The Murderer Vine (11 page)

“There used to be an old movie theater in Vandermill,” he said. “That’s the nearest town. No one went ever since TV got popular, so they turned it into a supermarket. The manager knows I like target shootin’ an’ he said I could have these, they was only pickin’ up dust in the basement. Who do you want, Greta Garbo or Gary Cooper?”

I picked Gary.

He put down the attaché case, took off the binoculars from his neck and scanned the hills and the valleys carefully. Satisfied, he opened the case.

It was filled with foam rubber. Cut in it, to fit the broken-down machine gun, were variously shaped holes. He pulled out the parts and assembled it easily in thirty seconds. Then he took it apart.

“You try it,” he said.

It took me ten seconds longer.

“Once more.”

This time I did it in twenty-five.

“Good enough,” he said. He took out a drum from the case and clipped it on. He took out a three-inch-thick cylinder of black plastic, five inches long, and screwed it on the thread at the muzzle end. “The silencer,” he said.

He showed me where the safety was. He handed me the gun.

“How about a practice swing?” he said.

I walked toward the cardboard cutout I liked, and paused about thirty feet away. I swung it up, pointed it at the neck. I squeezed the trigger. As soon as I felt the faint vibration of the first shot, I began moving the muzzle from side to side, lowering it. The drum took five seconds to empty.

There was very little recoil. It felt like someone was patting me gently on the forearm. The gun went
chug-chug-chug-chug,
very quietly, like a man coughing across a room and trying to muffle it out of consideration for others.

Gary Cooper disintegrated from the top down.

George showed me how to set it for single-shot action. He clipped on another drum, took it off, had me clip it on, nodded. He was satisfied I knew how to do it. I squeezed off one shot. It made a hole in poor Greta’s stomach three inches in diameter. The gun coughed quietly once and subsided. Bits of cardboard were floating in the air.

“God,” I said.

I took it apart and put it in the case. We walked back silently. At the house George gave me a full drum. I put it in the case. He asked me if I wanted another one. I shook my head. I gave him twenty fifty-dollar bills.

As I got into the car, I said, “That’s a terrible thing.”

“So don’t buy it.”

He watched me drive down the road. When I reached his letter box, which was mounted on a cedar post with morning-glory vines blooming all around it, I paused and looked up the hill. He was still standing on the porch. Neither of us waved goodbye.

I took the bus down to Jackson rather than the plane. I wanted the extra time for Kirby to worm herself into the town, and if I got there too early, I’d only gum up the works.

So I took one small suitcase, the Kim, and the attaché case down to the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The attaché case had a leather partition in the middle which divided the contents equally. There were two buckles by which it could be attached so that the golf-club side was permanently covered. The empty half had three slots into which I stuck a couple of books on speech, a notebook, and a couple of ballpoint pens. As soon as the bus started down the ramp leading to the Lincoln Tunnel, Mr. Wilson (who had decided he would like to be called Hal rather than Harold) began to catch up on his homework. He also had an excellent reason for keeping the case on his lap at all times rather than placing it in the overhead rack.

I read all the way through New Jersey and Maryland. It wasn’t as hard sailing as I thought it might be. It was pretty interesting.
Brid
became
bird
because the effort it took to slide the mouth from
b
to
r
was just too much. So some lazy forebear stuck in an
i
between them to bridge the gap, and it took. The same thing with
thrid,
which became
third. Am not
became
amn’t
which became
ain’t,
which was once used in polite society. It ain’t permissible now, although George Foglia uses it all the time. Then I came to the symbols they have dredged out of mathematics and other languages in order to represent sounds not covered in English. I made notes on them. They weren’t the kind of notes that any Ph.D. candidate in my chosen field would have on him at this late stage in his career, but it was the only way I could remember all the junk. Later on I would tear them up.

I read grimly on as our headlights drilled across Virginia. Somewhere near the southern border of the state I couldn’t take it anymore. I put my book and notes in their proper slots, closed the case, and reached up to turn off the little bull’s-eye light that was focused on my lap. I levered my seat back, stretched my legs with a groan of pleasure, leaned back with my hands clasped on the case, and closed my eyes.

I couldn’t sleep. I stared at the dark country as the bus cruised at seventy. A sudden thought jumped into my head. I could open the case, spend thirty-five seconds on the contents, and then kill everyone on the bus. Forty-seven people. And the driver wouldn’t even turn around. He’d think the studious gentleman in seat 27 was just having a quiet little coughing fit.

It was the kind of thought a psychopathic kid might have. For a second I thought that the most intelligent thing I could do would be for me to get out at Fayetteville, walk to a bridge over the Cape Fear River, and drop in the nine little parts plus the drum, go on to Jackson, pick up Kirby’s note at the general delivery window, tell her to pack up, withdraw the money from the Okalusa bank, and meet me at the bus depot in the car. Then we’d drive to Cape Hatteras and I could go surf-casting for sea bass for a couple days while she went on up North and answered the phone. Then back to New York, peeping at keyholes, striking up barroom acquaintances, and reading about the latest electronic devices in
Security.
And not sweat nights about Moran.

But I’d already spent close to three thousand bucks. It would be too embarrassing telling Parrish I’d changed my mind, sorry, I’d pay him back over the next few months. Well, definitely by the end of the year. And then I’d be stuck with two cars — when one is a big enough headache to park in New York.

I knew what Parrish would do. He wouldn’t yell. He’d just listen. He’d say, “Okay. Pay me back when you can, Mr. Dunne.” And he’d hang up. He’d sort of despise me for the rest of his life. But then you don’t hire a man who’s thought about your offer first for twenty-four hours, agrees to it, spends three thousand dollars of your money, and then expect to like him when he welshes. The mere thought of Parrish’s quiet contempt made me flush.

We rolled into Fayetteville at three in the morning. Very few towns are appealing at that time, and most American cities are way down at the bottom of the list. It looked cold, locked up, hostile. We stopped at the Greyhound Depot. Twenty-minute rest stop.

All I had to do was to walk out with my baggage. I went into the station and had a cup of coffee that was an insult to my stomach and my intelligence. Ten minutes to go. Ten minutes to change my life. And what swung it was that coffee. It was so bad I took it personally. Because it suddenly occurred to me that when this Parrish job would be over, I’d never have to drink lousy coffee at three
A.M.
in dead little towns in the piny woods again. Never.

I got on the bus and was asleep before the driver started her up.

We got into Jackson at eleven the next morning. I checked the Kim and suitcase at a locker and walked on over to the post office, whistling and swinging my attaché case. People were walking far more slowly than they do in New York, and several of them nodded to me pleasantly. General delivery had a letter for me. From Mrs. Harold Wilson, 412 South Magnolia, Okalusa.

Dear Hal,

Welcome to Dixie! I rented a nice little second-floor furnished apartment for sixty-five dollars. The house belongs to a decaying couple named Garrison. The phone is
516.
Phone me when you get this letter and I’ll put on an award performance at the bus station like I promised.

(Mrs.) Harold Wilson.

I phoned her right away.

A soft voice said, “Yes?”

“Mrs. Garrison?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Harold Wilson, and I — ”

Instant warmth. “Oh,
you’re
her husband! I declare! We heard so much about you an’ the wonderful thing you’re goin’ to work on down here! She’s been pinin’ for you somethin’ dreadful. You jus’ hold on now an’ I’ll get her for you quicker ’n you can say Jack Robinson! Don’t go ’way now, y’ hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Kirby must have started her performance as soon as she hit the city limits.

“Sugar?”

“Hi, Kirby.”

“Darlin’! Jus’ get in? I found the most delightful place I ever did see, an’ I know you’re jus’ gonna love it!”

“I gather the landlady is standing right next to you.”

“Yeh-uss! I feel the same way about you, honey! I love this lil ole town, evvabody’s been so nice an’ friendly an’ all!”

“Can you cut it short?”

She wouldn’t. She went on and raved about the town park with the bandstand and the flowers planted all around it and the swimming pool. She said the grocery man was so nice and so was the boy at the gas station who checked her steering and suspension and found she needed an idler arm and he put it in and he charged her just for the labor and nothing at all for the inspection, and he adjusted the carburetor and timing and didn’t charge nothing at all because she told him I was working hard still going to school.

“This is what happens when I hire an out-of-work actress,” I said, and immediately realized I had made a serious slip. The local operator might be listening in. Kirby recognized the danger as soon as I did.

“I’m so glad you wouldn’t let me go on with those actin’ lessons, Hal,” she said. “I was beginnin’ to hate all those No’th’n girls in mah class always makin’ fun of the way I talked.”

“I always liked the way you talked, honey,” I said, breathing easier. “This bus gets into Okalusa at two-forty. Will you meet me?”

“What a silly lil ole question! Miss Ethelda-Grace, would you like to come for a ride to the bus station with me when mah Hal comes in?”

Miss Ethelda protested, but only weakly. She must be quite bored. Kirby knew this was the surest way to spread the news over Okalusa that I had arrived.

I hung up with a loud kiss echoing in the receiver. I bought a ticket for the Jackson-Okalusa bus, bought a copy of
Pleasure,
wondered why people thought those colorless bunnies had any flavor, tried to read the third-rate prose, threw it away, and had a better time reading
True Detective.

The announcer finally called my bus. The friendly driver cut short his conversation with the mechanic and helped with my baggage. I thanked him and he smiled pleasantly and went back to his seat and his conversation with the mechanic.

“Y’ought to make the run to Okalusa just once, Gene,” he said. “We grow cotton so high thataway the moon has to go around by way of Tinnissee. The mosquitoes get so big in the swamps outside of town they c’n stand flat-footed an’ drink out of a rain barrel. An’ the frogs in them swamps along the Chickasaw, why, when they get to bellerin’ of a night, they rattle the winderpanes ten mile off.”

“You bet, Ray,” said the grinning mechanic. He took out a wrench from his back pocket and adjusted the outside rear-view mirror.

“Come down an’ eat our catfish,” said the driver.

“We got good catfish heah. Ain’t no reason to travel a hundred and eighty hot miles to eat yours, Ray.”

“I tell you we got good eatin’ catfish, Gene. You take our catfish an’ corn bread an’ some of that white mule them hill boys make up in the laurel, an’ you got a good thing goin’.” He saw me listening with interest. He swung around and included me in the conversation.

“Mister, you look like a stranger. Lemme tell about our catfish up there in the swamp. One time a cotton-mouth struck me on the face, right here. It weighed seventy-eight pound, coiled. It was bigger’n a bushel basket. It plumb tore away the whole left side of my face, but all they fed me for three days straight was that local catfish from the swamp, an’ corn bread an’ corn whisky, an’ by the end of the week it healed up an’ didn’t even leave a scar. You see any sign of a scar on mah face?”

I shook my head.

“Mister,” the mechanic said, “Okalusa’s in Milliken County. An’ you can hear anythin’ in Milliken County except the truth and bacon a-fryin’.”

Ray closed the door, switched on the ignition, and grinned.

“Hold it, Ray,” said the mechanic. “You got one more passenger!” In a lower tone he added, “A jigaboo.”

Ray opened the door. He said curtly, “C’mon. Step on it. I ain’t got all day.”

A black man of about sixty began to climb the steps with a heavy old suitcase. Once inside, he gave his ticket to Ray, who didn’t wait till the old man could be seated. The bus started immediately and the old man was having trouble with his bulky suitcase in the narrow aisle, which was littered with boxes and shopping bags. It was obviously the bus used by country people to do their serious city shopping in. The old man paused and hesitated when he saw the cluttered aisle. There was an empty seat far in the rear, and there was an empty one beside me. I could almost see his thinking processes.

He would have to ask pardon of ten whites in order to get to the empty seat in the back. He would probably bang a few knees as well with his huge suitcase, and why go through all that humiliation when he could just sit beside me? He looked at me. The look said, Please, mister, are you gonna make a fuss if I sit beside you?

I was filled with compassion for a man who had to think over things like this when a white person could breeze on ahead, saving his mental energy for other matters. I automatically smiled and moved over a bit. He smiled, let out a sigh, and began to stow his suitcase overhead in the rack.