Jassie removed his fingers and retreated a few steps away from her. He had a vague sense of having been caught doing something wrong. But still he didn’t quite understand the ugly look in Van’s bloodshot eyes as he sat down at the table. Nor did he understand the sudden crimsoning in Sarah’s pale cheeks. She didn’t move at all. She just stood and stared at her husband.
“Van,” she said.
“What?”
“What do you think you saw?”
He made no answer. He just smiled, with a smile that was a sneer.
“I asked you,” she pressed him. “What do you think you saw just now... Jassie and me?”
“Nothing, nothing I didn’t expect to see.”
Now a fury began to drain the blood from her cheeks. Her voice thinned and started to tremble. “Say what you mean,” she demanded.
He didn’t relax his smile. But his eyes were malevolent. “You haven’t changed, Sarah,” he said.
Jassie watched them and listened to them. He could feel Sarah’s anger even though he did not know all of the reasons for it. He saw her turn away, saw her small fists clenching and unclenching.
Then Van spoke to him. “You’re kind of dumb, Jassie,” he said. “You should have let her kill me last night. Then you could have had her all to yourself.”
Van didn’t understand Jassie, any more than Jassie understood them. Even if he had noticed some things about Jassie now, like for instance the way the blood pounded visibly in the corded veins of Jassie’s big hands, he would probably have misinterpreted such portents. But he didn’t notice. He preferred to taunt Sarah.
“How low do you think I am?” she was asking him.
“About right where I found you. As I said, you haven’t changed, Sarah.”
She whirled back to face him then. She didn’t say anything. Just looked at him. There was more in her eyes than words could have said. And what he saw there made Jassie afraid.
But all she did was to go to the stove and begin fixing Van’s breakfast. Jassie watched her, lingering longest on her delicate, graceful, snowy-white neck.
“Get out of here, Jassie,” Van said.
Jassie hesitated. Sarah said nothing. Then he went. But something had happened inside him. He knew finally what he was going to do.
He lay on his cot in the lean-to shed. He had come there right after he had left the kitchen, and he hadn’t stirred in the hour that had passed since. But he’d been busy. Not with his hands. With thoughts.
Thinking didn’t come easy to Jassie. It never had. And most of the time his life didn’t require thinking. So he had never gotten the habit. But now he was doing the biggest job of thinking he’d ever done. The thing that spurred him to this immense task was a horrible vision that he couldn’t empty out of his mind — the vision of a hemp rope around Sarah’s neck.
He didn’t move when he heard his name called. He was almost certain he would hear it sooner or later. Now it pleased him to have predicted so accurately. Van calling. “Jassie!”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t do anything. There was nothing to do. His preparations had been made, inside his brain.
“Jassie! Dammit, there’s work to do.”
Yes, there was work to do. But not yet.
He could hear Van slamming around through the outbuildings. Looking for him, no doubt. Imagining that he could be found hiding or napping under or behind something. A stream of curses drifted to Jassie on the breeze.
Then at last, after his search in the outbuildings was complete, Van started coming. Jassie knew that he would, and was pleased again. He could hear Van’s boots approaching over the hard earth. But he lay still.
And he was there when Van lurched into the doorway and blocked out the image of the sun. Jassie lay in the shadow and stared back at his employer.
“What the hell!” Van said.
Jassie remained silent, calculating many things, like Van’s strength and the distance between them.
“Get up!” Van said, through his teeth. He swayed on the threshold. Some of the haze and fog of last night’s whiskey still unsteadied his movements, clouded his eyes. And he’d been angry even before he’d arrived.
“I pay you for working, Jassie,” he snarled. “Not for lying there thinking what you’d like’ to be doing with my wife.”
He hurled himself into the lean-to, toward Jassie. Jassie let him come. He let him come all the way, even to getting his fingers around Jassie’s throat, his knee into Jassie’s belly.
Then Jassie reacted. With a surge of legs and back muscles he rolled off the cot. Van had been on top of him. Now suddenly he was underneath. Jassie’s fingers tore at the other’s wrists, broke the hold that was shutting off his breath. Van learned then how strong Jassie was.
“Let me up, Jassie,” he said.
Jassie didn’t feel he owed Van an explanation for what he was doing. And he didn’t want to wait to give it. His thick fingers, which had been so gentle on Sarah’s neck, made a steel noose around her husband’s. Once the fingers found their place, Van didn’t talk or breathe any more. His eyes didn’t question the why of this. They only spoke of the terror of knowing there was no more air. And they stayed open, with the terror frozen in them, when Jassie was finished.
He did not move Van’s body. When he crawled from off it, he saw there was no need to. This was the best way for Van to be found, just as he was now.
Jassie sat down on the end of the cot and waited. He waited for Sarah. He knew that eventually she would have to come. It never occurred to him to go and fetch her. He could afford to be patient now. And he had a kind of animal patience as a compensation for his small, insufficient brain.
Time passed, on toward noon. He had not expected her to come immediately. Very likely she would think that the two men were working together somewhere. Only when they didn’t return for lunch would she begin to wonder, and then to search. So Jassie waited and watched the progress of the sun by the shadows of things outside.
He didn’t mind staying with the dead body. Jassie knew what death was, and it held no fears for him. Van’s staring, protruding eyes made no accusations that Jassie was aware of. His innocence was intact and his conscience was clear.
He watched the creeping of the shadows across the ground. When the sun stood high, he heard Sarah stirring in the kitchen. Jassie sat and listened, thinking without emotion that some of the food she was preparing would go uneaten.
The busy noises ceased after a while. Now she was waiting too. Jassie knew somehow that her patience wouldn’t be as enduring as his. He was correct again. In less than half an hour he heard the opening and closing of the door.
From where he sat he could see most of the yard. After a moment he saw her cross it. She was wearing her wide-brimmed bonnet, and Jassie approved of that. He didn’t want the sun to molest the whiteness of her skin. She wandered among the outbuildings. She would see that they could not have gone far, because the truck was still there. Several times she called out, “Van.” And once, “Jassie.” Somehow he didn’t care to answer her summons. He wanted her to come here and see for herself what he had done and how he had done it. If he had wanted things any other way, he would have gone to her before this.
And he knew, as he had known everything else, that she would come to the lean-to sooner or later.
He saw her now as she came, across the dusty yard. She didn’t see him at first, because she was walking in bright sunlight and he was still sitting on the end of the cot in the interior shadows. But she saw him just before she arrived at the doorway. And she must not have seen the body, because she came right ahead, right to the threshold, saying, “Jassie, where is Van?”