Джонатан Крейг - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 12, December, 1953

But I could see it wasn’t the same. Father didn’t turn to look at me the way he had before. I had displeased him again, the way I always did whenever we went out together and I wished I could tell him I was trying. But he was too far away and too angry at me, so I walked as fast as I could to keep up with him. Then I saw him, dead ahead, and he was resting on one knee and gesturing to me to come up to him fast. When I broke into a run, he put his finger to his mouth and made a face to tell me to be quiet. I walked softly to him and there, not far from us and straight ahead, was a coyote, the wind coming from behind us so he didn’t even know we were watching him, and he was eating something he was holding like a dog between his two paws.

“All right,” Father whispered. “Now. Quickly.”

I looked at Father, but he only tightened his mouth and repeated, “Now.”

I brought my gun to my shoulder. I looked at Father again, and I could see him grow more furious at me. Then I looked at the coyote as best I could, my eyes suddenly hazy, and I squeezed the trigger and there was a blast and I wasn’t holding the gun properly, I guess, for it seemed to have an awful kick, hurting my shoulder. I could see the coyote fall over.

Father got up. “You didn’t take proper aim,” he said. He started to walk to the coyote who got hit in his side and who was trying to get up and run but couldn’t. “You’ve only injured him, you damned fool. Now you’ve got to do it properly.”

The way Father looked at me frightened me, so I started to run. Father caught me by the crook of the elbow and dragged me with him. “I don’t want to!” I cried. “Papa! Papa!”

He squeezed my arm and pulled me with him. “That’s what comes of being sentimental. Now he’s bleeding to death out there and you’re going to put him out of his pain.” He let go of me. “Come on, we’ll go on over to him and you can bash him over the head with your gunstock and end his misery. He isn’t worth another shell.”

“No, Father,” I shouted.

He struck me across the face. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” he said. He took hold of my shirt behind my neck and started to walk. We circled around the coyote who was still trying to get to his feet. His eyes were redshot and his tongue was hanging out, gray foam flecking his mouth.

I turned to Father. “Let’s take him home, Father. Let’s make him well again.”

“Kill him, you fool,” Father said, hardly opening his mouth. “Kill him now.”

We were standing over the coyote now, his eyes upturned to me.

“Put him out of his pain,” Father said.

I lifted my gun in the air, looked at Father, and then let the stock crash into the coyote’s head. I could feel the bones crush like dry adobe and the coyote let out a long little sigh that sounded like, “Oh,” and his legs stiffened and he was dead.

Father had walked away from me. I stood over the dead coyote. “There,” Father said, turning to me. “You’ve killed. You’ve learned to kill. The next time it won’t be so hard. Put a shell in your barrel and come on.”

I broke my gun and the spent shell popped out. I put a new one in.

I looked at Father. He was trying to smile. “See, now you’ve learned, it isn’t so bad, is it?”

I was walking toward him when his eyes grew big and afraid. “I told you not to carry the gun that way, you fool.” Then he tried to move away from me. “Don’t carry it like that!” he shouted. “Don’t! Don’t!” he said. “For God’s sake, don’t!”

The cops could hear her screams from the street, so they went up and got the guy who was beating her. But that was only the beginning...

Her name was Cherry Szykora. Regularly, every week, her husband would beat her black and blue. Across the street, Harry, the bartender, would slide a beer over the bar to a customer. They’d listen for a moment and chuckle. “Well,” Harry’d say, “Cherry’s gettin’ it again.”

The call came in at eleven sixteen P.M.

“Car six. Check on disturbance at two-ten Prescott. Man beating his wife...”

Jake threw his cigarette out the window. “Hell,” he said. Then he thought for a second. “Prescott. That’s down in Hunkytown, isn’t it?”

Tom Rivas nodded. “Yeah,” he said.

Jake, who was driving that night, jammed the prowl car into gear and headed toward the part of town where drab frame houses and dirty alleys huddled like a parasitic growth around the iron smelters. Hunkytown.

“Those people,” Jake grunted. “Always kicking their wives around.” He chuckled then. “Oh, well, maybe if my wife ran around like some of them babes do...”

Tom Rivas’ face was pale in the glow of the dash. He was quietly grinding his right fist into the palm of his left hand. “Don’t joke about it. It’s nothing to joke about.”

Jake Smith shot him a quick, puzzled glance.

Tom shrugged and lit a cigarette jerkily. “I just don’t like wife beaters, that’s all,” he muttered.

“Okay,” Jake shrugged. “So you don’t like wife beaters. Personally I don’t give a damn.” He concentrated on driving.

Tom Rivas watched the streets unfold before their headlights. He didn’t bother to explain his words. It was a matter of pride. You didn’t go telling everybody how you watched your old lady get her brains beaten out one night by a crazy-drunk father. But Tom could remember plain enough, though he’d been only seven at the time. He could remember her whimpering cry and the huge brute of a man, his father, slamming his fist into her face over and over. And then the piece of stove wood coming down on her head, popping it open like an overripe canteloupe.

Yeah, he could remember.

They got down to the narrow streets and the buildings that were a constant gray from the iron works smog.

They stopped the car and walked across a wet street to a bar. It was raining a fine mist that night.

The name of the bar was Harry’s Place. Harry, himself, was at the beer tap, carefully filling a glass with keg beer. He had a little plastic paddle in his right hand, skimming off the excess foam. He was an artist at this job.

Jake walked up to the bar. “You got some apartments in this building?”

Harry looked up at the two policemen. The other men in the dim place looked up too. Their faces all had the same look, a sullen animosity which was half fear. The people down here in Hunkytown had little use for the law, which was seldom on their side whether they were right or not.

Slowly, Harry laid the paddle down. He caught up a corner of the soiled apron that was tied around his fat middle and wiped his hands. “Nah,” he said. “We ain’t got no apartments here. Why?”

“This two-ten Prescott? We got a call to check a disturbance here. Something about a man beating his wife.”

Harry’s jagged teeth stumps revealed themselves in a leer. “Oh, sure.” Down the bar, there was a man with his cap pulled down over his eyes, a mug of beer in his hand. He laughed shortly.

“Well?” Jake asked, his temper beginning to shorten. Tom Rivas stood right behind him.

“Yeah,” the saloon keeper said, “I guess there was a disturbance here, you might say. They went home, though. He took her home.”

“The guy that was beating his wife?”

“Yeah. He come here and got her. She was screeching around like she didn’t want to go, so he slapped her up a little and took her home. It’s just across the street.” He took a dirty, broken thumb nail out of the beer suds and jabbed it at a frame house across the way.