The Kill-Off (14 page)

I was turning away from the washroom sink when I happened to glance out the window. And I just stood there for a moment, staring, wondering well, what the hell next.

Now, there, I thought, that’s really something. Kossmeyer and Goofy Gannder! One great man talking to another great man. Yes, sir, I thought, water really finds its level.

Mind you, I have nothing against Kossmeyer. I’ve never said a word against him to anyone. But I do feel—yes, and I’m justified—that if he’s what’s supposed to be smart, why I don’t want to be.

The way I look at it, if he’s so damned smart, why isn’t he rich? Where’s the proof that he’s smart? Why, half the time he don’t even use good English!

I had him figured right from the beginning. He’s one of those jury jaybirds, one of those howlers and pleaders. All the law he knows you could put in your right eye. And he’s just been lucky, so far. If he ever came up against a man who dealt in
facts
and
details,
I guess you know how long he would last.

I went to lunch.

The afternoon was even busier than the morning.

The way the work was piling up, it began to look like I might be so tied up I couldn’t get out to see Luane Devore tonight. But, then, I thought about the way Sis had acted, and I decided I’d better, work or no work.

I was on my way out of the courthouse when Sheriff Jameson called to me and asked me to step into his office. He’d confiscated a batch of evidence, and he wanted my opinion of it before he went into court on it. I tested it. I told him I wouldn’t hesitate to go before the Supreme Court with evidence like that. So he laughed, and gave me a bottle to take with me.

It was a little after five when I got in my car and headed out of town. Just before I got to the Devore place, I took a right fork in the road and drove up toward the hills. The land up there isn’t much good any more. Either worn out, or eroded and gullied of its topsoil. All the farms have been abandoned, including the one where I was born and raised.

I turned into the lane that led up to our house. I stopped in the yard, all grown up to weeds now, and looked around. One side of the barn-loft was caved in. All the windows of the house were broken, and the kitchen door creaked back and forth on one hinge. And the chimneys had toppled, scattering brick across the rotting and broken shingles of the roof.

It was kind of sad. Somehow it made me think of that poem,
The Deserted Village,
I used to give at Friday afternoon school recitals. It was sad—but it was nice. Because everything had gone to hell now, but in my mind it hadn’t. In my mind, nothing had changed; everything was as it used to be. And the way it used to be…nothing was ever nicer or finer than that.

No worries. No one fussing at you. Always knowing just what to do and what not to do, and knowing that it would be all right if you made a mistake. Not like it is now, when you mean well but you ain’t real sure of yourself, and there’s no one to come straight out and set you straight.

Not like it is now, when people can’t understand that you’re truly sorry about something—and being sorry is about all you can do—and they wouldn’t give a damn if they did understand.

I took a big drink of the whiskey. I guessed I ought to be seeing Luane Devore, but it was so nice and peaceful here, and I had all evening to do it. So I got out, and went up the back walk to the kitchen.

The big old range was still there. Lily had said what was the sense of moving an old wood-burner into town, for pity sake. So we’d left it behind, and consequently, fine stove that it was, it was rusting into junk. It looked like junk. But in my mind I could see it like it had been. Like I’d used to keep it when I was a kid, and Mama and Papa were still alive.

That was my job, keeping the stove blacked and polished. I did it every Saturday morning, as soon as it was cooled off from breakfast, and no one was allowed in the kitchen while I was doing it. First, I’d take a wire brush and dry-scrub it all over. Then, I’d get busy with the blacking rags and polish. I’d rub it in good, get it wiped so clean you couldn’t raise a smudge on your finger. After that, I’d take a little kindling splinter and tip it with the blacking, and get down in all the little cracks and curlycues.

We didn’t do any farm work on Saturdays, except for just the milking and feeding, of course. So when I was through, I’d roll back the doors to the living room, and Mama and Papa and Lily would come in.

Mama would take a look, and kind of throw up her hands. She’d say, why, I just can’t believe my eyes; if I didn’t know better I’d think it was a new stove! And Papa would shake his head and say, I couldn’t fool him, it
was
a new stove. I’d gone out and snuck one in from somewhere, and no one could tell him different. So, well, I’d have to take and show him that it was really just the same old stove, and…

Lily hardly ever said anything.

I used to wonder about it, wanting to ask her why but somehow kind of shy about doing it. And one time when I’d saved up a lot of nickels—I got a nickel every time I polished the stove—I took them all and bought her a big red hair-ribbon. I brought it home from town inside my blouse, not telling anyone about it. That night, when she was out in the kitchen alone doing dishes, I gave it to her. She looked at it, and then she looked at me smiling at her. Then she doused it down in the dishwater, and threw it into the slop pail. I watched it sink down under the scummy surface, and I didn’t know quite what to do. What to say. I didn’t feel much like smiling any more, but I was kind of afraid to stop. I was kind of, well, just afraid. Mama and Papa always said if you were nice to others, why they would be nice to you. But I’d done the nicest thing I knew how, I thought. So all I could think of was that Mama and Papa must be wrong, or maybe I didn’t know what was nice and what wasn’t. What was bad and what was good. And for a minute I felt all scared and bewildered and lost. Well, though, Lily grabbed me up in her arms suddenly, and hugged me and kissed me. She said she’d just been joking, and she was just mixed-up and absent-minded and not thinking what she was doing. So…everything turned out all right.

I never said anything to Mama or Papa about it. I even lied to Mama and said I’d lost all my nickels when she asked me what had happened to them. That was about the only time I can ever remember her scolding me, or Papa saying anything real sharp to me—because she felt he had to be told about it. But I still didn’t tell about the ribbon. I knew they’d be terribly upset and sad if they knew what Lily had done, and I’d’ve cut off my tongue before I told them. It’s funny how—

Dammit, it’s not funny! There’s nothing funny about it. And why the hell does it have to be that way?

Why is it when you feel so much one way, you have to act just the opposite? So much the opposite?

Why can’t people leave you alone, why can’t you leave them alone, why can’t you just all live together and be the way you are? Knowing that it’s all right with the others however you are, because however they are is all right with you.

I wandered through the house, drinking and thinking. Feeling happy and sad. I went up the stairs, and into my little room under the eaves. Dusk was coming on, filling the room with shadows. I could see things like they had been, almost without closing my eyes. It all came back to me…

The checked calico curtains at the windows. The circular rag rug. The bookcase made out of a fruitbox. The high, quilted bed. The picture above it—a picture of a boy and his mother, titled
His Best Girl.
The little rocking chair…

The chair was still there. Lily hadn’t mentioned moving it, and I kind of didn’t like to. I hesitated, and then I tried to sit down in it.

I was a lot too big for it, of course, because San—because Mama and Papa had given it to me the Christmas I was seven. I kept squeezing and pushing, though, and finally the arms cracked and split off, and I went down on the seat. That was pretty small for me too, but I could sit on it all right. I could even rock a little if I was careful. So I sat there, rocking back and forth, my knees almost touching my chin. And for a while I was back to the days that had been, and I was what I had been in those days.

Then some rats scurried across the attic, and I started and sighed and stood up. I stood staring blankly out the window, wondering what the hell I’d better do.

Dammit all, what was I going to say to Luane? She’d just start screaming and crying the minute I opened my mouth, and I’d wind up making a fool of myself like Lily says I always do. It wouldn’t do any good to ask her for a retraction, because I wouldn’t be able to make myself heard in the first place and in the second place she’d know there wasn’t a damned thing I could do. She’d know I wouldn’t take her into court. Trials cost money, and voters don’t want money spent unless it has to be. And they sure wouldn’t see it as having to be in this case. They might be sore at her. They might want her to catch it in the neck. But using county money to do it just wouldn’t go down with them. Besides that—besides, dammit, I
couldn’t
bring her to trial. I didn’t dare do it.

She was Kossmeyer’s client. He’d fight for her to the last ditch, regardless of what he thought of her personally. He’d fight—one of the best trial lawyers in the country would be fighting
me
—he’d put me on the witness stand and mimic me and get everyone to laughing, and shoot questions faster than I could think. And—

I took a drink. I took a couple more right behind it. My shoulders sort of braced up, and I thought, well who the hell is Kossmeyer, anyway? He ain’t so goddamned much.

I took another drink, and another one. I let out a belch.

He—Kossmeyer—he didn’t really know anything. He was just a fast talker. More of an actor, a clown, than he was a lawyer. No good outside of a courtroom where he couldn’t pull any of his tricks.

Outside of a courtroom, where he had to deal strictly in
facts,
he’d be no good at all. I could make a fool out of him—with the right kind of facts. It would be all over the county, all over the state, how Hank Williams had shown Kossmeyer what was what.

Maybe…

Oh, hell. I just couldn’t talk to Luane. She wouldn’t listen to me, and—damn her, she ought to be made to! To listen or else. And what, by God, could she do about it if she was? What could Kossmeyer do about it? You’d have your facts all ready, you know. So you’d just smile very sweetly, and say, why there must be some mistake. The poor woman must have gone
completely
out of her mind. Why, I’ve been right here at home with my sister all evening. And Lily would swear that I had been, and—

God Almighty! What was I thinking about? I couldn’t do anything like—like
that!
I wouldn’t any more think of—of—hurting anyone than I would of flying. So…

But they kept hurting me, didn’t they? They wouldn’t leave me alone, would they?

And if I didn’t do something, what would I tell Lily?

Could I get away with lying to her again? If I could—give her a real good story and make it sound convincing—why, that would give me some time, and maybe I could think of something to do. Or maybe I wouldn’t have to do anything at all. You know how it is. Lots of times if you can put something off long enough, it just kind of takes care of itself.

But I sure hated to try lying to Lily. Remembering the way she acted this morning, it almost made me shiver to think about lying to her.

And why should I have to, anyway? Why not do the other as long as it was perfectly safe?

God, I didn’t know what to do! I knew what I ought and wanted to do, but actually doing it was something else.

I looked at the whiskey bottle. It was only a third full. I lifted it to my mouth, and started gulping. I took three long gulps, stopped a second for breath, and took three more gulps. I coughed, swayed a little on my feet, and let the bottle drop from my fingers.

It was empty. My eyelids fluttered and popped open, and I shuddered all over. Then, my shoulders reared way back, and I seemed to have a ramrod where my spine had been.

I gave the bottle a hard kick. I laughed and made a pass in the air with my fist.

I went down the stairs, and drove away.

It was about a quarter of nine when I got home. Lily met me in the hall—all ready, it looked like, to open up on me, so I opened up first.

“Now, just one minute, please!” I said. “You listen for a change, and then if you’ve got any questions you can ask ’em. Now, you’ll recall that—”

“H-Henry. Henry!” she said. “I—I’m—”

“You’ll recall—” I raised my voice. “You’ll recall that I was against seeing Luane. I told you it was highly inadvisable, occupying the position that I do, but you insisted. So—”

“H-Henry…” she said shakily. “You—you did see her?”

“Naturally. Where do you think I’ve been all evening?” I said. “Now, it didn’t turn out at all well—much worse even than I expected. So whatever you do, don’t let on to anyone that I—What’s the matter with you?”

She took a step back from me. Her hand fluttered to her mouth.

“Y-you’ve been drinking,” she said. “You d-don’t—didn’t know what you were—”

“I’ve had a drink,” I said. “Just a swallow or two, and I don’t want to hear anything about it. I—”

“Shut up!” Her voice cracked out suddenly like a whip. “Listen to me, Henry! The sheriff called here a few minutes ago. I was positive you were up to something foolish, staying away like this, so I didn’t tell him you weren’t here. I said you were taking a bath, and you’d have to call him back. Now—”

“B-but why?” My stomach was sinking; it was oozing right down into my shoes. “W-what d-does—”

“You know why, what! Going out there so drunk you—you—You killed her, understand! Luane’s dead!”

Doctor Jim Ashton arrived at the Devore place right behind me, and we went in the house together. Jim looked pretty drawn, sickish. Surprisingly—or maybe it wasn’t surprising—I’d never felt better or more self-confident in my life. I’d been kind of set back on my heels for a second, but I snapped right out of it. The fogginess washed out of my mind, taking all of the old foggy unsureness with it. I had a keyed-up, coiled-tight feeling, and yet I was perfectly at ease.