Wilfred, a rangy bachelor with a long bony face and black hair graying at the temples, came striding around the house with a basket of shiny apples. He grinned at Janet hesitantly.
“I’m glad you asked us out, Wilfred,” she said, smiling at him.
“I’m glad you came.”
She frowned, suddenly uneasy. Had Ben lied about Wilfred phoning him at the office? Was it the other way about? Or had she imagined his brief hesitation? Yes, she must have...
They had tea, scones, and honey in a large bare-looking kitchen whose only concessions to modern living were the telephone, radio, and refrigerator. As the men talked, she became aware of tiny echoes whispering in the lonely house and she thought of the ratty little apartment where she and Carmel had been raised by a befuddled mother who neither knew nor cared which end was up.
Mother was long gone, and a good thing too. Carmel had made it on her own, was a success, and still free. But she, poor fool, had married for money, for the security money would bring...
“I’m after a porcupine this time, Wilf,” Ben was saying. “I’ve never seen one close up.”
“You’ll find them on the ground as much as in trees this time of year,” Wilfred said — then, unwittingly, cleared the path for murder: they must see the cattle and his new pasture before he left for a co-op meeting.
He led them outdoors, down the bark-littered lane between the woodpiles, past the barn to the pasture gate. Here, leaning on the rails, pointing to various plants in the thick sward, he talked at length about the advantages of improved grass and legume mixtures.
His monologue, the stillness, the mellow warmth of the sun, made her drowsy. She yawned at the glorious scarlet and gold of the forested hills, and then found herself staring at the salt lick Wilfred had put out for his cattle.
A tapered blue block, hard as stone, weighing about fifty pounds, it lay on its side three feet inside the barbed-wire fence. The round hole in the larger end, two inches wide and five inches deep to accommodate the picket from which the cattle had butted it, faced her like a dark eye.
She looked away, and found her gaze drawn irresistibly back. An idea began to form. She shivered, tugged away, and followed the men back up the lane to see the cattle.
When they returned to the house, she felt like crying because she knew she couldn’t do it. It had all been wishful thinking, brought on by childish resentment. She must have been crazy to think such thoughts! Thank God she had come to her senses in time!
Ben, out in the back yard, target-practicing with his slide-action repeater and new box of shells, was a good gentle man, worthy of better than she. She would be a better wife from now on. The minute Wilfred left, she would give Ben some indication of her new regard, might even hint about the children he had so long desired.
But when Wilfred did leave for his co-op meeting, bouncing down the dusty road in his battered old truck, she found Ben’s attitude subtly changed. He was balanced on the balls of his feet, a trace of the bulldog in the line of his jaw. “Wilf’ll be gone four hours, I imagine,” he said, with obvious satisfaction.
He was looking at her in a curious manner; not at her eyes or her face, but, it seemed, at her head. Where had she seen that disconcerting gaze before — that intent yet unfocused gaze, as if he were looking through her to some object beyond? Nervously, she turned and entered the house.
“Come on,” he said, following. “Let’s take our guns and get going.”
“I don’t feel like hunting now,” she said.
“Oh, come on,” he urged, and there was something in his voice that made her draw back from him, a hint of breathlessness, of hidden excitement.
“All right then,” she said, and went to get her rifle from its case. She put a bullet in the chamber, the other nine in her slacks pocket. He loaded his repeater and worked the slide action, advancing a cartridge to the chamber, cocking the firing-pin in readiness. She preceded him through the door.
She was blinking against the autumn sunlight when the realization hit her. Not for one minute had she fooled him with her deceitful wifely acquiescences and loving smiles. He knew her for what she was. He meant to kill her!
A dozen rushing thoughts supported this conviction against the incredulity of Ben doing such a thing:
This was the first time he had not insisted that they wear their blaze-orange vests!
If his hair was brown as a rabbit’s, hers was black as a porcupine’s! He had mentioned a porcupine to Wilfred in order to set the stage for murder!
He had phoned Wilfred from his office, not vice-versa, to get them out here, and he seemed to have known Wilfred would be at a meeting!
He had, in public, been increasingly attentive and loving of late, to show people how happily married they were.
It had all begun when Carmel made those commercials for Wetherson’s. There had been something between them all along. It was Carmel he wanted!
He saw things coming before they happened, he said. Did that mean he knew what she intended when he had bought the rifles?
Her scalp seemed ready to lift from her skull with the fear that rose inside her, but not by the twitch of an eyelid did she show it. Holding the trigger back, she cocked her single-shot rifle silently, to be on even terms without his knowing. If he points that rifle at me just once, she thought, I’ll drill him through the foot!
She couldn’t kill him. Nobody would believe a story of self-defense against kindly respectable Ben.
Instantly, she realized a startling disadvantage. Being right-handed, she shot more naturally toward the left. A time-consuming half turn was necessary to shoot to the right. She couldn’t take that chance. Casually, going down the slope from the house, she stepped around him.
In a way it was the final test, because he was right-handed too. A few paces later, when he stepped to her right in turn, there was no doubt left in her mind. She knew, and knew also that it was useless to balk or run. He could shoot her here just as easily and claim accidental discharge of the gun. And he would get away with it.
She forced in a ragged breath, pretended to stumble on the rough ground, and again came up on his right. A few seconds later, he copied her movement. “Will you quit shuttling around?” he mumbled. “What’s gotten into you anyway?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just wanted to be on the sunny side.”
The sunny side! Even as she said it she realized his plan — he was fixing their relative positions now so that when they entered the woods later she, on his left, would be blinded by the barred sunlight of the bush and he would have perfect vision.
It seemed impossible that this was happening in this perfectly peaceful countryside. Yet accidents did happen on soporific days like this. That boy last year, mistaken for a partridge. The man shot while eating lunch because some idiot thought the waxed paper from his sandwich was the flag of a deer. In each case, the culprits had merely had their licenses revoked for three years
She sneaked a sideways look at Ben. He seemed flushed. That might be because of the red woollen shirt and cap he was wearing, but it didn’t explain his intense expression. A cold light glinted on the blued barrel of his rifle with every step he took.