it was rosy and flushed.

  She acted like she was afraid to look at me; bashful, you know. She’d duck her head and look the other way. Her hair was like silk as she bent over my hand. Black silk, with a finger-wide streak of white through the center.

  “You’re awfully pretty,” I said, all of a sudden.

  “I’ll bet I’m black and blue.”

  “Let’s see if you are.”

  “Now, Joe—don’t—”

  But she didn’t pull away.

  I put a kiss on my hand and patted her.

  “Feel better now?”

  “Uh-huh. And now you’re going to bed.”

  “We’ve got some talking to do first,” I said.

  “All right,” she said. “But just a little. I know you’re worn out.”

  I didn’t know why she blushed; why she didn’t want to talk. Not right then, I didn’t. I should have, sure, but you know how it is. You don’t think about water when you’re not thirsty.

  She sat on the edge of the bed while I undressed and lay down.

  “Now, what’s it all about?” I said.

  “I don’t know, Joe. It just seemed at the moment that it was the only thing to do.”

  “We don’t have to go through with this business,” I said. “Maybe we can think of something else.”

  “Do we have to think of something else, Joe?”

  “What—how do you mean?”

  She was leaning back on one elbow, her legs drawn up under her. She lifted her eyes and gave me a long, slow look. She didn’t answer.

  “Well—well, maybe we don’t have to,” I said. “Gosh, Elizabeth, I don’t know—I don’t know what to do or what not to do. I never have known.”

  “I know I’m terribly difficult,” she said. “No, I mean it. But I do hope you understand my intentions were good.”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “I understand.”

  “I’m afraid you don’t,” she said and laughed, “but we’ll not argue about it. It’s no longer important now. I hope it will never become important again.”

  “Tell me something,” I said. “About what we were going to do. Did you feel like I did—like you wouldn’t want to have other people around you anymore? Like you’d be ashamed, not for yourself but for them?”

  “Well—”

  “I guess I’m not sure of what I mean myself,” I said. “It wasn’t the idea of breaking the law or not going to heaven. I didn’t really see how we were doing anything very wrong. If it was someone you knew it would be different. If it was someone that was, well, respectable and a valued citizen and all that, it would be different. But when it’s not— Well, if you can sacrifice— If three people can have happiness and go ahead and amount to something just by someone—someone that doesn’t stand a show of being anyone or doing anything—getting out of the way, why—”

  “I’ll tell you why you felt as you did,” said Elizabeth. “It was too simple.”

  “No, that wasn’t—” I hesitated. “I don’t think I get you, Elizabeth.”

  “We’re strong people, Joe. Stronger at least than many. Without being too flattering we can say that we have good minds, good bodies, a good financial position.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “There’s room for improvement,” said Elizabeth. “There usually is. And there comes a time when the improvement seems imperative. So what do we superior people do? How do we exercise our fine talents in the emergency? We don’t. We don’t use them at all. We do something that the first man could have done much better. Something that anyone could do. We—we push over someone who is more trusting or less strong than we are.”

  “Well,” I said, “it was the only thing we could think of.”

  “Yes, Joe. It was the only thing we could think of.”

  I frowned, and I suppose she thought I was getting mad.

  “You go to sleep now, dear,” she said. “We’ll talk more later.”

  She got up and pulled down the shades, and turned off the light. She came back and bent over me, her face flushed, looking more like a little girl than ever.

  “Think you can sleep, Joe?” she said.

  And before I could answer, she lay down by my side and pulled my head against her breast.

  We lay there for a long time. Long enough to give me every chance in the world. And I could feel her growing stiffer and older by the minute.

  She didn’t get mad.

  She just acted sorry and sort of resigned. She moved away from me, and stood up.

  “When was it, Joe?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “Was it before you came here—to me?”

  “Hell,” I said, “you knew how it was all along. You’ve known about it for months.”

  “I didn’t know until now, Joe. But that isn’t the point. I’d have sworn this would be one time when, as you’d put it, you’d pass up a bet. If it wasn’t, well, then there’ll never be such a time. You’ve got nothing to share with me. There’s nothing I can do for you.”

  As she started for the door I said, “Well, what do you want to do? Do you still want to go through with it?”

  “By all means,” she said. “I’ve changed my mind about its being too simple for us.”

  I let her go. I’d gone a little goofy when I thought she was in danger. But I should have known we couldn’t patch things up. I still wasn’t hot for the killing—who would be?—but if that was the only way to lead a happy, decent life, why…

  9

  If you’re like I am you’ve probably spotted a thousand couples during your lifetime that made you wonder why and how the hell they ever got together. And if you’re like I used to be you probably lay it to liquor or shotguns.

  Not that I can tell you why I married Elizabeth or she married me. Not exactly. But I can tell you this. We both knew exactly what we were getting, barring a few points, and we went right ahead and made the grab anyway.

  And looking back it all seems perfectly natural.

  That first rainy night when I drove her home in the film truck she got out, fumbled in her purse, and handed me fifty cents.

  “No, I want you to take that, Joe,” she said, when I sort of began
to stutter. “It would have cost me much more than that to take a cab.”

  “But—but look here, Miss Barclay—”

  “Good night, Joe. Be careful of the flower beds when you drive out.”

  I told her what she could do with her flower beds and four-bit pieces. I told her she could walk in mud up to her ears before I gave her another ride. I—

  But I was ten miles down the road when I did it. At the time I couldn’t think of any more to say than I can now when she ties me into knots. Not as much, maybe, because I hadn’t had any practice.

  My next run-in with her was a Sunday, about two weeks later. I was still sore, or thought I was; but when she motioned me over to the box office I went running, like a dog running for a bone.

  “Come around to the door,” she said, “you’re in the way of the patrons there.” And I went around. Then, she said, “I want you to do an errand for me, Joe.”

  And I said, “Well—well, thank you.”

  “A whole row of seats has broken down,” she went on. “I want you to go over to the Methodist Church and pick up thirty of their folding chairs. I’ve already called about them.”

  I gulped and got started so fast I didn’t really understand what she’d told me. I heard it, you know, but I didn’t understand it. And when I did, or thought I did, I still couldn’t believe it.

  I got the chairs after some pretty chilly looks from the parson, and took them back and set them up. By that time I was so late on the route that a couple of hours more wouldn’t make any difference, so I found a little engine trouble, and I’d just got it fixed when the show closed for the night. So I drove her home again.

  She didn’t hand me fifty cents that night. She said something about not having any change—I knew she had a five-pound sack full—and that she’d pay me some other time.

  “I’ll settle cheap,” I said, bracing myself. “Tell me—I mean, can I ask you a question?”

  “Certainly you may.”

  “Were those chairs you got tonight—were they some you’d loaned to the church?”

  “No. I thought I mentioned they were theirs.”

  “You mean,” I said, “you borrowed thirty chairs from a church for a picture show on Sunday night?”

  She frowned a little, then her face cleared. “You mean they might have been using them? Oh, but I knew they wouldn’t be. That church never has anything approaching a crowd on Sunday night.”

  “Well,” I said, “well, that makes everything just dandy.”

  I found out later that her old man, her grandfather rather, had donated the sites for most of the churches in town, so I guess she felt like they owed her a few favors and they apparently felt the same way.

  Jesus, what a hell of a way to collect! It was like asking to sleep with a man’s wife because he owed you five dollars.

  After that, after I really began to notice things, to do something besides set the film cans in the lobby and beat it, I saw her head for one jam after another. And instead of pointing my nose the other way, I’d jump in and try to give her a straight steer.

  She had trouble spelled all over her. She’d always have it. And I knew it, and I didn’t want it any different—then.

  You don’t buy a twenty-three-jewel watch and hope to turn it into an alarm clock. I didn’t have any idea of ever changing her.

  The funniest deal came up one night over some color film.

  She was using Simplex projectors with nine hundred-watt Mazdas, and the way the stuff came out on the screen was pretty God-awful. Most of the time you could tell the men from the women characters but they all looked like they’d been brawling in a jelly closet.

  “I’m going to make them give me a rebate on this,” she told me. “I’ve never seen such a thing in my life!”

  “You won’t get any rebate,” I said. “This print is brand new; that’s the trouble with it. What little color stuff you’ve played in the past has been old and those Mazdas would shoot through it. But there’s more and more color coming in, and you’ll probably be getting a lot of new prints.”

  “Oh?” She began to look a little sick. “What should I do, Joe?”

  “Get rid of the lamps and put in carbon arcs. They’ll cut through anything.”

  “Are they—pretty expensive?”

  “Well, it’s going to cost you something to convert, sure,” I said. “But you should be able to squeeze around that. Talk it over with your power-and-light man here. Show him how the arcs will burn more juice and it’s to his advantage for you to have them. If you handle it right you might be able to get him to put them in for you.”

  She brightened up and said she’d try it.

  Two weeks later she was still using lamps, and from what little I could get out of her I knew she’d keep right on using them as far as the manager of the power-and-light company was concerned.

  Well, I picked a light night on the route, drove to beat hell for sixteen hours straight, and got back into Stoneville early the next morning. I brushed up a little bit and paid a call on the power company.

  Not that I’d expected him to be, but the manager wasn’t an imbecile or a boor or a grafter. He was just a pretty pleasant citizen who’d spent a lot of time learning his business. And he wasn’t going to let anyone tell him where to get off, even if he had been trotting around town with his tail sticking out at a time when she had six dresses for every day in the week.

  I don’t know what I said to him. Nothing in particular, I guess. We sat around and talked for thirty minutes or so and went out and had coffee together, and that was all there was to it. Two days later the arcs went in.

  I could tell you some more things along the same line, but there wouldn’t be too much point to it. The time’s better used, probably, in mentioning that she’d found out plenty about me. About all there was to find out.

  Her mother was pretty feeble, and I used to inquire about her. So sooner or later, of course, she had to inquire about mine—about my folks. And that brought up the orphanage, and one thing led to another. At first I told her I’d picked up the projectionist trade when I was in the orphanage. But then I remembered telling her I’d skipped out of the joint when I was fourteen, and, rather than look like a liar, I told her the truth.

  “Was the reform—the industrial school very bad, Joe?”

  “I thought it was at the time,” I said. “But after I saw a few—”

  I told her about the jails.

  I told her how it was when you really got down to the bottom of the pot, how you’d get seventy-two hours on vagrancy as soon as you hit a town, how they’d float you back on the road again before you could get a job or even a good meal in your belly.

  “I’m never going to go back to stuff like that,” I said. “They’ll have to kill me first.”

  “Or?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’ll be ‘or’ before they get me down again.”

  I didn’t have to tell her why I was sticking to what looked like a pretty cheap job, because I knew she knew. Maybe she didn’t know any more about business and public relations than a two-year-old. But she could see an angle a mile off, particularly where it concerned me. Most of the time it was like we were looking out the same window.

  There were around fifty customers on my route. They bought product on everything from a two-day to a week’s option. I mean it was their right to keep it for a week if they wanted to, which didn’t mean that they always would. They just bought a long option to play safe.

  Well, suppose they decided to keep it four days or less, then turned it back to me for pick-up. I take it on down the road a ways and give another house a run on it for half price. The house is able to make one more change on the week than it’s been making and I pick up a ten spot or so.

  I had to be careful. Bicycling film is a penitentiary offense. But a guy that’s actually hauling the product—a guy that knows just who is buying from where—can get away with it. The exchanges can’t afford to check the small towns
. They’ve maybe got a damned good idea they’re being roped, but unless it gets too bad they let it go.

  I never let it get too bad.

  Well, there’s not a lot more to tell.

  Stoneville wasn’t important enough as a show town then for the union to bother with, and Elizabeth had a punk boy working in the booth. One of those sharp lads who has to think ten or fifteen minutes before he can decide which end of the match to strike.

  His best trick was to get the reel in backward or out of sequence, but he had a lot of others. Missing change-overs. Forgetting to turn the sound on. Hitting the arcs before the film was rolling.

  It was the last one that finally got me.

  By this time I’d rearranged my route so that Stoneville was my last stop instead of the first one; and I’d stay there overnight before going back to the city— Sure, at a hotel. Where do you think?

  Anyway, I was sitting in the house that night when I finally got just as much of that punk as I could take. He’d already run one reel backward. He’d missed two change-overs, and he’d turned the sound on full and forgot about it. That’s more boners than a good projectionist will pull in a lifetime, but the punk wasn’t through yet. Right after the second miss, he caught the film on fire.

  If you’ve gone to many picture shows, particularly back in the early days of the business, you’ve seen it happen once or twice. The film will hit the screen like a still. Then it looks like someone is punching a live cigar butt through it from the back.

  That’s caused by not having the film rolling while the arcs are on. Because those arcs are just like a blast furnace, and nothing burns as easily as or faster than film.

  Projectors are fixed so that nothing but the film in the frame can burn. But not everyone knows that, and even if they did—what the hell? No one’s going to thank you for not roasting them. No one’s going to pay dough to sit in a dark house while some boob splices film.