Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

James Mallahan Cain (1892–1977) seemed destined for any career rather than that of a ‘poet of tabloid murder’, as the critic Edmund Wilson later described him. His own youthful ambition was to be an opera singer, but instead his parents encouraged him to be a teacher and he taught mathematics and English for several years before opting for journalism. He became an outspoken columnist on the Baltimore Sun and then the New York World, but various editorial restrictions so infuriated him that he turned instead to fiction. The success of The Postman Always Rings Twice (which was filmed in 1946 with John Garfield and Lana Turner) gave him freedom of expression and the opportunity to influence significantly the development of the hardboiled genre. He was himself as tough as the people he wrote about, as H. R. F. Keating has commented: ‘Cain was a bigger than life man, as hot-headed and tough-minded as any of his characters. He was a fighter for what he believed to be right and a man to have on your side in a fight.’ Like W. R. Burnett, Cain was recruited by Hollywood to write scripts and also saw two of his subsequent novels, Double Indemnity (1943) and Mildred Pierce (1945), turned into box office hits. Until only a couple of years before his death he continued writing his own brand of hardboiled fiction with its unique slant on human nature. ‘Pastorale’, despite its deceptive title, should not fool the reader, for it is a tale of sex and murder in typical Cain style which he wrote in 1945. It is fascinating, too, because of its undoubted similarities to that ground-breaking novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, which he had written over a decade earlier.

Well, it looks like Burbie was going to get hung. And if he does, what he can lay it on is, he always figured he was so dam smart.

You see, Burbie, he left town when he was about sixteen year old. He run away with one of them travelling shows, ‘East Lynne’ I think it was, and he stayed away about ten year. And when he come back he thought he knowed a lot. Burbie, he’s got them watery blue eyes what kind of stick out from his face, and how he killed the time was to sit around and listen to the boys talk down at the poolroom or over at the barbershop or a couple other places where he hung out, and then wink at you like they was all making a fool of theirself or something and nobody didn’t know it but him.

But when you come right down to what Burbie had in his head, why it wasn’t much. ’Course, he generally always had a job, painting around or maybe helping out on a new house, like of that, but what he liked to do was to play baseball with the high-school team. And they had a big fight over it, ’cause Burbie was so old nobody wouldn’t believe he went to the school, and them other teams was all the time putting up a squawk. So then he couldn’t play no more. And another thing he liked to do was sing at the entertainments. I reckon he liked that most of all. ’Cause he claimed that a whole lot of the time while he was away he was on the stage, and I reckon maybe he was at that, ’cause he was pretty good, specially when he dressed hisself up like a old-time Rube and come out and spoke a piece what he knowed.

Well, when he come back to town he seen Lida and it was a natural. ’Cause Lida, she was just about the same kind of a thing for a woman as Burbie was for a man. She used to work in the store, selling dry goods to the women, and kind of making hats on the side. ‘Cepting only she didn’t stay on the dry goods side no more’n she had to. She was generally over where the boys was drinking Coca Cola, and all the time carrying on about did they like it with ammonia or lemon, and could she have a swallow outen their glass. And what she had her mind on was the clothes she had on, and was she dated up for Sunday night. Them clothes was pretty snappy, and she made them herself. And I heard some of them say she wasn’t hard to date up, and after you done kept your date why maybe you wasn’t going to be disappointed. And why Lida married the old man I don’t know, lessen she got tired working at the store and tooken a look at the big farm where he lived at, about two mile from town.

By the time Burbie got back she’d been married about a year and she was about due. So her and him commence meeting each other, out in the orchard back of the old man’s house. The old man would go to bed right after supper and then she’d sneak out and meet Burbie. And nobody wasn’t supposed to know nothing about it. Only everybody did, ’cause Burbie, after he’d get back to town about eleven o’clock at night, he’d kind of slide into the poolroom and set down easy like. And then somebody’d say, ‘Yay, Burbie, where you been?’ And Burbie, he’d kind of look around, and then he’d pick out somebody and wink at him, and that was how Burbie give it some good advertising.

So the way Burbie tells it, and he tells it plenty since he done got religion down to the jailhouse, it wasn’t long before him and Lida thought it would be a good idea to kill the old man. They figured he didn’t have long to live nohow, so he might as well go now as wait a couple of years. And another thing, the old man had kind of got hep that something was going on, and they figured if he throwed Lida out it wouldn’t be no easy job to get his money even if he died regular. And another thing, by that time the Klux was kind of talking around, so Burbie figured it would be better if him and Lida was to get married, else maybe he’d have to leave town again.

So that was how come he got Hutch in it. You see, he was afeared to kill the old man hisself and he wanted some help. And then he figured it would be pretty good if Lida wasn’t nowheres around and it would look like robbery. If it would of been me, I would of left Hutch out of it. ’Cause Hutch, he was mean. He’d been away for a while too, but him going away, that wasn’t the same as Burbie going away. Hutch was sent. He was sent for ripping a mail-sack while he was driving the mail-wagon up from the station, and before he come back he done two year down to Atlanta.

But what I mean, he wasn’t only crooked, he was mean. He had a ugly look to him, like when he’d order hisself a couple of fried eggs over to the restaurant, and then set and eat them with his head humped down low and his arm curled around his plate like he thought somebody was going to steal it off him, and handle his knife with his thumb down near the tip. Nobody didn’t have much to say to Hutch, and I reckon that’s why he ain’t heared nothing about Burbie and Lida, and et it all up what Burbie told him about the old man having a pot of money hid in the fireplace in the back room.

So one night early in March, Burbie and Hutch went out and done the job. Burbie, he’d already got Lida out of the way. She’d let on she had to go to the city to buy some things, and she went away on No. 6, so everybody knowed she was gone. Hutch, he seen her go, and come running to Burbie saying now was a good time, which was just what Burbie wanted. ’Cause her and Burbie had already put the money in the pot, so Hutch wouldn’t think it was no put-up job. Well, anyway they put twenty-three dollars in the pot, all changed into pennies and nickels and dimes so it would look like a big pile, and that was all the money Burbie had. It was kind of like you might say the savings of a lifetime.

And then Burbie and Hutch got in the horse and wagon what Hutch had, ’cause Hutch was in the hauling business again, and they went out to the old man’s place. Only they went around the back way, and tied the horse back of the house so nobody couldn’t see it from the road, and knocked on the back door and made out like they was just coming through the place on their way back to town and had stopped by to get warmed up, ’cause it was cold as hell. So the old man let them in and give them a drink of some hard cider what he had, and they got canned up a little more. They was already pretty canned, ’cause they both of them had a pint of com on their hip for to give them some nerve.