John D. Macdonald
The Doll
One midweek evening he had sprayed the patch of crab grass, and now, on Saturday morning, it was lurid and twisted with overgrowth. Steve was on his knees, rooting it out. tossing it into a bushel basket. He worked steadily in the heat of the late August sun. hearing behind him the splat-splat of ball into mitt as Paulie played catch with the Quinn boy from the next block. Diana had taken her scrapbook collection of movie and TV stars across the street to the home of her friend. Betty Baker. He could hear, inside the house, the warm humming of the vacuum cleaner, operated by the capable and monolithic Mrs. Chandler. In the driveway next door a heavy young man, too well dressed for the job, was polishing a sleek new black Cadillac sedan.
Steve Dalvin straightened up to rest his back for a moment, and thought that Ellen would be enormously amused if she could see him puttering around during these weekends, manicuring the lawn. It was hard, very hard, to realize she had been dead over a year. It had been such a tragic, useless, pointless death. It had broken him into small random fragments. Paulie and Diana had been sent off to stay with Ellen’s parents for a time. It had taken him six months to learn that no answer could be found in whisky, in the arms of women anxious to comfort him, or even in work that left him exhausted. He had quit his job, done manual labor, and then, doggedly, inevitably, had recreated the family unit. Only it was not the same without Ellen, of course.
He took a small new house where she was not around every corner, where she was not in the kitchen each time you sat in the living room, where you didn’t listen for her to come wheeling into the driveway with that reckless casualness that had killed her.
Now he was finding satisfaction and a form of contentment in the closeness and trust of the small family unit. Paulie, at twelve, and Diana, at seven, had the odd emotional resiliency of the young. The sound of their laughter was good.
Mrs. Chandler, who lived nearby, had been a find. She was an elderly woman, widowed about the same time Ellen had been killed. Her son and daughter-in-law lived with her. Mrs. Chandler, a vast, gray woman of little warmth, was efficient and responsible.
Yes, Ellen would be amused at seeing her husband grubbing sedately around in the yard. The only lingering effect of her death that he could see in himself, outside of the inevitable loneliness, was an explosive fury that he had learned to control. It was something that would grow inside him until he wanted to smash walls with his hands, tilt his head back and roar at the sky.
“You call that a curve?” Paulie cried tauntingly to the Quinn boy. “Just watch this old curve.”
Steve grinned and bent over the dying crab grass again. Paulie was the immediate problem. He had inherited Ellen’s wiry, lithe strength instead of Steve’s bulk. And her sensitivity and imaginativeness had also been given him. Adolescence was going to be a rough time for Paulie. He was the quicksilver of Ellen, and Diana had inherited all Steve’s calm and stubbornness and implacability.
The young man next door with the heavy face was whistling monotonously as he polished the car. An odd setup. They had moved into the house next door over a month ago, and even Mrs. Chandler, with her curiosity and watchfulness, had been unable to determine who was who. Heavy-set men and brightly dressed young women came and went. There were regular poker games into the small hours of the morning, but never any noise. Low voices, and many comings and goings. The house had been purchased by a Mr. Prade. and the rumor was that he had something to do with the restaurant business. The Cadillacs and cases of bonded liquor and the fur coats on some of the women seemed at odds with the new, bright, cheap subdivision.
Steve heard the Quinn boy say, “Hey! Sorry, Paulie.” He heard the ball whisk through the hedge and thud hard against metal. Steve straightened up, frowning, and saw that the ball had banged against the door of the new black Cadillac sedan.
Paulie trotted through a gap in the hedge. He said to the man, “He was trying to throw a curve, and it was wild.”
The heavy young man stared soberly at the door. He didn’t look at Paulie. Paulie pounced on the ball, and as he straightened up, the young man dropped the polishing cloth, caught the front of Paulie’s T-shirt and, with casual, deadpan brutality, began to whip his heavy hand back and forth across Paulie’s mouth. Steve was standing rigid with shock. The slaps sounded thick and ugly in the morning sunlight.
At Paulie’s first cry of shock and pain Steve went toward them at a dead run, his feet noiseless on the grass. The young man must have caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned his face sharply into the big fist Steve had swung with all his strength.
The blue-white bolt of pain that crashed up through Steve’s arm blinded him, and he did not even hear the sound of the blow. Steve clamped his broken hand against his belly. The heavy-shouldered young man rocked, half-lifted his hands, and then went down with a strange slowness, sitting on his heels for a moment, then sprawling onto his side and rolling over onto his back. The left side of his face had a distorted, out-of-focus look.
Paulie stood with his eyes wide, blood on his mouth, sobs catching in his throat. The Quinn boy stared warily from the other side of the hedge, his face chalk-pale. Steve said harshly, “Paulie, you and your friend go into the house. Ask Mrs. Chandler to fix your mouth.”
He waited until they went up the back steps and into the house. He looked at his hand. It was beginning to swell. He walked around the car and went to the back of the house next door. A short, thick-set man stood just inside the screen door looking out mildly. He had a large, bland face, a head that was bald except for a fringe of delicate blond hair.
“You’re Prade, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. I saw it. That was a good thing you did, friend. Marty is stupid. I think you bust your hand. An X-ray you ought to have.” His voice was mild and casual.
“That man out there, that Marty—”
“You hit him. I see him fall. That your kid? Sorry it happened.” He pushed the door open and came heavily down the steps. Steve followed him over to the car. Marty was still out. Prade looked down at the unconscious man. and then he turned and stared at Steve. Steve saw that the man’s blue eyes seemed as lacking in depth as pale-blue marbles. Prade put one foot on Marty’s shoulder and joggled him. The man’s head rolled back and forth.
“Don’t you think you ought to call a doctor?”
Prade turned toward the house and bellowed, “Irene! Hey, Irene!”
A tall girl in a yellow sun suit came out the back door, squinting in the bright sunlight. “What you want, Lew?”
“Go call Doc Dressner. Tell him to get over here with his ambulance. Tell him we got a package for him.”
The girl came into the yard and stared at Marty. She gave Steve an appraising look. Lew Prade took two steps toward her and faked a kick. “Go phone, big nose,” he said with rough affection.
Prade said, “You can go along in the ambulance, and Doc will fix you up. He’s got nurses and X-ray at his place.”
“That man might be hurt badly, Mr. Prade. It ought to be reported to the police.”
“What’s your name?”
“Dalvin, Steve Dalvin.”
“Stevie, the cops don’t care if a guy trips over a hose and bangs his face on a car bumper. We both saw him fall just like I said. You lose time off work with that broken hand?”
“My secretary can sign letters for me.”
“What kind of a business you in?”
“I work for a contractor. Construction firm. Mostly road work.”