Authors: Elmore Leonard
Taking her back to the table Richie said, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, talking to your mom like that."
Armand had the container of lasagna in front of him now eating from it, taking his time; it was pretty good, still warm. Richie had gone to the toilet and Carmen in that undershirt was looking at Richie's Model 27 Smith & Wesson lying on the table. He said to her, "You ever shot one of those?"
It caught her by surprise. She looked at him a moment before shaking her head.
"Good," Armand said. Their eyes held for another moment and he was sorry he had spoken to her.
Richie came in from the hall zipping up his pants, a magazine under his arm. He said, "Jesus Christ, Bird, you still eating?" The punk chewing his gum. "Man, I already showed you what you're gonna look like."
Armand stopped eating, pushed the lasagna away from him and leaned on the table, his arms flat along the edge, one hand hanging, feeling his belly through his tie. He watched Richie, seated now, the magazine open, showing Carmen the picture of the twelve-hundred-pound man lying in bed, his little head peeking out from that tremendous body.
"Bird," Richie said, never shutting up, "listen to what the guy eats. For breakfast, two pounds of bacon, a dozen eggs and some rolls. Lunch, four Big Macs, four double cheeseburgers, eight boxes of fries, six little pies and six quarts of soda. Am I making you hungry?"
Keep talking, Armand thought, watching Richie blow a bubble and pop it.
"For supper he'll have three ham steaks, six sweet potatoes, six or seven regular potatoes and stuffing. Bird, can you imagine this guy taking a dump? Jesus Christ." Richie shook his head, studying the picture in the magazine. When he looked up he was starting to smile. "You know who could cook for this guy? Old Donna. Be like cooking for a whole fucking cellblock."
Armand watched Richie turn to Carmen.
"Donna Mulry's the Bird's sweetheart."
And was surprised when Carmen looked at him and said, "Why does he call you the Bird?"
Armand liked her asking him that. It reminded him of who he was. Or who he had been. He said, "I'm called the Blackbird," and almost smiled at her.
"Him and Donna are going to Memphis," Richie said, cracking his gum, "so they can visit Graceland, hold hands looking at all that Elvis Presley shit. Isn't that right, Bird?"
Look at the punk chewing away. "I think so," Armand said.
"Donna's this dried-up old broad use to be a corrections officer," Richie said to Carmen. "Man, did she love corrections. I can tell you why, too, if you want to know." Richie paused, he had plenty of time, and got a bubble going. A big one.
Armand's right hand came out of his coat holding the Browning auto. Richie wasn't looking. Armand racked the slide to put one in the chamber. Now he was looking, his eyes big peeking over that bubble. Armand the Blackbird said, "You get one, Richie, like everybody else," extended the Browning and shot him in the center of that pink bubble. The sound of it so loud--as Richie's head snapped back and came forward to hit the magazine lying on the table--always louder than Armand expected.
* * *
Carmen heard him say, "There," and heard him blow out his breath even as she felt her head ringing, the room filled with the sound. She was holding herself rigid, but didn't realize it until the sound faded to silence and she watched Armand get up and move to the end of the table, watched him lay his gun next to Richie's, lift Wayne's jacket from the back of Richie's chair and use it to cover Richie's head and shoulders. Carmen thought of stopping him. Don't, that's my husband's. But kept quiet, trying to feel Wayne close by, the way she had felt him before and used him to get mad and hold on. If he was with her now, he wasn't saying a word. She stared at his jacket, at IRONWORKERS BUILD AMERICA, blue on silver, and beyond it a splash of color on the wall, deep red.
"You know what he did?" Armand said.
Carmen looked up. He was going toward the kitchen.
"He called me Bird for the last time, that's what he did." Armand walked into the kitchen and Carmen waited. She looked at the dull-metal automatic and the nickel-plated revolver on the table next to the covered shape. Armand came out of the kitchen with his bottle of whiskey saying, "I'm no bird. All I know about that stuff was from my grandmother. It was so long ago I don't even remember most of it."
Carmen watched him sit down at his place and pour whiskey into his glass. He raised the glass to her and took a sip.
"I'll tell you something else. I never saw her get seagulls to shit on a car. Oh, they said she could do it, but I never saw it. She was gonna turn me into an owl one time. I said, 'I don't want to be no owl, I want to be a blackbird.' She said okay. So I went in the sweat lodge, I was in there hours. I come out naked holding a blanket around me. She beats on this little drum she's got and chants in Ojibway awhile. She stops, she tells me to throw off the blanket and fly away. I throw it off, raise my arms up. Nothing happened. I feel my body, I said to her, 'I'm no blackbird, I'm still me.' She says, 'When was the last time you bathed?' I said, 'You mean washed myself? I took a bath yesterday.' She says, 'Oh, you not suppose to bathe for a month.' So I didn't become a blackbird." He raised his glass to her, said, "That's my life story, whether you understand it or not," and took a drink.
Carmen said, "Who wants to be a blackbird?"
He seemed to like that and came close to smiling. "If you could be any kind of bird there is, what kind would you be?"
Carmen thought of birds and saw the bird prints covering the walls of her mother's house. She said, "I wouldn't be a bird. I'd be something else."
He seemed to like that, too. "All right, what would you be?"
Carmen took a moment, breathed in, hesitated and breathed out through her mouth. She said, "Maybe a deer." She watched him nod, thinking about it. She said, "Although . . ." pulled the neck of the tank top away from her, lowered her head slightly and sniffed. "They smell awful."
He said, "We all smell at times."
She fanned the air in front of her. "Not this bad." She said, "That buck lure really smells." She said, "Could I get dressed?"
"If you want, sure. I'm not Richie, I'm not the same as him."
Carmen watched him raise his glass to the shape at the end of the table and take a drink.
She said, "I'll have to go upstairs."
There was a silence.
He said, "Well . . ."
She waited, expecting him to say, Didn't you bring clothes? Or, I'll go up with you. She watched him pour whiskey into his glass.
He said, "Okay, I'll give you one minute."
She didn't move.
"Go on."
Now she got up, walked around the table past him. When she was in the hall she heard him say, "You don't want to be a bird, think of what you would be."
Carmen closed the bedroom door and locked it. She went to Wayne's side of the bed, dropped to her hands and knees and saw the Remington, right there, brought it out feeling the weight of it and smelling the oil smell. She went into the bathroom, closed the door and pumped the gun. There would be a cartridge in the chamber now if the gun was loaded. She pumped it again and a three-inch magnum slug ejected. It was loaded. She picked up the slug from the floor and shoved it into the magazine. Now, go do it. And thought, I can't. And told herself, Don't think. But at the bedroom door, her hand on the old-fashioned key sticking out of the lock, she started thinking again, she couldn't help it.
There was a George Jones song Armand had liked called "The Last Thing I gave Her Was the Bird," until he got sick and tired of Richie and then he didn't care for it anymore. That fucking Richie, he was like something stuck to the bottom of your shoe you couldn't get rid of, like his chewing gum. That wasn't a bad idea, though, take Donna down there to see Graceland. Why not? She was a stupid woman, but that was okay, he was tired of being alone in hotel rooms, bars, motels--take her on a trip, play some Yahtzee . . . One moment he felt relieved, a weight lifted off him, looking at the ironworker's jacket covering the punk. The next moment he didn't feel so good.
She could wait for him to come up. Get down behind the side of the bed with the gun aimed at the door. He walks in . . . But if he came upstairs he'd be ready, he'd have his gun in his hand he killed a man with, nothing to it, so easy for him, or he'd have a shotgun. Or he could wait, her nerves bad enough, and she wouldn't know where he was. Or she could listen for the stairs to squeak . . . And heard Wayne say to her, For Christ sake, if you're gonna do it, do it. Wayne took her that far, gave her the loaded gun. Now she had to hear herself say it, in her own words, and after that stop thinking.
You have to kill him.
There wasn't a sound in the house.
You have to go downstairs and kill him.
Carmen turned the key to unlock the door.
He was sorry now he had started talking to her. It was the same with the old man in the hotel room, he was sorry after they had talked; though he didn't feel sorry for the girl who ordered breakfast from room service and hardly touched it, wasting the old man's money. He had never talked to a person he was going to kill before he talked to the old man and now he had talked to this woman Carmen. He was thinking he'd better not talk to her anymore . . . and heard the stairs creak and heard her steps coming down to the front hall. Looking at his watch Armand said, "You're ten seconds late." Talking to her again, saying that without thinking because she was easy to talk to. He took a drink, waiting to see her come in, and held the glass, listening. When no sound came to him he said to himself, Man, you're getting old, you know it? He sat waiting. There was no way she could sneak up on him, but she was trying something. It got his mind working again. This woman had nerve. Putting the glass down he laid the palms of his hands flat on the table and turned his head enough to see his Browning close to Richie's .38, where he had laid it when he covered the punk with the jacket. He could reach it if he leaned over and stretched--pick it up with his left hand.
"So you don't like the idea of a bird," Armand said. "What do you want to be?"
No answer.
She was there, but she wasn't talking.
* * *
Carmen had the stock of the Remington against her bare shoulder, the barrel aimed at his face, his profile, twelve to fifteen feet away, close; though she was back far enough that she could see everything at the table: the covered shape, the two guns, Richie's bright one and Armand's dull-metal automatic, his head turned that way, and on the other side of him, to his right, the shotgun leaning against the table. She saw the light from the window shining on the crown of his black hair, above the slug barrel's front sight, her mind telling her, You have to kill him. But saw Richie killed as she heard that word, shot through the head, some of him coming out red to smear against the wall. And she lowered the sight to a point between Armand's shoulder blades, a thick solid shape in the black suit. Do it . . . Or she could shoot him through the cane back of the chair framed in dark wood. She raised her face from the gunmetal smell to look at him quick and make up her mind to shoot high or low but for God's sake shoot . . .
Just as he said, "Where are you, Miss?" and half-turned, brought the chair sideways to the table to sit looking at her over his shoulder.
Standing there in those nice little underpants with the shotgun. She knew it was here all the time, tricked him.
Armand said, "You found it, 'ey?" and squinted at that black hole pointing at him. "It looks like the same one you had that other time. Yeah, with the slug barrel." Wanting her to understand he didn't give a shit about it. "Let me ask you something. Is it loaded?"
"It's loaded."
Her voice sounded calm, but that didn't mean she wasn't scared. "You sure now. You not bullshitting me."
She said it again. "It's loaded."
Maybe she was afraid to say anything else, give away how nervous she was inside her nice underwear. He was thinking he had never gone to bed with a woman as slim and beautifully shaped as this one. He could see the points of her breasts in the undershirt, but couldn't see her dark place through the white panties. The ironworker's little wife surprised him then.
She came into the room, moving sideways to keep the 12-gauge pointed at him, and went to the end of the table to stand by the two handguns. He thought she was going to do something with them, get them out of the way. No, what she did was put the stock of the 12-gauge under her arm to hold it with one hand and with the other lifted the ironworker's jacket, uncovering the dead punk. It amazed him. To look at Richie? No, to fold the jacket against her body one-handed and lay it on the other corner of the table. Her husband's, taking care of it for him. This was the kind of woman to have. Live in the city and take her places, but not the Silver Dollar. He could take Donna Mulry to the Silver Dollar or Memphis, Tennessee. He felt tired and wouldn't mind lying down a while. Then pushed that from his head thinking, Man, what are you doing? Take the fucking gun away from her and use your own, one shot, get it done.
Armand got up from the chair. He heard wind rattle the windows, glanced over that way, picked up his glass and put it down, nothing in it, moving just a small step closer to her.
"Look at him, Miss," Armand said, nodding at the punk, wanting her to see the mess his bullet had made of Richie's head, his hair matted and dyed black now, some of what little brains he had shot out of him.