That was where she made her big mistake. When she turned to go back to the house, he shot, and that was the last she knew for a while.
Now, for what happened next, it wasn’t nobody there, only Duke and the tiger, but after them state cops got done fitting it all together, combing the ruins and all, it wasn’t no trouble to tell how it was, anyway most of it, and here’s how they figured it out:
Soon as Duke seen Lura fall, right there in front of the house, he knowed he was up against it. So the first thing he done was run to where she was and put the gun in her hand, to make it look like she had shot herself. That was where he made his mistake, because if he had kept the gun he might of had a chance. Then he went inside to telephone, and what he said was, soon as he got hold of the state police: “For God’s sake come out here quick. My wife has went crazy and throwed the baby to the tiger and shot herself and I’m all alone in the house with him and — oh, my God, here he comes!”
Now that last was something he didn’t figure on saying. So far as he knowed, the tiger was in the room, having a nice meal off his son, so everything was hotsy-totsy. But what he didn’t know was that that piece of burning firewood that Lura had dropped had set the room on fire and on account of that the tiger had got out. How did he get out? We never did quite figure that out. But this is how I figure it, and one man’s guess is good as another’s:
The fire started near the window, we knew that much. That was where Lura dropped the stick, right next to the cradle, and that was where a guy coming down the road in a car first seen the flames. And what I think is that soon as the tiger got his eye off the meat and seen the fire, he begun to scramble away from it, just wild. And when a wild tiger hits a beaverboard wall, he goes through, that’s all. While Duke was telephoning, Rajah come through the wall like a clown through a hoop, and the first thing he seen was Duke, at the telephone, and Duke wasn’t no friend, not to Rajah he wasn’t
Anyway, that’s how things was when I got there with the oil. The state cops was a little ahead of me, and I met the ambulance with Lura in it, coming down the road seventy mile an hour, but just figured there had been a crash up the road, and didn’t know nothing about it having Lura in it. And when I drove up, there was plenty to look at all right. The house was in flames, and the police was trying to get in, but couldn’t get nowheres near it on account of the heat, and about a hundred cars parked all around, with people looking, and a gasoline pumper cruising up and down the road, trying to find a water connection somewhere they could screw their hose to.
But inside the house was the terrible part. You could hear Duke screaming, and in between Duke was the tiger. And both of them was screams of fear, but I think the tiger was worse. It is a awful thing to hear a animal letting out a sound like that. It kept up about five minutes after I got there, and then all of a sudden you couldn’t hear nothing but the tiger. And then in a minute that stopped.
There wasn’t nothing to do about the fire. In a half hour the whole place was gone, and they was combing the ruins for Duke. Well, they found him. And in his head was four holes, two on each side, deep. We measured them fangs of the tiger. They just fit.
Soon as I could I run in to the hospital. They had got the bullet out by that time, and Lura was laying in bed all bandaged around the head, but there was a guard over her, on account of what Duke said over the telephone. He was a state cop. I sat down with him, and he didn’t like it none. Neither did I. I knowed there was something funny about it, but what broke your heart was Lura, coming out of the ether. She would groan and mutter and try to say something so hard it would make your head ache. After a while I got up and went in the hall. But then I see the state cop shoot out of the room and line down the hall as fast as he could go. At last she had said it. The baby was in the electric icebox. They found him there, still asleep and just about ready for his milk. The fire had blacked up the outside, but inside it was as cool and nice as a new bathtub.
Well, that was about all. They cleared Lura, soon as she told her story, and the baby in the icebox proved it. Soon as she got out of the hospital she got a offer from the movies, but ’stead of taking it she come out to the place and her and I run it for a while, anyway the filling-station end, sleeping in the shacks and getting along nice. But one night I heard a rattle from a bum differential, and I never even bothered to show up for breakfast the next morning.
I often wish I had. Maybe she left me a note.
The Birthday Party
He bounced the tennis ball against the garage with persistence, but no enthusiasm. He would have gone swimming, but Red would be there, and he owed Red ten cents. Red drove the ice-cream truck evenings, and so swam in midafternoon; debtors, therefore, used the creek mornings, late afternoons, and, if there was a moon, nights. Between times they passed away the hours bouncing tennis balls against garages.
He bounced the ball with sudden zeal. There had come a call from the house: “Burwell!” It was repeated, twice, and then amended: “Burwell Hope!”
He slowed the tempo. “You call me, ma?”
“I don’t see why you can’t answer when I call.”
“I was practicing strokes,” he told her.
“Well, don’t stand there yelling so the whole neighborhood can hear you; and, besides, I don’t think that’s any place for practicing strokes. It makes an awful noise and I don’t wonder people are annoyed.”
He slouched slowly into the house, practicing a trick that involved mashing the ball into the ground, hitting it with the edge of the racket as it sprang up, and catching it in the pants pocket as it bounced waist-high.
“Have you bathed?”
“It’s too hot to bathe now. I’ll be all perspired up again. I’ll bathe after supper.”
“You ought to bathe now.”
“It’s too hot.”
“Did you black your shoes as I told you?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet, what?”
“Not yet, ma.”
“Well, there’s the pen and ink; sit down and write the card now so I can wrap it up. I’ve got a minute now and I don’t want to have to think about it later.”
“Wrap what up?”
“Burwell, how many times have I got to tell you you must stop this habit of asking useless questions? It’s annoying, and you have to stop it. Marjorie’s birthday present, of course. I can’t wrap it up until I have the card, and you’re giving it to her, so you have to write the card.”
“I’m not giving it to her. I don’t even know what it is.”
“It’s a very nice bottle of perfume. Want to see it?”
“Phooie!”
“Stop — using — that — word!”
“I don’t want to see it.”
“Very well. Then as soon as you write the card you can black your shoes.”
“What for?”
“Will you stop asking those useless questions! For the party, of course. Didn’t I tell you? Answer me. Didn’t I tell you not two hours ago that Mrs. Lucas stopped by, told me they were giving a little surprise party for Marjorie tonight because it’s her birthday, and that she especially wanted you to be there? Didn’t I tell you that?”
“I’m not going.”
“You’re—”
“Sure, you told me, but I never said I would go.”
“Why, Burwell Hope, the very idea. And after Mrs. Lucas said she especially wanted you to go. And after I made a trip downtown to buy a nice present. Why, I never heard of such a thing. All her friends are going. Spencer, and Jackie, and Junior LeCrand, and—”