And all the time trying to quiet Artie, to shut up Artie in his high mood making his jokes, waving his flask- “We come not to bury Paulie but to baptize-”
“Shut up! There’s some bastard railway switchman got a shack up the track. He’ll hear you.”
“Invite him! Let’s give him a drink of that old acid! You sure you got the ass-it?”
“I’ve got it, right in my pocket.”
Then coming to the edge of the pond, putting down the long bundle. And there it must have happened… Judd saw himself there, sitting for a moment on the slope of the low railway embankment, bending to take off his shoes and pull on the boots – his brother Max’s fishing boots, taken from Max’s closet. You’re in it with me, Max, you sonofabitch, big man Max. Who’s a sissy now! And before him, the dark flat water, going into the dark hole, the culvert. Then, heated from the long exertion, and knowing he had yet to lift the body and carry it into the water, Judd rose to remove his coat. He placed the coat carefully folded upon the grass, beside his shoes.
The remainder of the scene flashed through his mind now, accelerated, for he still found it distasteful to review. First, Artie unrolling the lap robe. The lower part of the body, bare except for the knee-length stockings, appearing grotesque under the low-held beam of Artie’s flashlight, looking like those manikins you sometimes see half undressed in store windows… No! the glasses would have glinted then, under Artie’s light. No! Now Judd felt sure; he could sense the glasses lying there still folded in the breast pocket of his folded coat.
“Cold stiff,” Artie said. “Help me with his goddam clothes.”
“Rigor mortis,” Judd repeated, kneeling. They both worked to finish the undressing.
Artie joked – the punk was like some broad that goes rigid and won’t let you get her clothes off. He kept up the stream of jokes the way he had in the car, handling the body so casually, the way he had in the back of the Willys. Then the nude body lay there, a pale streak on the lap robe, and Judd knew his part had come. He rose and got the can of hydrochloric. Was it then? Not then; he had not disturbed the folded jacket.
And Artie had moved the body off the robe, to the water’s edge, and Judd stood over it, raising the can of hydrochloric, so well forethought – acid to dissolve all evidence of mortality. Then he was pouring the stream from the can – “I hereby baptize and consecrate nothing to nothing” – and with his high giggle, watching the stream, silvery, upon the face. To obliterate, all, all! A thought, an urge, a dark wing beating far back in his mind, so they never might recognize, never might identify, but it was more than that, it was all, all faces, and no face. It was as though he himself were being obliterated so he could never be caught. And then there was a sure impulse, a thing to do so no one could ever ever know who, what it was. And he turned the stream downward, giggling, giggling – he was a kid again playing in the sand, holding a can of water over a body of sand, the sand dissolving away to nothing – so now the stream upon the penis… dissolve, dissolve and be no more! And Artie laughed with him, and it was right, right! There was a great lifting within him, Judd thought, because now the deed was done, the whole terrible superhuman god-devil deed was done. They had achieved! But it was a feeling that continued, even stronger, more obscure, a lifting feeling within him, as though something utterly wrong had been corrected, put back right.
Then wading in Max’s boots into the water, seizing the body, feeling it cold as the touch of the water. And the whole thing had become easy. Shoving the object into the culvert, the non-being, face and sex soon dissolving, how neatly it fitted, as he had estimated it would, fitting perfectly in the perfect place. And then retreating to get cleanly out of there.
Had he then picked up the coat?
And the precise image of that moment came before Judd. Artie’s form, looming out of the dark, Artie breathlessly offering him his coat and shoes, the coat snatched up in a tangle any old way, the disorderly way Artie handled things, upside down.
That was how it had happened. That had been the moment. Judd could virtually sense the glasses sliding from the upside-down pocket, among the weeds.
“I’m sorry to have to contradict you,” he said now to Artie, “but I believe the slip-up was yours. It was you who picked up my jacket and brought it to me. That’s when the glasses must have dropped out. But I accept my share of the error in failing to notice-”
“Me!” Artie turned on him, raging. “Trying to shove it off on me! You and your buggering sure-shot hiding place! You and your damned eyeglasses-”
“Take it easy,” Judd said. He felt cool, controlled, exhilarated.
If the whole thing had gone off without a slip-up, it would have been perfection of a kind: a deed conceived and planned and carried out, like some intricate construction – a matchstick palace with even the last piece fitting perfectly into place.
But the glasses were an error, an error tearing down Artie and himself from their superhuman state as beings who could achieve an act of perfection. And in some centre of his self, Judd rejoiced that they were united in this error, united in their imperfect action; he rejoiced that Artie had committed his part of the flaw.
Now their action permitted a different kind of triumph, for they must try to retrieve their error and still emerge superior. And in their error they were united even more firmly than by a perfect deed. For had the adventure succeeded, they would have divided the ransom and been done. He would have gone on, in two weeks, to Europe.
Perhaps now he would never go. Even in this dread anticipation of being caught, Judd felt a subterranean satisfaction; he and Artie were entwined in what was still to come.
“By the law of probabilities,” he said to Artie, “there is one chance in a million that they can trace the glasses.”
“To hell with all that,” said Artie.
But something perverse in Judd made him see the spectacles already traced. They had to be traced – he had to be confronted with them – for the next part of the action to occur, the infinite ordeal through which he would redeem his error, prove himself a truly superior being. The ordeal in which, by facing down all accusation, he would save Artie, too.
To Artie he said, “They’re just the most ordinary reading glasses. The chance that their ownership can be identified is infinitesimal. But even if it should be, that still doesn’t prove anything. I could have dropped my glasses any day I was out there birding. I was even out there with my class in the same spot last week. In fact, I can use my bird class as witnesses!” There was a Machiavellian touch that Artie should appreciate.
Judd saw himself standing before some powerful man – a heavy moustache, an authority – but he remained unflustered, controlled, saying, “A mere coincidence,” as he accepted the spectacles back into his hand and placed them back in this same coat pocket. For no matter who they were, the authorities would know they had to accept the word of Judah Steiner, Jr.
In fact, they would conduct their questioning with the utmost deference, and probably apologize to his old man for even calling him in. And the old man would say to him quietly, “You don’t have to answer them if you don’t want to. What kind of nonsense is this?” But Judd would say, “It’s routine. I’m perfectly willing to answer any questions they ask.” And all that time it would be a howl over the old man and his slow-minded righteousness! For he would be fooling the old man as well as all the inquisitors.
“I ought to kill you for making such a boner,” Artie said, hurling the newspaper to the floor.