He picked up his club from the table. His eyes had turned red. His face was gray and dry, lips chapped.
An old gray rat poked his head from underneath the grease-covered rusty woodburning stove. The rat had red eyes also. The rat looked at Jackson and he looked at the rat.
The house began to shake, The floor was shaking, shaking the rat. Jackson felt himself begin to shake. His brains felt as though they were shaking up and down in his head, about to explode. The thunder of the train filled the room, froze the shaking man and shaking rat in a death-like trance.
At that moment the whistle screamed. It screamed like a stuck pig running through the corn patch with the knife still in it.
The rat vanished.
Jackson’s feet began to run.
He ran blindly from the kitchen, through the bedroom, stumbling over the three-legged chair, jumped up and ran into the pitch-dark hall and started down the stairs.
Then he remembered Imabelle’s clothes. He turned around, ran back to the kitchen, laid his pipe on the table, gathered the clothes in his arms, turned around again and ran out of the flat, forgetting his club.
He ran through the dark hall, down the steep, dark stairs, trying to be as quiet as possible. Sweat started to pour from his dry skin. He could feel it trickling down his neck, from underneath his arms, down his sides, like crawling worms.
The hems of the dresses trailed on the dirty stairs. At the bottom of the first staircase he tripped over the skirts, fell belly-forward, holding the dresses clutched in his arms, and landed with a dull thud.
“Lord, my Savior,” he muttered getting up. “Looks like I ain’t got long to stay here.”
He was hugging the dresses as though Imabelle were inside them, just able to see over the top of the pile, when he passed underneath the dim light in the ground-floor hall and came to the outside doorway.
He expected to see Goldy waiting impatiently on the front seat of the hearse. Instead he saw Hank and Jodie, standing on the far side of the hearse, facing each other and talking. He was petrified. He stood there with his mouth open in his wet black face, white teeth shining from purple-blue gums.
Hank and Jodie had just that instant withdrawn their gazes from the lighted hallway.
Hank was saying to Jodie, “Let’s move him out the street.”
“Move him where?”
“Inside the hearse.”
“What for? Why don’t we let the mother-raper lay where he’s at?”
“He’s a stooly. If the cops find him here they’re on our trail like white on rice.”
“If it was up to me, I’d leave him lay, and frig the cops. We’re lamming, ain’t we?”
Hank went back and opened the double-doors of the hearse. If he had turned his head he would have seen Jackson standing petrified in the doorway. But he was looking at the body as he walked back.
“Grab his shoulders,” he said, stooping to pick up the feet.
Jodie began putting on his gloves. He was looking at the body also.
“What the hell, you scared to touch him with your hands?”
“The mother-raper’s dead. That’s what I’m scared of.”
Jackson thought they were preparing to move the trunk. The thought released his petrified muscles. Through the rim of his vision he saw the panel truck. He thought they were going to take the trunk and put it into the truck. He didn’t have any way of stopping them. He didn’t even have his club.
For the first time he realized that Goldy was nowhere in sight. Maybe Goldy had seen them coming and had hidden. Goldy had the revolver. Jackson felt like damning Goldy to everlasting hell, but didn’t want to commit blasphemy on top of all the other sins he’d committed.
He backed quietly down the hall, half-stumbling at each step, turned at the foot of the stairs and started to run back upstairs to the flat. Then he thought better of it. After they’d moved the trunk into their truck, they might go up to the flat for something or other.
He looked about for a place to hide.
The space underneath the stairs had been walled in to form a closet with the door facing a small dark corner at the back of the hall. He backed into the corner, tried the door of the closet, found it opened.
Garbage cans were crammed helter-skelter among dirty mops and pails. Folding the dresses to keep them from dangling into the cans, he squeezed inside, silently closed the door, and stood in the stinking dark, scarcely breathing.
Jodie took the body beneath the armpits, Hank the feet. They rammed it feet first into the funeral paraphernalia underneath the trunk. It was a tight squeeze and they had to lay it on its back and push it, with their feet against the shoulders. Finally they got the head in far enough to close the doors.
Hank went back and picked up the white bonnet and gray wig and stuck it back on the head. Then he pulled down some of the black bunting and artificial wreaths to cover the head before shutting the door.
“What you doing that for?” Jodie asked.
“In case anybody looks.”
“Who’s going to look?”
“How the hell do I know? We can’t lock it.”
They turned and looked up at the window of the third-story flat again.
Jodie took off his gloves, stuck his bare hand into his pocket and gripped the handle of his knife.
“Who helped him, you reckon?”
“I don’t figure it. I had it cased as her and Jackson, but this stooly makes it different.”
“You reckon Jackson’s in it too?”
“Got to be, I figure. It’s his hearse.”
“You reckon they’re still upstairs?”
“We’re going to see right soon.”
They turned, crossed the sidewalk, and entered the hall. Both had their hands in their overcoat pockets, Hank’s gripping his .38 automatic pistol, Jodie’s gripping his bone-handled knife. Their eyes searched the shadows.
As they approached the stairs they were talking loudly enough for Jackson to hear from the stinking closet underneath.
“Double-crossing bitch, I should have killed her—”
“Shut up.”
Jackson could hear each footstep touching lightly on the wooden floor. He held his breath.
“I don’t care if she does hear me, she ain’t got no place to hide.”
“Shut up. Other people are in here who can hear.”
Jackson heard the footsteps as they started to ascend the stairs. Suddenly one pair stopped.
“What you mean, shut up? I’m getting good-and-goddam tired of you telling me to shut up all the time.”
The second pair of footsteps stopped just as abruptly.
“I mean shut up. Just that.”
Jackson held his breath so long in the dangerous silence his lungs ached before the footsteps began ascending again.
No further words were spoken.
Jackson breathed softly, listening to the steps going higher and higher, becoming fainter. He gripped the door-knob, pulled it inward with all his strength, turned it slowly so as not to make a sound, and opened the door a crack with infinite caution.
He heard the footsteps start up the second staircase, barely hearing them when they moved along the third-story hall.
He waited a moment longer, then came out of the closet running. An empty garbage can turned over with a shattering clang. The sound kicked him down the hall with his arms full of dresses, like a pointed-toe shoe in his rump.
He heard feet pounding on the wooden floor of the upper hallway, hitting the wooden steps like a booted centipede. As he crossed the sidewalk he heard a window being opened overhead.
He grabbed at the handle of the hearse door, threw it open, tossed the dresses onto the seat, jumped inside, fumbled in his pocket for the ignition key, turned on the ignition, and pressed the starter button.