On the plane down to Fort Smith we sat silently. The Braniff jet was already docked at Fort Smith, and we had to hurry aboard. It had been such a race to this jet, my mind had been doing little at all. But when I sat down in it, my mind caught up with my eyes, and I was sure I was sealed up in a cartoon farce which was bound to explode with me inside it. The inside of the plane seemed to have been arranged by an interior-decorator wild about pastels and the Astro-Mod motif and I had an idea that the same man had designed the plane itself. There was a row of two seats across on one side and a row of three seats across on the other side. A fool would know that this arrangement, though novel and Mod, would make the plane dip sorely to one side, especially with a lot of people sitting in the three-seat side. Another concern was that there was almost nobody in the plane except Lariat and me. The two stewardesses were two just-too-beautiful blondes, in high leather boots figured like the crazy pastel seats. The wings of the plane were black and stubby; the body was gold; the tail was even another color. That we were in the air at all seemed a paradox of high cartoon fun. I had grown sick thinking of this veering craft when the pilot opened the address speaker and gave us his one message: “Ladies and Gentleman, we are twenty thousand feet in the air and we are making six hundred and twenty land miles per hour.” He had the voice of a Texas disc jockey, a real hot-rodding yokel.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked Lariat.
I made my way to the restroom. It was a nicer place, duller, steadier. If I could stay in here, I could trust that I would not fly apart in a wreck of hot pinks, greens, and oranges, holding the boots of those blondes. I would not hail out with this thing like a roman candle. I saw myself in the mirror. You! I thought, shocked. Always you! You tick. The plane sat down in the air after making a rise. It sounded like every gear on board had fouled up. What did it matter?
I began seeing in my mind Mr. Wrag at the reservoir. He fell backward and hit his head on the rocks of the shore-line. He did it again and again. Then I saw Mr. and Mrs. Wrag. Mr. Wrag slumping between Mrs. Wrag and the doctor, walking up the slope toward me, toward the Volkswagen with fishbait in the back seat. Then Catherine, walking beside them in her sports outfit. Seeing me and waving to shoo me away, again and again. The chilly “breeze from the water mounting and falling. Doing it again and again. Now I began seeing the sunburned little forearm of Catherine, covered with goosebumps. The putting of the lab coat over her shoulders. “You silly old boy.” I saw it over and over. I began heaving and sobbing. Someone wanted in the rest-room. I went back to my seat. When I sat down I saw her all dolled-up for the last date, her foot in the shoe with one strap across it. I saw her singing in a minor role of the musicals. “She’s dead, dead.”
“Did you love the girl?” said Lariat.
“For a few weeks.”
When I looked at Lariat, he was staring out the window. He was slightly red-eyed himself. “Look at the sun in those clouds,” he said. “Oh God, if there is a God. That’s what my wife used to say. ‘Oh God, if there is a God!’”
In Jackson it was twilight The cabbie took us to the fair-ground gates. They were locked. We climbed over. We walked through the field to the kudzu vine cliff in back of Mother Rooney’s.
“You can’t climb that,” said Lariat.
We made it foot by foot on the ridges. At last we obtained the back yard. For me it was no easy thing, with the raincoat I had. After we got our breath, I eased around the side of the house and yes there was Peter’s Buick parked directly across the street from Mother Rooney’s sidewalk. I told Lariat. I knocked quietly at the back door. The house was alight in both towers but dark in Mother Rooney’s quarters. Nobody came. I saw a candle, held by someone, cross the archway to the dining room. We were on the tiny back porch behind the kitchen. We kept waiting at the door. I looked for the candle to reappear, but it didn’t. Fleece was telling the truth about the neighborhood. All the big houses on Titpea were closed up. No light came from them. Only the streetlights, making a fuzzy ribbon of illumination around the roof and edges of Mother Rooney’s house, and the yellowish light coming out of the window shades of the tower. Then I went back to the porch and knocked again. I knew I had seen a feeble light going around in the downstairs area. The porch was pitch dark.
“Kick the door in,” said Lariat. “Let’s take a chance. Wait. I’ll kick it in.” I took hold of the gun in my raincoat.
Just then we heard somebody trying to turn the lock. This door had only a small pane of glass at head level. You could see into the kitchen through the glass, but there was nobody to be seen. The doorknob was turning, and the door swung out.
Fleece was hanging on the inner knob. He fell out on the porch. I couldn’t see much but I knew it was Fleece. Something hard hit the floor alongside him.
“Get it,” he said. I bent down to him. He whispered again. “Get it.” He was hoarse. Lariat picked up the thing he was talking about, which was the Italian pistol. Now I could see his face. He was without his glasses, which meant that he was blind and that the moment was grave. He looked terribly pale.
“He killed Mother Rooney. I had my finger on my pistol when he came in the front door but I couldn’t pull it. Damn me. Couldn’t.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Twice. He shot me in the leg and in my back. I had my pistol.”
“Is that him with the candle?”
“Shhhhhl Not loud. Yes. He just went back to your room.”
I picked up Fleece’s arms and dragged him out, down the steps, to the back yard. Lariat came along with his feet.
“He shot her in the forehead. She’s lying by the telephone nook in the hall. First he shot me in the leg. Then he saw her with the telephone in her hand and shot her. I had turned away but I heard her being shot and I went over to her. He shot me again in the back while I was holding her. I passed out … when I came to I was lying on her face…. Who is that?” he asked.
“Dr. Lariat.”
“A doctor?”
“Professor of Literature.”
“Aw Jesus. Why did you bring him?”
Lariat did seem awfully useless at the moment. I took out the long cowboy pistol I’d brought down with me in my raincoat and gave it to him. Fleece’s big unshot pistol. I told Lariat all he had to do was pull the trigger.
“That’s right!” said Fleece. “Kill him. He’s looking for you, Harry. When I came to, he was talking to me. All afternoon he wants to know where you are. He sat on the floor and talked to me in this squeaky little voice. I asked him to call the hospital for me. He never even heard me. He looked at Mother Rooney. He kept squeaking for the night to come, please come the night, he said. Her corpse was driving him crazy.”
“The gun you gave me isn’t loaded,” said Lariat. Fleece lifted up one hand and gave Lariat several wet cartridges out of his palm.
“Well, is this one loaded?” I asked him.
“Oh yes. I had plenty of ammunition. I just couldn’t pull the trigger.”
“Peter doesn’t have the shotgun, does he?” I asked Fleece.
“Just a pistol. A black pistol, I hope it was only a twenty-two. I don’t hurt all that much.”
“I’ll get the ambulance here.” I knew I was the one. I ducked up to the porch and crawled in the house itself. I was hit by a cold wind at the kitchen door, but this was only my nerves spraying out all over me. I waddled across the kitchen floor to the cornice. I peeped around it to the hall. All was black, and smelled musty. I crept on to the tele-phone nook. I heard nothing and saw nothing, so I stood up and tiptoed two huge steps and put my hands on the phone. The receiver was not on the cradle. I picked up the wire and tried to lift it. It wouldn’t give. Mother Rooney had it in her hand. I reached down and felt the plastic and jerked the receiver out of her grip. I dialed the operator and whispered to her. The ambulance people said they would be over.