The Axman Cometh (9 page)

"Tell me you're going to come back and see me," she says fiercely.

"I'll be back before you know it," Robert says. "Remember: I always keep my promises."

You came back, all right! You came back to kill them! Dab. Ernestine. Chap. Allen Ray. And—

You still don't know who I am. But it'll come to you. And then I know you'll want to draw me.

Six. There were six killed in our house! But who else? It should have been me—why wasn't I there?

You were there.

Liar! I would have seen you!

The last time we met, we had so much to talk about. But we never finished our conversation. Why don't you tear up that other picture you've drawn—that fiat old man with the beard? Everybody's literary fallen idol. He can't help you. No one else can. Not even Don. Frankly, Shannon—Donald Carnes just doesn't have what it takes. Oh, I know. You almost married him. I know all about your affair with Donald. But I'm not jealous. Now listen. Do you hear the music? The music's important. There's never been any like it. I composed the score myself—for the occasion, when we last met. You heard it then, didn't you?
We
heard it, no one else. Concentrate on the music, then
see.
And draw me. Because I'm getting tired now—tired of waiting for Shannon Hill.

Nooooo
! Somebody! Please! Get me out of here, before he
killllls
meeeeee
!

(Silence.)

(More silence.)

( music. )

Isn't it beautiful? It's all for you, Shannon. Because I worship you.

“
Donnnnnnnnnn
!''

When Donald Carnes returns from the basement men's room at Cabrera's the rain outside is driving against the windows of the bar, and the lights seem lower, but that just might be an aftereffect of his fourth "Papa
doble
."
So, undoubtedly, is the hallucination that confronts him: he actually thinks he sees Hemingway himself sitting on the bar stool next to his.

The rest of the bar is deserted; even Francisco has done a temporary vanishing act. Don is about to make a detour and go out into the rain without his umbrella to find out if a fast walk around the block in the equivalent of a cold shower will sober him up when

Papa turns solidly to him, the seat of the stool creaking under his weight (he's wearing a safari jacket with leather trim, camp shorts and knee-length yellow socks). He grins and swipes at his whiskers with one meaty hand and says, "How long does it take you to shake the dew off your daisy? Get over here, Carnes."

"I beg your pardon?" Don says stiffly.

"You need some help with your problem, and there's no time to waste, according to the signals I'm getting." He seems to have trouble with his l's and r's, a mild speech impediment. "Shannon just hopes you're up to it. Expect that's what I'm doing here."

"You, uh,
you
can't be here. I mean,
he
can't. So what are you, an actor who impersonates—"

Don looks around to see if any of his friends are
peeking
at him from the dining room or behind the coatroom door. But they are alone, in an unnerving wee-hours silence. Silent, except for the rain and the swish of tires on the street outside. Alone, except for the quick shadowy presence of pedestrians beneath umbrellas hurrying past Cabrera's windows.

Papa slams a
fist
down on the bar. He is still grinning, testily.

"Watch what names you call a man, unless you're prepared to defend yourself.

Actor? Never had any use for the lot of them, except Coop. And the Kraut, of course. Sit down and drink up. You don't quit after four daiquiris, not when you drink with me. The record's eighteen. At one sitting. You're looking at the record-holder. What we need now are some prawns. You know how I like them: cooked in seawater with a little lime juice, some black peppercorns. But the kitchen's closed." His expression sours. "Makes a man wish he was back home in San Francisco de Paula."

"What problem?" Don says woodenly, edging a little closer to the burly man, anticipating, hoping that he will suddenly laugh or wink or say something to give away the rib, the conspiracy, whatever it is.

Papa just looks at the rain and then at the two of them in the
backbar
mirror. He lifts his daiquiri and drinks, two good swallows, leaving a little froth on his whiskers.

"Always this spooky?" he says, with a sidelong glance at Don. "Or is it the booze? Not a
rummie
, are you? I don't mind rummies. It's the bores that make my ass ache. They'd come right in the house, down there in Key West, while I was trying to get work done. 'Just wanted to shake your hand, Mr.
Hummingbuffer
. Personally I never read anything, but the little lady tells me you're aces. Help myself to your booze? Don't mind if I do.' So what are you staring at, Carnes? Sit down, drink your drink, and we'll roll for the next one. Then you've got work to do."

Don rubs his eyes and his vision blurs; the man in front of him is immediately less substantial. Don, light-headed, is inspired to think he can almost see through him. Panic in his breast. He wants to back away, but is more afraid of the shadowy, empty room behind him than the man on the barstool. Blinking, feeling a chill in his belly that has settled in like a glacier, he eases onto the adjacent stool. Aware he is being stared at, Papa smiles, but grumpily. And Don can smell him: the sportsman's leathery slightly sweaty tang, with a double whiff of sporting dog and gunpowder—did apparitions have an odor? Famous author or not, there is something four-square and trustworthy about him. Loyal to his friends, ruthless to his enemies—why get on his bad side? He only wants someone to drink with, isn't that it? But what is it he's just said about—

Don's fingers curl around the "Papa
doble
"
mug in front of him.

"Work?"

"Sure. Your beauty's in a spot of trouble. Not so bad, maybe, if she were alone in that elevator; but she's not alone. He's coming out now, smoothly and cleverly, yet he's in a beastly frame of mind.
Un
cabron
maldito
.
We will drink now to your valiant beauty, whose valor is not of itself enough to save her, and consider what must be done. Whatever must be done must be done awfully quickly."

Don gulps down a third of the frozen daiquiri while Papa continues to sip his own drink at a thinker's pace, the sun wrinkles bunching at the corners of his eyes.

"Shannon's trapped in the elevator? I knew it! Why didn't Petra call me—I'll call now! The fire department! They—"

"They will be useless to her. By the time they reach her, by prying open the elevator doors, she will be dead.
Muerte
.
We are talking now of the Axman, not some ordinary evil but
un
malhecho
grandioso
—a king of a devil."

"The Axman died!"

"No one can be sure of that."

"And," Don says, confused and sore at heart and scared, "I'm sitting here talking to a dead man too, so I must have got good and drunk when I wasn't counting. I know I haven't lost my mind. There are people who lose their minds and people who will never lose their minds, and I'm one of
them."

"The Axman may have died," Papa concedes, "but he was never laid to rest. More than a technicality is involved here. None of us are ever truly gone, as long as there is a single memory to keep us alive."

Papa points, as if he is aiming a gun, at the back bar photograph. With no transition Don can be certain of, the flat shadowy cat from the
Finca
Vigilia
is crouched cross-eyed and big as life on the bar in front of Papa, who says affectionately, "How are you, you screwy old bastard?" To Don he says, "Meet a forty- year-old cat."

"
Aaaaggghhh
!"

"If the living recall the dead, the dead will recall the remoter dead, and soon there won't be a decent place in town you can get into. What must be done, then, is simple: keep your beauty from recalling the Axman until she is safely removed from the dark. But no firemen."

Don, looking him straight in the eye so he won't have to look anywhere else, recovers his voice. "Why not?"

"With firemen will come the fire. Which only a king of a devil may survive."

"My God. My God!"

"
Tu
lo
crea
,"
Papa says solemnly. "And go now. Before she is desperate enough to draw you."

"Hey, Shannon! Give you a lift?"

(She is walking east on Cottonwood, four blocks from the high school. It is two o'clock in the afternoon on a very warm but pleasant Monday, the first of June. She has one more exam to go—second-year algebra, at eight-thirty Wednesday morning—and her junior year will be over. Then she has three days left to get ready for Dab's surprise party on Friday night. But an even greater surprise is in store: the Axman cometh. He is, in fact, already there. In Emerson, Kansas, in the spring of 1964.)

Shannon has been going over her mental preparations for the party, ticking off expenses. She turns her head incuriously to see who has called to her.

"Oh, hi, Perry—where'd you get the neat pickup?"

It's practically new, a blue-and-silver GMC. But she keeps walking, with only a block to go before she reaches Dab's hardware store, around the corner and three doors down from the main drag in Emerson, the recently named Dwight D. Eisenhower Boulevard. On Dedication Day there was a parade with six bands, fireworks, and an RCA-

sanctioned rodeo that night. John Eisenhower was there with his family, but Ike and Mamie sent their regrets.

"My dad's. Actually he never lets me touch it, but he came home drunk Saturday night, fell in a ditch and broke his leg."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Shannon says mildly, but she has no great fund of sympathy for men who drink too much and fall in ditches. As if her attitude is in plain view, Perry
Kennold
hastens to assure her.

"He hardly ever gets that bad. It was just him and some guys out celebrating, one of them had a kid—I mean, it was his wife who had the kid. So could I take you somewhere?"

"I'm just going to my dad's hardware store to give him a hand this afternoon. It's right there. Thanks anyway."

"How'd you make out in biology?"

Shannon shows him two crossed fingers. "C on the final. That'll give me a C-minus for the year, and I don't have to take
any
more science for the rest of my life, unless I go to college."

"Don't know if I passed or not," Perry confides, leaning out the window, driving with one hand as he rolls slowly along keeping pace with Shannon. "I did okay in English, though. I always do good in English. I just always did like to read. My mother taught me, even before I was old enough to start school.

She wanted to be a schoolteacher once, but then she got married. She had high school and two years of college. She was really well educated. My dad only got as far as eighth grade, and I don't know how good he can read. I never see him read anything, and it takes him five minutes to sign one of his paychecks. My sister dropped out of ninth grade to get married. I don't know why I stay in school. My mother always said she'd skin me alive if I dropped out. But she's not around
any more
. Aren't you planning to go to college?"

"I'm going to art school in Kansas City —or maybe Chicago," she adds, a recent inspiration.

"If you've got a little time before you start helping your dad, would you like to go to the Dairy Queen? That's where I was headed."

"Oh, I don't think so, Perry, Dab's doing inventory and needs me on the cash register."

"Well, maybe I'll see you again
some time
this summer. I'm going to work for the Highway Department." He smiles, apparently not caring about the vacancy in his dental arch; he has something to be proud of. "I have to get up at four-thirty in the morning. But I'll be making a dollar-seventy an hour."