Heed the Thunder (25 page)

Once there, he had another drink while he treated the frozen landscape to an owlish survey. He drank, turning around and around, staring off past the end of the bottle; then he put the bottle away, frowning, not liking the looks of what he saw.

This wasn’t Fargo Crossing. It was—it must be Misery Crick. He was away up in hunky-land, a good eighteen miles from Verdon.

And the sun was going down. And it was snowing. It wasn’t snowing hard, but it wouldn’t have to snow hard. There was no chance of getting in to Verdon. There would be no chance of getting anywhere unless he got there quickly.

He had drunk far too much, now, to be sobered by anything but time. But drunk as he was, he was badly frightened. People went to bed early in this part of the country. There would be no lights to guide him; and the snow would blot out the trails. And the temperature would drop thirty degrees during the night.

He would have to get to a house quickly.

Far off to his right, down the road and to his right, he saw a plume of smoke rising from a grove of trees.

At a fast wobbling walk, he set off for it.

The sweat poured from him, and his leaden legs forced him to stop frequently. But he staggered on each time, keeping his eyes on the plume of smoke.

He had gone a matter of perhaps a half-mile when he heard the distant but unmistakable creak of wagon wheels. He stopped and looked behind him and saw nothing. Then, as he started to turn around again, his gaze traveled across the cornfield on his left, and he saw a team coming down the rows of frozen stalks. A team and a wagon and a man, almost completely disguised by the snow. The man was hurrying along at the side of the wagon, making throwing motions that were followed by a steady succession of dull thudding sounds.

A corn-husker. Some farmer out getting his last load before going in for the day.

Grant almost wept with relief. He wouldn’t have to find his way in alone. He’d ride home with this farmer. Even a hunky would have to take a man in on a night like this.

He remained where he was, taking another two or three drinks, while the wagon came rapidly down the corn rows. Grant raised his hand to the fellow in greeting, but he received no response. Probably the fellow was in too much of a hurry to break his husking rhythm by waving back. Or, more than likely, he was just too damned ignorant and sullen, like the rest of his hunky breed.

The team reached the end of the field, and, with a guttural shout, the man turned it down the narrow little lane which ran parallel with the fence. The farmer, his face almost entirely concealed by a stocking cap and a heavy woolen muffler, looked squarely at Grant, but made no acknowledgment of his presence.

He caught the endgate of the wagon and started to climb on.

“I say there,” Grant cried, in his best citified manner. “Hold on a minute!”

The farmer grunted, and the team came to an impatient stop. He looked around. He did not seem to look at Grant, but to one side of him.

“Huh?” he grunted.

“What’s the matter with you anyway?” the ex-printer demanded, peevishly, and the man moved closer to the fence, rolling his head from side to side. “I’m lost. I’ve got to find a place to put up for the night.”

“Huh?” The farmer looked at him directly at last.

“I said I want to spend the night at your house. I live in Verdon and I’m lost.”

“Huh?”

Grant cursed. “You goddam stupid hunky swine! I’m going to ride home with you. You’re going to put me up for the night, and—and—”

The man straddled the fence and lumbered awkwardly through the ditch. He reached the road and with curious intensity headed straight toward Grant. Grant started to choke out a hasty apology, but the fellow stopped a few feet away and stood staring at him again.

“Swine,” he grunted. And he sniffed the air, animal-like.

“Well,” said Grant arrogantly, “think you’ll know me next time you see me?”

The fellow nodded slowly. His husking-mitted hand went to the back of his neck and he undid the muffler.

“I…know…you. You know me?”

“Can’t say that I do,” said Grant. And then he brushed his eyes and blinked. And a sickening chill ran up and down his back.

This—this wasn’t a man. There was never a man with a face like that.

“God!” he gasped.

He took a step backwards. Another. The—it didn’t have any face. It wasn’t really a face. Just a great blob of tortured flesh, like clay squeezed through the fingers of an idiot. Its eyes were gleaming distorted bulbs of mattered white. It—for Christ’s sake, what was it?

He backed away, and the thing merely stood and watched him.

Then it turned and walked over to the fence. The blade of the husking mit came down on the barbed wire and the wire snapped. The thing walked to the next post and repeated the process.

It came back to the road, dragging the length of barbed wire. It started toward him.

He could not move for a moment. He could not even cry out. He was like a man in a nightmare.

Jesus…God…Jesus…I didn’t want to kill her…she kept after me and I didn’t want to, and I’m sorry…I’ve told you how sorry I was.…Jesus, just let me see Ma again. Don’t…DON’T…

He screamed. He tried to run at last, and his foot caught in a frozen rut and he sprawled.

And the thing stood over him.

“I…know…you.…You know me?”

Grant looked up and screamed again, and the thing bent over him insistently.

“You…know…me?”

“No!” screamed Grant. “Go ’way. I haven’t got any money. I—I—
GO AWAY!
”

“You…stand…up.”

“I won’t stand up! You can’t make me!…Please, please don’t hurt me. I’m sick and I haven’t got any money, and—
help, help!
”

The husking mit closed around his neck and the blade bit into his flesh. As if he had been a child, he was lifted into the air.

He struggled, choking, flailing at the hideous face with his hands, and the thing suddenly released him and let him drop to the road.

His terror was so great by now that it was its own antidote. He watched the thing fold the wire, and his voice became almost quiet.

“What are you going to do? Why are you doing this? I haven’t any money.…You—you don’t want to tie me up with that. It’ll cut me. I’ll freeze. Why do you want to tie me up. Why…”

“No tie.…Whip.”

“W-whip?” Grant rose to his knees incredulously. “Y-you can’t do that. I—”

The thing moved so swiftly that he was still talking when the blow fell. He did not even have time to close his eyes. The barbed wire bit into his face, chopped into his eyes, dragged through the skin and flesh and membranes.

And when his pain rode through the shock, and he opened his mouth to scream, the wire quirt swung again, slicing his neck, his throat. And his scream died in a choking burbling sound.

A drowning sound.…

…He lay stretched out on his back at last, lay on a scarlet counterpane of blood. And he no longer screamed nor struggled. He no longer breathed.

Mike Czerny let the quirt slide from his fingers. Scornfully he nudged the corpse of Grant Fargo with his foot.

“Go…wash…face.…Go wash…in snow.…”

I
n Verdon: Doc Jones was treating Myrtle Courtland for an attack of rheumatism; Philo Barkley and Pearl Fargo were rocking contentedly in front of their fire; Sherman Fargo was mailing some tobacco to his two sons; Josephine and the three girls were doing chores; Paulie Pulasky lay in her bedroom, weeping; and Alf Courtland was telling Wilhelm Deutsch, the German swine, that the Kaiser had best beware of the tight little isle.

In Lincoln: Mike Czerny sat in the death cell; and Attorney General Jeff Parker was confidentially recommending an investigation of Alf Courtland’s bank.

In Omaha: Jiggs Cassidy was advising his principals that Jeff should be elevated to a still higher office, where he would have more to lose.

In Kansas City: William Simpson was privately looking around for another job.

In Houston: Ted and Gus Fargo lay chained to their bunks on the state pea-farm, planning some way of killing their guards.

…and on the night train out of the valley, Bob Dillon looked across the aisle at his sleeping mother and suppressed a grin. She looked kind of funny in her new hobble-skirted suit and the toque hat. Strange—a stranger. He muttered the word
Papa
and was struck with the foolishness of its sound.
Papa—
gosh! His grin faded as a terrible sense of loneliness swept over him. He turned and looked out the window.…
Home
. They were going
home
to
Papa
.

He wondered if Paulie would have a baby. He hoped she would and he hoped she wouldn’t. He wished that they could have stayed forever like they were that year they were nine. Little Paulie.
Paulie, you come here!

Well—I am here, Bobbie.
And she was. She had come as she always had.

She smiled at him humbly in the mirror of the window, and her eyes were great slate-gray pools, and there was a speck of ice-cream on her little nose.
Paulie! Paulie!
…Pa?

Goddam if I won’t take you fishin
’. Lincoln Fargo rolled his eyes doggishly and twirled his cane.
Now what the hell you bellerin’ about?

He wants me to cut his ears off.
Sherman smiled sourly and cocked his pipe between his teeth.

What you devils been up to now?
Josephine scowled flabbily and flexed the blacksnake.

Shall we have tea, young Robert?…

I’ve brought you some books, old fellow.…

What’d you get in my way for, you son-of-a-bitch. You got in mine, you son-of-a-bitch.

And so he called them all back, one by one; all, for they were real people, elemental people, understandable people, people of the land, and as good and as bad as the land, their birthright, was good and bad. And in his loneliness he called them all:

Honest, bitter Lincoln; swaggering Sherman; fat Josephine; prissy Myrtle; cool Courtland; mean-eyed Ted and Gus; chipper Jeff Parker; dull Pearl; slow Barkley; proud Bella; dude Grant.…

He called and they came into the mirror of the window, seemingly fighting for remembrance even as he fought to remember them. They came brashly and shy, swaggering and halting and prissing, laughing, smiling, frowning, grimacing. Good, bad, and indifferent: the real people, the people of the land. And then they were gone, the last of them; and as he burned them forever into his memory, he pressed his face against the window and fought to hold the land:

The land. The good land, the bad land, the fair-to-middling land, the beautiful land, the ugly land, the homely land, the kind and hateful land; the land with its tall towers, its great barns, its roomy houses, its spring-pole wells, its shabby sheds, its dugouts; the land with its little villages and towns, its cities and great cities, its blacksmith shops and factories, its one-room schools and colleges; the hunky land, the Rooshan land, the German land, the Dutch and Swede land, the Protestant and Catholic and Jewish land: the American land—the land that was slipping so surely, so swiftly, into the black abyss of the night.

James Meyers Thompson was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma, in 1906. In all, Jim Thompson wrote twenty-nine novels and two screenplays (for the Stanley Kubrick films
The Killing
and
Paths of Glory
). Films based on his novels include
The Getaway, The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters,
and
After Dark, My Sweet.

In March 2012, Mulholland Books will publish Jim Thompson's
The Rip-Off.
Following is an excerpt from the novel's opening pages.

I
didn’t hear her until she was actually inside the room, locking the door shut behind her. Because that kind of place, the better type of that kind of place—and this
was
the better type—has its taproot in quiet. Anonymity. So whatever is required for it is provided: thick walls, thick rugs, well-oiled hardware. Whatever is required, but no more. No bath, only a sink firmly anchored to the wall. No easy chairs, since you are not there to sit. No radio or television, since the most glorious of diversions is in yourself. Your two selves.

She was scowling agitatedly, literally dancing from foot to foot, as she flung off her clothes, tossing them onto the single wooden chair where mine were draped.

I laughed and sat up. “Have to pee?” I said. “Why do you always hold in until you’re about to wet your pants?”

“I don’t always! Just when I’m meeting you, and I don’t want to take time to—
oops! Whoops!
Help me, darn it!” she said, trying to boost herself up on the sink. “
Hall-up!
”

I helped her, holding her on her porcelain perch until she had finished. Then I carried her to the bed, and lowered her to it. Looked wonderingly at the tiny immensity, the breathtaking miracle of her body.

She wasn’t quite five feet tall. She weighed no more than ninety-five pounds, and I could almost encompass her waist with one hand. But somehow there was no skimpiness about her. Somehow her flesh flowed and curved and burgeoned. Extravagantly, deliciously lush.

“Manny,” I said softly, marvelling. For as often as I had seen this miracle, it remained new to me. “Manuela Aloe.”

“Present,” she said. “Now, come to bed, you good-looking, darling son-of-a-bitch.”

“You know something, Manny, my love? If I threw away your tits and your ass, God forbid, there wouldn’t be anything left.”

Her eyes flashed. Her hand darted and swung, slapping me smartly on the cheek.

“Don’t you talk that way to me! Not ever!”

“What the hell?” I said. “You talk pretty rough yourself.”

She didn’t say anything. Simply stared at me, her eyes steady and unblinking. Telling me, without telling me, that how she talked had no bearing on how I should talk.

I lay down with her; kissed her, and held the kiss. And suddenly her arms tightened convulsively, and I was drawn onto and into her. And then there was a fierce muted sobbing, a delirious exulting, a frantic hysterical whispering…

“Oh, you dirty darling bastard! You sweet son-of-a-bitch! You dearest preciousest mother-loving sugar-pie…”

Manny.

Manuela Aloe.

I wondered how I could love her so deeply, and be so much afraid of her. So downright terrified.

And I damned well knew why.

After a while, and after we had rested awhile, she placed her hands against my chest and pushed me upward so that she could look into my face.

“That was good, Britt,” she said. “Really wonderful. I’ve never enjoyed anything so much.”

“Manny,” I said. “You have just said the finest, the most exciting thing a woman can say to a man.”

“I’ve never said it to anyone else. But, of course, there’s never been anyone else.”

“Except your husband, you mean.”

“I never said it to him. You don’t lie to people about things like this.”

I shifted my gaze; afraid of the guilt she might read in my eyes. She laughed softly, on a submerged note of teasing.

“It bothers you, doesn’t it, Britt? The fact that there was a man before you.”

“Don’t be silly. A girl like you would just about have to have other men in her life.”

“Not
men
. Only the one man, my husband.”

“Well, it doesn’t bother me. He doesn’t, I mean. Uh, just how did he die, anyway?”

“Suddenly,” she said. “Very suddenly. Let me up now, will you please?”

I helped her to use the sink, and then I used it. It couldn’t have taken more than a minute or two, but when I turned around she had finished dressing. I was startled, although I shouldn’t have been. She had the quick, sure movements characteristic of so many small women. Acting and reacting with lightning-like swiftness. Getting things done while I was still thinking about them.

“Running off mad?” I said; and then, comprehending, or thinking that I did, “Well, don’t fall in, honey. I’ve got some plans for you.”

She frowned at me reprovingly, and, still playing it light, I said she couldn’t be going to take a bath. I’d swear she didn’t need a bath; and who would know better than I?

That got me another frown, so I knocked off the kidding. “I like your dress, Manny. Paris job, is it?”

“Dallas. Nieman-Marcus.”

“Tsk, tsk, such extravagance,” I said. “And you were right there in Italy, anyway, to pick up your shoes.”

She laughed, relenting. “Close, but no cigar,” she said, pirouetting in the tiny spike-heeled pumps. “I. Pinna. You like?”

“Like. Come here, and I’ll show you how much.”

“Gotta go now, but just wait,” she said, sliding me a sultry glance. “And leave the door unlocked. You’ll have some company very soon.”

I said I wondered who the company could be, and she said archly that I should just wait and see; I’d really be surprised. Then, she was gone, down the hall to the bathroom I supposed. And I stretched out on the bed, pulling the sheet up over me, and waited for her to return.

The door was not only unlocked, but ever-so-slightly ajar. But that was all right, no problem in a place like this. The lurking terror sank deeper and deeper into my mind, and disappeared. And I yawned luxuriously, and closed my eyes. Apparently, I dozed, for I suddenly sat up to glance at my wristwatch. Automatically obeying a whispered command which had penetrated my subconscious. “
Watch
.”

I said I sat up.

That’s wrong.

I only started to, had barely lifted my head from the pillows, when there was a short snarling-growl. A threat and a warning, as unmistakable as it was deadly. And slowly, ever so slowly, I sank back on the bed.

There was a softer growl, a kind of gruff whimper. Approval. I lay perfectly still for a time, scarcely breathing—and it is easy to stop breathing when one is scared stiff. Then, without moving my head, I slanted my eyes to the side. Directly into the unblinking stare of a huge German shepherd.

His massive snout was only inches from my face. The grayish-black lips were curled back from his teeth. And I remember thinking peevishly that he had too many, that no dog could possibly have this many teeth. Our eyes met and held for a moment. But dogs, members of the wolf family, regard such an encounter as a challenge. And a rising growl jerked my gaze back to the ceiling.

There was that gruff whimper again. Approval. Then, nothing.

Nothing but the wild beating of my heart. That, and the dog’s warm breath on my face as he stood poised so close to me. Ready to move—decisively—if I should move.

“
Watch!
” He had been given an order. And until that order was revoked, he would stay where he was. Which would force me to stay where I was…lying very, very still. As, of course, I would not be able to do much longer.

Any moment now, I would start yawning. Accumulated tension would force me to. At almost any moment, my legs would jerk; an involuntary and uncontrollable reaction to prolonged inactivity. And when that happened…

The dog growled again. Differently from any of his previous growls. With the sound was another, the brief thud-thud of a tail against the carpet.

A friend—or perhaps an acquaintance—had come into the room. I was afraid to move my head, as the intruder was obviously aware, so she came around to the foot of the bed where I could see her without moving.

It was the mulatto slattern who sat behind the desk in the dimly lit lobby. The manager of the place, I had always assumed. The mock concern on her face didn’t quite conceal her malicious grin; and there was spiteful laughter in her normally servile voice.

“Well, jus’ looky heah, now! Mistah Britton Rainstar with a doggy in his room! How you doin’, Mistah High-an’-mighty Rainstar?”

“G-Goddam you—!” I choked with fear and fury. “Get that dog out of here! Call him off!”

She said, “Shuh, man.” She wasn’t tellin’
that
dog to do nothin’. “Ain’t my houn’. Wouldn’t pay no attention to me, ’ceptin’ maybe to bite my fat ass.”

“But goddam it—! I’m sorry,” I said. “Please forgive me for being rude. If you’ll get Manny—Miss Aloe, please. Tell her I’m very sorry, and I’m sure I can straighten everything out if she’ll just—just—”

She broke in with another
“Shuh”
of disdain. “Where I get Miss Manny, anyways? Ain’t seen Miss Manny since you-all come in t’day.”

“I think she’s in the bathroom, the one on this floor. She’s got to be here somewhere. Now, please—!”

“Huh-
uh!
Sure ain’t callin’ her out of no bathroom. Not me, no, sir! Miss Manny wouldn’t like that a-tall!”

“B-but—” I hesitated helplessly. “Call the police then.
Please!
And for God’s sake, hurry!”

“Call the p’lice?
Here?
Not a chance, Mistah Rainstar. No, siree! Miss Manny sho’ wouldn’t like that!”

“To hell with what she likes! What’s it to you, anyway? Why, goddam it to hell—”

“Jus’ plenty t’me what she likes. Miss Manny my boss. That’s right, Mistah Rainstar.” She beamed at me falsely. “Miss Manny bought this place right after you-all started comin’ here. Reckon she liked it real well.”

She was lying. She had to be lying.

She wasn’t lying.

She laughed softly, and turned to go. “You lookin’ kinda peak-id, Mistah Rainstar. Reckon I better let you get some rest.”

“Don’t,” I begged. “Don’t do this to me. If you can’t do anything else, at least stay with me. I can’t move, and I can’t lie still any longer, and—and that dog will kill me! He’s trained to kill! S—So—so—please—” I gulped, swallowing an incipient sob, blinking the tears from my eyes. “Stay with me. Please stay until Miss Manny comes back.”

My eyes cleared.

The woman was gone. Moved out of my line of vision. I started to turn my head, and the dog warned me to desist. Then, from somewhere near the door, the woman spoke again.

“Just stay until Miss Manny come back? That’s what you said, Mistah Rainstar?”

“Yes, please. Just until then.”

“But what if she don’ come back? What about that, Mistah Rainstar?”

An ugly laugh, then. A laugh of mean merriment. And then she was gone. Closing the door firmly this time.

And locking it.