Charles Williams - Hell Hath No Fury

I switched on the light, and she repaired the damage.

While she was poking around in her purse, something fell out of it, bounced once on the seat, and fell on to the floor mat. I groped around for it and found it for her. It was a money clasp, apparently of sterling silver and made in the shape of a dollar sign.

“Say that’s a pretty thing,” I said.

“My mother gave it to me when I graduated from high school.”

I handed it back to her and she dropped it into her purse. “We can be married any time,” I said. “We’ve already got our silver started.”

She laughed, and finished rubbing out the tear stains. She felt a lot better, and I kept on clowning so she wouldn’t know the way I was raging inside.

* * *

When I left her at the gate it was like pulling off an arm to let her go, but I was anxious to get started before she thought to ask me what I was going to do. I didn’t want to lie to her any more than I had to, and I knew she’d be frantic and try to make me promise if she got an inkling of what was going on in my mind.

When I got over on Main I stopped under a street light and got out and opened the trunk. I found what I was looking for, and threw them in the front seat. They were a pair of leather gloves I’d won on a punchboard one time and kept in the car for changing tires. They were leather all over, very thick and tough. For a job like this they’d save your hands almost as well as having them taped.

I was doing seventy by the time I got out of town. I’d forgotten about Tate and the Sheriff and the fact that they were still keeping an eye on me. If they tried to follow me, they got lost. I had to slow down when I left the highway, but I was crowding it all the way across the sandhills and through the river bottom. I went up over the second ridge bucking along like a madman in the uneven ruts, and when I hit the clearing I drove right up in his yard. And he wasn’t home.

The car was gone, and in the beams of the headlights I could see the cabin door was closed. I sat there cursing for two or three minutes before I remembered it was Saturday night. A big sport like Sutton would be in town, or even in the county seat. He had to spend all that easy money some way.

There was no use going back and looking for him around the beer joints and pool halls. The only thing to do was wait. I looked at my watch. It was a little after eleven.

I waited until twelve. And then it was one a.m. Somewhere far off a train whistled for a crossing, and once in a while a little night breeze would rustle through the oaks around the clearing. What was the use of hanging around any longer? He was probably bedded down somewhere by this time and wasn’t coming back.

I gave it up finally at two-thirty and went back to town. I took a shower and lay down in the darkness with an all-night pass on the merry-go-round. The ash-tray on the floor beside the bed filled up and overflowed, and the sheets stuck to me every time I’d turn. I’d think of him, not satisfied with squeezing her dry with blackmail but having to dress it up with that crawling joke of his and humiliate her for his own particular brand of laughs, and the anger would come boiling up and choke me.

When was it going to end, and where? If I got him stopped, how about Dolores Harshaw? The whole thing was changed now. I wanted to stay here, and I wanted to marry Gloria. So then she’d just wish us luck, and that Sheriff would get off my back and take up raising orchids? There wasn’t any way to guess what she was going to do.

I must have dropped off to sleep sometime towards dawn, for the next thing I knew it was ten-thirty and I could hear church-bells ringing. Sutton was back in my mind with the opening of my eyes, as if he’d never been gone, and even while I was looking at my watch I was rolling out of bed. I dressed and went downtown. Sunlight was brassy in the streets, stabbing at my eyes. Only a few people were in the restaurant. I ordered orange juice and coffee, and while I sat drinking it a man in a white hat came in and sat down at the second stool on my left. It was Tate. He nodded.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“All right, I guess.”

“Anything new in the bank deal?”

“No,” he said. “We’re still waiting.” He looked at me, the level gaze devoid of any expression at all, and then went back to the newspaper, “just waiting.”

I finished the coffee and put some change on the counter. “See you around,” I said, and went out. I could feel him there behind me. Waiting, I thought. They’d wait a long time. I threw my cigarette savagely into the street and headed for the car, forgetting them. He ought to be home by now.

When I crossed the bridge over the river I thought of last night, and of her telling me, and began to ride the accelerator. And then when I hit the clearing I could see the car parked near the porch. He was home. I rolled to a stop in the front yard, grabbed the leather gloves off the seat, and got out.

I went up on the front porch and in the door without knocking. He wasn’t there. I stood in the middle of the room, looking around, feeling the wicked proddings of impatience and baffled rage. It looked about the same as it had that other time, when I’d come out here with Gloria, the bed unmade and dirty dishes sitting on the table by the rear door. Maybe he’d gone hunting. I turned, looking along the walls. The .22 rifle was lying in a rack near the front door and just above it was a pump shotgun. He couldn’t have gone far. A sudden thought occurred to me and I went over and checked the guns. The .22 was empty, but when I worked the action on the shotgun it was loaded. I jacked the three shells out on to the floor, picked them up, and threw them under the bed.

I sat down on the bed and leaned back against the wall. Outside I could hear a woodpecker hammering on a tree. The air was dead and very hot and I could feel sweat breaking out on my face. And then I heard him coming. He was climbing out of the ravine behind the house. I sat there as he appeared in the rear door, carrying a bucket of water in each hand.

He was wearing overalls, but no shirt, and the black hair on his arms and chest glistened with sweat. The smooth moon face split open with a grin that didn’t get as far as his eyes.

“Come in,” he said. “Make yourself at home.”

“Sure,” I said. I pulled a foot back and put it behind the edge of the small table beside the bed and shoved. It shot across the room and crashed into the kitchen table. An ashtray rolled, spilling butts, and the kerosene lamp hit the floor and shattered. Oil spilled down between the planks. “Sit down,” I said.

He looked at the mess. “Tough, huh?” He set the buckets of water on a bench by the door.

“Yes,” I said. “Tough.”

His eye drifted towards the shotgun.

“It’s not loaded,” I said.

“Well, what’ll they think of next?” He looked at me.

“What are we going to talk about? Not that I’m nosey, you understand—“

“Gloria Harper. You’ve been on her back a little over a year now—“

“And you came all the way out here to tell me to get off? Is that it?”

“I’m going to do better than that,” I said. “I’m going to help you off.”

I got up off the bed and started for him. He waited, not even putting his hands up. I walked in on him, watching the hands, and when they did move at last, the left feinting at my face, I turned sharply on my left-foot and took the knee against my thigh. Maybe he was expecting somebody from the Golden Gloves, I thought, swinging very low and hard into his belly and moving in with it at the end. He bent over, sucking for air and sick, and I put the glove in his face and twisted it. He groped for me with a left, and I hooked a right to his face which spilled him on to the edge of the kitchen table. The legs caved in on one end and he slid down it, getting mixed up with the plates and a bottle of syrup. He tried to get up, the wind roaring in his throat, and I dropped him again. It was five times before he stayed down. I was winded and my hands hurt, and sweat ran down my face like rain. I got him by the bib of the overalls and hauled him up against the slant of the table-top with my knee in his belly and bounced his head against it three times more for a sales talk and then let him slide down and roll around in the dishes. He was a mess to look at. I went over to the water buckets, fighting to get my breath, and poured water over the gloves to get the blood off, then took one of his shirts off the wall and dried them, and threw it on the floor. I poured the rest of the bucket of water in his face.