He looked at her again. Then he looked at me.
Then he started to laugh.
“You little punk,” he said when he stopped laughing. “A guy like you, you wouldn’t know what to do with a broad like this. What’s the bit—just sit around necking?”
My cheeks were burning. But Rita was nodding very earnestly.
“Hell,” he said. “I outgrew that when I was in junior high. I guess some people take awhile to grow up.”
I still don’t understand it exactly. When he touched her, when he told me what he was going to do to her, I was still able to stand still and not do anything about it. But now something snapped, as if his insult had hit home and I had to do something about it.
I rushed him.
I came in low and the gun sounded like a cannon when it went off. The shot missed and he pulled the trigger again when I was within a foot or two of him.
The hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
I crashed into him and he rolled over on his back. The gun dropped from his hand and I reached for it, managing to pick it up. Then he was on his feet again and coming at me.
Behind me Rita had started to scream.
“You punk,” he snarled. “I’ll kill you for that.”
When he charged me I swung the gun like a club, putting everything I had into it. I had to nail him fast. If he got in one punch he could kill me.
The butt of the gun caught him on the side of the head and knocked him to the ground. It would have killed an ordinary man, or at least knocked him out. But he was shaking his head at once and on his feet a second later.
“Okay,” he said. “Now you’re going to get it.”
I was still holding onto the gun as he came in for the kill. He was wary now, knowing that I had the gun and that I wasn’t afraid to hit him with it.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Rita. She was standing in the same place as before and she was stark naked, screaming her lungs out.
But there was no one around to hear her screams. I cursed myself mentally for parking so far away from town. I had wanted privacy—now I wished I had settled for a nice quiet spot on lover’s lane by the river.
It was too late to wish. He stepped in closer, swinging his left like a meat cleaver. When I ducked it he threw the right.
I ducked under the punch and stepped out of the way. He had put his whole body into the blow, expecting it to connect, and now he couldn’t stop. He went on right past me and I brought the gun down with all my might on the top of his head.
He dropped like a stone.
I knelt down next to him; he was unconscious. Then everything that had been bottled up inside me let loose and I rolled him onto his back. I brought the butt of the gun down on the bridge of his nose as hard as I could and I heard bone snap.
When somebody who knows judo does that with the side of his hand it can kill a man. I didn’t know any more about judo than I had read in detective stories, but I wasn’t using the side of my hand. I was using a gun butt.
I felt for a pulse. There was none.
He was dead.
When I straightened up she was in my arms, warm and sobbing and unconscious of her nakedness.
“Jim,” she said. “Oh, God!”
I didn’t feel anything. “Relax,” I said. “He’s dead. He can’t do anything now.”
“You were wonderful,” she said. “You…you killed him.”
I nodded.
“You knocked him out and you killed him.”
I nodded again. My arms slipped around her and I stroked the smooth skin.
“He was horrible,” she went on. “I…never met a man like that.”
I mumbled, “He had a few good ideas.”
“What did you say?”
I told her again.
She drew away from me. “What do you mean, Jim?”
I ignored her question. Instead I reached out a hand and took hold of her the way he had.
“He’s right,” I said. “You are nice.”
She didn’t know how to react. Finally she smiled. “I’m glad you think so.”
I didn’t smile. I tightened my grip on her the way I had seen him do it and she writhed in pain, staring at me.
“Does it hurt?”
“Yes,” she gasped. “What—”
“If you weren’t such a bitch,” I said, “we wouldn’t be here tonight. All this wouldn’t have happened.”
“I…let go, Jim.”
I didn’t let go.
“Jim—”
“We’d have been in bed, Rita. My bed. We never would have seen this guy.”
She stared at me. I think she was beginning to catch on.
“Let go,” she said. “I have to get dressed.”
“Don’t bother.”
“I have to get some clothes on.”
“I’ll only rip them off again.”
Her eyes opened wider. “Jim—”
“He had some good ideas,” I said again. “I’m sick of necking, Rita. When I want something I’m going to take it.”
She didn’t answer.
“I want you,” I said.
“Please,” she said. It was the same tone of voice she had used before when he told her to take off her pants.
I managed to laugh. “Lie down,” I said. “On the grass. It’s not as good as a bed but I’m not going to wait anymore. I’m through with waiting, Rita.”
She lay down in the grass, trying to cover her nakedness with her hands. Her eyes stared at me dully.
Very methodically I took off my jacket, folded it, and set it on the ground by the body. Then I removed the rest of my clothing.
When I knelt beside her she didn’t try to resist me but her face was contorted in terror. I put my hand on her shoulder. She shivered.
“Relax,” I told her. “It won’t be that bad.”
I added, “Someday you might even learn to like it.”
THE BURNING FURY
HE WAS A BIG MAN with a rugged chin and the kind of eyes that could look right through a person, the piercing eyes that said, “I know who you are and I know your angle and I’m not buying it, so get out.”
All of him said that—the solid frame without fat on it, the muscles in his arms, and even the way he was dressed. He wore a plaid flannel shirt open at the neck, a pair of tight blue jeans, and heavy logger’s boots. Once the boots had been polished to a bright shine, but that was a long time ago. Now they were a dingy brown, scuffed and battered from plenty of hard wear.
He tossed off the shot of rot-gut rye and sipped the beer chaser slowly, wondering how much of the slop he would pour down his gullet tonight. Christ, he was drinking too much. At this rate he’d drink himself broke by the time the season was up and he’d have to go bumming a ride to the next camp. And then it would just start in all over again—breaking your back over the big trees in the daytime and pouring down the rye and beer every night.
The days off were different. On those days it was cheap wine, half-a-buck a bottle Sneaky Pete, down the hatch the first thing in the morning and you kept right on with it until you passed out. That was on your day off, and you needed a day off like you needed a hole in your head.
When he worked he stayed sober until work was through for the day. He didn’t need a drink while he was working, not with the full flavor of the open air racing through him and the joy of swinging that double-bit axe and working the big saw, not then. Not when he was up on top, trimming her down and watching the axe bite through branches.
When he was working there was nothing to forget, no memories to grab him around the neck, no hungers to make him want to reach out and swing at somebody. Not when he had an axe in his hand.
But afterwards, then it was bad. Then the memories came, the Bad Things, and there had to be a way to forget them. The hunger came, stronger each time, and he couldn’t sleep unless his gut was filled with whiskey or beer or wine or all three.
If only a man could work twenty-four hours a day…
He knew it would be bad the minute she came through the door. He saw her at once, saw the shape of her body and the color of her hair and the look in her eyes, and he knew right away that it was going to be one hell of a night. He took hold of the beer glass so hard he almost snapped it in two and tossed off the rest of the beer, calling for another shot with his next breath. The bartender came so slowly, and all the time he could see her out of the corner of his eye and feel the hunger come on like a sunset.
It was just like a sunset, the way his mind started going red and yellow and purple all at once and the way the hunger sat there like a big ball of fire nestling on the horizon. He closed his eyes and tried to black out the picture but it stayed with him, glowing and burning and sending hot shivers through his heavy body.
He told the bartender to make it a double, and he threw the double straight down and went to work on the beer chaser, hoping that the boilermakers would work tonight. Enough liquor would kill the sunset and put out the fire. It worked before. It had to work this time.
He watched her out of the corner of his eye, not wanting to but not able to help himself. She was small—a good head shorter than he was, and she couldn’t weigh half of what he did. But the weight she had was all placed just right, just the way he liked a woman to be put together.
Her hair was blond—soft and fluffy and curling around her face like smoke. Her yellow sweater was just a shade deeper and brighter than her hair, and it showed off her body nicely, hugging and emphasizing the gentle curves.
The dark green skirt was tight, and it did things to the other half of her body.
He looked at her, and the ball of fire in his mind burned hotter and brighter every second.
Twenty or twenty-one, he guessed. Young, and with that innocent look that would stay with her no matter what she did or with whom or how often. He knew instinctively that the innocence was an illusion, and he would have known this if he saw her kneeling in a church instead of looking over the men in a logger’s bar. But he knew at the same time that this was the only word for what she had: innocence. It was in the eyes, the way she moved, the half-smile on her full lips.
That was what did it: the youth, the innocence, the shape, and the knowledge that she was about as innocent as a Bowery fleabag. That did it every time, those four things all together, and he thought once again that this was going to be one hell of a night.
Another double followed the beer. It was beginning to take hold now, he noticed with a short sigh of relief. He rubbed a callused finger over his right cheek and noted a sensation of numbness in his cheek, the first sign that the alcohol was reaching him. With his constant drinking it took a little more alcohol every night, but he was getting there now, getting to the point where the girl wouldn’t affect him at all.
If only she’d give him time. Just a few more drinks and there would be nothing to worry about, a few more drinks and the numbness would spread slowly from his cheeks to the rest of his body and finally to his brain, quenching the yellow fire and letting him rest.
If only…
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her eyes upon him, singling him out from the crowd at the bar. She took a hesitant step toward him and he wanted to shout “Go away!” at her. She kept on coming, and he wished that the stool on his right weren’t empty, that with no place for her to sit she might leave him alone.