You sit down at the table with your coffee and cigarette, and you ease your elbow up and down, seeing how far you can lower your arm without dropping the knife, letting it slide down from your sleeve a time or two.
You think, "Well how can you? How can you hurt someone that's already dead?"
You wonder if you've done things right, so's there'll be nothing left of something that shouldn't ever have been, and you know everything has been done right. You know, because you planned this moment before eternity way back yonder someplace.
You look up at the ceiling, listening, up through the ceiling and into the sky beyond. And there isn't the least bit of doubt in your mind. That'll be the plane, all right, coming in from the east, from Fort Worth. It'll be the plane she's on.
You look up at the ceiling, grinning, and you nod and say, "Long time no see. How you been doin' anyway, huh, baby? How are you, Joyce?"
26
Just for the hell of it, I took a peek out the back door, and then I went part way into the living room and stooped down so I could look out the window. It was like I'd thought, of course. They had the house covered from every angle. Men with Winchesters. Deputies, most of 'em, with a few of the "safety inspectors" on Conway's payroll.
It would have been fun to take a real good look, to step to the door and holler howdy to 'em. But it would have been fun for them, too, and I figured they were having far too much as it was. Anyway, some of those «inspectors» were apt to be a mite trigger happy, anxious to show their boss they were on their toes, and I had a little job to do yet.
I had to get everything wrapped up to take with me.
I took one last walk through the house, and I saw that everything-the alcohol and the candles and everything- was going fine. I came back downstairs, closing all the doors behind me-all the doors behind me-and sat back down at the kitchen table.
The coffee pot was empty. There was just one cigarette paper left and just enough tobacco to fill it, and, yeah-yeah! — I was down to my last match. Things were sure working out fine.
I puffed on the cigarette, watching the red-gray ashes move down toward my fingers. I watched, not needing to, knowing they'd get just so far and no further.
I heard a car pull into the driveway. I heard a couple of its doors slam. I heard them crossing the yard and coming up the steps and across the porch. I heard the front door open; and they came in. And the ashes had burned out, the cigarette had gone dead.
And I laid it in my saucer and looked up.
I looked out the kitchen window, first, at the two guys standing outside. Then I looked at them:
Conway and Hendricks, Hank Butterby and Jeff Plummer. Two or three fellows I didn't know.
They fell back, watching me, letting her move out ahead of them. I looked at her.
Joyce Lakeland.
Her neck was in a cast that came clear up to her chin like a collar, and she walked stiff-backed and jerky. Her face was a white mask of gauze and tape, and nothing much showed of it but her eyes and her lips. And she was trying to say something-her lips were moving-but she didn't really have a voice. She could hardly get out a whisper.
"Lou… I didn't…"
"Sure," I said. "I didn't figure you had, baby."
She kept coming toward me and I stood up, my right arm raised like I was brushing at my hair.
I could feel my face twisting, my lips pulling back from my teeth. I knew what I must look like, but she didn't seem to mind. She wasn't scared. What did she have to be scared of?
"… this, Lou. Not like this…"
"Sure, you can't," I said. "Don't hardly see how you could."
"… not anyway without…"
"Two hearts that beat as one," I said. "T-wo-ha, ha, ha, — two-ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha-two-J-jesus Chri-ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha-two Jesus…"
And I sprang at her, I made for her just like they'd thought I would. Almost. And it was like I'd signaled, the way the smoke suddenly poured up through the floor. And the room exploded with shots and yells, and I seemed to explode with it, yelling and laughing and… and… Because they hadn't got the point. She'd got that between the ribs and the blade along with it. And they all lived happily ever after, I guess, and I guess-that's-all.
Yeah, I reckon that's all unless our kind gets another chance in the Next Place. Our kind. Us people.
All of us that started the game with a crooked cue, that wanted so much and got so little, that meant so good and did so bad. All us folks. Me and Joyce Lakeland, and Johnnie Pappas and Bob Maples and big ol' Elmer Conway and little ol' Amy Stanton. All of us.
All of us.
About the Author
James Meyers Thompson was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma, in 1906. He began writing fiction at a very young age, selling his first story to True Detective when he was only fourteen. In all, Jim Thompson wrote twenty-nine novels and two screenplays (for the Stanley Kubrick films The Killing and Paths of Glory). Films based on his novels include: Coup de Torchion (Pop. 1280), Serie Noire (A Hell of a Woman), The Getaway, The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters, and After Dark, My Sweet. A biography of Jim Thompson will be published by Knopf.