Joe Haldeman - Worlds

“Benny is dead,” he said precisely.

I think my heart actually stopped. A wave of remorse and fear rushed over me, so strong I almost fainted. Perkins reached across the table and steadied me, hand on my arm.

“What happened?”

He let go of me slowly and eased back into his chair. “Not what they say happened.” He raised his cup. “Better drink some.”

It made me cough and finally brought tears to my eyes. Perkins gave me a surprisingly clean handkerchief. “What do they say happened? Who are ‘they’?”

“The police, they say he killed himself.”

“Benny would never do that.”

“I know. And he doubly would never do it without he left a note. Wordy son of a bitch. Excuse me.”

I blew my nose. “No, you’re right.”

“He was murdered. Now what the hell was going on? I knew he was in deep trouble but he wouldn’t tell me a damned thing. He said I was better off not knowing. Was there somebody layin’ for him?”

“I don’t know.” I didn’t know who, at least.

He took a cotton bag of tobacco out of his shirt pocket and began rolling a cigarette. “This is what happened. About three weeks ago. I put on some mush to fry for breakfast and went out to the barn to get Benny. He had fixed himself a little room out there in the stable. Don’t have horses no more.

“Well… he was hanging there. Long rope tied up on the rafters by the hayloft.”

“My God!”

“Well, he didn’t do it himself. Somebody marched him up to the loft and put the noose on him and pushed him off.”

“How do you know?”

“You want a cigarette? I got some real ones around.”

I shook my head. “How can you tell?”

“You really want to know. Well. I cut him down. It was cold in the barn and he was stiff. He didn’t have no clothes on, that was the way he slept.” Perkins lit the cigarette carefully and sipped his coffee.

“I guess I stood and looked at him for a long time. Then I saw there was something wrong, I mean something peculiar.

“His left arm was dislocated, popped right out of the socket. There was a big brown bruise on his left wrist, and another on his right shoulder. You know what a come-along is?”

“No.”

“Well, you put somebody’s arm behind his back and pull it up, like this.” He reached around as if he were trying to scratch between his shoulderblades. “Then you grab his other shoulder and push . He has to come along with you. Police do it.”

“That’s how they got him up into the hayloft?”

“Right. And he must have struggled something fierce, to dislocate his arm and get those bruises.

“I showed that to the police and they agreed with me, at first. But I called them a few days later and they said the case was closed, suicide. Said the coroner said the injuries were caused by Benny trying to get loose from the rope, after he’d jumped. Said a lot of people have second thoughts like that. But that’s a load. It just couldn’t happen.”

“Not Benny, no.”

“Not anybody. How’d he bruise his right shoulder? Did he do it before or after he’d popped out his arm? It’s a load, all right” He took a furious drag on his cigarette and it showered sparks over the table. “The question is, who?” I nodded.

He banged the cigarette out on the jar lid that served as an ashtray. “You know more’n you think you can tell me.”

“I can’t… I hardly know you.” Then he read my mind.

“You think I might not be who I say I am?”

“That’s possible.”

“Well. I don’t have a flier’s license to show you. That wouldn’t do anyhow, I ’spect.” He got up and went to the stove for a refill; picked up the whiskey bottle and put it back down. “Want some more?” I said no. He sat back down and stared into his cup, as if gathering his thoughts.

“Benny and I were best friends in middle school. We’re line cousins. My folks moved up to New York for a few years and we lived in the same line house as Benny.” He waved at the hundreds of books. “He got me to readin’. I guess I was as good a friend as he had. Why don’t you ask me something about him? Like I asked you.”

“Believe me… you’re better off not knowing anything.”

“That just ain’t so. I been walkin’ around with a gun for three weeks. Better off if I knew what I might be up against.”

“I don’t think they’d bother you,” I said without too much conviction. He just stared at me. “All right. Tell me about Benny’s … love life. Did he have any homosexual experience?”

Perkins frowned and took his time answering. “If he did, he never told me about it. Wouldn’t expect him to, though. I know he had a really bad time with a woman some years back, and hadn’t seen many women until you came along. He told me a lot about that—say, I don’t want to embarrass you.”

“Sex doesn’t embarrass me.”

“Well, he was real confused about you because he had a hard time separating out the sex from the love. You know? Not the way most everybody does. Stronger, because he had nothing to go on, nothing good. And all of a sudden he had everything. He said there was nothing you didn’t know, nothing you wouldn’t do.”

“He was wrong there. But the things I won’t do would never occur to Benny.”

He shifted restlessly. “What did he tell me that nobody else would know?… You, um, did it once in the women’s locker room. You had to hide in a smelly little closet.”

I smiled at the memory. “Why?”

“A whole gym class came in. Right at the wrong moment.”

I nodded. The right moment, actually; I’d never seen Benny recover so fast. The situation must have fulfilled some obscure fantasy. “You’re right. That’s something not even the FBI would know.”

He leaned forward, alert “You suspect the FBI?”

“No… I was just—”

“I do.”

“You think the FBI killed Benny?”

“Some part of the government.” He rubbed at his chin savagely with the back of his hand, sandpaper sound. “Look, Benny told me how he got here. He zigzagged all over the country for a day and then went to Vegas. Took off his beard and most of his hair and got his skin dyed, then got all new papers. Then he spent another three days constantly on the move, before he got here. No private person could have tracked him down.

“And look. How come they dropped the investigation, just like that? They only even interrogated me once, the day after he died, and I’m the only real suspect they could have. Somebody told them to get off it.”

I hardly heard what he was saying, for the overwhelming rush of guilt. “What day did he die?”

“January ninth. Why?”

So I hadn’t caused it; that was before I’d told Jeff. “Could we go outside? I—I’m having difficulty breathing.”

He picked up the shotgun on the way out. It was still cold and clear. We went behind the house and walked between rows of dead cornstalks.

“I wanted to get out because I was afraid your place might be bugged,” I said.

“If it’s the FBI you’re worried about, I might be bugged.” He switched the Shotgun to his right hand and buried his left deep in a pocket, for warmth. “They can get you while you’re sleeping, do microsurgery. Leave a bug in your skull for the rest of your life.”

“Come on… that’s just something you see on the cube.”

He shrugged. “Why would the FBI be interested in Benny?”

How much to tell? “I think he was in touch with them. If he was murdered, it wasn’t them who got to him.” I gave Perkins a synopsis of our dealings with the sinister political action group. “Before Benny left, I think he tried to penetrate the group as deeply as possible, and then told the FBI all he knew.”