Open it then: with right hand, forefinger in recess, holding carbine stock in left elbow. Open it till I can see him. It takes five minutes.
There he is. Up he comes swimming into view like a diver from the ocean depths.
I don’t know him.
He sits at the window, back turned, but I see him at an angle. One cheek is visible, and the notch of one eye. His feet are propped on the low sill — it is not a French window, as I had remembered — the front legs of the director’s chair clear of the floor. The feet flex slightly, moving the chair. The rifle lays on the floor under his right hand. It is an M-32, the army’s long-barrel sniper rifle with scope. How did he miss me with that? He must be a poor shot.
He is dressed as an inyanga, a herbalist, in a monkhu6, a striped orange and gray tunic of coarse cotton. From his belt hangs an izinkhonkwani, a leather bag originally worn to carry herbs and green sticks but now no doubt filled with.380 mm shells. The foot propped on the sill wears a dirty low-quarter Ked, the kind pro ballplayers wear for scrimmage. His head, shaved, ducks slightly in time with the rocking. His right wrist, dangling above the rifle, wears a large gold watch with a metal expansion band.
I judge he was or is a pro. The lateral columns of neck muscles flare out in a pyramid from jaw to the deep girdle of his shoulders. The bare leg below the tunic is rawboned and sharp-shinned, as strong and stringy as an ostrich’s. The skin is, on his neck, carbon-black. It blots light. Light hitting it drains out, it is a hole. The skin at the heel of the loosely flexed hand shades from black to terra cotta to salmon in the palm.
The front sight of my carbine is on his occipital protuberance. The sweetish smell of the Benedictine fills my nostrils. I must shoot him. He will experience light, a blaze of color, and nothing else.
Then shoot him.
He tried to shoot you three times and he would shoot you now. Worse, he wants to take your woman, women.
Saint Thomas Aquinas on killing in self-defense: Q.21, Obj. 4, Part I, Sum. Theol. But did he say anything about shooting in the back?
My grandfather on sportsmanship (my grandfather: short on Saint Thomas, long on Zane Grey): Don’t ever shoot a quail on the ground or a duck on the water.
Then what do I do now for Christ’s sake, stomp my foot to flush him and shoot him on the fly?
Or in Stereo-V-Western style: Reach, stranger?
No. Just shoot him. The son of a bitch didn’t call you out.
Shoot him then.
Wound him?
No, kill him.
The trouble is my elbow is not comfortable.
Get it comfortable then.
Now.
Consider this though: would Richard Coeur de Lion have let Saladin have it in the back, heathen though he was?
The trouble is that my grandfather set more store by Sir Walter Scott than he did by Thomas More.
What would Thomas More have done? Undoubtedly he would have—
“Hold it, Doc.”
The voice, which is both conversational and tremulous, comes from close behind me.
“All right.”
“Just set the gun down real easy.”
“I will.”
“You wasn’t going to do it anyway, was you, Doc?”
“I don’t know.’
“You wasn’t. I been watching you. Now turn around.”
“All right.”
It is Victor Charles. He sighs and shakes his head. “Doc, you shouldn’t ought to of done this.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
Victor stands against one flap of the saloon doors, single-barrel shotgun held in one hand like a pistol. The weak light from the hall gleams on his white ducks and white interne shoes.
The gun was aimed at my middle but now strays off. Victor, I know, will shoot me if he has to. But I perceive that an old etiquette requires that he not point his gun at me.
“Doc Doc Doc. You sho done gone and done it this time?”
“Yes.”
“Doc, how come you didn’t do like I told you and move in with your mama and tend to your business?”
“You didn’t tell me why.”
“How come you had to come over here?”
“That fellow in there has been trying to kill me.”
“O.K., Doc. Now let’s us just move on out of here and up in the front.”
It is odd: the main emotion between us is embarrassment. Each is embarrassed for the other. We cannot quite look at each other.
As he waits for me to get in front Victor picks up the carbine and shoves it under the slatting!
We walk around to the pro shop. At the door I hesitate, wondering if the inyanga will shoot me. Victor fathoms this and calls out: “It’s all right, Uru. It’s just me and Doc.”
Uru has swung his chair around to face us. His rifle is still on the floor, his hands clasped behind his head. I notice with surprise that he is very youthful. His pleasant broad face has a sullen expression. A keloid, or welted scar, runs off one eyebrow, pulling the eyebrow down and giving him a Chinese look.
“Well well well. The hunted walks in on the hunter.”
“Then I was the hunted.” I look at him curiously, shifting my head a bit to get a fix on him. What sort of fellow is he?
“Where did you find him, Victor?”
“He was in there.” Victor nods toward the panel. “Fixing hisself a drink. Can’t you smell it?”
I take some hope in Victor not mentioning my carbine and in Uru not picking his up. Perhaps they are not going to shoot me.
“What were you doing in there, Doctor?” asks Uru, straining his clasped hands against his head.
“Doc was picking up a couple of bottles,” says Victor, shaking his head. “Doc he like his little toddy.”
“I didn’t ask you. I asked him.”
Uru diphthongs his I’s broadly and curls his tongue in his R’s. I judge he is from Michigan. He sprawls in his chair exactly like a black athlete at Michigan State sprawling in the classroom and shooting insolent glances at his English instructor.
“So Chuck here was going to have himself a party,” says Uru lazily. He turns to me. “Chuck, your party days are over.”
“Is that right?”
“All right, Victor. You found him. You take care of him.”
“D-D-Doc’s all right!” cries Victor. Victor’s stammering worries me more than Uru’s malevolence. “When Doc give you his word, he keep it. Doc, tell Uru you leaving and not coming back.”
“Leaving your house?” Uru asks.
“As a matter of act, I have left. Moved out.”
“So we’re taking Doc’s word now,” says Uru broadly, imitating Victor. He frowns. The chair legs hit the floor. “Victor, who are you taking orders from?”
“You, but I’m going to tell you about Doc here,” says Victor, rushing his speech, a frightening thing. He is afraid for me. “Doc here the onliest one come to your house when you’re sick. He set up all night with my auntee.”
Uru is smiling broadly — a very pleasant face, really. “So Chuck here set up all night with your auntee.” He rolls his eyes up, past Gene Sarazen, to the ceiling. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“Do you mind if I ask you something?” I ask Uru.
“Make it quick, Chuck.”
“Just what is it you all have in mind to do around here?”
“Doc,” says Victor, sorrowful again. “You know we can’t tell you that.”
“Why can’t we tell him? Chuck’s not going to tell anybody, are you, Chuck?”
“Are you all taking over Paradise Estates?”
“No, we all not,” says Uru, like any other Yankee.
“Not in the beginning, Doc,” says Victor patiently. “All we wanted was the ridge houses since they were empty anyhow, all but yours and you wouldn’t leave. We had to have your house.”