Джон Макдональд - All These Condemned

I had forgotten my earlier feeling of coming too close to reality, and this brought it all back again. There was something immutable about that silent shape. You couldn’t tell it to go away. There were no lamps to rub, no incantations to say. It was there and undeniable and dead.

There was a room. They took me to a doorway. A strange woman took me to the doorway. There was a stink of flowers. She gave me a little push. “Go in and say good-by to her, Stevie.” I went in. There was satin and silver handles. It wasn’t my mother. They had made it out of wax, and my mother never was so pink and still. And her hands were not like that. Not like white sticks with blue nails. Not so still. They had been busy hands. Busy with soap and towels and brush and broom and quick caresses.

I turned and ran and the woman caught me and tried to hold me against her and I hit her with my fist and I guess I hurt her because she slapped me and then I cried and we both cried.

It had been a long time since I had remembered that. I stood very still. They were telling us to get off the dock. I looked at a slim dark-haired woman. I couldn’t remember for a moment who she was. Noel. Like meeting someone on the street. You haven’t seen them for a long time. And I remembered, but remembering did not chase away any ghosts.

I went to my room. I rolled up my sleeves. I scrubbed my hands. I wanted to scrub the skin off them. I wanted to get rid of the skin that had touched the heaviness of the body on the dock. I walked slowly toward the door to the corridor. And I heard someone coming. A woman. I opened the door. It was Noel. I spoke to her and took her hand and pulled her into the room and closed the door again. She would know where Randy was. I wanted to talk to him first. He could split the job with me. Maybe we’d have time enough.

She said he was still sleeping. I looked at her. She was a stranger. But there are times when you need the closeness of a stranger. I put my hands on her slim waist and pulled her close to me, and kissed her hard, with a sort of defiance, trying to kiss away all this tarp and flowers and grapple business. But even as I was kissing her, I remembered the afternoon, and remembered that it hadn’t gained me anything. I’d just got her emotionally involved. I had to find out where she stood. And, from her attitude, figure a way of untangling myself. She certainly wasn’t a hell of a lot to look at. And she looked at me with a discouragingly glazed and sappy expression.

So I delved a bit, cautiously, and found out, much to my relief, that she was off on a noble-wife kick. Standing bravely beside the unemployed husband. All very soap sales. It was an easy script to follow. I took my role. The disappointed lover. But not too insistent. The last thing I wanted to do was talk her out of the noble-wife part.

“Then,” I said bravely, “I’m to consider this the brush-off?”

It shows you how wrong you can be sometimes. I thought the little minx had been all loaded with sincerity. And what do I hear? One of my own lines, usually used in the brush-off scene. “We are a couple of adults, aren’t we?”

My surprise showed. And she told me it didn’t mean as much as we said it did. I tell you, with that acting ability, she could have landed a part.

I ruffled her hair and made with the “just grateful for knowing somebody like you” gambit. My kind of people. That’s what she was. I had a twinge of conscience about all the time I was losing, but suddenly I wanted her again. Maybe whenever there is death and violence around, you start wanting somebody. Maybe nature does it to you. Like affirming that you are the one who is alive. And we sat on the bed. But before it could become particularly interesting, the maid tapped on the door and said we were all wanted in the living room.

I decided right away that was for the best. It broke it up and kept me from wasting any more good time. We made some fast repairs and got ready to go. I checked the hall and it was clear. I was amused at the way she had fooled me. Fooled old Steve, the expert. And I felt affectionate toward her. So as she moved by me in the doorway I gave her a little love pat.

Once I was at a zoo. A human-interest thing, I think it was. Baby zebras or something. Can’t remember. But I remember the big tawny cat. It was asleep. One big paw was through the bars. A typical linthead tourist had picked up a little stick. He leaned over the railing and he was jabbing at the exposed paw, showing his cretin children what a big brave guy he was, poking at a lion.

One minute the lion was asleep. The next minute that big paw flicked by the guy’s face so fast that he jumped back long after it had gone by. His kids started crying. His complexion was like spoiled library paste.

I just patted her and she whirled and raked me. Her face was all twisted up and she hissed as she did it. And then she was gone. I stood and called her every name in the book and then went in and looked at myself in the mirror. Two long deep ones, with blood gathering slowly. I washed them. I found iodine in the cabinet, and some tape. I patched myself up. She had no damn reason in the world to do that. Not a reason in the wide world. Nobody does that to me. I decided right then and there that I’d get her apart from the others somehow. I’d get her out beside the house and back her up against a wall. I wouldn’t mark her, but I’d damn well teach her a lesson she wouldn’t forget in a hurry. A couple of good solid thumps in the belly teaches them some manners. It knocks the wind and the fight out of them.

I was the last one to arrive in the living room. I got a cold stare from everybody, and I saw the flicker of speculation as they looked at my taped face and wondered. I saw Judy glance at the tape and then look immediately at Noel.

Even the servants were there, and the young doc with the sideburns. I sat as far away from Noel as I could get. I caught her eye and gave her a hard look.

Fish started talking, and as soon as I got the sense of what he was saying, I forgot all about Noel and my plans and everything else except the fact of murder. For a time my mind was just a damn blank, with a great big red M printed across it. And then the damnedest thing. If she drowned, it was an accident, and something like that could not happen to Wilma. She had to be murdered. My God, she had been born to be murdered. Pushing people. Always pushing. No truth or sincerity in her. Everything an angle. Everything had to be used for her benefit. It was just a case of which damn worm had turned.

And thinking of worms, I looked at Randy Hess.

We got our orders, and we were told that the big brass was coming. I jumped at the first hunk of silence that came along, asking permission to handle the working press on this whole thing. Fish was dubious. I oiled him a little and saw him lean my way. Noel took off. It began to break up into little groups. Fish and the doctor got me aside. I was explaining how I would operate.

I looked over the doctor’s shoulder.

Ever since that moment I’ve been explaining it to myself. Here is what I say to myself: There is something inside you that goes ’way the hell back. Primitive. Atavistic. I keep telling myself that it was just as automatic as yanking your hand back when you put it on a hot stove. Nothing you can control. No part of guts or lack of same. Just a reaction. One minute I was looking and I saw it, and the next second I was running like hell in the opposite direction. I went through the door so fast that my hands slapped hard against the corridor wall as I made the turn. And I ran all the way down to my room before I stopped. I stopped and I listened.

I keep telling myself it was just an instinctive reaction. I mean nobody has given me a bad time about it. They’ve looked at me in a funny way, but nobody has given me a bad time. I’d suspect that they’ve talked. You know. Good story over a five-o’clock shot. But what the hell.