by Jim Thompson
“Well, goddam if you ain’t a fine one!”
“Where you going, Pa?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“Take me fishing, Pa. You promised a long time ago to take me, and you never did.” He squirmed a little, his eyes fixed eagerly on his grandfather’s face. “Take me fishing, Pa.”
“Damned if I won’t,” snarled Lincoln, not yet ready to move on. “First thing I’d know, the fish’d be holding the pole and you’d be on the hook.”
“No they wouldn’t, Pa. I’ll be all right.”
“I just bet! Oh, no! Any boy that thinks he can fly a bunch of two-by-fours out of a barn loft ain’t no company for me.”
The boy twitched fretfully. “But I’ll be good, Pa. Honest, I will.”
The old man, resting, appeared to deliberate. There was the matter of bait to consider, he pointed out. And he expressed an unreasonable doubt that his grandson would know a fishworm if one approached him with a tag in its ear and a letter of introduction.
“We won’t need worms, Pa! I’ll get some liver,” said Bob, and his squirmings increased.
Well, what about poles, the old man inquired. And he profanely and flatly refused the boy’s solution to the problem.…Oh, no, they would not get poles at the river. Not by a damned sight. Bob would doubtless pick up a rattlesnake and try to use that.
He declared that he was a reasonable man with no more than a normal regard for his life. He did not fear death at all, he said, in its usual guises, but was only averse to such unpleasant fates as being swallowed by water moccasins, nibbled to death by fish, or fatally mutilated by bent pins. So, unless Bob could show him how…
Hysterically, his mind feverish with eagerness, Bob explained how the excursion could be made in safety and comfort. And as Lincoln sadly shook his head, the boy offered alternates—a dozen of them. But to each plan the old man found some objection. He hated it, too, he said—he would like to go fishing himself.
It was too bad, he implied, that a strain of idiocy had cropped out in his grandson.
The ultimate result of the teasing upon the boy was what Lincoln called a “dance,” a term that insulted the art of Terpsichore even back to its rudest beginnings.
The tortured youth clasped himself about the middle, in the manner of one having overeaten of green apples. Bent double, he rocked his head from side to side, hopping first on one foot, then on the other—like a rooster on a hot stove. And all the time he emitted cries so filled with agony and rage as to turn every coyote in the distant sand-hills gray-headed:
“Ye-ou praw-miss-ed, Pa-w-w! Yeow-u praw-miss-ed tew-w take-a mee-a feesh-inn…!”
It was his mother’s habit, when he was thus seized, to shake him until his teeth rattled. And his grandmother had always socked him with a dishrag or a handful of scourings from the churn, or something equally unpleasant. Today, Lincoln, having had his rest and amusement, hooked his cane into the boy’s suspenders and pushed. And Bob sat down on the sidewalk with a silencing jolt.
“What the hell you bellering about?” he demanded, a sudden notion entering his head. “I said I’d take you fishing.”
“Ye-ou deed nawt—what!” said Bob, leaping to his feet.
“Why, sure,” said Link, airily. “We’ll catch us a nice mess of suckers.”
The boy jumped up and down with delight. “Hell’s fire! I’ll go and get the bait!”
“Now hold your horses—” Lincoln began.
But Bob was already in the next block, turning in at Dutch Schnorr’s meat market.
Among the boys of the town there were disturbing rumors about the meat market. More than one hapless youth, it was said, had gone into the place, never to be seen again except in the unidentifiable form of sausage. The proprietor, a stolid-faced Hollander with little pig ears, looked to his reputation, and did his best to perpetuate it. While he inwardly boiled with amusement, he would make leering inquiries about a boy’s weight, or insist on his examining the sausage-making equipment.
“Vell?” he said, now, while he whetted a long knife. “Vot do you vant?”
Bob decided that they would need lunch at the river. He asked, tremulously, for five cents’ worth of Bologna, five of headcheese, and a pound of liver.
Scowling ferociously, the butcher wrapped the purchases and laid them on the counter. Bob glanced over his shoulder at the door. Pa should have been there by this time. He should have come in.
“Vell?” said Dutch.
“P-pa’s going to pay for it,” stuttered the boy. “You know Pa?”
“No,” said Dutch, flatly.
“W-well—w-well, he’s my grandfather. H-he’s got the money.” Fear-struck, he inched backwards in the sawdust.
“So!” said the butcher, whetting his knife. “Now it gifs gran’fadders. I t’ink I will yust…”
He started around the counter.
With a wild yell, Bob fled.
A few doors up the street, his grandfather hooked him again, gave him a curse-filled lecture on the perils of brashness, and sent him back with the money for his purchases. Bob, seeing the butcher in his doorway holding his sides, went back grinning sheepishly. He took his packages and paid the dime due. (Liver, of course, was good only for cat food and bait and had no price.)
He caught up with his grandfather just as the latter was turning up the stairs that led to the Opera House, and loudly reiterated his demand that they go fishing.
“Goddamit, we’re going to!”
“When? There ain’t no fish up there.”
“The hell there ain’t!” the old man snorted with secret glee. “But never you mind, now. We’ll go fishing. You just stop pestering me or I won’t take you.”
“You’ll really take me fishin’?”
“I really will,” said Lincoln, and he started up the steps, wheezing and chuckling.
The Opera House was owned rather vaguely by the Masons, the Odd Fellows, the Eagles, and the township. But the old soldiers of the Grand Army were the de facto proprietors. There were three of them there today, playing cards on a rickety table down near the stage: Cap’n Ball, Cap’n Finigan, and Veterinary Sergeant Doc Hallup.
They greeted Lincoln with amiable profanity which became profanity unqualified upon the sight of his grandson. But Lincoln drew back a chair, deriding their protests.
“Hell, he’s only going to stay a little while. He’s going fishing pretty soon.”
“Why can’t he go now?”
“Well, he will pretty quick. Come on. Deal me a hand. Or are you scared I’ll take all your money?”
Stung by the jibe, the old men allowed Lincoln to sit in and Bob to remain—a bit of weak-mindedness for which they cursed themselves until their dying day.
For during the next half-hour the boy (a) upset a gaboon over the two cap’ns’ feet, knocking a live cigar into the cuff of Doc’s boot at the same time; (b) crawled under the floor and had to be extricated; (c) swung out from the stage on a curtain-rope and knocked over the card table.
This last misadventure, which of course created a misdeal, had found Lincoln heavily bluffing and about to be called. Nevertheless, he simulated dismay.
“Now, Bobbie,” he said, so mildly that the boy was shocked into paralysis. “You hadn’t ought to have done that.”
“He hadn’t ortto of done it!” howled Cap’n Finigan. “You chase that scamp on out of here to his fishin’!”
Lincoln arose regretfully. “All right. I sure hate to go, though.”
“You go? You ain’t goin’!” snarled Doc Hallup. “Not the winner you are!”
“Well, I got to go when he does. I got to take care of him.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell us that at the beginnin’?” demanded Cap’n Ball.
But the three saw that they were trapped.
Doc snatched a dollar from the pot and threw it at Bob Dillon. “Go on out,” he commanded. “And don’t come back until you’ve spent every penny of it.”
“I never seen worse in my life!” declared Doc Hallup.
“I have,” said Cap’n Finigan. “But I always had artillery to back me up.”
“He don’t bother me hardly none at all,” said Lincoln, innocently.
Meanwhile, Bob had arrived at the racket store, the then small-town counterpart of the modern five-and-ten. Old Man Sneaky Anderson, the rheumatic proprietor, met him at the door; and after he had exhibited his money and been warned of the dire consequences of handling things, he was allowed to enter.
The boy began a vague meandering through the crowded aisles, pacing block after dreamy block and forcing Old Man Sneaky to creep along behind him. He bought a tremendous bag of red-hots and licorice; then returning to the end of the store whence he had just come, he bought a cap pistol and a quantity of ammunition. Going back to the front again, he bought several large white button badges, inscribed with such legends as “Beer Inspector” and “Kiss Me, Girls.” From that counter he made a complete circuit of the building, crossed it sidewise through three aisles, and, finally, purchased a long calfskin coin purse.
By this time his eclecticism had so enraged the proprietor that the old man pressed fifty cents change upon him and thrust him out the door.
The boy’s next stop was at the Pulasky Confectionary and Bakery, where he downed, without noticeable effort, four chocolate ice-cream sodas. Paulie was there and watched him shyly through this feat, her slate-gray eyes warm with humble adoration. Naturally, he did not offer to treat her; since her father owned the place and she could get everything she wanted for nothing, it would have been stupid.
However, since the bib of his overalls was virtually enameled with the legend-bearing buttons, he did give her one that he could find no place for. Her little round face grew rosy with delight at this act of (sic) generosity, and fat John Pulasky beamed upon him while he frowned and grimaced at his daughter to be at her best.
Tottering out of the confectionary, he passed the saloon. And seeing his grandfather and his cronies at the bar inside, he would have entered. But they made such fearful faces and threatening gestures at him that he passed on. So he returned to the Opera House.
Going over to the table, he examined the playing cards, and, with the aid of moistened red-hots and licorice, he made quite artistic alterations on a number of them. He fired the pistol a few times; then found, or so he thought, that the remaining cap-strips were duds. He deposited the strips, wadded, in an ashtray and went over and sat down against the wall.
He was sitting there asleep when the old men returned to their game, and they took care not to wake him.
Two hours passed and Lincoln was losing steadily, and the other three old soldiers found themselves glancing at the boy with only mild revulsion.
Doc Hallup, who had just raked in a large pot, even ventured a theory that the boy was not really bad at all. He said he thought it was entirely possible that young Dillon might escape hanging, ending up with nothing worse than life imprisonment at hard labor.
Cap’n Finigan, who had won the pot before, clung to a more conservative and pessimistic viewpoint. In his opinion the boy’s career had now sunk to such decadence that it could only terminate in hanging, or, perhaps, boiling in oil. But he attributed the lad’s downfall to bad companions, namely—and it pained him to say it—Lincoln Fargo.
Lincoln snorted and sneered, and Cap’n Ball drew two cards to fill a full-house. Cap’n Finigan made an ace-high straight. Doc Hallup drew one club and filled a flush. Lincoln stood pat on nothing.
The betting went around and around, with Lincoln swearing silently over the bluff he had tried to run.
Then, Doc, his eyes fixed on his cards, extended his hand and ground out his cigar in the ashtray.
There was a shattering explosion. A choking cloud soared toward the ceiling and came down in a spark-filled avalanche. The table was knocked over as the old men fought to get away. Doc Hallup, his sleeve on fire, was forced to plunge it into a gaboon. Inevitably, he caught his hand in the brass receptacle. And in trying to free himself, he hurled it against the backdrop on the stage, staining its blushing cupids to a chocolate brown.
Panting, wild-eyed, the old soldiers—three of them, at least—started for the boy. But somehow he had slept through the turmoil, and their avarice got the better of their desire for revenge.
The table was righted again, the bets pulled back, and the game went on.
Another hour passed, and the boy quietly disappeared behind the screen at the sink.
Doc Hallup, under the impression that he had four threes, urged his friends to bet ’em high and sleep in the streets.
Cap’n Ball, who thought he had a spade straight flush, fell in with him.
Then the showdown came and Doc’s fours turned out to be two small pair, and Cap’n Ball’s hand was anything but what it appeared to be. Again they started for the boy, but not seeing him and believing him to be gone, they turned their wrath upon Lincoln.
He said, mildly, that he couldn’t see what they was fussing about. “He don’t bother me none hardly at all.”
They said he was a son-of-a-bitch and the major cause of the Union Army’s few defeats.
Cap’n Finigan said to play cards.
They played, and Lincoln won steadily, and his yellow eyes rolled with hideous glee.
Meanwhile, the boy was examining the package of meat. He did not believe it the proper time to bring up the subject of fishing, so he ate the headcheese, being unable to think of anything better to do with it, while he turned the fat pink roll of Bologna in one hand, thoughtfully.
In the nine-year-old mind, one object immediately demands comparison with another; and the Bologna presented no problem to Bob whatsoever. Yet the thing was at once too simple and too difficult. He could not picture himself strolling down the street, employing the sausage as a caricature of the only bodily member which it closely resembled, without seeing unavoidable disaster for himself. Reluctantly, for the scheme had startling possibilities, he gave it up and picked up the long wedge-shaped chunk of liver.
It was some moments before he could decide what the liver was, and when the solution came to him, he was amazed that it had not come to him sooner. It was a tongue, of course. Anybody could see it was a tongue. That’s what it was. A tongue. And a person would have to be very nicey-nice indeed to object to a boy’s showing his tongue.
Stretching his lips, he forced the broad end of the slimy meat in over his gums, and stood up in front of the mirror. The result was even better than he had hoped for.
He took a handful of soap, worked it into a lather, and spread it over the “tongue,” ringing his lips with the froth.
He bugged his eyes and almost frightened himself.
Peeking out at the players, he carefully inched the screen around until it shielded the window. He started to lean out; then his bugged eyes fell upon the curtain cord. That was it. The final touch.
He looped the cord around his neck.
Then, eyes popping, “tongue” and mouth drooling, arms waving in frantic appeal, he leaned out over the street.
Little Paulie Pulasky was the first to see him. She had watched him go into the Opera House, and had lingered in front of her father’s store solely for the pleasure of looking upon him again.
She giggled when she saw the apparition at the window, not recognizing it as her own and greatly beloved Bobbie Dillon. But seeing him for who he was at last, seeing him perish before her very eyes, she set up such a weeping and wailing that the street was almost instantly filled.
John Pulasky glanced out his window, choked out a prayer, and vaulted the counter. At the door, he tripped over the lintel and went sprawling upon the sidewalk. But, pain-racked as he was, he waved away those who would have aided him and begged them to succor the strangling heir of the house of Dillon.
Young Higgins an
d Alf Courtland came running out of the bank, and Courtland was so dismayed that he dropped and broke his precious Meerschaum.
Edie Dillon stuck her head out of the hotel door. Screaming, she fainted backward into the lobby.
Old Wilhelm Deutsch climbed upon the seat of his buggy and tried to drive up on the sidewalk.
Hinky-dink Murphy, the town scavenger, rounded the corner in his wagon and became so excited that he flopped backward into his slop tank.
There were shouts, yells, screams. All over town and up and down the valley the telephones were ringing, spreading the news of the hanging of Bob Dillon.
Above the turmoil Bob heard from behind him the conclusive scrapings and stampings that marked the end of the card game. He ceased waving his arms, undid the cord from around his neck, and allowed the “tongue” to drop into old Wilhelm’s outstretched fingers. He caught up with his grandfather just as the latter was following his three cronies out to the landing which led down to the street. Lincoln told them good-night cordially, and thanked them for their contributions. They replied with unprintable things.
“Well, now what you been up to?” Link demanded, turning to his grandson.
“Nothing,” said Bob, glancing apprehensively down the stairs.
“Want a sody? You been a pretty good boy today.”
“N-no,” said the boy. “I just want you to walk home with me.”
“What you scared of?”
“Nothin’.”
“Well, all right,” said the old man, amiably. “Reckon I ought to do something for you.”
He went down the steps and Bob followed, almost walking on his heels. He was not much afraid of what his mother would do to him; she would probably be too glad to see him alive to do anything. But he was properly worried about the attitude of the rest of the town. The joke, he was beginning to see, had succeeded too well. He was afraid that the simulated hanging might have put unpleasant notions into the townfolks’ heads.
Near the bottom of the flight of stairs, Lincoln became aware of the commotion in the street, and he turned to leer savagely at the boy.