He met the waitress on the Monday night following the Saturday on which he had tried to pay for the cup of coffee. He did not have the rope then. He climbed from his window and dropped the ten feet to the earth and walked the five miles into town. He did not think at all about how he would get back into his room.
He reached town and went to the corner where she had told him to wait. It was a quiet corner and he was quite early, thinking I will have to remember. To let her show me what to do and how to do it and when. To not let her find out that I don’t know, that I will have to find out from her.
He had been waiting for over an hour when she appeared. He had been that early. She came up on foot. She came and stood before him, small, with that air steadfast, waiting, downlooking, coming up out of the darkness. “Here you are,” she said.
“I got here soon as I could. I had to wait for them to go to sleep. I was afraid I would be late.”
“Have you been here long? How long?”
“I don’t know. I ran, most of the way. I was afraid I would be late.”
“You ran? All them three miles?”
“It’s five miles. It’s not three.”
“Well, say.” Then they did not talk. They stood there, two shadows facing one another. More than a year later, remembering that night, he said, suddenly knowing, It was like she was waiting for me to hit her. “Well,” she said.
He had begun now to tremble a little. He could smelt her, smell the waiting: still, wise, a little weary; thinking She’s waiting for me to start and I don’t know how Even to himself his voice sounded idiotic. “I reckon it’s late.”
“Late?”
“I thought maybe they would be waiting for you. Waiting up until you …”
“Waiting for … Waiting for …” Her voice died, ceased. She said, not moving; they stood like two shadows: “I live with Mame and Max. You know. The restaurant. You ought to remember them, trying to pay that nickel …” She began to laugh. There was no mirth in it, nothing in it. “When I think of that. When I think of you coming in there, with that nickel.” Then she stopped laughing. There was no cessation of mirth in that, either. The still, abject, downlooking voice reached him. “I made a mistake tonight. I forgot something.” Perhaps she was waiting for him to ask her what it was. But he did not. He just stood there, with a still, downspeaking voice dying somewhere about his ears. He had forgot about the shot sheep. He had lived with the fact which the older boy had told him too long now. With the slain sheep he had bought immunity from it for too long now for it to be alive. So he could not understand at first what she was trying to tell him. They stood at the corner. It was at the edge of town, where the street became a road that ran on beyond the ordered and measured lawns, between small, random houses and barren fields—the small, cheap houses which compose the purlieus of such towns. She said, “Listen. I’m sick tonight.” He did not understand. He said nothing. Perhaps he did not need to understand. Perhaps he had already expected some fateful mischance, thinking, ‘It was too good to be true, anyway’; thinking too fast for even thought: In a moment she will vanish. She will not be. And then I will be back home, in bed, not having left it at all. Her voice went on: “I forgot about the day of the month when I told you Monday night. You surprised me, I guess. There on the street Saturday. I forgot what day it was, anyhow. Until after you had gone.”
His voice was as quiet as hers. “How sick? Haven’t you got some medicine at home that you can take?”
“Haven’t I got …” Her voice died. She said, “Well, say.” She said suddenly: “It’s late. And you with four miles to walk.”
“I’ve already walked it now. I’m here now.” His voice was quiet, hopeless, calm. “I reckon it’s getting late,” he said. Then something changed. Not looking at him, she sensed something before she heard it in his hard voice: “What kind of sickness have you got?”
She didn’t answer, at once. Then she said, still, downlooking: “You haven’t ever had a sweetheart, yet. I’ll bet you haven’t.” He didn’t answer. “Have you?” He didn’t answer. She moved. She touched him for the first time. She came and took his arm, lightly, in both hands. Looking down, he could see the dark shape of the lowered head which appeared to have been set out of line a little on the neck when she was born. She told him, halting, clumsily, using the only words which she knew perhaps. But he had heard it before. He had already fled backward, past the slain sheep, the price paid for immunity, to the afternoon when, sitting on a creek bank, he had been not hurt or astonished so much as outraged. The arm which she held jerked free. She did not believe that he had intended to strike her; she believed otherwise, in fact. But the result was the same. As he faded on down the road, the shape, the shadow, she believed that he was running. She could hear his feet for some time after she could no longer see him. She did not move at once. She stood as he had left her, motionless, downlooking, as though waiting for the blow which she had already received.
He was not running. But he was walking fast, and in a direction that was taking him further yet from home, from the house five miles away which he had left by climbing from a window and which he had not yet planned any way of reentering. He went on down the road fast and turned from it and sprang over a fence, into plowed earth. Something was growing in the furrows. Beyond were woods, trees. He reached the woods and entered, among the hard trunks, the branchshadowed quiet, hardfeeling, hardsmelling, invisible. In the notseeing and the hardknowing as though in a cave he seemed to see a diminishing row of suavely shaped urns in moonlight, blanched. And not one was perfect. Each one was cracked and from each crack there issued something liquid, deathcolored, and foul. He touched a tree, leaning his propped arms against it, seeing the ranked and moonlit urns. He vomited.
On the next Monday night he had the rope. He was waiting at the same corner; he was quite early again. Then he saw her. She came up to where he stood. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t be here,” she said.
“Did you?” He took her arm, drawing her on down the road.
“Where are we going?” she said. He didn’t answer, drawing her on. She had to trot to keep up. She trotted clumsily: an animal impeded by that which distinguished her from animals: her heels, her clothes, her smallness. He drew her from the road, toward the fence which he had crossed a week ago. “Wait,” she said, the words jolting from her mouth. “The fence—I can’t—“As she stooped to go through, between the strands of wire which he had stepped over, her dress caught. He leaned and jerked it free with a ripping sound.
“I’ll buy you another one,” he said. She said nothing. She let herself be half carried and half dragged among the growing plants, the furrows, and into the woods, the trees.
He kept the rope, neatly coiled, behind the same loose board in his attic room where Mrs. McEachern kept her hoard of nickels and dimes, with the difference that the rope was thrust further back into the hole than Mrs. McEachern could reach. He had got the idea from her. Sometimes, with the old couple snoring in the room beneath, when he lifted out the silent rope he would think of the paradox. Sometimes he thought about telling her; of showing her where he kept hidden the implement of his sin, having got the idea, learned how and where to hide it, from her. But he knew that she would merely want to help him conceal it; that she would want him to sin in order that she could help him hide it; that she would at last make such a todo of meaningful whispers and signals that McEachern would have to suspect something despite himself.
Thus he began to steal, to take money from the hoard. It is very possible that the woman did not suggest it to him, never mentioned money to him. It is possible that he did not even know that he was paying with money for pleasure. It was that he had watched for years Mrs. McEachern hide money in a certain place. Then he himself had something which it was necessary to hide. He put it in the safest place which he knew. Each time he hid or retrieved the rope, he saw the tin can containing money.