The lesson probably saved Abel from jail, for he took the cash and entered his father’s business. From behind a counter he still tells one and all of my adroitness.
I paid him with the five hundred my uncle sent me. She wished to contribute. I refused to accept her money, rich as she is. Later she persuaded me to allow her to repay my uncle, in fact, insisted on it.
She is very rich, in fact. A widow. Her husband was killed by a boulder spewed from one of their oil wells. A young woman in search of adventure. But prudent too. She’d had sense enough to carry an imitation of the valuable stone.
In Merida these days I sometimes see the anthropology student who shared my cabin on the boat that brought me here. He never did go back to his father’s grain elevators. And I view those days with a tender longing.
At the Hotel Narcissus, Sandalio Fuentes and I often sit together in the Jack Dempsey Dining Room. We discuss politics and other artful games while she, her lovely brow under the smoky blonde hair crimped in concentration, keeps the ledgers.
She also handles the cash. But I don’t need cash if I decide to embark on new adventure. All my nature needs is the urge. But this widow, she has style. I did not expect her to domesticate me. I suppose no husband does. This question has occurred to me: Did I truly get the valuable stone, or did she get me?
A Real, Live Murderer
by Donald Honig
When we glance over our shoulders reminiscently, we see the golden glow of the good old days. Then, murderers were decidedly quaint. As for ghouls, why we have nothing today to match those of yesteryear.
I was waiting on the back porch, a trifle mistrustful of the dark. It was overly quiet and the trees seemed to be watching me dourly as if they knew I was going to do something I shouldn’t. Even the wind had stopped. I could hear Pa snoring through the upstairs window in slow, breaking rhythms.
It felt as though I’d been standing there for hours, but it wasn’t more than fifteen minutes. I’d gotten out of bed at ten of twelve and the midnight bells had come tolling over the meadows about five minutes after I’d come down. I was almost hoping that Pete wouldn’t show up. But I knew he would. He was always out late at night anyway. He was the only one allowed out so late; or maybe he wasn’t allowed; but either way, he was always around, looking for some mischief.
Pete had seen the murderer last night and had told me about it this afternoon while I was watering Pa’s horse at the trough in front of the Dooley House. He’d promised to take me tonight, if I could get out. It had to be very late, he said, because we had to be sure the murderer didn’t see us because he was going to be hanged shortly and everybody knows it’s bad luck to be looked at by somebody who is going to be hanged. We couldn’t go to look at him during the day because he’d be sure to see us. So we had to be sure he was asleep. I really wanted to see him too. I’d never seen a murderer before and I wasn’t going to be done out of it now no matter what.
I heard him coming then. He was coming through the elms across the road. I could hear him in there. I went down the porch steps as light as I could and went across the back yard and climbed over the picket fence. I met him in the middle of the road. A full white moon had come over the trees and you could see almost like it was morning.
“I made it,” I said.
“That’s good,” Pete said. He had his thumbs hooked inside his suspenders. He was wearing the Union Army forage cap that Clay Taylor had recently brought back from Virginia for him. Pete was the only one in Capstone who owned a hat like that and he wouldn’t trade it for anything. He said it was as near as he could come to fighting Rebs; the War was in its second year then.
We went down to the crossroads and then along Grant Avenue’s moonlit emptiness.
“You sure he won’t see us?” I asked.
“Nothing to be worried about,” Pete said. We walked between the ruts that the wagons made, on the shaggy grass that grew there.
“How many times have you seen him?”
“Twice,” Pete said. “The last two nights.”
“What does he look like?”
“You’ll see. You’ll see him good tonight. The moon is just right.”
The jail stood off by itself, a long, low, oblong building. Down further were the Dooley House and Gibson’s tavern and the stores, but they were quiet now, very quiet.
We lightfooted around behind the jail. High up in the long, whitewashed wall were the little cell-windows. Pete had moved the rain barrel under one of them and that was where the murderer was. Pete climbed up onto the barrel first and took hold of the bars and looked in, bending his face in close.
“Is he there?” I whispered, clasping my hands.
“Shhh,” he said.
“Let me up,” I said.
He moved aside on the barrel and I climbed on. I hooked my fingers into his belt and pulled myself up and took hold of the bars and held my breath and looked down into the cell.
He was lying on the cot, the murderer was, on his back, sleeping. The moon fell full and bright through the bars and showed him good. I recognized him now as a man I’d seen about town from time to time, Jimmy Grover. Mostly I’d seen him drunk. He was not a very large man but was sort of round. He had a short beard which lent a peculiar sadness to his reposing face. His hands were clasped over his chest and he looked just like any other man who is asleep.
“That’s him,” Pete whispered.
“He don’t look so special,” I said.
Then his eyes opened. They opened slow and mysterious and were looking right up at our faces in the bars. And he looked worse with his eyes open — he looked like he was dead. The way they had just opened like that, it was uncanny; they had opened and found us there, or more properly caught us, and were holding us, and there was nothing we could do about it. We couldn’t move. We couldn’t do anything but stare back, our fingers caught around the bars.
At first his eyes showed nothing, as if our faces peeping there were a continuation of his dream. Then they became startled and I could detect a tremor go through his body. But he didn’t move yet. I think if he would have moved — if he would have so much as parted his hands — we would have gone over backwards off the barrel.
He spoke first.
“What do you want?” he said. He was a little afraid and perhaps a trifle indignant.
Neither of us spoke, could answer. He asked it again, his voice not so harsh this time.
“We don’t want anything,” Pete said.
“You must want something,” the murderer said.
“Honest we don’t,” Pete said.
The murderer moved now, slowly, almost deliberately slowly so as not to alarm us. First his hands slid away and then he sat up on the cot, watching us.
“You’ve come to look at me, haven’t you?” he said. “You must think I’m a strange specimen.”
“Yes sir,” Pete said, not precisely agreeing, but trying to be agreeable.
“If you’ve come to see a murderer, then you’re wasting your time,” the murderer said, sitting there in the moonlight and looking up at us as if we were the peculiar ones.
“You mean to say you’re not a murderer?” I asked.
“I never killed anybody,” he said.
“Then why are you here?” Pete asked.
“The jails are full of innocent men.”
“But everybody says you’re a murderer,” Pete said stubbornly, as though trying to convince him.
Then he commenced to tell us his side of what had happened those few days ago when he’d got into his trouble.