Authors: James Jones
“I know you, you son of a bitch,” the lanky young man said with his sneer-grin. That was all that was said. Then the gun bucked and flashed in his hand, and simultaneously a larger, greater flame exploded in his own head. As he fell, he tried to twist sideways so that instead of lighting on the fragile little typewriter case, it would light on him. It was more or less an instinctive motion of protection, but it was completely pointless, because he never reached the ground. The last thing he heard was the thin, tinny music of the merry-go-round.
F
RANK
H
IRSH SAT
at the nearly-deserted Country Club main bar two weeks later, squinting through one eye at the bottle racks on the back bar, and the thought that was uppermost in his mind was the unhappy realization that before long it would be midnight and they would close the Club, and he would have to go home. To Agnes.
Damn it all.
Festival Week was over: Festival Week that he had worked so hard on, and that Agnes had not even gone uptown to see, and Frank had shaved his little beard off. Dave’s funeral was over, too: Dave’s funeral, which he Frank had given him—the very best funeral that he could give him—and which, of course, Agnes had attended: Wild horses couldn’t have kept her away from Dave’s funeral, considering how it would look if she didn’t go. The business about Dave’s will, which Frank had had a hand in, was over also. The law’s handling of Dave’s murderer was over, too: He was being shipped under guard to a Veterans’ Hospital as a lockup mental patient. He was crazy—a crazy killer—there wasn’t any doubt of that. So probably, that was the best way of handling it, after all. Especially when it came out that he was a Congressional Medal of Honor winner in the last war. But just the same Frank hated to see him get off scot-free like that.
Frank looked at his watch (eleven-fifteen; only forty five minutes left) and squinted again at the bottle racks, and then motioned for Les the pro to fix him another highball. The little red-Irishman came running up quickly, smiling. And Frank studied him, grinning back. They were getting so they treated Frank Hirsh with quite a bit of deference anymore. Especially now, now that his election as vice president of the Club for next year was practically a foregone conclusion. Of course, he always tipped Old Les good, too. But even so, he was getting to be a pretty big man around this town anymore. Everywhere, that is, except his own damned home. He wasn’t treated like anything there. Except, of course, by Walter, who really loved him. Reminded, Frank looked at his watch again (eleven-sixteen now) and hopelessly thought about going home. She had been having another attack today; he only hoped she was asleep when he got there. If she wasn’t, it would mean he would be up half the night fetching for her, since little Walter would be asleep.
Frank had taken more and more lately to eating at the Club alone in the evenings. He would come out straight from work and usually stay right on until closing, at midnight. As long as there were people around him and he could talk, he could forget—for a while—that eventually he would have to go home.
Les the pro set his fresh drink in front of him and waited attentively to see if he didn’t want to talk; but this time, Frank just said thanks and fell again to thinking of the crazy killer: the crazy killer who had murdered his brother Dave.
He must have found out about the house from someone who didn’t know about him and then had hidden himself out there and stalked first Ginnie and then gone back and stalked Dave. In fact, that was what he himself had told them—when they finally got him to talk.
Frank hadn’t even known about the guy. He hadn’t known that Ginnie Moorehead—God! what a whore!—had actually gone off with him to Kansas and married him, and then run away back here to Dave. All that came out at the inquest when she told her damned story.
God, that woman! If you could even call her a woman. Whatever would have made Dave marry a lowlife like that Frank simply couldn’t understand. He had brought it all on himself, Dave had: getting mixed up with a bum like that.
Well, he had given him a good funeral, Frank thought sorrowfully. He had given the Old Man a good funeral, too, but compared to the funeral he had given Dave, it wasn’t nothing. They had buried him out there in the family plot with the Old Man—where all of them would wind up eventually. And Frank was sure Dave would have been pleased by that.
You just didn’t ever think of a murder like that happening in your own little hometown. Chicago, yes; or New York, or some other city. But not your hometown, not Parkman, Illinois. And especially not to your own
brother.
Of course, the soldier had not been from Parkman, and that made some difference.
Maybe they had had their differences, him and Dave, maybe they had fought over them—with hard feelings. But, by God, they
were
brothers; and always had been. If Dave only had of come to him for help, it might none of it have happened. If only he wasn’t so damned bullheaded and stubborn. He would have helped him. But that damned bullheaded stubbornness that had got him mixed up with that damned Ginnie Moorehead had also got him killed. He just wouldn’t learn; he never would.
Now that it was all over, it was funny, but Frank never thought of him as he had been the last few years. Whenever he thought of Dave, Frank saw him as the little kid brother that he had always taken such careful care of. That was the way he always saw him: the little towheaded kid he had loved so much and worked so hard to put through school. Poor old Dave, he guessed he must have been having a pretty bad time of it the last year or two, but he himself hadn’t known it. Dave wouldn’t come to him; and he had been so busy with all his own work on the bypass and with Agnes sick and all. So it had all just slipped up on him: on Dave. Well, Frank was sure that Dave, wherever he was, understood.
The thought of Agnes sent a sharp note through Frank’s melancholy revery and reminded him again that she was home sick now. He looked at his watch again (eleven-thirty now) and took a big pull at his highball. In a kind of desperation, he called Les over to talk about the closing baseball season.
Well—it didn’t do him much good. Les was a good listener; but after a few moments of worked-up enthusiasm, the whole thing fell flat for Frank and he sent Les to fix him another drink.
Anyway, baseball had set him to thinking of Dave again, and that one book Dave had written about a ball player—years ago. Why hadn’t he written more stuff like that? It was the only thing Dave had ever written that Frank had ever thought much of. And now Old Dave was dead. Frank had talked to Bob and Gwen French about this new book, the manuscript of which Dave had left to them, and had learned enough about it to know it was some kind of a combat novel about the war but that was all; but both Bob and Gwen seemed to think it could be published with a little cutting. Something about a love affair. Well, it would be nice for Old Dave if they could publish it—posthumously. Frank only hoped that they would use his right name—Hirsh—instead of making his name Herschmidt like Dave himself had done on those two stories.
It had been an unpleasant scene for all of them, that day they all met in the judge’s office in connection with the will. Largely because of that damned Ginnie Moorehead. (Frank simply could not think of her as
Hirsh.
) The judge had called the next day after Dave was killed, as soon as he got the will through the mail. And when Bob and Gwen learned about it that evening in the
Oregonian,
Bob had called him about the copy Dave had mailed to them. Frank had asked that they wait until after Festival Week was over before doing anything. Just as he had waited to have Dave’s funeral till after Festival Week was over. But when they finally did get together in the judge’s office, Ginnie Moorehead had kicked up a rumpus about Dave’s manuscript being given to the Frenches. It belonged to her, she said. It made a very unpleasant scene. And it didn’t do her a damned bit of good. Because the judge was just as strong on that point as he was on all the rest. It was just a simple will, ironbound; Dave had clearly intended that the book be left to the Frenches, and to them it was going.
Funny thing: when, afterwards, Frank asked the judge about what his fee would be in connection with the will, the judge simply said: “I’m being paid. Don’t worry about it.” Frank couldn’t figure out who it would be that was paying him. Unless it was that damned gambler ’Bama Dillert.
The leaving of Dave’s share of the taxi service to Ginnie Moorehead was the only thing that upset Frank about the will. That meant that now Frank would have that lowlife bum as a partner! In spite of his sadness over Dave’s death, he still couldn’t help but feel that Dave shouldn’t have done that to him. Of course, the only thing left for him to do was to buy her out. Which he had done. Christ, he couldn’t have
Ginnie Moorehead
for a partner! And, apparently, when she sensed that, she held him up on the price and refused to sell. She obviously wasn’t as dumb as she looked. So he had had to pay through the nose—but he had been glad to: to get rid of Ginnie Moorehead as a partner. Ginnie Moorehead had used the money to pay off the house she and Dave had bought, so now she had a house and Dave’s old car, and she was pretty well set up. It wouldn’t be long, Frank figured sarcastically, before she married some other joker. She had had her little taste of respectability, and now she wanted more. He had already heard she was going with some young guy who worked for Sternutol Chemical.
Well, anyway, he had gotten rid of her, and cheap at the price he figured. She had been there at the funeral, too, weeping and wailing. It had been all Frank could do to keep from going over and kicking her in the tail. Agnes wouldn’t even sit on the same side of the church with her. And rightly so. It was her who was the cause of the whole damned tragedy.
And once again the thought of Agnes impinged upon him and he looked at his watch (eleven-forty-five now: only fifteen minutes left till closing); Frank swung around on his stool and looked around the bar, but there were only two couples left in it now—both young guys with their wives. They wouldn’t want to be talking to him. He turned back to his drink. Probably, they were laughing at him behind his back.
Well, let them! he thought fierily. He could afford to let them laugh at him. He had earned all the prestige and respect—and power, too—in this town that he had once told Dave he would. And, by God, he could afford to sit back and let the sons of bitches laugh at him if he wanted to.
If he wanted to come out to the Country Club by himself, it was his business. And, as far as that went, he thought with a touch of the old terror rising in him at the thought: It was good for him. Because when he was around people he thought a lot less about going out “walking;” and that uncontrollable desire hit him a lot less often this way. There had been a lot of talk around Parkman lately about a peeping tom. He didn’t know where it had got started, but he had begun to listen to all of it carefully. Perhaps Edith had started it, before she left; because that was the only time that anybody knew someone was watching them, as far as he knew. But Edith had been gone a little over a year; and this talk had only started going around the last couple of months or so. In the past few months, Frank had added two new conquests—two new
possessions
—to his growing list of naked women. But the delicious pleasure of the added conquests—these two made five altogether, now—could not offset the terror he got when he thought about getting
caught.
Probably, if he ever was caught, they wouldn’t do anything to him. He had enough pull in this town any more that he could hush it up, he thought. But the very idea of the scandal and embarrassment, of being
caught
—while at some times, in certain moods, it actually seemed enticing to him—still nevertheless created in him the rest of the time a terror and a sense of sheer unreality: of everything being a figment of a dream—that he could not even describe to himself. And
that
was why he sat out here at the Club alone every night, talking to whoever was around. He did it to protect himself from going out. Out here the prestige and power and respect he had earned in Parkman was tendered to him, and was given freely.
And, by God, he
had
earned it. Whatever anybody said. He had
earned
it, all of it. So let all the sons of bitches laugh at him, it they wanted to, he thought fiercely. Calculating it all up once again, as he often did, he figured that—with all his holdings in the bypass venture, and the rest of his investments: not the least of which was the new filling-station ninety-nine-year lease he had just sold the other bypass corner for to Standard Oil: The corner which he himself owned privately—calculating all that in and adding it all up, he was worth, now, today, something over nine hundred thousand dollars. And, before another year was out, he would be—oh, that magic word—a Millionaire. He would be worth a million dollars. And he hadn’t forgotten about all his plans for future factory sites, either. So let all the sons of bitches laugh, if they wanted to.
Dawnie was impressed with what he had done. If
nobody
else was. Dawnie and her Shotridge (Frank found he called him that now all the time, since Dawnie had started it) were both impressed when he drove them out there and showed them all of it while they were home for Festival Week.
Out of the corner of his eye, Frank saw the other two couples remaining in the bar were leaving; and then he saw Les approaching him. Les had that apologetic look. Frank looked at his watch again. It was just exactly twelve.
Damn it all.
Tossing off the rest of his drink, Frank got up—holding himself steadily so as not to stagger any—and prepared to go home to his wife. He hoped she was asleep. If she wasn’t, it would mean that he would be up half the night preparing compresses for her.
M
OST ALL OF WHAT
the Frenches learned about Dave’s death they got from Frank. Because there was very little printed about it in the
Oregonian,
both because of Festival Week and because Clark Hibbard was a good friend of Frank’s and wanted to help him keep it quiet. So the day they all met in Judge Deacon’s office—before Ginnie Moorehead arrived—Bob and Gwen had sat with Frank for quite a while and he had told them all he knew about it. And Gwen, listening to it agonizingly, had to fight herself hard to keep from crying.