I said I would and he drew me a foaming mug. “Here you are. Drink it up. Plenty more where that comes from. I buy so much I get a wholesale price on it.”
“You’re lucky,” I said.
“Of course I’m lucky. Always have been lucky, always will be lucky.” He belched voluptuously and wiped his mouth with the back of his thick hand. “Luckiest thing ever happened to me was when my old barn burnt down. Needed a new one for years and now I’ve got it. Gift of the insurance company. Lucky as a rabbit in clover.”
A man and a girl drifted away from the dancers and came over and asked for beer. The lucky man drew it for them and said, “Drink up. Build up your energy. Look at me. Always been energetic, always will be. Why? A gallon of beer a day keeps the doctor away, that’s why.”
The couple laughed and drank up and went back to dance some more. He sat down beside me again and said, “Say, how’d you get here?”
“I walked,” I said. “Ran out of gas and lost my way.”
“Where you from?”
“Arbana.”
“Hell, stay with me and I’ll drive you in, in the morning.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Any rabbits around here?”
“Millions of them. Trillions of them. Swarm all over, eat me out of house and home. Why?”
“I thought now that I’m out here I’d try to do a little hunting before I go back to town. Have you got a gun?”
The big man threw his left leg over his right knee, bent over with a grunt and began to unlace his left boot.
“I said have you got a gun.”
He said, “Ha! Ha!” and pulled off his boot and sock and pointed triumphantly at his bare foot. The big toe was missing.
“I said a gun, not a big toe.”
“That’s correct.” He laughed uproariously. “No big toe, no gun. I used to have guns, dozens of them. A whole arsenal. Then one day, about five years ago, I was out hunting rabbits and crawled through a fence with a shotgun and the damn thing went off and shot off my big toe. After that no more guns for me. If I lost a few more toes or a whole foot, I’d be a damn cripple. Won’t even look at a gun. Stranger, don’t ever come trying to sell me a gun.”
“I won’t,” I said.
“Let the damn rabbits eat up everything I’ve got. If you were the President of the United States, I wouldn’t let you give me a gun.” He bent over and put on his sock and boot.
“Have you a telephone?” I asked.
“No sir, no telephone for me. They attract lightning. When I want to talk to the next farm, I just go out on the barn hill and holler. Like this.” He hollered. Nobody paid any attention.
“I see. Have they got a telephone at the next farm?”
“Yeah, I been telling them for ten years they better watch out, the lightning’ll get ’em sure as shooting. But the damn fools haven’t had it torn out yet. They’ll be sorry when the house burns down around their ears and–”
I cut him short. “How do you get to the next farm?”
He waved his arm. “Right down the lane past the house. Just follow the lane. You can’t miss it.”
“I think I’d better go and try to get in touch with a garage to pick up my car,” I said. I got up and thanked him and said good night.
“Good night,” he yelled. “Too bad you can’t stay.”
The music stopped and the dancers headed for the beer. I walked around them along the wall to the open doors and saw a car coming down the lane. The light was very dim but it looked like a coupe.
I turned and ran back across the deserted floor to the other end where the fiddler was drinking his beer. A small door in the end wall was open and I ran through it and found myself running in air.
I only fell a few feet but it seemed like a hundred. I landed in a soft pile of manure that squished up around my ankles and my wrists. I got up and crossed the barnyard and ran around the house to the lane. A pale blue neon light was creeping up two sides of the sky and I could see another farmhouse and a barn a quarter of a mile down the road. There was a light in the house, and I ran for it as hard as I could go.
Before I got there I heard the car behind me on the road and looked back and saw it coming. I ran like a rabbit hypnotized by headlights straight down the centre of the road to the farmhouse. I ran through an open gate into the front yard and saw a light in an outhouse in the yard and somebody moving inside.
The car drew up at the gate – it was a coupe all right – and I ran for the outhouse. An old woman working over a cream-separator heard me coming and came to the door of the outhouse. She had a hard, bright face with a long nose in the middle of it.
I ran up to her and said, “Call your men. There’s a murderer after me.”
She sniffed and said, “You’ve been drinking. Are you one of the friends of that O’Neill man on the next farm? Look at you, you’re all covered with cow-dirt.” She sniffed again in disgust and her long nose pointed at me like the finger of scorn.
“Call your husband,” I said. “Tell him to bring a gun.” I looked behind me. Peter was walking across the lawn towards us with his right hand in the pocket of his coat.
“Why should I bother my husband on a drunkard’s say-so?” the woman said. “He’s out in the barn milking. He’s a respectable man. If you got yourself a steady job you wouldn’t be running around early in the morning smelling of liquor and trying to frighten hard-working people. The Devil finds things for idle hands to do.”
Peter Schneider was at my shoulder. He said very respectfully as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, “I quite agree, madam. I apologize to you for my friend’s drunkenness.” I felt his gun pressed hard against my buttocks.
“He should apologize,” she said, bridling with justified virtue. “Is he a friend of yours?”
“He was at one time,” Schneider said. “I still feel some duty towards him. I’ve been looking for him all night to take him back to the hospital.”
“The hospital! Is he sick?”
“Not exactly. After a week of steady drinking he succumbed to delirium tremens. The poor fellow is out of his head. He even imagines that I want to kill him.”
“You’re a true Good Samaritan, young man.”
“He’s a German spy,” I said. “He killed his father tonight and now he’s trying to kill me.”
He caught the woman’s eye and laughed infectiously. They laughed together.
“Mercy me, I shouldn’t laugh at him,” the woman said. “Drink is such a horrible tragedy. But I’m so glad you found him before he destroyed himself.”
“So am I,” Schneider said. “He needs a nurse’s tender ministrations. I’ll take him back to the hospital now.”
“Before you go,” the woman said, “will you wait a minute? I have something for him. It may help him.”
“A gun would help me,” I said. “Nothing else would.” She threw up her hands and eyes and bustled off to the house.
“You are excessively naive,” Schneider said to me. “I have no intention of shooting you. You are much more precious to me alive.”
“How you cheer me,” I said. I turned and faced him and saw his unlined, complacent face and the bulge in his pocket. “But you’d better kill me quickly. Otherwise I’m going to kill you.”
His laughed sounded flatly against the roof of his mouth. The woman came back from the house and handed me a little printed pamphlet. In the growing light I could make out the title The Horrors of the Demon Drink.
“Thank you very much, madam,” I said.
“We must go now, Freddie,” Schneider said. “The doctor will be worried.”
I turned to the woman once more, “I’m a murderer,” I said. “The police are looking for me. My name is Robert Branch. Phone the police in Arbana and tell them you saw me escaping. This man’s name is Peter Schneider.”