The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder (20 page)

This went on for a few days, along with more complicated routines for the horses. They walked and strutted, knelt, and galloped sideways to music from a record player which one of the men operated outside the fence. They tried to get Billy to do something with a ribbon to which a piece of metal was attached. Billy didn’t understand what they wanted, and started eating the ribbon, whereupon they snatched it out of his mouth. The man kicked him in the haunch to make him pay attention, and tried again. Billy wasn’t trying very hard.

A couple of days later they all went off with the horses to a place with the biggest crowd Billy had ever seen. These people were mostly sitting down in a great circle with a clear space in the middle. Billy wore his saddle. One of the men got on a horse and led Billy—amid a lot of other men and women on horses—twice round the arena in a big parade. Music and cheers. Then Billy was led to the sidelines, and the man stood beside him on foot. They were near a gap in the wall, which was a good thing, because they had to use it when a wild horse, bucking and kicking, came very near them and threw his rider off. Now Billy and the man were in a kind of pen with no top, people leaned over the edge above them, and someone dropped what looked like a sizzling hot dog on Billy’s back. The man brushed it off Billy and was trying to stamp on it when it exploded with a terrible
Bang!

Billy bolted forward and was in the middle of the arena suddenly. A roar of delight went up from the crowd. A man in a clown’s costume spread his arms to stop Billy, or deflect him. Billy aimed himself straight at the clown who jumped nimbly into an ashcan, and Billy’s horns hit the ashcan with a
Clang!
and sent it rolling yards away with the clown in it. The people yelled with glee, and Billy’s blood tingled. Then a big man who looked purposeful came running for Billy, grabbed his horns as Billy attacked, and Billy and the man both fell to the ground. But Billy’s hind feet were free, and he kicked with all his might. The man gave a scream and released him, and Billy trotted away triumphant.

Bang!

Someone had fired a gun. Billy hardly noticed. It was all part of the fun. Billy looked around for more targets, started for a man on horseback, but was distracted by two men on foot who were running towards him from different directions. Billy didn’t know which to aim at, decided on the closer, and picked up speed. He whammed the man at hip height, but an instant later a rope hissed around Billy’s neck.

Billy charged the rope-thrower, but still a third man threw himself at Billy and caught him round the body. Billy twisted, fighting with his crooked left horn, and got the man in the arm, but the man held on. Someone else banged Billy in the head, stunning him. Billy was dimly aware of being carried off, amid the continuing cheers of the spectators.

Ka-plop!

Billy was dumped into one of the horse boxes. The man who mainly took care of him was tying up his legs now. His arm was bleeding, and he was muttering in an unpleasant way.

When they all got home to the ranch that night, the man took a whip to Billy. Billy was tied in one of the stables. The man kept shouting at him. It was a long strong whip and it hurt—a little. Another man watched. Billy butted the side of the stable in wrath, and on the rebound aimed himself at the man with the whip. The man jumped back, and was closing the stable door when Billy’s horns banged into it. Then the man went away. It was a long time before Billy calmed down, before he began to feel the stings of the whip on his haunches and his back. He hated everybody that night.

In the morning, all three men escorted Billy to one of the horse boxes, though when Billy saw the horse box, he went along readily. Billy was willing to go anywhere that was somewhere else.

Once more, it was a longish ride. Then Billy heard the peculiar rattle under the wheels that cars made going over the metal roller bridge in front of Playland Amusement Park. They stopped, and Billy heard Hank’s voice. Billy was let out. Billy was rather pleased. But Hank didn’t seem pleased. Hank was frowning and looking at the ground, and at Billy. Then the men went away in their car, and when they were gone, Hank said something to Billy and laughed. He grabbed Billy’s harness with one hand and steered him on to the grassier part of the park where cars and people never went. But Billy was too disturbed to eat. His back hurt worse, and his head throbbed, maybe from the blow he’d got in the arena.

Where was Mickie? Billy looked around. Maybe it was one of the days when Mickie didn’t come.

As dusk fell, Billy was sure it was one of the evenings when no one came to Playland Amusement Park, not even Mickie. Then Hank put the usual lights on, or most of them, and hitched Billy to his cart. This was strange, Billy thought. Hank never took a ride all by himself.

“Come along, Billy, ni-ice Billy,” Hank was saying in a soothing tone.

But Billy sensed fear in him. Hank’s weight made the cart creak as if he were several people.

“Gee up, Billy. Easy does it,” Hank said, and slapped the reins as Mickie always did.

Billy started off. It felt good to put some of his anger into pulling the cart. Billy’s trot became a gallop.

“
Ho theah, Billy!
”

Hank’s command made Billy run all the faster. He hit a tree, and knocked a wheel off the cart. Hank yelled for him to stop. Then Hank bounced out of the cart, and Billy made a curve and stopped, looking back. Hank was sitting on the ground, and Billy charged. Hank had just about got to his feet when Billy struck, and knocked him down.

“Ho theah, Billy,” Hank was saying, more softly now, as if he were still guiding Billy by the reins. Hank wobbled towards Billy, pressing a hand to one of his knees, the other hand to his head.

Then Billy saw Hank evidently change his mind, and veer towards the popcorn stand for protection, and Billy charged again. Hank trotted away as best he could, but Billy whammed into Hank’s broad, highly buttable backside.
Whoof!
Hank fairly doubled backward, and fell in a heap on the ground.

Billy trotted in a circle, oblivious of the half-a-cart behind him. Hank lifted a blood-stained face. Billy lowered his head and attacked the mass which was now about his own height. One curved horn, one crooked horn hit God knew where, and Hank rolled over backward. Billy gave an uppercut, pulled his horns out, backed a little, and came at Hank again.

Thuck!
Hank’s body seemed to be growing softer.

Billy struck again, backed a little, then footed it daintily over Hank’s body, cart wreck and all. Dark blood ran into the grassless, much-trodden earth. The next thing Billy knew, he was yards away, trotting with his head up. The cart behind him seemed to weigh nothing at all. Was it even there? But Billy heard a bush—which he had leapt—crackle behind him, and felt the cart bump against the corner of a booth.

Then Hank’s wife appeared. “
Billy!
. . .” She was yelling excitedly.

Billy trembled with leftover fury, and was on the brink of butting her, but he only snorted and shook himself.

“Hank! Where are you?” She hurried away.

The sound of “Hank!” made Billy jump, and he started off at a run, made a swipe at the gatepost by the car entrance, and knocked off the other wheel of the cart.

Hank’s wife was still screaming somewhere.

Billy dashed down the road, took the first dirt road that he came to, and kept on into the darkness, into the country. A car slowed, and a man said something to Billy, but Billy ran on.

Finally Billy trotted, then walked. Here were fields and a patch of woods. In the woods, Billy lay down and slept. When he woke up, it was dawn, and he was thirsty, more thirsty than hungry. He came to a farmhouse, where there was a water trough behind a fence. Billy couldn’t easily get to it, so he trotted on, sensing that there was water somewhere near. He found a brook in a sloping place. Then he ate some of the rich grass there. One shaft of his cart remained attached to his harness, which was annoying, but more important was that he was free. He could go in any direction he chose, and from what he could see there was grass and water everywhere.

Adventure beckoned.

So Billy took another dirt road and pushed on. Only two cars went by all morning, and each time Billy trotted faster, and nobody got out to bother him.

Then Billy caught a scent and slowed down, lifted his nose and sniffed again. Then he went in the direction of the scent. Very soon he saw another goat in a field, a black and white goat. For the moment, Billy felt more curious than friendly. He walked towards the goat, came to an opening in the rail fence, and entered the field, dragging the one gold and white shaft behind him. Billy saw that the other goat was tethered. She lifted her head—the goat was a female, Billy now realized—looked at him with mild surprise and went on chewing what she had in her mouth. Behind her was a long low white house, and near it clothes fluttered on a line. There was a barn, and Billy heard the “Moo” of a cow from somewhere.

A woman came out of the house and threw a pan of something on the ground, saw Billy, and dropped the pan in astonishment. Then she approached Billy cautiously. Billy stood his ground, chewing some excellent clover which he had just wrenched up. The woman made a shooing motion with her apron, but as if she didn’t really mean it. She drew nearer, looking very hard at Billy. Then she laughed—a nice laugh. Billy was an expert on laughs, and he liked this woman’s laugh at once, because it was easy and happy.

“Tommy!” the woman called to the house. “Georgette! Come out and see what’s here!”

In a minute, two small children came out of the house and screamed with surprise, a little like the children at Playland.

They offered Billy water. The woman finally got up courage and unbuckled the shaft from the goat harness. Billy was still chewing clover. He knew the thing to do was not to look aggressive, and in fact he felt not in the least like butting any of them. When the woman and the children called him towards the barn, he followed. But nobody tried to tie him up. The woman seemed to be inviting Billy to do what
he
wanted to do, which was a nice relief. She would have let him walk away, Billy thought, back down the road again. Billy liked it here. Later, a man arrived, and looked at Billy. The man took off his hat and scratched his head, then he laughed too. When the sun went down, the woman untied the other goat, and led her towards the barn outside which Billy was walking about, looking things over. There were pigs, a water trough, and chickens and ducks behind a fence.

“Billy!” said the man, and laughed again when Billy recognized his name and looked at him. He gave Billy’s harness a shake, as if he admired it. But he took it off and put it away somewhere.

The barn was clean and had straw in it. The man put a leather collar on Billy, patted him and talked to him. The other goat, which they called Lucy, was tied up near Billy, and the woman milked her into a small pail.

Billy opened his mouth and said “A-a-a-a!”

It made everybody laugh. Billy jumped back and forth from front feet to hind feet. The memory of Hank, of the smell of his blood, was fast fading, like a bad spell of temper that had happened longer ago than yesterday, although he knew he had given Hank more butts than he had ever given anyone or anything.

In the morning when the woman came into the barn, she looked surprised and really happy to see that Billy was still there. She said something friendly to him. Evidently he wasn’t going to be tied up ever, Billy thought as he trotted into the meadow with Lucy. Now that was fair play!

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921, Patricia Highsmith spent much of her adult life in Switzerland and France. She was educated at Barnard College, where she studied English, Latin, and Greek. Her first novel,
Strangers on a Train
, published initially in 1950, proved to be a major commercial success and was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. Despite this early recognition, Highsmith was unappreciated in the United States for the entire length of her career.

Writing under the pseudonym of Claire Morgan, she then published
The Price of Salt
in 1952, which had been turned down by her previous American publisher because of its frank exploration of homosexual themes. Her most popular literary creation was Tom Ripley, the dapper sociopath who first debuted in her 1955 novel,
The Talented Mr. Ripley
. She followed with four other Ripley novels. Posthumously made into a major motion picture,
The Talented Mr. Ripley
has helped bring about a renewed appreciation of Highsmith’s work in the United States, as has the posthumous publication of
The Selected Stories
, which received widespread acclaim when it was published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2001.

The author of more than twenty books, Highsmith has won the O. Henry Memorial Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, and the Award of the Crime Writers’ Association of Great Britain. She died in Switzerland on February 4, 1995, and her literary archives are maintained in Berne.

P
RAISE FOR
P
ATRICIA
H
IGHSMITH

“[Highsmith] is no more a practitioner of the murder mystery genre . . . than are Dostoevsky, Faulkner and Camus.”

—Joan Smith,
Los Angeles Times

“Highsmith writes the verbal equivalent of a drug—easy to consume, darkly euphoric, totally addictive. . . . Highsmith belongs in the moody company of Dostoevsky or Angela Carter.”

—
Time Out

“Highsmith’s writing is wicked . . . it puts a spell on you, after which you feel altered, even tainted. . . . A great American writer is back to stay.”

—
Entertainment Weekly

“No one has created psychological suspense more densely and deliciously satisfying.”

—
Vogue

“Highsmith’s gift as a suspense novelist is to show how this secret desire can bridge the normal and abnormal. . . . She seduces us with whisky-smooth surfaces only to lead us blindly into darker terrain.”

—
Commercial Appeal

“Patricia Highsmith’s novels are peerlessly disturbing . . . bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night.”

—
The New Yorker

“Though Highsmith would no doubt disclaim any kinship with Jonathan Swift or Evelyn Waugh, the best of [her work] is in the same tradition. . . . It is Highsmith’s dark and sometimes savage humor and the intelligence that informs her precise and hard-edged prose which puts one in mind of those authors.”

—
Newsday

“Murder, in Patricia Highsmith’s hands, is made to occur almost as casually as the bumping of a fender or a bout of food poisoning. This downplaying of the dramatic . . . has been much praised, as has the ordinariness of the details with which she depicts the daily lives and mental processes of her psychopaths. Both undoubtedly contribute to the domestication of crime in her fiction, thereby implicating the reader further in the sordid fantasy that is being worked out.”

—Robert Towers,
New York Review of Books

“For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there’s no one like Patricia Highsmith.”

—
Time

“The feeling of menace behind most Highsmith novels, the sense that ideas and attitudes alien to the reasonable everyday ordering of society are suggested, has made many readers uneasy. One closes most of her books with a feeling that the world is more dangerous than one had ever imagined.”

—Julian Symons,
New York Times Book Review

“Patricia Highsmith is often called a mystery or crime writer, which is a bit like calling Picasso a draftsman.”

—
Cleveland Plain Dealer

“An atmosphere of nameless dread, of unspeakable foreboding, permeates every page of Patricia Highsmith, and there’s nothing quite like it.”

—
Boston Globe

“To call Patricia Highsmith a thriller writer is true but not the whole truth: her books have stylistic texture, psychological depth, mesmeric readability.”

—
Sunday Times
(London)

“Highsmith is an exquisitely sardonic etcher of the casually treacherous personality.”

—
Newsday