Макс Коллинз - True Crime

That shocked her. The angry look turned blank and she said, rather hollowly, “They... killed him?”

I nodded.

“Good,” she said. But I didn’t quite buy it.

“You don’t have to pretend for me,” I said.

“What?”

“That you like it. The cheap way life and death is traded in around here.”

She swallowed again. “I didn’t really mean I wanted Doc Moran dead. He’s a... he was a lush and always crowing about himself. But...”

“But he didn’t deserve to die for it. That what you’re saying?”

She shrugged a little; leaned on her elbow and looked at me. Those eyes. Those goddamn eyes.

“He didn’t mean to kill Candy,” she said. “I hate him for not being a better doctor. But I’m not glad they killed him.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Just don’t expect me to cry for him,” she said, with an edge of bitterness. “I don’t have any tears left for that damn old drunk.”

I nodded.

“You’re nice to stay in here with me, Mr. Lawrence.”

“Call me Jimmy. Should I call you Lulu?”

“If you like... Jimmy.”

“What’s Lulu short for?”

“Louise. Nobody around here calls me that.”

“Would it be okay if I call you that?”

That surprised her; but she nodded, three little nods.

“Why don’t you get some sleep, Louise.”

“All right,” she said.

She turned on her stomach, facing away from me.

I lay looking up at the stars in the ceiling-paper sky.

After a while she said, “Jimmy?”

“Yes, Louise?”

“Would you do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Slide over onto my bed, with me.”

“Well...”

“Not for that. I need... held. You won’t try anything. You don’t have that sort of face. I can trust you. Can’t I?”

“You can trust me, Louise.” Taking into consideration I was pretending to be somebody I wasn’t, I figured she could do worse than trust me, among this company.

“I’m going to turn on my side,” she said.

She did.

“Now could you cuddle up to me? Maybe slip your arm around my waist?”

I did.

“That’s... that’s how Candy and me slept. Like spoons.”

“I got a girl back in Chicago,” I said. “We sleep like this sometimes.”

“It’s nice, isn’t it? Kinda... comforting.”

“It is nice.”

I was right up against her; she was soft and smelled like perfume. Dime-store perfume maybe, but I liked it anyway. I felt a stirring in me and had to pull back away from her rounded little rump; but she pushed back against me and said, ingenuously, “Candy was so sweet.”

Soon she began sobbing quietly; into my hanky. My erection receded. I kept my arm around her waist and hugged her to me.

“What am I going to do without him? What am going to do?”

I stroked her head, said, “There, there.”

And pretty soon she fell asleep.

So did I, and then I heard an unearthly sound, a screech out of a nightmare, and bolted upright in bed.

“What the hell was that?” I said.

Louise was sitting over at the child’s desk, combing her bobbed blond hair out with a brush; she was wearing that same pink dress I’d seen her in yesterday — like me, she’d slept in her clothes. She smiled over at me. She had no makeup on and looked about thirteen years old. The kind of thirteen-year-old that makes boys reconsider how they feel about girls, however.

She made a crinkly smile. “A rooster, silly. Haven’t you ever been on a farm before?”

I rubbed my face with a hand; I needed a shave. Sun was beginning to find its way in the open window next to her, but it still seemed pretty dark out to me.

“No,” I said. “This is a first for me.”

Still brushing her hair, she said, “I was raised on a farm. My daddy’s a farmer.”

“Do you miss your daddy?”

She looked sad, kept brushing. “Sometimes. I don’t imagine he misses me, though.”

“Why’s that?”

“He thinks I’m a bad girl. A sinner.”

“He’s a religious man, your daddy?”

“Too religious. He used to beat me with a belt because I wasn’t devout enough.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “At least when he beat me I knew he cared.”

“Pardon?”

She put the brush down and came and sat on the side of the bed next to me. “Sometimes that’s how people show you they care about you.”

“Hitting you?”

She nodded. “I don’t say it’s the best way. I wouldn’t ever hit anybody myself. And Candy — he hardly ever hit me. I guess that’s why I loved him so much.”

She seemed better this morning, seemed already to have accepted the finality of Candy’s death. Maybe in this fast crowd she ran with, fast death was commonplace. I asked her.

“You ever see anybody die before?” I said.

“Sure. Two times.”

“Guys working with Candy, you mean?”

She nodded. “They got shot on jobs.”

“I see.”

“And Candy killed some people. I never went on any jobs with him, so I never saw it. And I don’t like to think of it. But it’s true.”

“What kind of people?”

“Did he kill? A bank guard and a sheriff’s deputy. It bothered Candy.”

“It did?”

“Yes — he was afraid of the electric chair.”

I said nothing.

“He doesn’t have to be afraid anymore,” she said, and then tears gushed forth, and she was burying her face in my chest.

I held her for a while; by the time she came up for air, the sun was pouring through the windows like fresh buttermilk.

I wiped her tears with the bedspread. She smiled at me bravely. I got lost in her eyes, brown, brown eyes.

She said, “You didn’t take advantage of me last night.”

I swallowed.

“Most men would’ve.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“You could’ve. I was helpless.”

“You look like you’ve got some spunk left. You let out a pretty good scream when you saw me, for example.”

She shrugged. “That doesn’t matter. You could’ve taken me. A man can have a woman if he wants her.”

“You mean he can rape her.”

She nodded.

“Where I come from,” I said, “that’s not an acceptable way of getting to know a girl.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Back East.”

“Is that why you’re such a gentleman?”

I smiled. “That’s another first for me — being called a gentleman.”

“I think that’s what I’ll call you. Gentleman Jim. A real gentleman in a lousy world.”

“Let’s just leave it at ‘Jimmy.’”

“No — I like ‘Gentleman Jim’ better.” She beamed at me; she was trying a little too hard to be cheerful, but I was glad she was making the effort.

“Whatever you say,” I said.

She grabbed me by the hand and yanked me off the bed.

“Come on, Gentleman Jim... this old farm girl’s going to show you around a farm. You got some learning to do.”

I told her I had to go the bathroom, but she said that would be no problem.

I could stop at the outhouse on our way.

When we cut across the backyard, a dozen chickens were dancing around, scrounging for food. One with yellow legs and another with bluish-green legs were dancing in place, pecking at something that looked like an old beat-up leather glove.

Louise caught my curious expression and said, “That’s a rat skin. That’s about all the cat leaves behind, when she’s done with it.”

“Hens aren’t real particular about their breakfast, are they?”

Deadpan, she said, “Those aren’t hens. Not yet. They don’t start laying eggs till they’re seven months.”

She led me by the hand beyond the barn and silo, down a dew-wet path, at the end of which half a dozen cows, black, brown, stood gazing at us with bored expressions. Then we cut over by a shocked field, each shock looking like a small rustic wigwam.