Roy Carroll - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 4, April, 1953

Janie came over and threw herself into my arms. She put her head against my chest. Her fingers dug into my arm muscles. “Rocky, I’m scared,” she said. She was, too. I could tell by her voice. “What are we going to do? We’ve got to do something. He’ll kill you, too. Maybe not right away, but after a while.”

I grinned. I liked to have her cuddle up to me like this. She was so small and soft and warm against me. “Mr. Calligy kill me?” I said. “That’s silly. Why would he want to do that?”

She leaned back away from me, turned her face up toward me. I’d never seen her eyes so full and pretty, the long lashes all stuck together. “Listen, Rocky. I’ve got to tell you something, try to make you understand. Think hard, darling. Try to understand this.”

I frowned and looked down at her and concentrated. My head hurt but I kept it up because Janie wanted me to. She said, slowly, spacing the words: “That last fight, with Barney Phelan, remember? You got orders to take a dive. In the sixth round. But you were to let him hit you, make it look good, maybe even knock you out for real, because you were the heavy favorite and it had to look good. Remember?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said.

“And in the sixth, you gave him some openings just like you were supposed to. And he really teed off on you. You went down, twice, remember?”

“Sure. The second time, I stayed down. I was really out, cold. He... he hit me too hard. I didn’t remember nothing for three days after the fight and then I was up here with you and I don’t remember how we even got here.”

“That’s right, Rocky,” she said. She nodded her head, approvingly. “Now, try to understand this. I never told you. I didn’t want to worry you. Something went wrong in that sixth round after you went down the second time. You got up again, looking kind of dizzy. Phelan came at you, but he was careless, wide open. You threw a wild, heavy punch. It caught him flush and he went down. He stayed down. You won that fight, Rocky, and you shouldn’t have. Calligy lost fifty thousand dollars. He didn’t understand, either. He thought it was a double-cross you and Leo Mace pulled on him. Do you understand, Rocky? That’s why he’s up here. He’s killed Leo and he’ll kill you, too.”

I stared down at her and my eyes went blurry and I couldn’t see her tor a moment. There was a sound like millions of grasshoppers in my ears. My head began to hurt worse and worse, so bad I could hardly stand it. Then it stopped and I said: “You’re kidding me, Janie. For some reason. That couldn’t have happened. How could it?”

She seemed to go crazy and tried to shake me, like she would a little kid. But when you’re a hundred eighty pounds, a little dame like Janie has trouble shaking you. Then Mr. Calligy backed up to our driveway in his Caddy, called out the window: “What the hell are you waitin’ for, bellhead? You expect me to walk all the way back from that creek?”

“He’s got some crazy idea,” I told Janie. “I’d better go with him.”

She just stood there and watched me go, as I got into the jeep and went after Mr. Calligy in his Caddy. I kept thinking about what Janie had said. It didn’t make sense. Why would I double-cross Mr. Calligy? I’d been in the business too long to think I could get away with something like that. And I’d have remembered. Unless Phelan had knocked me cold that second time I went down, I would have remembered, wouldn’t I? Janie was a little mixed up, upset about something.

When we got to the creek, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Mr. Calligy drive the car off the little wooden bridge and into the creek, where it quickly sunk out of sight. I shook my head. I didn’t know. Everybody seemed to be acting crazy, today. I said: “What did you do that for? A nice car like that?”

“Rocky, m’boy,” he said. “I can always get another car. This way, if any cops do come, you can hide me and there won’t be any car to give things away.”

He got into the jeep with me and we drove back to our place. “You mean you really are in trouble with the cops, Mr. Calligy?”

“Ha-ha,” he said. “Joke.”

Then I asked him about that fight with Phelan. I told him what Janie had told me. I wasn’t afraid of him. When I finished, he pulled way over onto the other side of the seat and looked at me from under those hooded lids of his and twisted his thin, pink little mouth all up, as though he was trying to figure something out. “I’ll be damned,” he said, finally. “Leo Mace wasn’t giving me any bull, then. Because you couldn’t have been acting, just now. It was too perfect. I’m really beginning to think it happened like Leo said and you really didn’t know what you were doing.”

“What do you mean what I was doing?”

“Skip it,” he said. “We’ll see. In the next few days I’ll be able to tell for sure.”

It was kind of nice having Mr. Calligy there for company. We hadn’t had any before. That night at the supper table there was a lot of funny talk, though. Like I said, Mr. Calligy was a great kidder. You know what he kept saying? He’d say:

“Rock, old brain, what would you do if your wife ever told you some other guy tried to make her? You know, that he was fooling around with her. What would you do?”

He caught me by surprise. I had to think for a minute. I thought about Janie, and some other guy bothering her, putting his hands on her, trying to kiss her and stuff like that. Seeing that picture in my head made me a little crazy. I slammed the table with my fist so hard I broke a dish. “I’d kill him,” I said. My eyes got blurry and I could almost feel myself punching this guy who’d tried to make my wife, like Mr. Calligy said, punching him until he was dead.

“You see, Janie,” Mr. Calligy said. “But, Rocky, they’d electrocute you for that. That would be murder.”

“I wouldn’t care,” I said. “I wouldn’t be able to help myself. I love Janie. Nobody was ever so good to me. She’s the only girl never wanted me to spend my money, who’s never kidded me about bein’ punchy and ugly. I’d have to kill anybody who bothered Janie, no matter what happened.”

“You see, Janie,” Mr. Calligy said. “He isn’t kidding. He’d do that. And surer’n hell they’d electrocute him. No more Rocky. Remember that!”

Then he’d say to me: “This is nice up here, Rocky, keed. Up here in the wilds, with a beautiful dame. Do you ever go anywhere, Rocky? I mean do you ever go into town or, take any trips, leave this dump at all?”

“No, he doesn’t,” Janie butted in before I could answer. “When he does, I go with him.”

I looked at her, wondering what she said that for. “No, you don’t, Janie,” I said. “You never go with me. I always go alone. You told me, even, you don’t mind being here alone, that there’s nothing to be afraid of, way out here.”

Mr. Calligy roared with laughter. I thought he’d never stop. Soon I began to laugh with him. I knew I must’ve said something funny. Janie got up from the table and went out into the kitchen. When Mr. Calligy was through laughing, he hollered out there after her: “Hey, Janie, is that true you aren’t afraid of anything here, without Rocky around? The wolves don’t bother you or anything?”

I wanted to tell Mr. Calligy we didn’t have any wolves around here, only foxes once in a while and sometimes a skunk or two, but I didn’t get the chance. He was laughing too hard again.

So Mr. Calligy stayed with us a couple days and he began to look different than when he came. He got some rest and his eyes cleared and he got some color in his face. He had a lot of expensive sport clothes out of the suitcase he’d taken from the big car. He was real sharp, a good-looking guy and I could see why he was a bigshot in the Rackets. He was real nice to me, too. I liked Mr. Calligy. Even Janie seemed to take to him a little more after a couple of days. Sometimes when I was out chopping wood or drawing water from the well and would come in again, I’d find them talking together, real quiet. Every once in awhile I’d catch her looking at Mr. Calligy with a funny look, too. I could tell she was thinking how it was funny an ex-pug like me would have bigshot friends, handsome and polished like Mr. Calligy.