“Then what happened?” I pursued.
“Well, after a while we knew that she was dead. We were just standing there, sort of in shock, when we heard you at the door. Then you came in, and he hit you.”
“He thought fast, your friend. He saw at once how it could be blamed on you. He planned it all out in an instant. We went down the back stairs. I went to the supermarket, acted like I’d been there for some time. He went back to his store. Only a few minutes had gone by, really, from the time he’d left. Nobody’d missed him. Our alibis stood up fine. Then we went back and discovered the crime, with a policeman as a witness. You played your part fine, Joe. We found you wiping off the fingerprints. You tried to use the murder weapon again on an innocent bystander, accused him of the crime, acted so crazy nobody believed a word you said.”
“But why, Verna? Why did you back him up, let him get away scot free, after he killed your mother? I can see how you might have had to go along with his plans, up in the apartment. You were in fear of your life. But once you’d gotten away, why didn’t you go for the police? Everyone would have believed you. I would have. You and Doc as lovers — it never made sense to me, even when I was forced to think it. Did he threaten you?”
She leaned back gracefully, regarded me with insolent amusement. “You haven’t gotten the picture yet, have you, Joe,” she purred. “Look at it from my point of view. If I’d called the cops on Doc, sure, he’d be sitting where you are now. And I’d still be married to you.”
She bent toward me, her lovely young face close to the wire. Fury contorted that face, and hate, and a hot resentment that made me shrink back in sudden shame. “The things you did to me, you and Mother!” she whispered. “She made me marry you, and you know she did, you nasty, rich old man. When I was just a kid. When I was scared and insecure and thought that the man I loved didn’t want me. I was freed from her, that day. I saw a chance to be free from you, too. So I took it. And I won. I’m free!”
She stood up, shrugged into her mink, gathered up her purse and gloves. The interview was over. “I’m marrying Charlie next week,” she told me as she left.
I couldn’t think at first who Charlie was. Then it came to me. The beatnik fellow, of course. Verna’s first love.
I suppose I should hate Verna. She certainly ruined me. But somehow I can’t. All my life I’d hated people. People who annoyed me, who insulted me. Some people who said terrible things to me, destroyed the most precious thing a man can have, his respect for his own manhood. I punished those people in my fantasies. But that was all I ever did. I never had the guts to do anything more.
Verna is really a lot like me. For a long time, I guess, she was living a life she didn’t much like. She probably had her dreams about being free, her own master, with the money and the things money buys, that I’d taught her to need.
In a split second she had a chance to make her dreams come true. It was a long shot. A very risky gamble. If there’d been any tenants home that afternoon who’d heard the uproar in our apartment. If anybody had seen her or Doc. If one thing had gone wrong, she’d have been in terrible trouble.
It wasn’t easy for her on that witness stand, either, deliberately swearing my life away. It had been a painful, pitiful thing to watch. But she had done it.
She fell into a situation like the ones I’m always setting up, in my mind. She had the nerve to carry through. She acted. That’s why I can’t find it in my heart to hate her. The fact is, I admire Verna.
The Big Haul
by Robert Page Jones
Womack kept the rig rolling at sixty-five. He fought down the urge to drive faster. He couldn’t risk being stopped by a cop. Not now. Not with the load he was carrying.
1
It had begun to rain when he picked up Highway 77 outside of Friersville. Now, nearly a hundred and fifty miles west, water rattled down on the tomblike cab of the big tractor like showers of hail.
The driver — his name was Johnny Womack — chewed at a sandwich. He had nearly white hair, cropped close to his head like fine toothbrush bristles, but his face was young. The jaw was lean and hard, faintly corded with muscle. He had dark gray eyes. They squinted against the glare of an onrushing car. Cursing softly under his breath, he cut his speed back to forty, left it at that after the car had passed. He was satisfied to be making even forty through the drifting sheets of water.
The big rig moved well. It was nearly seven years old, one of the old stick-shift jobs, with ten forward gears — but it was dependable. And it was nearly his.
If he didn’t miss any more payments.
He thought about the empty van in back. His lips made a bitter expression. He had hauled a full load of cotton to Denver, hoping to get some kind of load for the trip back to El Centro, without success. It had been a bad deal from the start. The cotton run hadn’t paid well and he had been forced to come back empty.
And there was Emma. This would be the first time in ten years that he wouldn’t be returning to her. Emma. His lips made the bitter expression again. Not that he blamed her. Ten years is a long time to hang around while your husband is on the road — especially with bills coming in faster than money. Even when two people are in love, it’s no good without money. And he knew now, had known ever since she ran out on him, that she hadn’t been in love with him — not really in love.
He took another bite of sandwich and put the uneaten portion on the seat beside him. He felt let down and depressed. His face half bitter, half angry, he shook his head. The thought slipped in and out of his mind that he had felt let down and depressed for most of his life.
He rolled on, still knocking off forty, headlights stuck out before him like the probing antenna of a giant bug. The rig was running low on gas. He would reach Stanton around midnight and he could tank up there. Maybe. The oil company had let his credit card expire — he owed them nearly three hundred bucks — and he had only a few dollars left in his pocket.
Shifting hands on the wheel, he groped under the dash for the big .45 suspended there from metal clips. He had bought the gun for protection on long overnight hauls. Emma had wanted him to have it. He hefted it in his hand. The metal gleamed in the glow from the dash-lights. He remembered the first time he had held a gun. A long time ago. He had been a little boy. He had picked it off the floor by the body of his father.
Shrugging, as if to resolve some problem that bothered him, he hefted the gun and then put it back in the clips.
He would hock it, if he had to, or sell it. That would be better than using it. He had spent part of his youth in a reform school. It had taught him something. If he ever used a gun, it would be for something big. Something really big. Like a million dollars.
He laughed out loud. A million bucks was more money than there was in the world.
2
There were three of them. One was a soldier. He wore his tailored summer gabardines with the deliberate casualness of one who could never quite accustom himself to army discipline. The gabardines were obviously of expensive quality. They were the kind that the officers wear. But the shirt bore no insignia of rank — only the collar brass of an enlisted man.
He was younger than the others. His narrow, colorless face was heavily pockmarked, as if the skin had been gnawed by a rodent. He said softly, “Quit sweating, Wibber.”