The Eye of the Beholder

by Marc Behm

  ‘Sure, Becky.’

  ‘I adore your accent! It gives me goose pimples! I never met anybody who had so many different ways of talkin’. And so many different ways of bein’ different. You keep changin’ all the time.’

  ‘The devil hath the power to assume a pleasing shape.’

  They lived together for three months while Duke Foote was in New York. The Eye would hang on the lattice by the window all night, listening to them talk and laugh and weep and make love and read to each other. They read Rebecca and Gone with the Wind and Hamlet and Variety. They visited the Shiloh battlefield and Lookout Mountain and the Atomic Museum in Oak Ridge. In May they went to the Cotton Carnival in Memphis. Joanna taught her to drive. She bought her clothes and had her hair fixed.

  Gradually Becky turned into a pleasing shape herself. She became sleek and groomed, chic and perfumed. She grew up. And one morning when the Eye saw the two of them walking side by side in Centennial Park, he could hardly tell them apart.

  When Duke came back to Franklin he kicked them out of the house. They moved into an apartment in Nashville, but Joanna was running out of money. They bought two pistols with silencers from a shady gunsmith, and one Saturday night, masked and wearing men’s suits, they stuck up a gas station in Lebanon. The take netted them enough to pack their bags and fly to San Francisco.

  The money from the sale of Cora Earl’s jewels was still in the safe-deposit box in Oakland. While Joanna went into the bank to collect it, Becky waited outside. So did the Eye, sweating with panic. He examined every foot of the street, but couldn’t spot any stakeouts – which of course, didn’t mean a thing. Maybe the Feds were inside. Or miraculously, maybe they just didn’t know about the box.

  A half-hour passed. He was convinced they had her. He almost vomited with terror. He saw tomorrow’s headlines in the sky:

  HUSBAND SLAYER CAUGHT! SPIDER WIDOW ARRESTED! FBI TRAPS MULTIMURDERESS! NATIONWIDE HUNT FOR DEATH-BRIDE ENDS IN OAKLAND CAPTURE!

  Then she appeared, striding nonchalantly along the pavement, whistling, carrying a sackful of dollars.

  At lunch in the airport dining room he listened to them trying to make plans.

  ‘Where do you want to go, Becky?’

  ‘How about Miami?’

  ‘No, not Miami.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I have to keep away from Florida.’

  ‘What about Hawaii then?’

  ‘That’s no good either.’

  ‘Then LA. I never been there.’

  ‘I’d rather avoid LA too.’

  ‘Shit! Have you got anything against New York?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes.’

  ‘Fuck!’

  They spent three months at Lake Tahoe and six months in New Orleans. Then, in an Opel Manta, they drove through Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and northern Idaho to Washington. They stayed in Seattle for two months.

  ‘In the whorehouse in Walterboro,’ Becky said, ‘there was this one room filled with toys. Dolls and teddy bears and blocks and little cars and whatnot. Sometimes Ma would lock me in there all day long.’ The two girls were at a topless beach near Townsend on Puget Sound, lying in the sand, eating pears and sunbathing. Joanna was reading Beethoven by Romain Rolland.

  ‘But first she’d make me take off my clothes. I’d be in there bare-assed, dig. I must’ve been about eight or nine. I didn’t like it. That fuckin’ room scared me. There was something spooky about it. I’d start cryin’ and she’d come in and slap me around and say, “Play with your goddamned toys, you little cunt!” Well, there was holes in the wall, see. I found out later there was always a couple of guys in the next room, watchin’ me. I was part of the floor show. How do you like that?’

  ‘Didn’t anything pleasant ever happen to you?’ Joanna asked.

  ‘Just you.’ Becky smiled wistfully. ‘Everything else that happened to me was shitty. But the point is –’ She glanced around them scowling. ‘The point is there’s holes in the wall here too. Somebody’s watchin’ us.’

  ‘No there isn’t.’

  ‘Oh yeah there is. In New Orleans too. And all while we was drivin’ up here. And back in Nashville too. Somebody’s watchin’ us.’

  ‘I used to think that all the time. But it’s just an effect.’

  ‘A what? What is it?’

  ‘A fancy.’

  She closed her book and lit a Gitane. ‘We create things, you see. Out of the air and the wind and the people around us and impressions and sensations and all that. And out of ourselves also, our thoughts and our fears and our guilts. And our prayers. And these things take form and come around us and stare at us and even talk to us sometimes. Listen –’ And she looked at the crowd and whispered, ‘Are you still there, old buddy?’ She laughed and sat up. ‘Did you hear that? He answered me!’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said, “Yes, I’m here!”’

  ‘What’re you, flippin’ or what?’

  ‘Not in the least!’ She put her arm around her. ‘I hope he’ll always be there. He’s comforting. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving.’

  ‘Shit.’

  They went to Reno and Vegas and lost all their money playing roulette. They sold the Opel and flew across the country to Portland, Maine. Joanna had another cache here, dating from the years before the Eye knew her – four thousand dollars in a safe-deposit box in a bank in Westbrook, rented under the name of Miss Faye Jacobs (dark wig). And two thousand more farther north in another bank in Auburn, where she was known as Mrs. Paula Jason (no wig).

  They spent the next ten months driving west in an old Peugeot 604, taking their time, spending three or four or five weeks at every stopover; Syracuse, Toledo, Indianapolis, Des Moines, Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City (eight weeks!), Carson City.

  By the time they got to California they were broke again.

  Operating out of Pasadena, they unpacked their pistols and silencers, put on their masks and men’s suits and stuck up a grocery store in Sierra Madre and a haberdashery in Azusa. And a Hugo shoestore (Founded in 1867) in Alta Loma.

  It was eight o’clock, closing time. The last customer left, a rancher carrying a new pair of boots. The boy behind the counter was alone. He was in his twenties, spare and long-haired and not very good-looking. His name was Finch. He probably hated his job, hated his boss and the store and Alia Loma and the smell of leather and feet and socks – or so the Eye assumed, reading about the stickup in the papers next day. Actually, though, there was no way of knowing what Finch thought about anything, if he thought at all. But he couldn’t have been very bright. Sacrificing his life for a cash box filled with someone else’s money was extremely noble and conscientious and proved an unmistakable dedication to his employer’s interests, but it was an asinine thing to do. Perhaps, if he had survived, he would have been given a raise. This could have motivated his action. Or perhaps he was in love with the manager’s daughter and hoped to win her hand in marriage as a reward for his heroism. Or then again, perhaps he was just exactly what he appeared to be, a dumb and earnest thrall with a shoe horn hanging from a string around his neck.

  As the two girls came through the door aiming their guns at him, he reached under the counter, opened a drawer, and lifted out a .357 Magnum.

  ‘Shit and corruption!’ Becky shouted.

  He shot her in the stomach just as she pulled the trigger and blew away all his vocal cords.

  Joanna emptied the cash box into her purse and carried Becky out to the Peugeot. She drove toward San Bernardino at seventy miles per hour.

  She left her, bleeding and gibbering, on the doorstep of a hospital in Rialto, then checked into a motel near Riverside. So did the Eye.

  Becky’s death was announced on the eleven o’clock news. She was identified from her driver’s license. The newscaster looked appropriately grim when he mentioned her age. She was seventeen years old.

  The Eye heard someone knock softly on the door of the unit next to his.
‘Yes?’ a man’s voice called. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Can I come in for a minute, please?’ Joanna answered.

  The Eye looked out the window. She was standing before the cabin, one hand behind her back. The door opened, the man grinned at her. ‘Why, sure thing!’ he said. ‘Come on in!’

  The Eye heard the ebullient poooooff! of the silencer as she shot him in the face. The body fell back into the room with a crash. She walked to the adjacent cabin and knocked on the door. ‘What’s up?’ another man shouted. ‘Please let me in,’ she said.

  She killed seven men that night.

  16

  Five long years passed; five Christmases and five birthdays. And nine more men … no, ten, eleven … the Eye tried to remember.

  Ten or eleven.

  She married three of them. One husband was a doctor. (Just like – what was his name? Years and years ago, right after she’d killed Paul Hugo. Brice! Dr. James Brice! His bones were still buried under the thickets outside The Birdcage.) Doctor Number Two was smothered under a pillow while sleeping off the effects of his wedding champagne. After Joanna left, the Eye searched the room and found a dozen credit cards in a valise. He kept them, and for the next year they paid for all his gas and cars and meals and plane tickets. He even bought a new suit (his fourth) with one of them.

  He found this to be an ideal means of economizing. So once or twice a year, on moonless nights, he would unload his .45, and on a lonely street or in a parking lot outside a bar or restaurant he would waylay someone, hold him up, and relieve him of all his cards. Thus he was always plentifully supplied with credit.

  His gambling enhanced his budget, too. One New Year’s Eve, at a roulette wheel in Reno, he played the zero and it bounced up. He won all the chips on the table plus thirty-five times his own mise. This solved his financial problems for the next two years.

  Joanna wasn’t quite as lucky. She lost almost continuously. In a casino in Tulsa she dropped the entire take from one of her marriages in a single night. And she was drinking much too much. She was still nimble and lovely, but she had to spend more and more time in gymnasiums and swimming pools and beauty parlors to keep herself presentable.

  The names Nita Iquots, Faye Jacobs, and Paula Jason were added to the AKA list on her poster in the post offices. Because of her association with Becky, the Feds docketed her with the Finch shooting in Alta Loma and the motel cataclysm in Riverside. She was now one of the five Most Wanted Women in the United States.

  They came after her slowly and massively, like a moving glacier. But they couldn’t overtake her. Although she blazed a trail, she never stopped fleeing. And because she had no direction, they were unable to intercept her.

  She came to Houston, and Houston, like LA, turned a page in her life.

  This was Duke Foote country, celebrated in his still famous song ‘Texas Freeways’:

  On Route 59

  I pine an’ I pray

  Come rain or come shine

  Goin’ to find her some day

  Lovelady! Are you on Route 45

  Lovelady! Are you dead or alive?

  Lovelady! Are you in Galveston Bay?

  She met Chuck Estes, the son of oilman Bertie Estes, who had been one of President Johnson’s cronies. Chuck was forty, with a low forehead, a demented teenager’s mentality, and several million dollars. He wore tailor-made buckskin shirts, dude cowboy suits, a five-gallon hat, and spurs. His friends called him ‘Chuck Wagon.’

  He picked her up at a barbecue in Liberty. He drove her back to Houston in his zebra-striped Thunderbird and they had drinks at the Longhorn Grill.

  ‘So you’re from LA, huh?’ His conversation was as flat and barren as a prairie. ‘That’s a jumpin’ burg all right. We got an office there now. Whole floor of a buildin’ on Sunset Boulevard. I was there last month. Flew into San Diego and I said, “Well what the devil, might as well go on up to LA and see some action.” Stayed there two and a half weeks. Stayed at the Beverley Wilshire Hotel. I saw some action all right. The walls kept shakin’. “What’s that?” I asked a feller in the elevator. “Earthquake,” he says. “The whole city’s goin’ to crack open like a watermelon one of these days.” And bango! Down in the lobby a great big hunk of the ceiling dropped on the floor! I said to myself, “Hey!” I hopped in a taxicab and drove over to the office fast. Everything was shipshape there though, except – hey, waiter! Couple more here, please! – except all the windows was busted out. Cost us fifteen hundred dollars to put in new panes. LA – no thank you. New York’s my town. Now that’s an A-A-A place, Anything, anytime, anywhere! “New York and Los Angeles,” my dad used to say. “Two bookends for a vacuum.” What’s this you’re smokin’? Grass? Gee-tans. Let me try one.’ Then his attention roved to the other side of the room to a girl in a backless dress sitting at the bar. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. And he walked over to her.

  And that’s how it happened – casually and cruelly. They began laughing together. He bought her a drink.

  Joanna waited for him to come back to the table. He didn’t. She sat there for three quarters of an hour. He never even glanced at her. He simply forgot she was there. She was white-lipped with anger. She ordered another cognac. Couples sitting at the other tables watched her, smiling.

  The Eye watched, too, hoping she wouldn’t get drunk and cause a commotion. She didn’t. She just left.

  And the page turned.

  Lovelady on the highway

  Lovelady on the byway

  Lovelady ain’t thou ever comin’ my way

  Down them long long empty roads.

  She drove through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina, dropping a couple of grand at each stop in gambling clubs and backroom poker tables and, once in a while, at a racetrack. How much money did she have left? How much spirit and stamina? How much endurance? He watched, appalled, as the chasm opened before her.

  Her car broke down in Burnsville, N.C., and it cost four hundred dollars to have it repaired. She stayed in the town of Linville trying her old hitchhiking caper on the Blue Ridge Parkway; it just wouldn’t work. On the first day she stood on the edge of the highway for three hours. Hundreds of cars passed. None stopped for her. She had lunch in a truckers’ cafe, then went back to the road in the afternoon and stayed there until nine o’clock, waving her thumb like an automaton.

  On the second day it rained. A gorilla in an Alfa picked her up, drove her into a field near Deep Gap, and tried to rape her. She got away from him with only a black eye and a lost contact lens and walked in the pounding thunderstorm all the way to Blowing Rock, where her car was parked. She spent a week in bed with a fever, reading Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe.

  When she left Carolina she was wearing glasses.

  She drove to Virginia, sold her car in Portsmouth, tried to cash a bogus check in a bank in Virginia Beach but at the last minute panicked and fled. In May her landlady evicted her from her rooming house in Norfolk, impounding her luggage.

  In Newport News she began shoplifting, stealing soap and toothpaste and canned soup and pears from supermarkets. She got caught only once – trying to lift a bottle of scotch. She was in a drunken stupor for days afterwards, sleeping in parked cars and cabanas on the beach. A Pan Am stewardess on vacation picked her up in Hampton, and the two of them lived together for three weeks in a trailer camp. When the stewardess went back to work, Joanna floated up to Yorktown, where she lived in a abandoned shack in the dunes, keeping herself clean by bathing in the sea. She stole a dress from a clothesline and a pair of jeans from a sailboat anchored in the bay.

  In Williamsburg the police never bothered her; the midsummer peninsula was swarming with drifters. She moved into an old boathouse on the James River. The Eye didn’t know what to do for her. He bought a carton of groceries and left them on the wharf one night, but two kids passing in a canoe swiped everything. On another night he dropped a whole pile of credit cards in the boathouse mailbox, but Joanna never opened it.r />
  Then her behavior turned weird, and she began roaming through the streets for hours and hours every day, going nowhere, just wandering around, up one block and down the other, stooped over, peering into gutters and bushes. These endless walks frightened him. She looked like a scurrying madwoman! He couldn’t grasp what she was up to.

  One afternoon she found a quarter on the sidewalk, and he finally understood.

  She was looking for money!

  On her next excursion he managed to drop a hundred-dollar bill on the pavement in front of her. When she saw it she just couldn’t believe it. She stood transfixed for an instant, then snatched it up and ran off with it, escaping like a bank robber to the other end of town.

  Instead of spending it all on booze, as he thought she would, she had her hair cut and bought a new skirt, a blouse, and a pair of shoes.

  She went to Richmond and got a job – in fact, several jobs, working in a grocery store for a while, then in a dry-cleaning place, then in a five-and-ten, then carhopping in a drive-in, and finally as a chambermaid in the Eye’s hotel.

  She lived in a cheap room in a backstreet boarding-house, going to movies or to the public library on her days off. She read The Good Earth by Pearl Buck, Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, Barren Ground by Ellen Glasgow, and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. Occasionally she’d go to a pool, but swimming seemed to exhaust her these days. She stopped drinking, then began again, then stopped again.

  She grew old.