Savage Night

by Jim Thompson

  If you could have propped the door wide open—but you couldn’t do that. Kendall had warned me about keeping the door open any more than was necessary. It would be a hell of a cold-storage room if you did that much.

  I coughed, choked back another cough. The bug wasn’t active again, I was sure of that, but I was glad I hadn’t had to produce a health certificate.

  I dropped the cigarette butt, stepped on it, and looked at the cards for the sweet doughs. They were more complicated than the others, the sponge mixes, and the extra-refined flour had to be weighed out with the other ingredients. They didn’t just draw what they wanted as they did on the bread.

  If I took my time on this stuff—and I’d damned well better—I probably wouldn’t have it ready a hell of a lot sooner than I had to.

  I took the scraper out of my pocket. I pulled the cold-storageroom door open, and went inside. I laid the scraper handle against the jamb, letting the door settle against it. Then I turned my back on the damned thing and got busy.

  There were eight batches in all. I decided to do two, and go out and get the dry stuff ready for them. Then, I’d come back and do two more, and so on until I was through. And if I didn’t like it in here, I knew what to do about it. There was an easy way to save time. I could snap out of the creeps and stop checking on the door every ten seconds.

  I got busy, I put two pans on the work table, leaned their batch cards against them, and began pouring and dumping and weighing. And the creeps stayed right with me, but I didn’t give in to them. I never looked once at the door.

  The work went pretty fast. It didn’t seem to, but according to my watch it did. I finished the first two batches—the wet part of them—took them out and set up the dry stuff, and came back in again.

  I did another two and another two. And started on the fourth pair. The last two I had to do.

  I got them done, and somehow they seemed to take longer than the others. It seemed like I’d never get through with them. Finally, though, they were ready, and I tucked the batch cards into the slits at the end of the pans.

  Then, I picked them up and turned around and pushed against the door.

  I pushed—pretty easy at first. Easy because I couldn’t bring myself to push hard. I just sort of leaned against it, because if I did more than that—if I pushed hard and it didn’t…

  I put a little more steam into it; just a little. And then a little more…and a little more.

  And then suddenly I wasn’t pushing, hard or any other way. I was throwing myself at it, giving it every thing I had. And I was still holding onto those mixes, why the hell I don’t know, and they were slopping all over me and the floor. And I hit that door like I was going to drive straight through it. And I bounced and skidded and slipped. And I did a belly whopper to the floor.

  The wind went out of me like a popped balloon. I gagged and retched but nothing came up. I lay on the floor, writhing, squeezing my head between my hands, trying to squeeze the pain away. And after a while I could breathe again, and I could get my eyes to focus.

  I looked. The door was closed tight.

  The scraper wasn’t there, and it hadn’t slipped inside. Someone had taken it away.

  15

  I laughed. I got ahold of the table and pulled myself up. I laughed and laughed, brushing at the crap on my clothes, feeling it cling and stick and stiffen against my fingers.

  Because what was the sense to it anyway? How in the hell could you win? You were right on the beam—playing all the angles, doing things twice as well as you thought you could and getting some breaks thrown in. Everything was swell, and you were a bright boy and a tough boy.

  And a punchy booze-stupe without enough guts to string a uke could come along and put the blocks to you.

  He could do it because he didn’t have anything. Nothing to lose. He didn’t need to be smart, to cover his tracks. You had to cover them for him. He could make one dopey move after another, and all you could do was duck and keep your mouth shut. He didn’t need guts. He could run from you, but you couldn’t run from him. He could pick you off any way, any time, and if he got caught…? I had to choose between times and ways, and if I got caught…? Not responsible? Not a chance. If you beat the law there was still The Man.

  I laughed and choked and coughed. It was such a hell of a good joke, me feeling sorry for Jake.

  That was my first reaction—that it was the damnedest funniest thing in the world and it was a relief to get it all over. It hadn’t made any sense from the beginning. I’d go right on looking for whatever I was looking for, and I wouldn’t stand any better chance of finding it than I ever had.

  So it was funny. It was a relief.

  Then that cold really began to gnaw into me, and I stopped laughing and I wasn’t relieved any more.

  It was too simple, too clear-cut and easy. I’d been swimming in muck all my life, and I could never quite sink in it and I could never quite get to the other side. I had to go on, choking to death a little at a time. There wouldn’t be anything for me as clean and easy as this.

  I looked at my watch. I got up and started walking back and forth, stamping my feet, rubbing my hands and slapping them against my body.

  Four-thirty. It seemed like it ought to be hours later than that, I’d done so much that day and got started so early, but it was only four-thirty…Kendall would knock off at a quarter of six to go to the house for dinner, and he’d come in after me. And then I’d get out of here.

  No one would come in before then. There wasn’t any reason for them to, and—and they just wouldn’t. And Kendall wouldn’t dress out without me, and go on to the house by himself.

  Either way, see, would make it easy for me, and that was against the rules. I wouldn’t be found soon enough to really help, or late enough to…to do any good.

  Four-thirty to five-forty-five. An hour and fifteen minutes. That would be the score. No more, no less. Not enough to kill me; too much, a hell of a lot too much, to leave me unharmed. Just the right amount to knock me on my ass.

  I should have given up, just relaxed and stopped trying to do anything about it. Because whatever I did or didn’t do, I wasn’t going to change a thing. I’d still be just so sick, almost completely screwed up, not quite stripped of everything I had. Right at the time when I needed everything I had and I couldn’t be screwed up at all.

  No, I couldn’t change a thing. But I had to try.

  Relaxing, giving up, those were against the rules, too.

  I walked back and forth, stamping and slapping and pounding, hugging my arms across my chest, sticking my hands between my crotch and clasping my legs on them. And I kept getting colder and stiffer, and my lungs began to feel like I was breathing fire.

  I climbed up on the table, trying to warm my hands against the light in the ceiling. But there was a wire guard around it, and it was just a little globe, and it didn’t do any good.

  I climbed back down and started walking again. Trying to think…A fire? Huh-uh. Nothing to burn, and it wouldn’t do anyway. It wouldn’t even be smart to smoke. The air wasn’t too good now.

  I looked along the rows of shelves, looking—for anything. I studied the labels on the thick jugs: Extract of Vanilla, Extract of Lemon…Alcohol 40 per cent…But I knew better than that, too. You’d feel warmer for a few seconds, and then you’d be colder than ever.

  I began to get sore. I thought, for Christ’s sake, what kind of a dope are you, anyway? You’re supposed to be smart, remember? You don’t just take things. You don’t like something, you do something about it. Locked up, not locked up. It’s still the same, isn’t it, except for the air. Suppose…

  Suppose you were riding that manifest out of Denton, the fast meat train that balls the jack all the way into El Reno. It’s November and all the goddamned reefer boles are locked, so you’re riding the top, in the goddamn cold wind. And you can’t die, and you’d better not get down. Because you remember that kid in the jungle at St. Joe, the color of the weeds he was ly
ing in; taking on the boes for a dime or a nickel or a cart of coffee or…So?

  I remembered. I didn’t invent the trick but it’s a good one:

  You crawl down inside your cotton sack, the sack you pick cotton into. It’s nine feet long and made out of canvas, and you kind of flap the end over itself so that just a tiny bit of air comes in. And you breathe practically the same air in and out, but you warm up fast. After a while your lungs start itching and smarting and your head begins to hurt. But you stay there, keeping your mind on warm things, warm and soft, and safe…

  I didn’t have a cotton sack now, of course, or anything in the way of a big piece of cloth. But if I could get inside of something, pull something over me, and put my breath to work…well, it would help. I took a long careful look around the room.

  Egg can? Too small. Lard barrel? Too big; it would take too long to dig the lard out. Mincemeat…?

  The keg was only about a fourth full. I squatted down, trying to measure myself against it, and it was pretty small—not really what I ought to have. But it was the only thing I did have.

  I turned it upside down, then got my arms around it and banged it up and down, dumping the sweet-smelling, semifrozen slush on the floor. I scraped the inside with a scoop, and I knew I could scrape all night and not get it completely clean. So I gave up and got it over me.

  I sat down on the floor with my arms at my sides, and stuck my head and shoulders into it. Then, I sat up and let it slide down over me. It only came down to my hips, and little gobs of that goo kept letting go and trickling down onto me. But that had to be it—it and me was all I had. So I breathed hard and tried to concentrate on…on warmness and softness, comfort and safety.

  I got to thinking about the farm that guy had up in Vermont, where he grew all those things. And I remembered how he’d said that he didn’t have any demand any more except for just the one thing. I closed my eyes, and I could almost see them, the long rows of them. And I grinned and laughed to myself, beginning to feel kind of good and pretty warm. And then I thought, I began to see:

  …the goats were going up and down the rows, walking sideways on their hind feet. And every time they came to one they’d raise their tails and cut loose with the fertilizer. And each time they came to the end of a row they’d stand on their heads and bowl. They had to do it. They knew it wasn’t going to get them anything because there was nothing there to get, but they kept right on. Moving sideways and backwards—because that was the way the rows were laid out. And at the end they stood on their heads, howling…

  I stopped thinking about it.

  There was no warmth in it.

  I brought my mind back to Kendall, him and Fay. Wondered what I’d better tell them. And I knew I’d better not tell the truth.

  She might blow up—jump Jake about it or give it away to someone else. She might scare off. If she got sore or shaky, if she thought Jake could take the ball away from me…

  And Kendall. If he was on the level, he’d have Jake in jail so fast it would make his head swim. He’d gotten a bang out of the other, the frame-up, because nothing had come of it and he’d outsmarted Jake. But if he thought Jake had tried to kill me, and if he was on the level, he couldn’t let it slide. He’d have to crack down to protect the bakery.

  If he was with The Man—that would be worse yet. The Man already thought I might have a few rocks in my head. He’d been sore about me dragging in Fay and…why, in hell had I done that, anyhow? I could have got along without her…He probably had a hunch that I might have seen through that Fruit Jar frammis and didn’t trust him as much as I had to trust him. And if he thought I couldn’t do any better than this, get it thrown into me by the guy I was supposed to throw it into…

  No, it had to be an accident. That would be bad enough.

  …I twisted my wrist and looked down. Five-twenty. About twenty-five minutes to go. An hour and fifteen minutes plus the time before I’d got locked in. It wouldn’t be enough for a guy in good health. He’d have the sniffles and a sore throat, and that would be about the size of it. With me, though, it would be exactly enough. I couldn’t have timed it better if I’d been trying to knock myself out.

  Twenty-four minutes…

  Ruth. As long as I’d known I was going to use Fay, why had I made a play for Ruth?

  And Fay; getting back to Fay. It wouldn’t have been any wonder—I wouldn’t have blamed The Man much—if he’d given Fruit Jar that knife instead of me.

  Sure, Fay could be a big help. Sure, she could make things a lot easier for me. So what? She could do something else, too. If she was smart enough to see it. Because how can you really trust a dame who’ll help kill her own husband?

  The Man had told me what she could do; he’d pointed out the spot where I could go down and never come up. He’d just mentioned it once, then he’d let it lay and gone on. Fay was already in or as good as in, and there was nothing to do but like it. But he wouldn’t have been The Man if he had liked it. Brother, he must have thought I was a goof!

  Me—Little Bigger—putting the one rope in the world around my neck that would hang me!

  I didn’t have a record, none that they could pin on me. I could line up before every cop in the country and there wasn’t a one that could say, yes, that’s our Bigger boy. No one could say it and prove it.

  No one could, now.

  But if I could be caught in the act of trying to kill Jake Winroy—if they had that much to go on, and could work back from it…

  All those rewards, all for Fay. Forty-seven thousand dollars for Fay…and no half-blind runt with a mouth like a dog’s behind to get in her hair.

  …I got out just about on schedule. Kendall found me around ten minutes of six, and he and one of the bakers got me home. By six-thirty I was in bed with two hot-water bottles, feeling sort of drowsy and dopey from something the doctor had given me.

  It was the same doctor—Dodson—that Fay had called for Jake. But he wasn’t at all crusty and tough with me like he’d been with him and her. My own moth…you couldn’t have wanted a guy to be nicer.

  He pulled the blankets back up over my chest, and tucked them under my chin.

  “So you’re feeling fine, huh? No pain at all…Never mind. I don’t want you talking with that throat.”

  I grinned at him, and my eyelids began to droop shut. He turned and gave Fay a nod.

  “I want this boy to rest. He is to have complete quiet, understand? No nonsense. No disturbance such as occurred here yesterday.”

  “I”—Fay bit her lip, blushing—“I understand, doctor.”

  “Good. See that your husband does. Now, if you’ll get that bedpan I spoke to you about a quarter of an hour ago—”

  She went out.

  The doctor and Kendall moved over near the door.

  And I wasn’t quite asleep yet, I was just drifting off. And I got a little of what they said.

  “…all right?”

  “This time. Stays in bed, and…Ought to be up by…”

  “…relieved to…strong personal interest…”

  “Yep. This time…wouldn’t bet a nickel on…”

  “…pessimist, Dod. Why a next…”

  “…teeth out…lens. No, better do it my…”

  “…don’t mean he…?”

  “…everything. Straight across the board…nothing really right…no good to begin…”

  That was the last I heard.

  16

  I was in bed until Friday. Or, I should say, I didn’t leave the house until then, because I didn’t stay in bed all the time. When I had to vomit or use the toilet I went to the bathroom, and I made sure that everything was flushed down good.

  I told everyone that I felt all right—that I was just sort of weak and tired. And aside from all that blood and phlegm, which began tapering off about Thursday, there didn’t seem to be a hell of a lot wrong with me. I didn’t have much pain. Like I said, I was just weak and tired. And I had a funny feeling that a lot of me had been take
n away.

  What there was of me was all right, but there wasn’t much of me any more.

  Fay spent a lot of time in my room. And that was okay, of course, since she was supposed to take care of me. We had plenty of time to talk.

  She said that Jake had been in the house and in bed every night by eleven o’clock. As she put it, he was behaving like a perfect lamb.

  “How about that, anyway?” I asked her, making it sound casual. “I mean, how come he lets you boss him around? What’s he afraid of?”

  She shrugged. “Gosh, I don’t know, honey. Afraid I’ll leave him, I guess.”

  “It’s not doing him a hell of a lot of good for you to stay.”

  “No?” She laughed huskily, slanting her eyes at me. “Now how would you guess a thing like that?”

  I let the talk drift off onto other things—what a funny little guy Kendall was and who in the hell could have seduced Ruthie—and after a while I let it drift back to Jake again.

  “This board money doesn’t amount to anything,” I said, “and I don’t see how he can make any dough in that shop of his. How do you keep going?”

  “You call this going?”

  “It takes dough. Quite a bit with Jake hitting the whiz so hard.”

  “We-el, he does have some business, Carl. Me”—she guffawed and put her hand over her mouth—“I’d be afraid I’d get scalped. But everyone knows him and knew his folks, and he has some trade. On Fridays and Saturdays, you know, when all the shops are busy. And he’s usually hanging around there, at night, staying open, when the other shops are closed.”

  One day—Wednesday, I think it was, when she brought my lunch up—I asked her if Jake had ever mentioned going back to jail.

  She shook her head firmly. “For ten years? He couldn’t take it when he was being paid off heavy—when he knew he’d be taken care of when he got out. They wouldn’t play with him any more, would they, Carl? If he was willing? He’d just do his time and they’d get him when it was over?”