The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed (14 page)

The meaning of that burst on me suddenly: I thought, my God, Curt is nine years younger than Lou. I’d actually considered them the same age, and I thought: If they’re even now, where will Curt be when he’s Lou’s age? At that moment I regretted that I wouldn’t be there to see it, because I felt that he’d leave me far behind.

Lou’s curiosity was engaged, and the next night he took me to see Curt and Gaby. There was a farmhouse near Curt’s—Lou had the place listed for sale—where the attic was full of bats. Lou liked to sit and shoot them as they darted out at sunset. It was like a skeet shoot, only trickier. Curt was reluctant to do it, and I thought he was squeamish. But Lou insisted, and Curt took the gun. Bang, he took one shot and got one bat. Then he handed Lou the gun and said: “That’s all. I won’t push my luck.” Lou took five more shots and only winged one. When all the bats had flown, Curt said he thought he’d go up and board up the hole, but Lou said: “Leave it open. They’ll come back.”

Curt smiled and said. “I see. Then we’ll have more to shoot tomorrow.”

I’d never thought of it like that but Lou’s deal with the bats seemed suddenly sadistic and perverted. Before it had seemed like harmless fun.

Afterward Lou said: “He doesn’t like killing, you notice that? He just likes talking about it.”

I looked at Lou.
“Should
a person like it?”

“No, certainly not.” Lou chuckled to himself; he seemed oddly self-satisfied.

I felt uncomfortable watching the two together, each studying the other. Occasionally I’d pick up fragments of weird conversation. Curt saying: “Life is telling yourself a break will come, tomorrow will be better. Suicide is deciding it won’t come, or if it does it won’t be worth a damn.” And Lou asking: “Suppose you decided, how would you do it?” Curt said: “I’d choose to wait for death from some outside agency. Then each day would be profit, reckoned from the day I decided.” Lou laughed. “It’s altogether too sane. When you really decide on suicide, you’re nuts. Right now you’re sane, so you plan simple painless methods. But if you ever really do it, you’ll be kooky, so naturally your methods will be kooky too.”

“Yes,” Curt agreed finally. “And you’ll probably take a few people with you.”

A week passed; Lou spent less time at his work and no longer puttered in his shop at night. I was torn between worry and willingness to see Curt under any circumstances. Lou would get in the car in the evenings and say, Well, shall we go to a show or what? And I’d say, Whatever you want, Lou. And my stomach would knot up because tonight I wouldn’t see Curt, then Lou would say, Shall we stop and see Curt and Gaby? And my tongue would stick to the roof of my mouth because I knew before the evening was over Curt and Lou would be sizing each other up, like a pair of tomcats. Everything was a kind of contest, like the water skiing. Lou had been skiing for years and was far better than average. He asked Curt if he’d ever skied, and Curt said: “I’ve tried a couple of times.” From then on Lou couldn’t rest until he got him on a pair of boards. I stood on the bank and watched his first wobbly, wallowing attempts. An hour later I watched his smooth gliding ease; a day later I saw him slalom and carry Sharon on his back. Lou strained to stay ahead of him, but I could see it was useless. Then, just when Lou and Curt were exactly equal in skill, Curt said: “I’m beginning to lose interest in the sport.”

I thought about that. I realized that if he’d gone on to surpass Lou, I might have pitied Lou and resented Curt. But when he didn’t go ahead, he got all the credit and none of the blame. He was as superior physically as if he had, yet he didn’t have to bear the burden of having put Lou down.

I still hadn’t figured it out completely, though. One afternoon we were shooting the basketball at the net Lou had tacked onto the garage for Sharon. Curt dropped ten in a row which just whispered through the net. He seemed to forget the rest of us were there; we were just co-spectators in his drive to attain perfection. Then he seemed to remember that we were keeping score; he started clowning and missing shots. Lou beat him, but everybody knew Curt could have won. I had a feeling Curt was trying to infuriate Lou, in a way which left Lou no excuse to be angry. Curt was so blithe and easy about it, the way he shot the arrows. Lou got pretty good with the bow, but never as good as Curt—and Curt was always ready with a lame, unhelpful excuse:

“Your arms are too short; you need a lighter bow.” I felt like screaming at Lou, For God’s sake get off the physical kick; you’re just playing into his hands. But Lou didn’t seem to notice; trying the tablecloth trick was his own idea. Curt watched Lou do it twice, breaking a plate and two glasses. Then he walked to the table and jerked off the cloth with one hand. He didn’t even ripple the cream in the pitcher. He treated it as an accident and wouldn’t try it again; but I knew that somehow Curt had practiced, then had worked Lou into trying it first. When we were alone I asked: “Are you always on top?”

He smiled. “”There are better men. I met them back in the days when I was trying everybody out.”

“That must have shocked you.”

“It was a sobering lesson. It taught me never to deceive myself.”

I couldn’t figure out Curt’s game with Lou. I wondered if
he
knew; I felt that we were all four in a driverless car hurtling downhill toward certain disaster.

Gaby felt it too; she got a bright nervous glitter in her eyes. Her checks grew hollow and she cursed the town: “Goddam dusty stinking little pigpen.” I suspected she was hitting the bottle secretly, but she kept it all from Curt. She made me promise not to tell, then told me she’d gotten nasty phone calls at the same time I’d been getting them.

“Why didn’t you tell Curt?” I asked.

“I was supposed to,” she said. “I was supposed to rave and scream and get scared so Curt would pull out. That’s why I didn’t.”

I had to admire her courage; slim, elfin creature. She’d never really had her nose rubbed against life before. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. I felt sorry for her, but at the same time envious, watching her and Curt together. I saw him kiss her in the car, and I tried to remember how long it had been since Lou and I had done that. When we’d leave their house, they’d stand on the front porch together and Curt would slide his arm across her shoulders. There was something basic about that; a gesture of solidarity in front of the home which hints that everything’s good inside…. When they left our house, I always walked Curt to the car, and Lou walked with Gaby. I’d make these comparisons and I’d feel a prickle of discontent.

One day Sharon came to me with a problem. It was Sunday; Lou and Gaby were out riding, Curt and I were sitting on the blanket in front of our house. Sharon had been told by a boy she liked that he preferred short hair. Sharon wanted to know, Should I cut it, or would that make me seem too eager?

I said: “Well, I’m not a boy. Why don’t you ask Curt?”

Curt looked at me curiously, then at Sharon: “I’m afraid I didn’t have a normal boyhood. Why don’t you ask your dad?”

She left to do that, and Curt kept looking at me. Finally he said quietly: “He’s her dad, and nothing I do will change that. I don’t tamper with things I can’t change.”

“I know.” I felt everything coming down on top of me, covering me with confusion. I jumped up. “I know he’s her dad, and I know he loves her. And she loves him. I just wish there were more understanding between them and less emotion. I wish you were—” I turned away suddenly, my face burning. “My God, this thing is getting out of control.”

He shook his head. “No, it isn’t.”

“But … it has. You’ve gotten so involved in your little game with Lou you’ve forgotten—”

“It’s all one game, Velda.”

I stared at him. “But I thought by now you’d clear him—”

“On the contrary. I’ve noticed that the phone calls have stopped since I’ve been staying close to Lou.”

My mind started spinning. I couldn’t put two thoughts together. “Then … how can you leave Gaby alone with him so much?”

“I’m usually within calling distance.”

“Not now. They’ve been gone an hour on the horses.”

He nodded. “I know. Put your ear to the ground.”

I lay my ear against the ground and heard the faint thudding of hoofs. I looked at Curt. “What would you do if they stopped?”

“Go find them,” he shrugged. “But it isn’t necessary now. Sharon went for me.”

It made me furious that he’d used my daughter. “Damn you. You treat everybody like bugs under a glass.”

He reached up and took my hand. I looked into his eyes and saw that the pupils were large and black, with only tiny rims of blue around them. “Hold yourself together, Velda. Something’s going to break soon.”

I hoped so. I was tired of lying in bed every night and adding up the score: This counted for Lou, that counted against him. Was he, or wasn’t he? I’d added it a hundred times and never got enough on either side to settle the account. I doubted that any wife had ever been faced by such a problem.

The following night all my suspicions of Lou were wiped out. It was ten o’clock. Lou was out in the shop; Gaby and Curt had just left, and I was sitting with one eye on the TV and the other eye on the clock. Sharon had ridden the gelding to visit a girlfriend who lived two miles up the road; I’d been against letting her go, but Lou and Sharon had both opposed me, so I’d given in.

The phone rang, a hesitant ring which told me it was being cranked manually and not by the switchboard, which has a push button. That meant a call from somebody on our line. Since those weird calls had always come on our line, I lifted the phone fearfully.

“Mrs. Bayrd,” said a woman’s voice. “This is Crystal Miller. Can you come up? Your daughter’s here.”

My heart stopped. The Millers lived just a half mile up the road. “Is Sharon hurt?”

“She’s … not hurt, but—” She started to say more but stopped. “You’d better come right away. That’s all I can say.” I ran out the door and called to Lou. The door opened, and he was silhouetted by the light behind him. “Lou! Sharon’s up at Miller’s! Something’s happened!”

We wheeled into the Millers’ lane and stopped; Bert Miller came out of the square white house and sauntered down to meet us. He was a retired railroader who wore greasy overalls and smoked a corncob pipe which was unbearably rancid even if you liked pipes—which his wife didn’t. “She’s inside,” he drawled as though this were a social visit. “I don’t think you folks need to worry. Some kids threw a scare into her, I figure. I found her hammerin’ at my door, her shirt half torn off. She was bawlin’ …”

Lou strode past him toward the house, then Bert said: “I called the sheriff; he’s on his way.”

Lou paused in midstride, then nodded abruptly and went on. I walked behind him, into a neat living room which smelled of waxed linoleum and sassafras tea. The sassafras wafted up from a glass in Sharon’s hand. She sat in an armchair, pale and puffy-eyed, wrapped in a large plaid bathrobe. Crystal Miller stood behind her with bony arms folded across her chest, her pale gray eyes fixed on me.

“You shouldn’t let your daughter out at night, Mrs. Bayrd, with all those strange things happening.”

I ignored her and went to Sharon. “What happened, baby?”

Sharon took a deep breath and blurted: “I was riding Lightning down the road and a bright light flashed and Lightning jumped and I fell, and—”

She stopped abruptly. “Go on, Sharon,” I said.

“Don’t rush her, Velda,” said Lou. “Just tell the story, Sharon. No hurry now.”

Sharon looked down at the tea. Tears started running down her cheeks. “Mother … I can’t drink this.”

I took the tea and handed it to Crystal Miller. Her lips pursed with disapproval, but she took it.

Bert Miller said: “A shot of whisky would—”

“Shut up, Bert,” snapped his wife.

“Go on, Sharon,” I said.

“Well … I lay in the road with the breath knocked out of me. Then something … ran over from the side of the road, growling like an animal.”

“A dog?”

“Oh
no.
It was a man, I know that, but the sound was like an animal. It started tearing at my clothes … my shirt. I started kicking and screaming, and it was tearing at my Levis … but all of a sudden it ran away.”

“Ran away?”

“I guess my screaming scared it off.”

“But … he didn’t do anything?”

“Yes he
did,
Mother. He tore off my shirt and ripped my jeans—”

“But he just ripped them? He didn’t … I mean afterwards—”

“Oh, Mother!” Sharon started sobbing.

“Velda,” said Lou. “You’re not getting through.” He came forward and helped Sharon out of her chair. “Let’s go in the other room and talk.”

The door closed behind them and I heard Lou’s soothing voice. After a minute Bert Miller cleared his throat and said if I could use a drink, he’d just walk out to the barn. But Crystal told him to shut up, she wouldn’t have the stuff in the house; Bert shrugged and we sat in awkward silence for five more minutes. A car purred to a stop outside, then the sheriff came in, bulking huge in creased gabardines. He pulled off his hat and said: “Hello folks, Velda. Where’s the girl?”

Lou and Sharon came out, Lou with his arm around Sharon’s waist. He said: “Sorry you got called out on a wild goose chase, Sheriff. The girl just fell off her horse.”

I stared at Lou. The sheriff said: “Hell! I heard she got raped.”

Lou turned to Sharon. “Baby, tell the sheriff what happened.”

“I …” Her voice was husky from crying. “I fell off the horse and tried to catch him and tore my clothes in the fence.”

I gasped. “Sharon! Why did you tell that story?”

She looked down, refusing to meet my eyes. “Because … I’d stayed longer than you said, I didn’t want to he punished.”

“But I never … you knew you wouldn’t be—”

The sheriff cleared his throat. “I’ll be getting back, unless …” he looked at Lou “… you think I ought to look into it?”

Lou shook his head. “No, I’m sure it happened like she said.”

I watched the sheriff leave, too dazed by events to say anything. Lou drove the pickup out of the lane, with Sharon sitting between us. On the road he stopped and said: “Drive on home. I’ll check the area for tracks.”