The Kill-Off (5 page)

“I like him,” I said. “He’s a hell of an interesting little guy, and a nice one. But sometimes, y’know, Pete, I get a feeling that he ain’t where I’m seeing him. I mean, he’s right in front of me, but it seems like he’s walking all around me. Looking me over. Staring through the back of my head.”

Pete laughed. “He gives you that feeling too, huh? Ain’t it funny, Mac? All the people there are in the world, and how many there are you can just sit down and cut loose and be yourself with.”

I said it certainly was funny. Or tragic.

“Well, hell,” he said, finally, “and three is seven. Daddy’s gone and went to heaven. Guess you and me ought to be getting some sleep, Mac.”

We said good-night, and he went off toward town, his chunky body moving in a straight line. I went to my cottage, feeling conscience-stricken and depressed by my failure to help him. By my failures period. Bitch and botch, that was me. In common honesty I ought to start billing myself that way: Bitch And Botch And His Band And Bitch. I could work up a theme song out of it, set it to the melody of—well,
Goodie Goodie.
Let’s see, now. Tatuh ta ta tum, tatuh…I worked on that for a minute, and then swore softly to myself. I couldn’t do anything right any more. Not the simplest, damnedest ordinary thing.

Take tonight, for example. My people were new here; there are rows and rows of cottages, all exactly alike. Yet I hadn’t bothered to see that they got to the right ones, to see that they were comfortably settled. I’d just gone my own merry way—thinking only of myself—and to hell with them.

It didn’t matter, of course, about Danny Lee. She could sleep on the beach for all I cared. But my men, poor bastards, were a different matter. They had enough to bear as it was—those sad, sad bastards. Just barely squeaking by, year after year. Working for the minimum, and tickled to death to get it. Big-talking and bragging, when they know—for certainly they must know—that they were unfitted to wipe a real musician’s tail.

It must be very hard to maintain a masquerade like that. I felt very sorry for them, my men, and I was very gentle with them. They had no talent, nothing to build on, nothing to give. There can be nothing more terrible, it seems to me, than having nothing to give.

I unpacked my suitcases, and climbed into bed.

I fell asleep, slipping almost immediately into that old familiar dream where everyone in the band was me. I was on the trumpet, the sax-and-clarinet. I was on the trombone, at the drums, and, of course, the piano. All of us were me—the whole combo. And Danny Lee–Janie was the vocalist, but she-they were also me. And it was not perfect, the music was not quite perfect. But it was close, so close, by God! All we-I needed was a little more time—time is all it takes if you have it to work with—and…

I woke up.

It was a little after twelve, noon. The smell of coffee drifted through my window, along with snatches of conversation.

It came from the boys’ cabin—they were batching together to save money. They were keeping their voices low, and our cottages, like the others, were thirty feet apart. (“Don’t like to be crowded,” Pete told me, “and don’t figure anyone else does.”) But sound carries farther around water:

“Did you hear what he said to me, claimin’ I had a lip? Why, goddammit, I been playin’ trumpet…”

“Hell, you got off easy! What about him asking me if I had rheumatism, and I needed a hammer to close the valves…?”

“The wildeyed bastard is crazy, that’s all! I leave it to you, Charlie. You ever hear me slide in or off a note? I ever have to feel for ’em? Why…”

They were all chiming in, trying to top one another. But the drummer finally got and held the floor. I listened to his complaints—the bitter low-pitched voice. And I was both startled and hurt.

Possibly I had seemed a little sharp to the others, but I certainly hadn’t meant to. I had only been joking, trying to make light of something that could not be helped. With the drummer, however, I had been especially gentle—exceedingly careful to do or say nothing that might hurt his pride. He had nothing at all to feel bitter about that I could see.

It was true that I had joked with him, but in the mildest of ways. I had not so much corrected him as tried to get him to correct himself.

I had tossed him a bag of peanuts on one occasion. On a couple of others I had suddenly held a mirror in front of him, at the height of his idiotic, orgiastic contortions. I had had him look at himself, that was all. I had said nothing. It was pointless to say anything, since English was even more than a mystery to him than music, and I saw no necessity to. It seemed best simply to let him look at himself—at the man become monkey. And how that could possibly have made him sore, why he should blame me for the way he looked…

Well, the hell with it. He wasn’t worth worrying about or bothering with. None of them were. Only Danny Lee—Danny Lee’s voice. I wished to God I could have gotten hold of her a couple of years sooner. By now, she’d have been at the top, so good that she wouldn’t have been caught dead in a place like this.

I shaved and bathed and dressed. I walked over to her cottage, and told her to show at the pavilion at two o’clock sharp.

Then I dropped in on the boys.

They saw or heard me coming, for their voices rose suddenly in awkward self-conscious conversation. I went in, and there was a stilted exchange of greetings, and a heavy silence. And then two of them offered me coffee at the same time.

I declined, said I was eating in town. “By the way,” I added. “Can I do anything for you guys in town? Mail some letters to the local for you?”

They knew I’d heard them then. I looked at them smiling, one eyebrow cocked; glancing from one sheepish, reddening, silly face to another.

No one said a word. No one made a move. They almost seemed to have stopped breathing. And I stared at them, and suddenly I was sick with shame.

I mumbled that everything was Jake. I told them they’d better get out and have some fun; to rent a boat, buy some swim trunks—anything they needed—and to charge it to me.

“No rehearsal today,” I said. “None any day.”

I got out of there.

I ate and went to the pavilion, and went to work with Danny Lee.

After a while, Ralph Devore showed up.

Ralph’s the handyman-janitor here. Also the floorman—the guy who moves around among the dancers, and maintains order and so on. He’s a hell of a handsome guy, vaguely reminiscent of someone I seem to have seen in pictures. He has a convertible Mercedes, which, I understand, he got through some elaborate chiseling. And dressed up in those fancy duds he has (given to him by wealthy summer people) he looks like a matinee idol. But he wasn’t dressed up now. Now, when Danny Lee was seeing him for the first time, he looked like Bowery Bill from Trashcan Hill.

She was so burned up when he gave her a hand—and I kidded her about it—that she flounced her butt at him.

She stomped off to the dressing room. Ralph and I chewed the fat a little. And I began to get a very sweet idea, a plan for giving Miss Danny her comeuppance. I could see that Ralph had fallen for her. He wanted her so bad he could taste it. So with him looking as he did—or could—and Danny being what she was…

I put it up to Ralph, giving him slightly less than the facts about Danny. I said that she not only looked like a nice girl, but she
was
one. Very nice. The sole support of her family, in fact. So how did that cut any ice? He wasn’t going to rape her. He could just take her out, and leave the rest up to her. If she wanted to cut loose okay, and if not the same.

“Well…” He hesitated nervously. “It just don’t somehow seem right, Rags; I mean, fooling a nice little girl like that. I don’t like people foolin’ me, and—”

“So where’s the harm?” I said. “If she really wants to hang on to it, money won’t make any difference to her. If it does make a difference—all the dough you’re supposed to have—there’s still no harm done. What she loses can’t be worth much.”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “Yeah, but…”

I was afraid he was going to ask why my enthusiasm for the enterprise. But I needn’t have worried. He was too absorbed in Danny, so hard hit that he was in kind of a trance. And vaguely, with part of my mind, I wondered about that.

Ralph had seen sexy babes before. Seen them and had them. They were invariably kitchen maids or shop-girls on an outing, but still they had what it took. All that Ralph, being married, was interested in.

“She looks kind of tough,” he murmured absently. “Awful sweet, kind of, but tough. Like she could be plenty hard-boiled if she took the notion.”

“Oh, well,” I said. “Think what a hard time she’s had. Supporting an invalid mother and—”

“I bet she knows her way around, don’t she?”

“And you’d win,” I said. “She can take care of herself, Ralph. You won’t be taking advantage of her at all.”

“Well…” He squirmed indecisively. “I—I—What you want me to do?”

He had some good clothes in his car. I told him to get washed and change into them, while I fixed things up with Danny. “And hurry,” I said, as he hesitated. “Get back here as fast as you can. You can’t keep a high class girl like her waiting.”

He snapped out of it, and hurried away.

I went down to the dressing room.

She was waiting there, sullen and defiant and a little afraid. I hadn’t told her she could go to her cottage, so she waited. I looked at her sorrowfully, slowly shaking my head.

“Well, you really tore it that time, sister,” I said. “You know who that guy was? Just about the richest man in this county. Owns most of the beach property around here. Has a big piece of this pavilion, as a matter of fact.”

“I’ll bet!” she said—but a trifle uncertainly. “Oh, sure.”

“How did Pete Pavlov stack up to you?” I said. “Hardly a fashion-plate, huh? You just can’t figure these local people that way, baby. They keep right on working after they get it. They don’t go in for show while they’re working.”

She studied my face uncertainly, trying to read it. I took her by the elbow and led her to the window. “Who does that guy look like down there?” I said; for Ralph was just taking his clothes out of the Mercedes. “What do you think a buggy like that costs? You think an ordinary janitor would be driving it?”

She stiffened slightly; hell, that Mercedes even bowls me over. Then she shrugged with attempted indifference. So what, she asked. What did it mean to her if he was loaded.

“Just thought you’d like to know,” I said. “Just thought you might like to meet him. He could do a lot for a gal if he took the notion to.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “You just want to help me, I suppose! You’re doing
me
favors!”

“Suit yourself.” I picked up my shirt and began putting it on. “It’s entirely up to you, baby. You do a little thinking, though, and maybe you’ll remember me doing you a favor or two before. It maybe’ll occur to you that I can’t be any harder on you than I am on myself, and it ain’t making me a penny.”

“All right!” she snapped. “What do you want me to do about it? I’ve tried to thank you! I’ve—I’ve—”

“Never mind,” I said. “I’m satisfied just to see you get ahead. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

I finished buttoning my shirt. I tucked the tails in, studying her out of the corner of my eye.

She was wavering—teetering one way, then the other. Wavering and then convinced, like the stupid moronic tramp she was. There was nothing in her head. Only in her throat.

And you could dump a thousand gallons of vinegar down it, and she’d still expect the next cup to be lemonade.

“Well,” she said. “He did seem awfully nice. I mean, I couldn’t tell what he looked like much, but he acted nice and respectful. And—and he clapped for me.”

“He’s a wonderful guy,” I said. “One of the best.”

“Well…well, I guess I ought to apologize, anyway,” she said. “I ought to do that, even if he was only a janitor.”

She preceded me up the steps. She started to open the door that leads out to the bandstand, and suddenly I put out my hand.

“Danny. Wait…baby.”

It was the way I said it, the last word. A way I’d never thought I could say it. To her. She froze in her tracks, one foot up on a step, the shorts drawn high and tight upon her thighs. Then, her head moved and she looked slowly over her shoulder.

“W-what?” she stammered. “What did you cal—say?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I guess I…nothing.”

“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me what you want, Rags.”

“I want,” I said. “I want…”

The unobtainable, that was all. The nonexistent. The that which never-would-be. I wanted it and I did not want it, for once achieved there would be nothing left to live for.

“I want you to get your butt out of my face,” I said. “Fast. Before I kick it off of you.”

I
finished at the Thorncastle estate about four-thirty in the afternoon, and Mr. Thorncastle—that fine, democratic fat-bottomed man—paid me off personally.

My bill came to twelve dollars. I looked at him from under my lashes as he paid it, and he added an extra five. Managing to stroke my hand in the process. He is a very juicy-looking character, this Thorncastle. I had some difficulty in getting away from him without kicking him in the groin.

Father was already at the table when I reached home. I washed hastily and joined him, begging his pardon for keeping him waiting. He snatched up his fork. Then he slammed it down, and asked me just how long I intended to keep up this nonsense.

“The yard work?” I said. “Why, permanently, perhaps. It would seem well suited to my station in life—you know, with so much racial discrimination—and—”

“Stop it!” His face whitened. “Don’t ever let me hear you—”

“—and there’s the money,” I said. “A chance to advance myself financially.”

“Like Ralph Devore, I suppose! Like the town odd-jobs man!”

I shrugged. The facts of the matter were under his nose even if he, like the rest of the town, was too dullwitted to see them. Ralph had earned approximately twenty-eight hundred dollars a year for the past twenty-two years. He had spent practically nothing. Ergo, he now had a minimum of fifty thousand dollars, and probably a great deal more.

He had it. He would have to. And now that his income was cut off, he would be worried frantic. For fifty thousand would not represent enough security to Ralph. Not fifty thousand or a hundred thousand. He would visualize its disappearing, vanishing into nothingness before his life span had run. He would be terrified, and his terror must certainly react terrifyingly upon Luane.

I wondered where he had hidden the money, since, naturally, he had hidden it—how else could he keep its possession a secret?—as, in his insecurity, he would feel that he had to.

Well, no matter where it was now. There was still this first stage of the game to play. When it was played out, I would concentrate on the money—locate and appropriate it. And watch what happened to Luane, then.

She had behaved very badly, Luane. She had made the serious mistake of telling the truth.

That was unfair; it was theft. The truth was mine—I had earned it painfully and it belonged to me. And now, after years of waiting and planning, it was worthless. A heap of rust, instead of the stout, sharp-pronged lever I was entitled to.

What good was the truth, now? How could I use it on
him,
now?

Not much. Not enough. Not nearly enough.

He was talking again, bumbling on with his nonsense about my returning to school whether I thought I was or not.

“You’re going, understand? You’re going to complete your education. You can finish up your high school here, or you can go away. And then you’re going on to—”

“Am I?” I said.

“You certainly are! Why—what kind of a boy are you? Letting some gossips, some fool woman spoil your life! No one believes anything she says.”

“Oh, yes, they do,” I said. “Yes, they do, father. I could name at least three who do, right here in our own household.”

He stared at me, his mouth trembling, the mist of fear and frustration in his eyes. I winked at him, hoping he would start blubbering. But of course he didn’t. He has too much pride for that—too much dignity. Ah, what a proud, upright man my father is!

“You have to leave,” he said slowly. “You must see that you have to leave this town. With your mind—with no outlet for your intelligence…”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. “I’ll let you know what I decide.”

“I said you’d leave! You’ll do what I say!”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” I said. “Exactly, dear father, as I damned please. And if what pleases me doesn’t please you, you know what you can do about it.”

He stood up, abruptly, flinging his napkin to the table. He said, yes, he confounded well
did
know what he could do; and he’d just about reached the point where he was ready to do it.

“You mean you’d call in the authorities?” I said. “I’d hate to see you do that, father. I’d feel forced to go into the background of my supposed incorrigibility, and the result might be embarrassing for you.”

I gave him a sunny smile. He whirled, and stamped away to his office.

He was back a moment later, his hat on, his medicine kit in one hand.

“Do one thing, at least,” he said. “For your own good. Stay away from that Pavlov girl.”

“Myra? Why should I stay away from her?” I said.

“Stay away from her,” he repeated. “You know what Pete Pavlov’s like. If—if you—he—”

“Yes?” I said. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. What possible objection could Pavlov have to his daughter’s going about with Doctor Ashton’s well-bred, brilliant and, I might add, handsome son?”

“Please, Bob—” His voice sagged tiredly. “Please do it. Leave her alone.”

I hesitated thoughtfully. After a long moment, I shrugged.

“Well, all right,” I said. “If it means that much to you.”

“Thank you. I—”

“I’ll leave her alone,” I said, “whenever I get ready to. Not before.”

He didn’t flinch or explode, much to my disappointment. Apparently he’d been partially prepared for the trick. He simply stared at me, hard-eyed, and when he spoke his voice was very, very quiet.

“I have one more thing to say,” he said. “A considerable quantity of narcotics is missing from my stock. If I discover any further shortages, I’ll see to it that you’re punished—imprisoned or institutionalized. I’ll do it regardless of what it does to me.”

He turned and left.

I scraped up the dishes and carried them out into the kitchen.

Hattie was at the stove, her back turned to me. She stiffened as I went in, then turned part way around, trying to keep an eye on me while appearing occupied with her work.

Hattie is probably thirty-nine or forty now. She isn’t as pretty as I remember her as a child—I thought she was the loveliest woman in the world then—but she is still something to take a second look at.

I put the dishes in the sink. I moved along the edge of the baseboard, smiling to myself, watching her neck muscles tighten as I moved out of her range of vision.

I was right behind her before fear forced her to whirl around. She pressed back against the stove, putting her hands out in a pushing-away gesture.

“Why, mother,” I said. “What’s the matter? You’re not afraid of your own darling son, are you?”

“Go ’way!” Her eyes rolled whitely. “Lea’ me alone, you hear?”

“But I just wanted a kiss,” I said. “Just a kiss from my dear, sweet mother. After all, I haven’t had one now, since—well, I was about three, wasn’t I? A very long time for a child to go without a kiss from his own mother. I remember being rather heartbroken when—”

“D-don’t!” she moaned. “You don’t know nothin’ about—Get outta here! I tell doctor on you, an’ he—”

“You mean you’re not my mother?” I said. “You’re truly not?”

“N-no! I tol’ you, ain’t I? Ain’t nothin’, nobody! I—I—”

“Well, all right.” I shrugged. “In that case…”

I grabbed her suddenly, clamped her against me, pinning her arms to her sides. She gasped, moaned, struggled futilely. She didn’t, of course, cry out for help.

“How about it,” I said, “as long as you’re not my mother. Keep it all in the family, huh? What do you say we—”

I let go of her, laughing.

I stepped back, wiping her spittle from my face.

“Why, Hattie,” I said. “Why on earth did you do a thing like that? All I wanted was—What?” My heart did a painful skip-jump, and there was a choking lump in my throat. “What? I don’t believe I understood you, Hattie.”

She looked at me, lips curled back from her teeth. Eyes narrowed, steady, with contempt. With something beyond contempt, beyond disgust and hatred.

“You hear’ me right,” she said. “You couldn’ do nothin’. Couldn’ an’ never will.”

“Yes?” I said. “Are you very sure of that, my dearest mother?”

“Huh! Me, I tell
you.
” She grinned a skull’s grin. “Yeah, I ver’ sure, aw right, my deares’ son.”

“And it amuses you,” I said. “Well, I’ll tell you, mother. Doubtless it is very funny, but I don’t believe we’d better have any further displays of amusement. Not that I’d mind killing you, you understand. In fact, I’ll probably get around to that eventually. But I have other projects afoot at the moment—more important projects, if I may say so without hurting your feelings—”

She moved suddenly, made a dash for her room. I followed her—it adjoins the kitchen—and leaned absently against the door. The locked door to my mother’s room.

The door that had been locked for…

Yes, my recollection was right; it is always right. I had been about three the last time she had kissed me, the last time she had cuddled, babied, mother-and-babied me. I would have remembered it, even if I did not have almost total recall. For how could one forget such a fierce outpouring of love, the balm-like, soul-satisfying warmth of it?

Or forget its abrupt, never-to-be-again withdrawal?

Or the stupid, selfish, cruel, bewildering insistence that it had never been?

I was a very silly little boy. I was a very foolish, bad little boy, and I had better pray God to forgive me. I was not sweets or hon or darlin’ or even Bobbie. I was Mister Bobbie—Master Robert. Mistah—Mastah Bobbie, a reborn stranger among strangers.

My continuing illnesses? Psychosomatic. The manifold masques of frustration.

My intelligence? Compensatory. For certainly I inherited none from either of them.

I listened at night, when they thought I was asleep. I asked a few questions, strategically spacing them months apart.

She’d had a child; she’d had to wet-nurse me. Where was that child? Dead? Well, where and when had he died? When and where had my mother died?

It was ridiculously simple. Only a matter of putting a few questions to a fatuous imbecile—my father—and an oversexed docile moron, my mother. And listening to them at night. Listening and wanting to shriek with laughter.

He’d be ruined if anyone found out. It would ruin my life, wreck all my chances.

It would be that way
if.
And what way did the blind, stupid, silly son-of-a-bitch think it was now? What worse way could it be than as it was now?

And, no, it did not need to be that way. Needn’t and wouldn’t have been for a man with courage and honesty and decency.

I had deduced the truth by the time I was five. Several years later, when I was able to be up and around—to post and receive letters secretly—I proved my deductions.

He, my father, had practiced in only one other state before coming to this one. It had no record of a birth to Mrs. James Ashton, or of the death of said Mrs. Ashton. There was, however, a record of the birth of a son to one Hattie Marie Smith (colored; unmarried; initial birth). And the attending physician was Dr. James Ashton.

Well?

Or perhaps I should say
well!

As a matter of fact, I said goddammit, since the cigarette was scorching my fingers.

I dropped it to the floor, ground it out with my shoe and rapped on my mother’s door.

“Mother,” I said. “Mammy—” I knocked harder. “You heah me talkin’ to you, mammy? Well, you sho bettah answer then, or your lul ol’ boy gonna come in theah an’ peel that soft putty hide right offen you. He do it, mammy. You knows all about him—doncha?—an’ you knows he will. He gonna wait just five seconds, and then he’s gonna bus’ this heah ol’ doah down an’…”

I looked at my wristwatch, began counting off the seconds aloud.

The bed creaked, and I heard a muffled croak. A dull, weary sound that was part sigh, part sob.

“Now, that’s better,” I said. “Listen closely, because this concerns you. It’s my plan for finishing you off, you and my dearly beloved father…I am going to take you out to some deserted place, and bind you with chains. I shall so chain you that you will be apart from each other, and yet together. Inseparable yet touching. And you shall be stripped to your lustful hides. And in winter I shall douse you with ice-water, and in summer I shall smother you with blankets. And you shall shriek and shiver with the cold, and you shall scream and scorch with the heat. Yet you shall be voiceless and unheard.

“That will go on for seventeen years, mother. No, I’ll be fair—deduct a couple of years. Then I’ll bring you back here, pile you into bed together, and give you a sample of the hell that could never be hot enough for you. Set you on fire. Set the house on fire. Set the whole goddamned town on fire. Think of it, mammy! The whole population. Whole families, infants, children, mothers and fathers, grandparents and great-grandparents—all burning, all stacked together in lewd juxtaposition. And it shall come to pass, mammy. Yeah, verily. For to each thing there is a season, mammy, and a time—”

She was moaning peculiarly. Keening, I suppose you would say.

I listened absently, deciding that Pete Pavlov should be spared from my prospective holocaust.

No one else. At least, I could think of no one else at the moment. But certainly Pete Pavlov.

It was early, around eight o’clock, when I arrived at the dance pavilion. The bandstand was dark. The ticket booth—where Myra Pavlov serves as cashier—was closed. Only one of the ballroom chandeliers was burning. There was, however, a light in Pete’s office. So I vaulted the turnstile, and started across the dance floor.

He was at his desk, counting a stack of bills. I was almost to the doorway when he looked up, startled, his hand darting toward an open desk drawer.

Then he saw it was I and he let out a disgusted grunt.

“Damn you, Bobbie. Better watch that sneakin’ up on people. Might get your tail shot off.”

I laughed and apologized. I said I hoped that if anyone ever did try to hold him up, he wouldn’t try to stop them.

“You do, huh?” he said. “How come you hope that?”

“Why—why, because.” I frowned innocently. “You have robbery insurance, haven’t you? Well, why risk your life for some insurance company?”