Peter Rabe - The Box

“I asked him to get off my back and he laughed.”

“Quinn, stay-”

“I’m getting out. I’ve got to.”

She misunderstood. “Can you leave town? If you let me help you…”

He stepped hack, not to feel her hand on his arm. He felt sorry he had met her like this and had a small, rapid wish-it only leaped by, nothing more-that she might be elsewhere, and himself, too. But then he sucked in his breath to interrupt, because unless he knew why he had this wish about her, he would not permit it.

He thought he knew, of course, why he felt anger with Remal, so he stuck to that.

“I’m going out there and don’t worry. Open the gate.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked and ran after him into the garden.

“Have you got the key?”

She went back into the house and brought the key. She said nothing else, brought nothing else, just unlocked the gate and let him go out. She wished she knew what to say, what she wanted. Then she locked the gate.

It was no darker now than it had been before, but as Quinn walked hack to Whitfield’s he thought it was darker, and colder. I have to see Turk and set something up, he kept thinking. Whitfield? No help there. But I’ll need help. Either because of what the mayor does next or what I want to do next. What? I’ll see. First, check out that girl, check out Turk, even Whitfield-he knows the mayor, he can help make this clear if I’m imagining that something’s going to break He walked fast, which preoccupied him, and got to the yard out of breath. He stood for a moment there in the dark and called Turk. There was no answer. There was only the pump sound of his blood and the hard sound of his breathing. You listen to that long enough, he thought, and you get scared.

“Turk?”

Nothing. He’s with the whore, of course.

Quinn ran up the stairs and the first door was open. The light was on inside and the room was empty. No girl, no Turk. In the next room, Whitfield was asleep.

Quinn did not know what to think and did not care to think. He ran to the bed and started to shake Whitfield awake.

“Listen, listen to me,” he kept saying, until Whitfield opened his eyes.

There was an empty gin bottle on the floor and Quinn kicked it out of the way.

“How was she, huh?” said Whitfield. “Okay?” He sounded thick.

“Shut up and listen to me.”

“Once a week. Back next week. Okay? Nice girl-” Quinn tried a while longer but was too anxious to give Whitfield a chance to come out of his drunk. Quinn was so anxious he could feel himself shake inside.

Everybody gone, he thought. I’m imagining something, but not this. Everybody gone and me alone here. End up dead in an alley this way. That’s no imagination. Like the first time wasn’t imagination. End up dead in a coffin, next end up dead in an alley. That’s twice. That doesn’t happen to me, twice-And he let go of Whitfield as if he were a bundle of laundry. But Quinn didn’t race out. He felt alone but now this did not give him fright but strength. He picked up the gin bottle and left Whitfield’s apartment. In the yard he cracked the bottle against a stone wall and held onto the neck. He looked at the vicious jags on the broken end and heard his own breathing again.

“Turk?” he called once more.

Only his breathing. It didn’t frighten him this time, only made him feel haste. He left fast, to go to the only other place which he knew, which was Beatrice’s house. He didn’t get there.

On the way he saw shadows, imagined shapes, and fright played him like a cracked instrument. He bit down on his teeth, held his bottle, and with a fast chatter of crazy thoughts going in and out of his head, he had to stop finally or come apart.

It was very quiet, and except for a cat running by some little way off he seemed to be alone. His jitters embarrassed him now, but not much. Stands to reason, he thought. Stands to reason getting worked up like this, but no more now. Ninety-five per cent imagination. Try sticking with the other five for a while. He wished he had a cigarette, and the wish was ordinary enough to take the wild shimmer off his imaginings. In a while, standing by the wall of a house, he felt better. He moved on.

As he turned the next corner, he stumbled over a man lying on the ground.

Quinn saw everything very fast. The man was dead and bloody, throat all gone, and something went padding away, fast, in the dark. The sound wasn’t a dog or a cat. It was a person running.

But no panic this time. The act was so clearly wrong it pulled Quinn together. He ran after the sound of the feet.

At the next corner Quinn slowed. He did not think he was making a sound and then he saw the man waiting by a wall.

Knife, thought Quinn. He could see it. That would be twice, wouldn’t it? But not for me, Jack the Ripper, not for me-In great haste Quinn thought, why run after him anyway, why think he means me with that knife, why think that the dead man in the street has anything to do with me Suddenly the man with the knife stepped away from the wall and slowly moved towards Quinn. He said something in Arabic and stopped. He spoke again and came closer.

“And the hell with you, too,” said Quinn and didn’t wait any longer.

He thought the man was startled, that he moved back, but then the man with the knife never had a chance to start running. Even before he got his weapon up Quinn was on him like an animal and with a sharp hack tore the bottle across the dark face.

The man jerked like something pulled tight with wires, spun and screamed. He screamed so that Quinn swung out to cut him again. He felt so wild he heard nothing until the last moment.

He heard fast footsteps, then the voice. “No, Quinn. No!”

It was not the man with the ruined face. Quinn spun around and saw Turk. Confusion and Turk. Bloody face falling down on the stones, knife clatters, and Turk now.

“Come on. Run,” Turk hissed. “ Run. Now the others will come-”

“Who?…”

“Not now!”

Quinn hadn’t meant who are the others, he had meant who was the man whose face he had cut and who was the man who was dead just yards away and who in this night town knew anything to explain anything And there wasn’t any more question about anything when two more Arabs came running. At first Quinn could only tell they were there by the white rag wrapped around the bead of one of them and the long white shirt fluttering around the other. And he felt how Turk tensed. They ran.

The other two got distracted by the man in the street whose face had been slashed, and when Turk stopped sharply and turned to run up the stone steps between two houses, Quinn looked back quickly and could tell what the two others were doing. They stooped over the man on the ground, a motion of white cloth and then they leaped up.

Quinn followed Turk up the steps and saw they were in a dead end. There was a blank wall and a door which was recessed deeply.

“In here,” said Turk. “It’s all right. You’ll see.”

They squeezed into the doorway and watched the other two come up the stairs.

“You got a gun?” asked Quinn.

“Too noisy. Besides, they can only come up one behind the other.”

They did. They seemed to know where Quinn and Turk must be hiding. They were going more slowly now.

“You know how to throw a knife?” said Quinn.

“I would lose it.”

“When I throw the bottle we jump them,” said Quinn.

Turk only nodded. When Quinn stepped out, to block the steps, the two men below looked up and stopped. It was slow and weird now, because Turk talked to them and they talked back.

“What goes on?”

“I am bargaining.”

“And?”

“The one in front says he’ll let us run again and the other one says he doesn’t care. They are both lying.”