Charles Williams - Girl Out Back

I whirled, still sitting, and stared with growing horror. It was Cliffords. He was puffing his way toward me like some pudgy and self-consciously important gnome, and in his hands he was carrying a brown paper bag and a home-made crutch.

I knew I had to quit staring some way, but nothing seemed to work. The whole thing was crashing down around me, and my mind didn’t seem capable of grasping anything except the fact that now we were both headed for prison.

He hurried up. “Well, this’ll fix you up, Mr. Ward. I made you a real good crutch.” He showed it to me.

He wanted me to tell him how good it was.

“You. . . .” I shook my head and tried again. This time I finally got tracked. “You were gone so long. I thought you’d decided to run for it.”

He shook his head. “No, sir . Not me, Mr. Ward. Ain’t no use tryin’ to outfox the F.B.I. I found that out.”

Twelve

I tried to keep my face expressionless. What was the matter with the suet-headed little moron? I’d drawn him a picture; I’d sat down patiently and spelled it out for him, syllable by syllable. I’d told him how horrible it was in prison, and that he’d get ten years for what he’d done. I’d given him $3,800. I’d furnished him a car. I’d broken my goddamned ankle for him and promised him it would be at least twelve to twenty-four hours before anybody even found out he’d escaped. I wanted to scream at him. What the hell did he want—Brownell to come down here and carry him out piggy-back and furnish him with a Duncan Hines list of approved hiding places;

“Ain’t nobody escapes from the G-men,” he went on, hunkering down in front of me. “I should of knowed better in the first place. Look at how you got Dillinger, and Machine-gun Kelly, and Karpis. . . .”

He was an F.B.I, buff. And I’d opened my fat mouth and made it worse.

“. . . and when you explained how you fellers’d caught up with me . . .” He stopped and gave a sententious shake of the head.

You’re good, Godwin. You were magnificent. Tell him some more about how bright you are.

“. . . and if you can’t travel at all, Mr. Ward, I got it all figured out. I’ll go down the lake and call your office and have ‘em send out help. . . .”

If only he’d shut up . I was contemplating the ultimate madness of it. I’d arrested him, and now there was no way on earth I could escape from him. I was his hero—along with the F.B.I, in general. By God, he wasn’t going to desert me. He’d help me get back to the office if it took the rest of the week. Maybe they’d put his picture in the papers. If I took him down to Sanport and kicked him out of the car he’d be in F.B.I, headquarters inside of twenty minutes telling them all about it. If I left him here and ran, he’d do the same thing. They’d get a description from him, and it might take Ramsey as long as five minutes to recognize me.

No, that wasn’t quite the ultimate. The final, most putrid joke of all was the fact they probably wouldn’t even prosecute the fatuous little meat-head. Why should they? They’d have me. Presumably I was intelligent enough to know right from wrong, and they could reach into the State and Federal grab-bags without even looking and come up with a half-dozen charges that would stick. I tried a few on for size—conspiracy, obstructing justice, destroying evidence, impersonating a Federal officer, compounding a felony, and probably grand theft and accessory to armed robbery. Add flight to escape prosecution. And, oh yes, I had just finished destroying twelve thousand dollars worth of United States currency they were trying to recover. They were going to like me better than anybody they’d had in their hair since Gaston B. Means.

“You got your shoe back on,” he said.

“Yes,” I replied wearily. “It began to feel a little better.”

“Don’t seem to be swole much. You reckon you’ll need the bandage?”

“I don’t think so.” I laced the shoe up rather loosely. He handed me the crutch and I struggled to my feet, not bothering to make much of a production of it. What difference did it make now? Anyway, I was an F.B.I, superman, wasn’t I? If I tucked my feet up my pants legs and roared off the ground like a pheasant he wouldn’t consider it more than mildly noteworthy.

I’ll carry the surp buckets,” he said. He strung their handles on the wooden shaft of the shovel and slung it across his shoulder. I stared at them.

I’ll go slow,” he said. “Just tell me when you want to stop and rest.”

He started out. I fell in behind him.

In a moment lie looked back over his shoulder. “Is the crutch about right?”

“It’s fine,” I said. He went on.

The three pails bumped gently together as they swayed to his stride, forever three feet before my eyes. I tried to look away from them. I tried not to hear the small metallic sounds they made.

“We’ll make her in fine shape,” he told me reassuringly over his shoulder. “Sure,” I said.

“When we get to the cabin, we’ll use the boat.”

I didn’t say anything. I merely reflected it would be wonderful if we drowned. It would be such a fitting close to our brief encounter and to this perfect idyll of a day. Nothing short of committing suicide could lend it that final little brush-stroke it needed to make it complete. A truly formidable day. I thought, trying to keep my mind and attention off those pails; the great whore of all days. Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes, and smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands.

The pails clinked companionably.

They contained one-hundred-and-one thousand dollars, and there were only two people on earth who knew it.

I wrenched my eyes away from the pails, feeling sick and very cold in my stomach. Still pools of shadow clotted and thickened under the trees as the sun went down.

Nobody knew I was out here, or that I had even been here.

That was irrelevant. That wasn’t the question at all.

The proposition as stated is that everything you buy in this antic bazaar has its individual price tag. Look at it first; don’t be a fool and cry about the bill afterward. You know what it is now; and understand that it won’t be any different after it’s too late to return the merchandise.

He backed me into this corner. . . .

No, he didn’t. You backed yourself into it. Don’t wait and make that great discovery after it’s too late. Accept it now. You can buy your way out in something less than a minute, but it’s not going to be on a pass.

The pails swung gently behind his shoulder, three feet away. I was becoming hypnotized. I kept seeing them as they had looked when they were open on the ground. I could put out my hand and touch them. Godwin’s Law of Character Erosion states that the attrition of honesty. . . . Never mind that bright and sophomoric bit of wisdom. This is something else. Well, isn’t murder the ultimate dishonesty?

The thing that was so terrible about it was its simplicity. I could go on and go to prison, for nothing. Or I could merely walk out of here with a fortune, and not go to prison at all.

It was twilight. I saw the edge of the clearing and the darkening bulk of the cabin ahead of us.

All right, I thought. But when you start, do it fast and very coldly, and don’t think at all.

Now we were inside the cabin, from which the light was almost gone. I felt very tight, and far away, and was concentrating on details like remembering to limp as I walked. I had picked up my jacket and the paper bag that contained the $3,800. He had already put the three pails in the boat and had come back after the clothes he was going to take. He placed them in a cheap little imitation leather bag he took from under the bed.