“Do you think you should be talking so much?” She held out the glass of water.
“I should talk. You should listen.” He took a sip of water and set the glass on the table. “So listen.”
“I’ll try.”
“It will open your deceitful eyes, what I have to say.”
“Please. No more of that.”
“Almost from the beginning you broke our personal deal.”
“What did you expect?”
“Just that. It was no surprise. A healthy young trollop tied to a sick old goat. The horns were inevitable. As long as you were discreet I was tolerant. My pride was not touched. But then you finally threw discretion to the winds. Your gross infidelities became common knowledge. You made me the butt of sad dirty jokes. Even then... yes, even then I—” The cough was phlegmy this time and he gave it thoughtful concentration. “Even then I rationalized the situation. But when you seduced my nephew Otis under this roof and flaunted the affair, that was just too much. I decided to take drastic steps.”
“I don’t know what you can do about it now.”
“At this moment Otis is on a plane to Athens where his father, my brother, will welcome him. Already I have done that.”
“Impossible. We had lunch together and—”
“He failed to mention the journey. In Greek the name Otis means keen-eared. A few days ago my nephew listened well to Norman Yard, who outlined certain financial arrangements that could improve his future.”
“Why, you interfering old buzzard!”
“Wait till you hear what I have in store for you, Coral.”
“Well, you can’t disinherit me, George. I’m you legal wife. You have no children. Even if you die intestate I’m entitled to half of what you leave.”
That rare, sly smile tightened his dry lips. “You know the state law well. So you may as well see what you will inherit half of.” From his bathrobe pocket he took a thin sheaf of greenbacks. “A hundred thousand, ten bills of ten thousand each. My entire estate as of today.”
“You’re not kidding me, George,” Coral said nonchalantly.
“You’ll see soon enough. All my other assets have become part of the ecological Painter Foundation. What I have here is all that’s left of my personal wealth.”
Stunned, Coral watched the disgusting old man take one of the bills and tear it into a dozen small pieces.
“What in hell are you doing?”
Reaching for the glass of water, he crammed the shredded paper into his mouth and washed it down with a gulping swallow. “I’m taking it with me,” he said as he began tearing up another bill.
“Why, you crazy old bugger,” she screamed, grasping his scrawny throat with her strong tennis-playing hands. He died so quickly that she couldn’t believe it. She looked at the greenback clutched in his hand. It was transparently bogus. Of course. The government hadn’t printed $10,000 bills in years.
“What have you done to him?” asked a voice at her shoulder. It was Miss Suratt.
“What have I done to him?” She raised the murdering hands to her eyes. “What has he done to me? What has he done to me?”
79
The Devil Behind You
Richard A. Moore
He sat under the tree in the dark and stared at the illuminated stained-glass windows of the church. A few late arrivals were hurrying from the parking lot. A pair of high heels clicked up the sidewalk, the last of the faithful sounding off the final seconds. The door swung open, letting a shaft of light pierce the darkness, and then pneumatically hissed shut. The night service was beginning.
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” the chant began, with the choir leading the way.
He watched all this from the edge of the woods, in his usual Sunday-night seat. He stood and automatically wiped the pants of his new blue suit. It would be an hour now before the service would end and his mother would be back to pick him up.
It was much darker under the trees and the pine-needle carpet muffled his footsteps. He could hear the whir of traffic on the highway beyond the church and a dog barking among the houses across the highway. The only nearby sounds were the twigs sharply protesting his steps.
He moved deeper into the woods toward a small stream where he liked to pass the time. It wasn’t a great pleasure, sitting on the cool bank listening to the many sounds of the brook, but it was so much better than the inside of the glaringly lighted church.
Going to church was the only social activity in the dreary village, and the main service in the morning was enough contact for most of the congregation. Many made their living from the poor soil and the rest worked at the nearby state prison. It was a simple hard life, and most preferred to contemplate it in solitude.
The eight-year-old boy dreaded the lonely Sunday ordeal, but he had stopped questioning his mother’s absense. He was shunned by the other church members and he knew it concerned his mother’s past and the father he never had. At times he sat through the sermon, but the fear and tension that traveled through the crowd as they listened to the red-faced preacher frightened him. He dimly grasped the teaching of an ever-present danger of hell and damnation, but his young mind sometimes rebelled and he sought the quiet forest.
He could hear the breeze rustling the few remaining stubborn leaves. An occasional chill reminded him of the winter to come.
“Are you lost?”
The sudden voice shattered the quiet darkness and pricked the boy’s heart into a racing flutter. He turned quickly and stared upward at the looming silhouette. The figure knelt, seeming to telescope back to normal size after its early exaggerated hugeness.
A round face, impossibly round, with eyes yielding space enough for several noses, although one was not immediately apparent in that vast area, leaned toward him. A mouth, large beyond belief as if it served double duty because of the minute nose, curved across the face like the world’s last river after all else has eroded to pale desert.
“I say, are you lost, boy?”
Clenching bits of twigs and crushed leaves in his fists, the boy attempted to answer, but for the moment could only stammer. The gibbous face nodded with lips stretching another inch in smile.
“Where do you belong?”
The boy found his voice at last but it sounded awkward. “The church. I was at church.” He pointed back over the hill from where the distant rumble of the preacher could still be heard working steadily toward the meat of the sermon.
Heavy deliberate laughter came slowly from the crouched figure, as if much more was imprisoned in the barrel chest but only a carefully measured portion was allowed to escape through those awful lips.
“Slipped away from church, eh? Slipped away to the woods.” The man gazed about the dark forest. “Couldn’t stand to be cooped up. I’ll bet. I can understand that. You’d rather visit with me than listen to the preacher go at it. Well, you found a kindred soul. I can’t stand those Bible thumpers or close quarters either.”
The man’s huge face seemed to blot out the small amount of night light that filtered through the trees. The boy tried to stand, but the man put a thick hand on his shoulder and held him firmly to earth.
“Now where do you think you’re going?”
The boy stared at the bulging forearm inches from his face. For a moment he seemed to be counting the coarse black hairs that with the movement of the breeze appeared to be crawling along the arm.
“I have to go back now. They’ll be missing me.”
The man laughed again. “No, son, you’ve made your choice. They wanted you and instead you came here to me and here you’ll stay. I can’t let you go now. We haven’t got to know each other. I didn’t ask for you, but maybe you can be of help.” He tightened his grip on the boy’s shoulder. “I hope so, boy, I really hope so.”