Ричард Деминг - Manhunt. Volume 3, Number 1, January, 1955

When I got home at ten o’clock that night, I wanted to tell Ray everything that had happened and beg him to forgive me and help me. He saw at once how upset I was, and he tried to get me to tell him what the reason was for my being like that. He took me into his arms and held me tightly, but even when I clung to him I still couldn’t bring myself to tell him. Every time I remembered the threat that Walter had made I was afraid something terrible might happen to Ray. I knew Walter once had killed a man in an argument about a woman, and I was afraid something might happen to Ray now.

That’s why I didn’t tell Ray that time, or the next time I was with Walter. And so for two years I’ve continued going to Walter’s apartment every time he’s told me he wanted me to go. That has happened at least once a week, sometimes two or three times a week. Ray believes I work late at the office those nights, and I don’t think he has ever suspected the reason why I come home late so often.

Ray has never stopped talking about our having a child since we were married two years ago, and I’ve waited all this time, hoping every day that Walter would let me go. Ray has been promoted to assistant manager of his office now, and he’s earning three times the salary he was getting when we were married. Several times lately he’s said he thinks it’s time for me to stop working. Night after night, lying awake in the darkness beside Ray, I’ve hoped and prayed that Walter would find somebody else he wants more than me. But it’s been the same week after week, and he still says I’m the most desirable woman he knows, and now I’m pregnant and I’m not sure whose child I’m carrying. I love Ray too much to let him think he was the father of a child when I could never be certain if he or Walter is the father. As long as I lived, no matter how much I loved the child I gave birth to, I’d be miserable and unhappy for Ray’s sake.

It’s too late now to beg Walter again to let me leave my job and stop seeing him, because even if he did let me go, I would still never know whether he or Ray was the father of the child.

I can’t tell Ray now, and ask him to forgive me, because even if he did forgive me, we would still be living in that awful uncertainty. I wish now I had told Ray about Walter two years ago. I should have told him everything that day I went back to work after our honeymoon — I should’ve told him even before that. That’s what I ought to have done. But it’s too late now — oh, so late.

I’m suffering for what I’ve done, and now that the baby is on the way, I can’t endure this torture another day.

There’s only one thing left for me to do. I just can’t live any longer. I’ve got to go ahead and do what I’ve decided. I couldn’t endure waking up in the morning one more time and having this terrible feeling for even one more day. It’ll be better for everybody, too. It’ll be better for Ray.

There may be other ways, but I can’t think of any now. I’ve thought and thought until my mind refuses to be a mind any longer. I’ve got to go ahead and do what I’ve decided to do.

... My name was Amelie.

The truck was late, so Pete and Joe had nothing to do but sit around and wait. That was why the trouble started.

Joe Morelli and Pete Lane sat on the steps of the general store. It was hot, the way New England can get in late September. The men had taken off their jackets and piled them on the two battered suitcases that were set behind them on the porch of the store. They both wore white shirts, open at the collar, with the sleeves rolled up.

They were drifters, both about thirty-five, and, having worked the summer as dairy hands on one of the neighboring farms, they were on their way now to spend the winter in Florida. They had been promised a ride to New York in a truck, and their ride was over an hour late. It was a fact that irritated Pete Lane a great deal and Joe Morelli not at all.

Occasionally a car came drifting through the town on the narrow, twisting highway, and until a broad, low, mongrel beagle trotted around the corner of the building, it was the only movement in the town.

When the dog saw the two men he changed his course abruptly and came over to sniff the end of Pete Lane’s shoe. Pete watched the dog for about three seconds and then he shot his foot out and kicked the dog in the face. The dog gave a sharp yelp and pulled back quickly. He stared at Pete in a much bewildered way, and then he trotted off, licking the end of his nose.

“What a dull, rotten, filthy town this is,” Pete said. He took out a soiled handkerchief and mopped his face with it, and then he resettled himself against the square supporting post of the porch. He lit up a cigarette and blew out a thin cloud of smoke and, as he did, he looked up the highway, listening and watching for the long overdue transportation. At that moment a man came into sight around the bend of the road.

Pete began to smile. “Well, look who’s coming,” he said.

Joe Morelli squinted up the road at the approaching figure. “Who’s that? That Manny?”

“Yeah. Little orphan Annie. For the first time since I’ve been here I’m glad to see him. Anything to break up this filthy monotony.”

Manny had a slow, awkard manner about him. He walked like a little boy, dragging his feet and deliberately scuffing the ground to stir up an eddy of thin dust spirals. A tall, heavy man, with tremendous hips and thick legs, he was somewhere in his thirties. His head, chest and shoulders were smaller than the rest of him and it made him look out of proportion, as if he was made up of parts from two different men. He was considerably overweight.

He came up and stood in front of the two men with a faint, pleased smile on his face. Pete flicked his cigarette at him and it bounced off the side of his arm. “Hello, Annie,” he said.

“I’m not Annie.”

Pete screwed up his face and cocked his head toward Manny. “What? What did you say, Annie?”

“My name’s Manny.”

“Well now, ain’t that funny. I thought your name was Annie. I thought you were a girl.”

“I’m not a girl,” Manny said. He was pouting.

“So you don’t think you’re a girl. Is that right, Annie? Well do you know what I think, Annie? I think the next chance you get you’d better take a good look at yourself. You got bigger brannigans than a lot of girls I know.” He looked over at Joe Morelli and laughed.

Joe was looking at Manny’s hands. “Hey, what you got in your hands?” he asked.

Manny was holding his hands cupped together and, when Joe asked this, he brought his hands up close to his face. He opened them up a bit and peeked in. “Toad,” he said. He held his hands softly against his cheek.

“A toad? No kidding?” Pete said. “Let me see.”

Manny opened his hands and showed it to him. It was a fat, blinking creature covered with thick warts. Manny began caressing the back of the toad with his big clumsy forefinger, and he was smiling at the toad.

“Put it down so we can get a better look at it,” Pete said.

He stopped patting the toad and he stared at Pete, vacant and uncomprehending.

“Come on, come on, put it on the step so we can get a look at it.” It was a harsh command and Manny moved to obey. He put the toad carefully on the step in front of Pete.

Pete leaned over and looked down at the toad. “Now ain’t that something,” he said. “Ain’t that really something. A toad. Can you beat that.” He put his heavy shoe on top of the toad, and immediately Manny reached down to retrieve his animal. Pete pushed him away.