Killing Cousins (7 page)

He removed the flashlight from the glove compartment and shoved it into a side pocket of his jacket. Moving around to the rear of the wagon, he opened the tailgate and pulled Howard out onto the ground. He had the impression that old Howard had limbered up a little on the ride out.

“First things first,” he said. “I’ll have to return for the bags and the portable and the spade. Positions as before, Cousin. Watch your step in crossing the creek. The water will be hardly above your knees, but the rocks underfoot are slippery.”

His voice and entire attitude were a little too cheerful to suit Willie, who was becoming rather depressed again, not to say apprehensive, but she supposed that she must concede him the right to take a certain pleasure in the successful execution of his plans. He had already taken Howard under the arms, and so she took up the feet as before, and they moved off in the same order as before, he leading and she following and Howard, naturally, between. The ground was rough and treacherous, but the creek bank was fortunately low on this side, no steep decline to the water, and they got safely down without mishap and into the water and about halfway across before anything unfortunate occurred. Then Willie inadvertently stepped down on the side of a round rock and lost her balance and fell with a splash. Howard, released at the nether end, swung downstream with the current and was only prevented from floating away by the determined resistance of Quincy. Willie got up gasping and soaked, her blouse and Capri pants plastered to her body, and the night air felt suddenly twenty degrees cooler.

“Kindly be a little more careful,” Quincy said. “Can you imagine our position if old Howard had got away from me? It would be absolutely impossible to find him in the water in the darkness.”

“Well,” Willie said indignantly, “I have never before heard anything so unfair. Here I’ve fallen into the water and gotten soaked and might even have broken a leg or something, and all you can do is be cross and critical. I’m doing my very best, Quincy, and that’s all that can be expected of me.”

“Oh, well, never mind. No harm has been done. At the worst you’ve only wet your pants.”

“Please don’t be vulgar, Quincy. I’m hardly in the humor for it.”

“Excuse me. I’m only trying to keep your spirits up. I’d appreciate it, Cousin, if you’d resume your position. Old Howard’s pulling like the devil to get away, and I’m becoming slightly tired.”

Willie found Howard’s feet beneath the water and took them up again, and the crossing was completed. The bank on the other side, however, was a problem. It was about six feet high and very steep, almost vertical, and it was plainly impossible to walk right up it, let alone with Howard between. They leaned Howard against the bank in a semi-upright position while Quincy considered the matter.

“I’ll have to haul him up from above,” he said. “Hold him in position until I can clamber up, and be certain that you don’t let him fall forward into the water and get away.”

“Don’t worry, Quincy. I’m perfectly capable of holding Howard until you’re ready.”

She proved it by doing it, and Howard was hauled up safely by Quincy. Willie clambered up afterward, and it was from there only a hundred feet or so downstream to the spot Quincy had chosen. Willie was forced to concede that it seemed a very likely spot. It was among a cluster of bramble bushes where someone would go infrequently, hardly ever, and the chances of Howard’s being discovered were satisfactorily negligible. After resting a minute or two, Quincy prepared to return to the wagon.

“You had better stay here with Howard,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes with the things.”

“Perhaps I’d better go with you. You’ll surely need help carrying them.”

“No. After all, we must now do old Howard the courtesy of keeping him company until he is properly disposed of. I’ll have to make two trips across the creek. You can come down to the crossing on this side and help from there.”

“Well, please hurry, if you will. I don’t feel inclined to stay here with Howard indefinitely.”

She was feeling rather uneasy, as a matter of fact. The instant Quincy was gone, the night was filled with a thousand sounds that had not been there before, and the worst of the sounds was the crying of an owl somewhere among the trees, and she had a notion that the owl was watching her and taking Howard’s part against her, and she wished the owl would stop crying and fly away, but it did neither, and there was no way to make it. After a bit, she walked down the bank and found the spade and two bags, Quincy obviously having gone back for the rest, and she carried the bags and the spade back to the cluster of bramble bushes, and pretty soon Quincy came along with another bag and the portable. The owl kept crying, but Quincy didn’t seem to hear it, or if he did, didn’t mind.

“I’ll require a little light now,” Quincy said. “Here is the flashlight. Keep it pointed at the ground and shielded as much as possible above. It’s almost certain that no one will come around to see it, but it’s just as well to be cautious.”

She sat down beside Howard and held the light, and Quincy got to work with the spade. He seemed to be quite strong for a little guy who was generally allergic to physical exercise, and he worked along steadily with infrequent brief breaks for rest. Once, as a kind of token courtesy and to show her willingness to do her part, Willie offered to dig a little in his place, but he declined, as she expected, and it was pleasantly surprising, all in all, how quickly the time began to pass and how soon an adequate hole was dug. It would have been dug even sooner if it hadn’t been necessary to allow space for the bags and the portable that must also go in. Willie became so intrigued by Quincy’s demonstration of unsuspected physical effectiveness that she actually forgot to listen to the owl, and when she finally remembered to listen again, the owl was gone, or at least silent.

“Well,” said Quincy, climbing up and out, “it’s now time to put old Howard in.”

“Yes,” said Willie, “I guess it is.”

After he was in, Willie thought that it would only be proper to say something appropriate, and she tried to think of something, but she couldn’t think of anything original and couldn’t remember anything prescribed for such occasions. Then Quincy, who was clever and could always be relied upon, put in the bags and the portable and said, “Well, so long, old Howard. Drop us a line from Dallas,” and this seemed enough to be said, and nothing remained but to cover up and spread some twigs and leaves around.

They went back along the bank and across the creek, Quincy stopping to wash the spade in the water, and then, in the wagon, back across the pasture and between the Osage orange and the corn to the road.

“As I expected,” Quincy said, “it went well.”

NINE

 

This was the night, of all the nights it might have happened, that Cousin Fred met Fidelity Stemple. Heretofore, Cousin Fred’s approach to women had been direct and simple, even somewhat primitive, and if the approach was no more than moderately effective on the whole, it had at least left him unfettered and uncluttered, free alike of uncomfortable commitments and emotional hangovers. If a chick would, she would. If a chick wouldn’t, she wouldn’t. And if she wouldn’t, to hell with her. That, in brief, was Cousin Fred’s position.

Or had been. Before this particular night, that is. The night Quincy and Willie disposed of Howard, and Cousin Fred met Fidelity. At first, of course, Cousin Fred didn’t know if Fidelity would consider fornication or not, but he had immediately a miserable feeling that it was an issue of greatest importance that could not be dismissed, if she wouldn’t, with the assurance that there was always someone else who would.

The way he met her, he was walking down this dark street along about midnight, and suddenly he was listening to one of the most remarkable passages of profanity he had ever been privileged to hear. He stopped and continued to listen with proper admiration, at the same time peering ahead to locate the source, and there was this slim little chick with a pale pony tail standing on the sidewalk ahead of him. She was standing spraddle-legged with her arms akimbo and her fists on her hips and leaning far forward from the waist to look into the dark interior of a set of parked wheels. A Caddy. It was apparent that someone in the interior was the subject of her invective, and Cousin Fred’s first judgment was that he’d better get the hell out of there before the fight started, but he didn’t know whether to slip on past in the direction he was going or to turn and retreat in the direction from which he had come. In the moment of indecision, the profanity came to an abrupt halt, and he was aware that the chick had straightened and turned and was watching him in what appeared to be an attitude of friendliness.

“The son of a bitch is drunk,” she said with apparent good humor.

“Is he?” Cousin Fred said cautiously.

“Stinko, the slob. Come here and see.”

Cousin Fred approached and peered into the Caddy. A fat man was sprawled in the front seat with his head fallen back and his mouth open in a carp-like expression. His heavy breathing had the sound of gargling, but his breath didn’t smell like Listerine.

“Stinko, all right,” Cousin Fred conceded. “That’s plain enough.”

“We were in that little bar around the corner,” she said, “and he kept drinking all those God-damn boilermakers, just to show what a hell of a man he was, and no sooner did I get him outside, after trying for hours, than he began to puke, and he puked all over himself. Can you smell him, sweetie? Go on and smell the slob.”

“I smell him.”

“Well, it’s not the smell of roses, is it? I hope to God I die if I ever go out with another fat guy as long as I live, even if he’s got a million dollars. I never went out with a fat man in my life who didn’t turn out to be a slob one way or another.”

What Cousin Fred couldn’t understand was why this chick had felt compelled to go out with any slob whatever, fat or otherwise, for she was in his opinion by all odds the neatest chick he had ever encountered in KC and could probably have had her choice of almost any guy you’d be likely to find up and down Twelfth around the clock.

“Why did you go?” he said.

“Go where, sweetie?”

“Out with this fat guy.”

“Because he has money, of course. Why else?”

“Do you like fat guys with money?”

“Well, I sure as hell don’t like them
without
money.”

“Couldn’t you find a guy with money who wasn’t fat?”

“Oh, sometimes I do, of course,” she said thoughtfully, “but it’s rather astonishing, when you come to think of it, how many guys with money are fat. Besides, to be fair, they’re inclined to be especially generous. There are certainly advantages to fat guys if you can only stand their being such slobs. The problem now, however, is how the hell I’m going to get home.”

“Can’t you drive?”

“No, I can’t. Isn’t it ridiculous? I’m probably the last woman alive who can’t drive an automobile. I can’t understand it myself, really, but the moment I try I head immediately for the nearest building or pole or whatever solid is handy. Do you suppose you could possibly drive me home?”

“I don’t have my car with me.”

“We could use this one. After all, the son of a bitch is obliged to get me home, isn’t he? I’ll tell you what. We could drive out most of the way and leave him in the car and walk on to my place and have a couple of drinks or something.”

This was a proposition that seemed to Cousin Fred to have an interesting potential. It was almost four hours before he was supposed to appropriate the Buick for Cousin Quincy, and he couldn’t, offhand, think of any way to spend them that had half the appeal. The truth was, something strange was happening in Fred’s gnarled little heart, and what was happening, although he didn’t understand it yet, was something that had happened because of Fidelity to quite a few other men in much the same way. She looked almost statutorily young standing there with her head cocked and the pale pony tail sticking up from it at a sharp angle, but the truth was that she had never been young at all. She had only, once, been an ancient child.

“Let’s get the slob in the back seat,” Cousin Fred said.

He hauled the fat man out onto the pavement and then heaved him into the back seat while Fidelity, as her contribution to the effort, held the door open. Then they got in the front seat, Fred under the wheel, and he drove, following her directions, in a southeasterly direction that brought them in somewhat over twenty minutes to a respectable street on which, at intervals, there were respectable apartment buildings. During this time names were exchanged and rapport established.

“I live down in the next block, sweetie,” Fidelity said, “but I think we’d better leave fatso here and walk the rest of the way. I don’t want to litter the neighborhood with him.”

Cousin Fred pulled up at the curb, and they got out, leaving the keys in the ignition and the victim of boilermakers in the back, where he had fallen over onto his side on the seat, his knees drawn up against his belly in the posture of a gross and obscene embryo with prenatal gland trouble. He drew his breath loudly through his nose and expelled it through his lips, making bubbles.

“Looks like he’ll sleep till morning,” Cousin Fred said.

“For all I care,” Fidelity said, “the son of a bitch can sleep forever. Come on, sweetie. I’ll fix you a nice Hi-Fi Special for your trouble.”

“What’s a Hi-Fi Special?” Cousin Fred asked warily.

“It’s a drink I made up myself out of brandy and rum and vodka and some other stuff. You’ll like it. You see how I got the name? Hi is the way it makes you, and Fi is for me, my name, because I made it up. You see? I use it on guys to make them generous, and you’d be surprised how it works. It’s very effective, I mean.”

Cousin Fred, of course, had already decided what he wanted for his trouble, and it surely wasn’t any lousy Hi-Fi Special, but he wasn’t averse, nevertheless, to a preliminary social period, even one compounded of rum and brandy and vodka and stuff. Besides, if the recipe incited generosity in the hearts of guys, it would quite likely incite the same in the hearts of girls, including Fidelity, which would be a development well worth a hangover. His thoughts, though scatological, were qualified by tenderness, and he was beset by a strange uneasiness that he couldn’t diagnose. He was merely vaguely aware that Fidelity might somehow become, if he wasn’t careful, or even if he was, a threat to his emotional stability and his natural conservatism. In the next block, they turned into her apartment building and went up to her apartment. It was obvious from the environment, which was comfortable if not luxurious, that she had indeed been the recipient of generosity which had certainly not all been inspired by Hi-Fi Specials only. He remarked on this with a faint accent of bitterness.

“Sweetie,” she said, “it’s just that guys seem to enjoy giving me things.”

“I’ll bet they do.”

“It’s true. They seem to get the greatest pleasure from it.”

“I don’t doubt it for a second. I’ll just bet they get the greatest pleasure, all right. I wouldn’t mind getting some of that pleasure myself.”

“Well, you mustn’t be nasty about it, sweetie. You surely wouldn’t expect me to ruin a good thing by being chintze with a guy who is being generous. Anyhow, as you know, it’s none of your God-damn business.”

This terse reminder brought Cousin Fred up short. She was perfectly right, and he was bound to admit that he was acting like nothing but a lousy monogamist. Worse than that, he was thinking and feeling like one. Entirely, moreover, without justification. He had only met this chick, and here he was already, in less than an hour, wanting unreasonably to deny her the natural right to sleep around in her own best interests. He watched her moodily as she busied herself with bottles and glasses. Her straight little back was turned to him, and he observed her neatly turned tail with a disturbing sense of attachment. After a minute or two, she brought him a tall glass containing a vile-looking liquid with a couple of ice cubes floating in it. He took a long swallow of the liquid while she stood with her head cocked, the pale pony tail sticking up at any angle behind, to observe his reaction. And it was to his credit that his reaction was restrained. The mixture of brandy and rum and vodka and stuff was only waiting for the catalytic action of his stomach juices to set it off like a bomb. After the detonation, he hung onto the glass with both hands as if it were a lamppost while his organs settled into place and his head stopped spinning.

“What do you think of it?” she said.

“I never tasted anything quite like it before,” he said.

“Of course you haven’t. It’s my secret recipe. You can’t buy it at a bar.”

She raised her own glass to her pink lips and tipped it. She had apparently developed a tolerance for Hi-Fi Specials, for there was no discernible effect. Cousin Fred, watching her, was overwhelmed by a feeling of fuzzy admiration. Setting his glass carefully on a handy table, he grabbed her and kissed her fervently, but she had also apparently developed a tolerance for kisses. She accepted this one with good humor but with no warmth and no response.

“You mustn’t get excited, sweetie,” she said.

“Let me stay all night,” he said.

“No, sweetie. It’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“It wouldn’t be right.”

“You’ve let others stay.”

“It was different with others. I had good reasons, sweetie.” “What reasons?”

“They gave me things or money for the rent or something. It wouldn’t be right to let you stay just for fun.”

“By God, I never heard anything so crazy in my life before.”

“It’s not crazy to have principles, sweetie.”

“All right, all right. I’ll give you something for the rent.”

“You don’t look like you could give me enough to make it worth while, sweetie. I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything, but you don’t look very rich.”

“You might be surprised.”

“I don’t think so, sweetie. I’ve developed an instinct about such matters.”

“Oh, come on, Fi. Let me stay.”

“No, no, sweetie. I’m sorry, but it’s a matter of principle.”

“God damn it, you’d have let that fat slob stay if he hadn’t passed out. You know you would.”

“Well, he’s a big real-estate dealer from out of town, and he was going to take me on a little trip for a few days.”

“Where?”

“Never mind where. It doesn’t matter, since he surely won’t take me now, the son of a bitch. I was looking forward to it, as a matter of fact. I’m sick of this town and need a change.”

“If I were to take you somewhere, would you stay with me?”

“Sleep with you, you mean?”

“You know damn well that’s what I mean.”

“Of course, sweetie. It would only be fair. You mustn’t start getting excited again, however, for I’m sure there’s no place you could afford to take me that I’d want to go.”

“Don’t be so sure of that. How would you like to go and spend a week in a fine lodge on a lake and not have anything to do except swim and lie in the sun and go boating and out dining and dancing at night and things like that?”

“It sounds heavenly, sweetie, but you mustn’t tell me any lies, because I’m far too experienced in these matters to give you anything in advance on account.”

“I’m not asking for anything in advance. I’m asking you to go with me first and find out for yourself that I’m not such a lousy bum as you seem to think.”

“Could it be that you’re serious?”

“Damn it, I am! Will you go?”

“How will we get there?”

“We’ll go in my car, which is a new Buick Roadmaster.” “Honest to God, do you really have a fine lodge on a lake and a new Buick Roadmaster?”

“I said I did, and I do. You’ll see.”

“I admit that I hardly believe it. I was certain that you were poor, sweetie. When would you like to leave?”

“Well, I loaned the Buick to a friend, but he’s going to return it by four o’clock at the latest.”

“In that case, I’d like to leave as soon after four as possible. It’s God’s truth that this town has become so depressing that I can hardly stand it. What you had better do is leave now and go get your Buick, wherever it may be, and come back for me as soon as possible. I’m sorry I thought you were hardly more than a bum. What you should try to do, sweetie, is cultivate a more impressive appearance. It’s probable that you miss out on a lot of nice things by looking so unimpressive.”

“Sure,” he said with some asperity. “I ought to be a fat slob, that’s what I ought to be.”

“Well,” she said, “you mustn’t lose your temper and spoil things, now that we have reached an understanding and matters are looking pleasant for both of us. If you have a long way to go for your Buick, you had better call a taxi from here, for it might be difficult to find one on the streets at this hour.”