James Cain - The Baby in the Icebox and Other Short Fiction

“If you’ve got the nerve, I have.”

She was looking square into his eyes, and he felt a throb of excitement.

“The worst they can do is put us in jail. Well... I been there before, haven’t I? Plenty of times — but I’m still here.”

He turned to the shelves again, didn’t see her look at him queerly, hesitate, and start to leave before deciding to follow him. His hand touched something and he gave an exclamation.

“What is it, Jack?”

“Matches! Now we’re coming.”

Lighting matches, poking and peering, they located the canned goods section.

“Here’s soup. My, Jack, that’ll be good!”

“O.K. on soup.”

“What kind do you like?

“Any kind. So it’s got meat in it.”

“Mulligatawny?”

“Take two. Small size, so they’ll heat quick.”

“Peas?”

“O.K.”

She set the cans on the counter, but he continued searching, and presently yelled:

“Got it, Flora, got it! I knew it had to be there!”

“What is it, Jack?”

“Chicken! Canned chicken! Just look at it!”

He found currant jelly, found instant coffee, condensed milk, a package of lump sugar, found cigarettes.

“O.K., Flora. Anything else you want?”

“I can’t think of anything else, Jack.”

“Let’s go.”

When they got back to the house again, it was dark. He put more wood on the fire, went back to the kitchen, filled the bucket again. When he returned, to put it on the fire, he noticed she had put on her stockings, sweater, and skirt. He felt his own denims. They were dry. He put them on. But when he went to put on his shoes his feet recoiled from their cold dampness. He let them lie, sat down, and pulled the robe over his feet. She started to laugh.

“Wonder what we’re going to eat off of?”

“We’ll soon fix that.”

He found the saw, found a piece of smooth board, sawed off two squares. “How’s that?”

“Fine. Just like plates.”

“Here’s a couple of chisels for forks.”

“We sure do help ourselves.”

“If you don’t help yourself, nobody’ll do it for you.”

When the water began to steam, they dropped the cans in — the big can of chicken shaped like a flatiron first, the others on top of it. They sat side by side and watched. After a while they fished out the soup, and he took a chisel and hammer and neatly excised the tops. “Take it easy, Flora. Watch you don’t cut your lip.”

They put the cans to their mouths, drank. “Oh, is that good! Is that good!” Her voice throbbed as she spoke.

Panting, they gulped the soup, tilting the cans to let the meat and vegetables slip down their throats.

They fished out the other cans then, and he opened them, the chicken last. She took it by a leg and quickly lifted it to one of their plates.

“Don’t spill the juice. We’ll drink that out of the can.”

“I haven’t spilled a drop, Flora. Wait a minute. There’s a knife here, I’ll cut it in half.”

He jumped up, looked for the carpenter’s trimming knife he had used to whittle the kindling. He couldn’t find it.

“Damn it, there was a knife here. What did I do with it?”

She said nothing.

He cut the chicken in half with the hammer and chisel. They ate like a pair of animals, sometimes stopping to gasp for breath. Presently nothing was left but wet spots on the board plates. He got fresh water and set it on the fire. It heated quickly. He went to the kitchen, washed out the soup cans, came back, made the coffee in them. He opened the milk and sugar, gave each can a judicious dose.

“There you are, Flora. You can stir it with a chisel.”

“That’s just what I was wishing for all the time — that I could have a good cup of coffee, and then it would be perfect.”

“Is it O.K.?”

“Grand.”

He offered her a cigarette, but she said she didn’t smoke. He lit up, inhaled, lay back on the couch of tar paper. He was warm, full, and content. He watched her when she got up and cleared away the cans and bucket. She found a rag in the tool kit, dipped it in the last of the hot water.

“Don’t you want me to wipe the grease off your hands?”

He held out his hands, and she wiped them. She wiped her own hands, put the rag with the other stuff, sat down beside him. He held out his hand, open. She hesitated, looked at him a moment as she had looked at him in the store, put her hand in his.

“We ain’t got it so bad, Flora.”

“I’ll say we haven’t. Not to what we might have. We could have been drowned.”

He put his arm around her, drew her to him. She let her head fall on his shoulder. He could smell her hair, and his throat contracted, as though he were going to cry. For the first time in his short battered life he was happy. His grip on her tightened, he pushed his cheek against hers. She buried her face in his neck. He kept nuzzling her, felt his lips nearing her mouth. Then he pulled her to him hard, felt her yield, turn her head for his kiss.

Convulsively he winced. There was a sharp pain in the pit of his stomach. He looked down, saw something rough and putty-stained about the neck of her sweater. Instantly he knew what it was, what it was there for. He jumped up.

“So — that’s where the knife was. I pull you out of the gutter, feed you, take you in my arms, and all the time you’re getting ready to stick me in the back with that thing.”

She started to cry. “I never saw you before. You said you’d been in jail, and I didn’t know what you were fixing to do to me!”

He lit a cigarette, walked around the room. Once more he felt cold, forlorn, and bitter, the way he felt on the road. He looked out. The rain was slackening. He threw away the cigarette, sat down on the floor, drove his feet into the cold clammy shoes. Savagely he knotted the stiff laces. Then, without a word to her, he went slogging out into the night.

I was assigned to the kitchen, dipping grub for the guards, not the cons like the radio said I was. I had been in the laundry, but my fingers and toes all swelled up and I got a ringing in the ears from the liquid soap, so they switched me to the kitchen. My name is Red Conley. If you don’t quite recollect who Red Conley is, go down to the public library and look him up in the Los Angeles newspapers. You’ll find out a funny thing about him. According to them write-ups, Red Conley is dead.

It had been raining all morning, and around eleven the meat truck drives up. They let it right in the yard, and Cookie yells for me and Bugs Calenso to unload it. Bugs, he’s got three concurrents and two consecutives running against him, and some of it’s violation of parole, so they don’t bother to figure it up any more. Along about 2042, with good behavior and friends on the outside, he’s eligible. Me, I’m in for rolling six tires down the hill from Mullins’s Garage, which seemed to be a good idea at the time, but I was doing a one-to-five before we even got the papers off them. Still, I had served a year, and was up for parole, and it looked O.K., and if I’d let it ride I’d have been out in a month.

So me and Bugs, we split it up with me handling the meat, account I’m younger, and him handling the hooks, account he knows how. I’d pull out a quarter of beef, then brace under it, then come up. Then I’d tote it to the cold storage room, and Bugs would catch it with the hook that swiveled to the overhead trolley. Then he’d throw the switch and I’d shove the stuff in place, the forequarters on one rail, the hindquarters on another. There was four steers on the truck, two of them for someplace down the line, two of them for the prison. That meant eight quarters of meat, and I guess I took ten minutes, because beef is not feathers, and I needed a rest in between. But then it was all moved, and Bugs give a yelp for the driver, who was not outside, where he generally waited, but inside, account of the rain. So he yelped back, from inside the corridors someplace, and then we hollered some more and said what was he doing, stalling around so he could get a free meal off the taxpayers of the state of California, and why don’t he take away his truck? So Cookie joins in, and quite a few joins in, and some very good gags was made, and it was against the rules but it felt good to holler.