The Postman Always Rings Twice

by James M. Cain

  “We’ll get it. Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not.”

  I stayed out there with him all night. I didn’t give him any food, and I didn’t give him any sleep. Three or four times he had to talk to Willie, and once Willie wanted to talk to me. Near as I could tell, we got away with it. In between, I would beat him up. It was hard work, but I meant he should want that paper to get there, bad. While he was wiping the blood off his face, on a towel, you could hear the radio going, out in the beer garden, and people laughing and talking.

  About ten o’clock the next morning she came out there.

  “They’re here, I think. There are three of them.”

  “Bring them back.”

  She picked up the gun, stuck it in her belt so you couldn’t see it from in front, and went. In a minute, I heard something fall. It was one of his gorillas. She was marching them in front of her, making them walk backwards with their hands up, and one of them fell when his heel hit the concrete walk. I opened the door. “This way, gents.”

  They came in, still holding their hands up, and she came in after them and handed me the gun. “They all had guns, but I took them off them in the lunchroom.”

  “Better get them. Maybe they got friends.”

  She went, and in a minute came back with the guns. She took out the clips, and laid them on the bed, beside me. Then she went through their pockets. Pretty soon she had it. And the funny part was that in another envelope were photostats of it, six positives and one negative. They had meant to keep on blackmailing us, and then hadn’t had any more sense than to have the photostats on them when they showed up. I took them all, with the original, outside, crumpled them up on the ground, and touched a match to them. When they were burned I stamped the ashes into the dirt and went back.

  “All right, boys. I’ll show you out. We’ll keep the artillery here.”

  After I had marched them out to their cars, and they left, and I went back inside, she wasn’t there. I went out back, and she wasn’t there. I went upstairs. She was in our room. “Well, we did it, didn’t we? That’s the last of it, photostats and all. It’s been worrying me, too.”

  She didn’t say anything, and her eyes looked funny. “What’s the matter, Cora?”

  “So that’s the last of it, is it? Photostats and all. It isn’t the last of me, though. I’ve got a million photostats of it, just as good as they were. Jimmy Durante. I’ve got a million of them. Am I mortified?”

  She burst out laughing, and flopped down on the bed.

  “All right. If you’re sucker enough to put your neck in the noose, just to get me, you’ve got a million of them. You sure have. A million of them.”

  “Oh, no, that’s the beautiful part. I don’t have to put my neck in the noose at all. Didn’t Mr. Katz tell you? Once they just made it manslaughter, they can’t do any more to me. It’s in the Constitution or something. Oh no, Mr. Frank Chambers. It don’t cost me a thing to make you dance on air. And that’s what you’re going to do. Dance, dance, dance.”

  “What ails you, anyhow?”

  “Don’t you know? Your friend was out last night. She didn’t know about me, and she spent the night here.”

  “What friend?”

  “The one you went to Mexico with. She told me all about it. We’re good friends now. She thought we better be good friends. After she found out who I was she thought I might kill her.”

  “I haven’t been to Mexico for a year.”

  “Oh yes you have.”

  She went out, and I heard her go in my room. When she came back she had a kitten with her, but a kitten that was bigger than a cat. It was gray, with spots on it. She put it on the table in front of me and it began to meow. “The puma had little ones while you were gone, and she brought you one to remember her by.”

  She leaned back against the wall and began to laugh again, a wild, crazy laugh. “And the cat came back! It stepped on the fuse box and got killed, but here it is back! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Ain’t that funny, how unlucky cats are for you?”

  CHAPTER

  15

  She cracked up, then, and cried, and after she got quiet she went downstairs. I was down there, right after her. She was tearing the top flaps off a big carton.

  “Just making a nest for our little pet, dearie.”

  “Nice of you.”

  “What did you think I was doing?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Don’t worry. When the time comes to call up Mr. Sackett, I’ll let you know. Just take it easy. You’ll need all your strength.”

  She lined it with excelsior, and on top of that put some woolen cloths. She took it upstairs and put the puma in it. It meowed a while and then went to sleep. I went downstairs to fix myself a coke. I hadn’t any more than squirted the ammonia in it than she was at the door.

  “Just taking something to keep my strength up, dearie.”

  “Nice of you.”

  “What did you think I was doing?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Don’t worry. When I get ready to skip I’ll let you know. Just take it easy. You may need all your strength.”

  She gave me a funny look and went upstairs. It kept up all day, me following her around for fear she’d call up Sackett, her following me around for fear I’d skip. We never opened the place up at all. In between the tip-toeing around, we would sit upstairs in the room. We didn’t look at each other. We looked at the puma. It would meow and she would go down to get it some milk. I would go with her. After it lapped up the milk it would go to sleep. It was too young to play much. Most of the time it meowed or slept.

  That night we lay side by side, not saying a word. I must have slept, because I had those dreams. Then, all of a sudden, I woke up, and before I was even really awake I was running downstairs. What had waked me was the sound of that telephone dial. She was at the extension in the lunchroom, all dressed, with her hat on, and a packed hat box on the floor beside her. I grabbed the receiver and slammed it on the hook. I took her by the shoulders, jerked her through the swing door, and shoved her upstairs. “Get up there! Get up there, or I’ll—”

  “Or you’ll what?”

  The telephone rang, and I answered it.

  “Here’s your party, go ahead.”

  “Yellow Cab.”

  “Oh. Oh. I called you, Yellow Cab, but I’ve changed my mind. I won’t need you.”

  “O.K.”

  When I got upstairs she was taking off her clothes. When we got back in bed we lay there a long time again without saying a word. Then she started up.

  “Or you’ll what?”

  “What’s it to you? Sock you in the jaw, maybe. Maybe something else.”

  “Something else, wasn’t it?”

  “What are you getting at now?”

  “Frank, I know what you’ve been doing. You’ve been lying there, trying to think of a way to kill me.”

  “I’ve been asleep.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Frank. Because I’m not going to lie to you, and I’ve got something to say to you.”

  I thought that over a long time. Because that was just what I had been doing. Lying there beside her, just straining to think of a way I could kill her.

  “All right, then. I was.”

  “I knew it.”

  “Were you any better? Weren’t you going to hand me over to Sackett? Wasn’t that the same thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’re even. Even again. Right back where we started.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Oh yes we are.” I cracked up a little, then, myself, and put my head on her shoulder. “That’s just where we are. We can kid ourself all we want to, and laugh about the money, and whoop about what a swell guy the devil is to be in bed with, but that’s just where we are. I was going off with that woman, Cora. We were going to Nicaragua to catch cats. And why I didn’t go away, I knew I had to come back. We’re chained to each other, Cora. We thought we were on top of a mountain. That was
n’t it. It’s on top of us, and that’s where it’s been ever since that night.”

  “Is that the only reason you came back?”

  “No. It’s you and me. There’s nobody else. I love you, Cora. But love, when you get fear in it, it’s not love any more. It’s hate.”

  “So you hate me?”

  “I don’t know. But we’re telling the truth, for once in our life. That’s part of it. You got to know it. And what I was lying here thinking, that’s the reason. Now you know it.”

  “I told you I had something to tell you, Frank.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m going to have a baby.”

  “What?”

  “I suspicioned it before I went away, and right after my mother died I was sure.”

  “The hell you say. The hell you say. Come here. Give me a kiss.”

  “No. Please. I’ve got to tell you about it.”

  “Haven’t you told it?”

  “Not what I mean. Now listen to me, Frank. All that time I was out there, waiting for the funeral to be over, I thought about it. What it would mean to us. Because we took a life, didn’t we? And now we’re going to give one back.”

  “That’s right.”

  “It was all mixed up, what I thought. But now, after what happened with that woman, it’s not mixed up any more. I couldn’t call up Sackett, Frank. I couldn’t call him up, because I couldn’t have this baby, and then have it find out I let its father hang for murder.”

  “You were going to see Sackett.”

  “No I wasn’t. I was going away.”

  “Was that the only reason you weren’t going to see Sackett?”

  She took a long time before she answered that. “No. I love you, Frank. I think you know that. But maybe, if it hadn’t been for this, I would have gone to see him. Just because I love you.”

  “She didn’t mean anything to me, Cora. I told you why I did it. I was running away.”

  “I know that. I knew it all along. I knew why you wanted to take me away, and what I said about you being a bum, I didn’t believe that. I believed it, but it wasn’t why you wanted to go. You being a bum, I love you for it. And I hated her for the way she turned on you just for not telling her about something that wasn’t any of her business. And yet, I wanted to ruin you for it.”

  “Well?

  “I’m trying to say it, Frank. This is what I’m trying to say. I wanted to ruin you, and yet I couldn’t go to see Sackett. It wasn’t because you kept watching me. I could have run out of the house and got to him. It was because, like I told you. Well then, I’m rid of the devil, Frank. I know I’ll never call up Sackett, because I had my chance, and I had my reason, and I didn’t do it. So the devil has left me. But has he left you?”

  “If he’s left you, then what more have I got to do with him?”

  “We wouldn’t be sure. We couldn’t ever be sure unless you had your chance. The same chance I had.”

  “I tell you, he’s gone.”

  “While you were thinking about a way to kill me, Frank, I was thinking the same thing. Of a way you could kill me. You can kill me swimming. We’ll go way out, the way we did last time, and if you don’t want me to come back, you don’t have to let me. Nobody’ll ever know. It’ll be just one of those things that happen at the beach. Tomorrow morning we’ll go.”

  “Tomorrow morning, what we do is get married.”

  “We can get married if you want, but before we come back we go swimming.”

  “To hell with swimming. Come on with that kiss.”

  “Tomorrow night, if I come back, there’ll be kisses. Lovely ones, Frank. Not drunken kisses. Kisses with dreams in them. Kisses that come from life, not death.”

  “It’s a date.”

  We got married at the City Hall, and then we went to the beach. She looked so pretty I just wanted to play in the sand with her, but she had this little smile on her face, and after a while she got up and went down to the surf.

  “I’m going out.”

  She went ahead, and I swam after her. She kept on going, and went a lot further out than she had before. Then she stopped, and I caught up with her. She swung up beside me, and took hold of my hand, and we looked at each other. She knew, then, that the devil was gone, that I loved her.

  “Did I ever tell you why I like my feet to the swells?”

  “No.”

  “It’s so they’ll lift them.”

  A big one raised us up, and she put her hand to her breasts, to show how it lifted them. “I love it. Are they big, Frank?”

  “I’ll tell you tonight.”

  “They feel big. I didn’t tell you about that. It’s not only knowing you’re going to make another life. It’s what it does to you. My breasts feel so big, and I want you to kiss them. Pretty soon my belly is going to get big, and I’ll love that, and want everybody to see it. It’s life. I can feel it in me. It’s a new life for us both, Frank.”

  We started back, and on the way in I swam down. I went down nine feet. I could tell it was nine feet, by the pressure. Most of these pools are nine feet, and it was that deep. I whipped my legs together and shot down further. It drove in on my ears so I thought they would pop. But I didn’t have to come up. The pressure on your lungs drives the oxygen in your blood, so for a few seconds you don’t think about breath. I looked at the green water. And with my ears ringing and that weight on my back and chest, it seemed to me that all the devilment, and meanness, and shiftlessness, and no-account stuff in my life had been pressed out and washed off, and I was all ready to start out with her again clean, and do like she said, have a new life.

  When I came up she was coughing. “Just one of those sick spells, like you have.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I think so. It comes over you, and then it goes.”

  “Did you swallow any water?”

  “No.”

  We went a little way, and then she stopped. “Frank, I feel funny inside.”

  “Here, hold on to me.”

  “Oh, Frank. Maybe I strained myself, just then. Trying to keep my head up. So I wouldn’t gulp down the salt water.”

  “Take it easy.”

  “Wouldn’t that be awful? I’ve heard of women that had a miscarriage. From straining theirself.”

  “Take it easy. Lie right out in the water. Don’t try to swim. I’ll tow you in.”

  “Hadn’t you better call a guard?”

  “Christ no. That egg will want to pump your legs up and down. Just lay there now. I’ll get you in quicker than he can.”

  She lay there, and I towed her by the shoulder strap of her bathing suit. I began to give out. I could have towed her a mile, but I kept thinking I had to get her to a hospital, and I hurried. When you hurry in the water you’re sunk. I got bottom, though, after a while, and then I took her in my arms and rushed her through the surf. “Don’t move. Let me do it.”

  “I won’t.”

  I ran with her up to the place where our sweaters were, and set her down. I got the car key out of mine, then wrapped both of them around her and carried her up to the car. It was up beside the road, and I had to climb the high bank the road was on, above the beach. My legs were so tired I could hardly lift one after the other, but I didn’t drop her. I put her in the car, started up, and began burning the road.

  We had gone in swimming a couple of miles above Santa Monica, and there was a hospital down there. I overtook a big truck. It had a sign on the back, Sound Your Horn, the Road Is Yours. I banged on the horn, and it kept right down the middle. I couldn’t pass on the left, because a whole line of cars was coming toward me. I pulled out to the right and stepped on it. She screamed. I never saw the culvert wall. There was a crash, and everything went black.

  When I came out of it I was wedged down beside the wheel, with my back to the front of the car, but I began to moan from the awfulness of what I heard. It was like rain on a tin roof, but that wasn’t it. It was her blood, pouring down on the hood, where she we
nt through the windshield. Horns were blowing, and people were jumping out of cars and running to her. I got her up, and tried to stop the blood and in between I was talking to her, and crying, and kissing her. Those kisses never reached her. She was dead.

  CHAPTER

  16

  They got me for it. Katz took it all this time, the $10,000 he had got for us, and the money we had made, and a deed for the place. He did his best for me, but he was licked from the start. Sackett said I was a mad dog, that had to be put out of the way before life would be safe. He had it all figured out. We murdered the Greek to get the money, and then I married her, and murdered her so I could have it all myself. When she found out about the Mexican trip, that hurried it up a little, that was all. He had the autopsy report, that showed she was going to have a baby, and he said that was part of it. He put Madge on the stand, and she told about the Mexican trip. She didn’t want to, but she had to. He even had the puma in court. It had grown, but it hadn’t been taken care of right, so it was mangy and sick looking, and yowled, and tried to bite him. It was an awful looking thing, and it didn’t do me any good, believe me. But what really sunk me was the note she wrote before she called up the cab, and put in the cash register so I would get it in the morning, and then forgot about. I never saw it, because we didn’t open the place before we went swimming, and I never even looked in the cash register. It was the sweetest note in the world, but it had in it about us killing the Greek, and that did the work. They argued about it three days, and Katz fought them with every law book in Los Angeles County, but the judge let it in, and that let in all about us murdering the Greek. Sackett said that fixed me up with a motive. That and just being a mad dog. Katz never even let me take the stand. What could I say? That I didn’t do it, because we had just fixed it up, all the trouble we had had over killing the Greek? That would have been swell. The jury was out five minutes. The judge said he would give me exactly the same consideration he would show any other mad dog.

  So I’m in the death house, now, writing the last of this, so Father McConnell can look it over and show me the places where maybe it ought to be fixed up a little, for punctuation and all that. If I get a stay, he’s to hold on to it and wait for what happens. If I get a commutation, then, he’s to burn it, and they’ll never know whether there really was any murder or not, from anything I tell them. But if they get me, he’s to take it and see if he can find somebody to print it. There won’t be any stay, and there won’t be any commutation, I know that. I never kidded myself. But in this place, you hope anyhow, just because you can’t help it. I never confessed anything, that’s one thing. I heard a guy say they never hang you without you confess. I don’t know. Unless Father McConnell crosses me, they’ll never know anything from me. Maybe I’ll get a stay.