The Kill-Off (3 page)

I felt awful sorry for Luane. She’d sure given up a lot on my account. She was a lady, and she came from a proud old family. She’d been a good churchgoer and a charity-worker, and everything like that. And then just because she wanted someone to love before she got too old for it, why there was all that dirtiness. Stuff that took the starch right out of you, and filled you up with something else. No, it didn’t bother me too much; I guess I just didn’t have enough sense to be bothered, and, of course, I never amounted to anything to begin with. But it did something pretty terrible to Luane. She didn’t show it for a long time, except maybe a little around me. She had too much pride. But the hurt was there inside, festering and spreading, and finally breaking out. And then really getting bad. Getting a little worse the older she got.

I sure wished Luane could go away with me. I figured I could make out pretty fine with Luane. With someone like that, you know, someone who knew her way around and could tell you what to do—someone that really loved you and you could talk to, and—and…

Well, I guess I just hadn’t wanted to face the facts there at Mr. J. B. Brockton’s place. I mean, it was such an awful setback, I didn’t feel like I could bear any more; I just couldn’t admit that it would be the same way wherever else I went. Because what was I going to do if it was? How was I going to live? What would I do if I couldn’t make out here, and I couldn’t go any place else?

You can see how I’d be kind of stunned. So scared that I couldn’t look at the truth even with my nose rubbed in it.

So, anyway, I went on to all the other estates. I made them all, just taking “no” for an answer at first, and then arguing and finally begging. And, of course, it was the same story everywhere. I was just wasting my breath and my time. They were sorry, sure; most of ’em said they were, anyhow. But Bobbie Ashton had asked for the work, and Doc Ashton was an influential man—and he treated most of them—so Bobbie was going to get it.

It was noon by the time I’d gone to the last place I could go to. I drove down to the beach and ate the lunch I’d packed that morning. Gulping it down, not really tasting it.

Twenty-five years, I thought. Twenty-five years, but no, a man like me would probably live a lot longer than that. Thirty-five or forty, probably. Maybe even fifty or sixty. Fifty or sixty years with everything going out and nothing coming in!

Yes, there was a little work around town, for the local residents, you know. But it wasn’t worth bothering with. Just fifty cents here and a dollar there. Anyway, the kids had it all sewed up.

I wondered if it would do any good for me to talk to Bobbie, but I didn’t wonder long. He’d made up his mind to run me out of town—to get back at Luane through me.

Doc Ashton settled here a little short of seventeen years ago. His wife had died in childbirth, so he had this Negro wet nurse for Bobbie, the woman who still works for them as housekeeper. Doc was quite a young man then. The woman was young, too—in fact, she’s still fairly young—and pretty good-looking, besides.

Well, Bobbie was sick when he got here, the colic or something. And he no sooner got over that than he was hit by something else. Every disease you ever heard of practically, why Bobbie had it. One right after another. Year after year. He couldn’t play with other kids, couldn’t go to school; he was hardly out of the house for almost twelve years. Then, finally, I guess because he’d had every blamed sickness there was to get, he didn’t get any more. He began to shoot up and broaden out. All at once, he was just about the healthiest, huskiest—and handsomest—kid you ever saw in your life. And smart! You couldn’t believe a kid could be that smart, and probably you won’t find many that are.

I suppose he got a lot of it from all those books he’d read when he couldn’t do anything else. But there was plenty more to Bobbie’s smartness than book-learning. He just seemed to have been born with a head on him, a head with all the answers. He could do things without being told how or reading about ’em, or maybe even hearing of ’em before. Not just lessons, you know, but
anything!

He went through eight grades of grammar school in a year. He went through high school in a year and a half. At least he could have gone through, if he hadn’t dropped out the last semester. Now, it didn’t look like he’d be going to college; he wouldn’t be studying to be a doctor. And how Doc Ashton would be feeling about that, I hated to think.

I wadded up my lunch sack and put it in a trash basket. Then, I got a drink of water from one of the picnicker fountains, and drove up to the dance pavilion.

The big front doors were swung open. I went inside, circled around in front of the bandstand, and stopped in the doorway of Pete Pavlov’s office. He was at his desk, bent over some papers. He glanced up, squirted a stream of tobacco into a spittoon and bent back over the papers again.

He’s one of those round-faced, square-built men. About fifty, I guess. He wore khaki pants with both a belt and suspenders, and a blue work shirt with a black bow tie. His hair was parted on the side, and there was a blob of shaving soap up around one of the temples.

I waited. I began to get a little uneasy, even though I was practically sure that I had a job with him for the summer. Because any time Pete Pavlov could do anything to annoy people in Manduwoc, he was just about certain to do it. I mean, he’d go out of his way to get under their hides. And giving me work would get under ’em bad.

He didn’t need to care what they thought of him; his business was all with the summer trade. He owned most of the rent cottages, and the pavilion, and two of the hotels, and oh, probably, two-thirds of the concession buildings. So to heck with Manduwoc, was the way he felt. The town people hadn’t ever done anything for him. In fact, they’d always been kind of down on him, sort of resentful. Because even back when he was a day laborer, cleaning out cesspools or anything he could get to do, he was as independent as a hog on ice. He’d do a good day’s work, but he wouldn’t say thank-you for his pay. If anyone called him by his first name or just Pavlov, he’d do exactly the same thing with them. No matter who they were or how much money they had.

He straightened up from his desk, and looked at me. I smiled and said hello, and remarked that it was a nice day. I said, “I guess I better be getting to work, hadn’t I, Pete?”

He waited for me to say something else. I didn’t, because I was just too worried. Here was maybe another twenty-five dollars a week going down the hole. The only chance I had left for any income.

Pete kind of squirmed around in his chair, kind of scratching his rear, I guess. He leaned back and picked something out of his nose, and held it up and looked at it. And then he pushed his lips out, moved them in and out, while he stared down at his desk.

“Well, hell,” he said. “I tell you how it is, Ralph. The way this goddamned summer business is going, I figure on hiring out myself.”

I didn’t say anything. I guessed things weren’t as good for him as they used to be, but I knew he was still setting pretty. He had plenty, all right, Pete Pavlov did. It would take more than a few slack seasons to hurt him much.

“What are you looking like that for?” he said. “You think I’m a goddamned liar?” Then, his eyes flickered and shifted, and he let out a whoop of laughter, and slapped his hand down on his desk. “Well, you’re right, by God! I wish you could have seen your face! Really had you going, didn’t I?”

“Aw, no, you didn’t,” I said. “I knew you were joking all the time.”

“You know what a broom looks like?” He waved me toward the door. “Well, see if you can find one that’ll fit your hands.”

I got out. I got busy on the restrooms, and after a while, as he was leaving for downtown, he looked in on me. Stood around talking and joking for a few minutes. He asked about Luane, and said he was pretty goddamned hurt the way she never told any dirty stories about him. I laughed, kind of uncomfortable, and said I guessed that was his fault, not hers. Which was mainly the way it was, of course. Because how can you mud a man up when he’s already covered himself with it? To annoy people, you know. What’s the point in saying that a man does such and such or so and so when he lets ’em all know it himself?

He had a family, a wife and daughter, but Luane couldn’t do much to dirty them, either. There just wasn’t enough to them, you know, to hold dirt. They were dowdy and drab. They went around with their shoulders slumped and their heads bowed—like they might cut and run if you looked their way. No one was interested in them. There wasn’t anything to be interested in. And if the time ever came when there was, well, I figured Luane would do some tall thinking before she gossiped about it.

You see, years ago—before Luane and I were married—her father gave Pete an awful raw deal. Cheated him out of a pile of money, and then placed it in Luane’s name, so that Pete couldn’t sue. Luane’s always felt kind of guilty about it. She’d think a long time before she did anything else to hurt Pete or his family.

“Well,” Pete said. “I got a feeling that this may be a good season after all. The best damned season yet.”

“I think it will, too,” I said. “I think you’re right, Pete.”

He left. I finished with the washrooms, and went back to his office.

I pulled a chair up to the air-vent, took off the grate and crawled up inside the duct. I crawled through it slowly, squirming along on my stomach, brushing all the dust and cobwebs and dead bugs in front of me. It was so hot and stuffy I could hardly breathe, and I kept sneezing and bumping my head; and I was just about one big muddy smear of sweat and dust. I crawled through all the duct, the branches and the main, and came out at the rear of the building.

I dropped down to the roof of the blower shed. I started up the big four-horse motor, tightened the belt to the fan, and went in the back door of the men’s room.

I looked at myself in the mirror, and, man, was I a mess! Dirt and cobwebs from head to foot. I started to turn on the water at one of the sinks, and then I stopped with my hand a couple of inches away—kind of frozen in the air. I stood that way for a few seconds, listening to the piano, to Rags, listening to
her.
Then I turned toward the door, picking up my broom sort of automatically, and went out into the ballroom.

It was pretty shadowed in there, and there was just the swivel-necked light on over the piano. So, for a second, I thought it was Janie up there singing. Then I started across the floor, and pretty soon I saw it was another girl. She had the same kind of voice as Janie, and the same kind of candy-colored hair. But she was quite a bit bigger. I don’t mean she was any taller or that she probably weighed any more, but still she was bigger. In certain places, you know. You could see that she was without even half-way studying the matter. Because it was still pretty warm there in the ballroom, and Rags was stripped to the waist. And all she had on was a bra and a little skimpy pair of shorts.

I thought she was a mighty good singer, but I knew Rags wasn’t pleased with her. I knew because he was putting her through
Stardust,
having her rehearse it when he’d always told me that no singer needed to. “That’s one they can’t bitch up, see?” he’d told me. “They can do it with all the others. But
Stardust,
huh-uh.”

He brought his hands down on the keys suddenly. With just a big crash. She stopped singing and turned toward him, her face hard and sullen-looking.

“All right,” Rags said. “You win, baby. I’ll send for Liberace. Me, I’m too old to run races.”

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, not looking a darned bit sorry.

“Never mind that sorry stuff,” he said. “Your name’s Lee, ain’t it? Danny Lee, ain’t it?”

“You know what it is,” she said.

“I’m asking you,” he said. “It’s not Carmichael or Porter or Mercer, is it? This ain’t your music, is it? You’ve got no right to bitch it up, have you? You’re goddamned right, you haven’t! It’s theirs—they made it, and the way they made it is the way it should be. So cut out the embroidery. Cut out that bar-ahead stuff. Just get with it, and stay with it!”

He picked up his cigarette from the piano, and tucked it into the corner of his mouth. He brought his hands down on the keys. He seemed to kind of stroke them—the keys, I mean. But yet there was no running together. Every note came through, clear and firm, soft but sharp. So smooth and easy and sweet.

Danny Lee took a deep breath. She held it, the bra swelled full and tight. She was nodding her head with the music, tapping one toe. Listening, and then opening her mouth and letting her breath out in the
Stardust
words. Soft-husky. Pushing them out from down deep inside. Letting them float out with that husky softness, still warm and sweet from the place they’d been.

I looked at Rags. His eyes were closed, and there was a smile on his lips. I looked back at the girl, and I kind of frowned.

She didn’t hardly have to move at all, to look like she was moving a lot. And she was moving a lot now. And if there was one thing that burned Rags McGuire up, it was that. He said it was cheap. He said singers who did that were acrobats.

Rags opened his eyes. His smile went away, and he lifted his hands from the keys and laid them in his lap. He didn’t curse. He didn’t yell. For a minute he hardly seemed to move, and the silence was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Then he motioned for her to come over to the piano. She hesitated, then went over, kind of dragging her feet, sullen and hard-faced, and watchful-looking.

And then Rags reamed her out—real hard. It was pretty rough.

She took her place again. Rags brought his hands down on the keys, and she began to sing. I moved in close. Rags gave me a little nod. I stood up close, drinking her voice in, drinking her in.

She finished the song. Without thinking how it might seem to Rags—like I might be butting in, you know—I busted out clapping. It had been so nice, I just had to.

Rags’ eyes narrowed. Then he grinned and made a gesture toward me. “Okay, baby, take off,” he said. “You’ve passed the acid test.”

I guess he meant it as kind of an insult. Just to her, of course, because he and I are good friends, and always kidding around a lot. Anyway, she started down at me—and gosh, I’d forgot all about what a mess I was. And then she whirled around, bent over and stuck out her bottom at me. Kind of wiggled at me.