He picked up the glass as if weighing it and took a drink. It wasn’t much of a drink, compared to the way he usually did it.
“Just exactly right,” he said. “I should have been a chemist instead of whatever, it is I am, and if we know any long words that are what I am we won’t say them tonight. I should have been a chemist because I’ve got it mixed just right. Or maybe a carburetor. I’m a carburetor that went funny over a bitch with lamplight hair. . . . It’s mixed just right because if I mixed in three more drinks I’d cry and if I didn’t mix in any more at all for a half hour I’d be sober and that wouldn’t be good because we all know what the big word for me is when I’m sober. You know what I’m like when I’m sober, don’t you, Angelina, darling? I run from Sam and hide under the porch and get my nice new white linen suit all dirty. Not nice dirty. Dirty dirty. And things were simple then because I was just like anybody else who took it where he could find it and some of it was good and some of it was better and there wasn’t anything complicated about it like not being able to go away or stay away or sleeping nights because you could always stay away, at least afterward and for a little while.”
Angelina’s face was quiet but I could see her eyes begin to fill. She tried not to blink them. There had been fear and horrified fascination in them, but now there was pity, and all the time she knew as well as I did what he was going to do.
I tried to shift cautiously a little farther out in my chair to get closer to him. He looked at me out of the corners of his eyes.
“Don’t move,” he said. I knew who was first on his list and who would still be first even if I tried to jump him, so I didn’t move.
“Things were simple then but they’re not any more and I can’t go away. I went away this afternoon as far as I could but it was only five miles and then I couldn’t go any farther. Then I saw how easy it would be if you went with me. Just the two of us. And it’ll be easy, just like having your picture taken. Raise your eyes up and look at me and don’t look down there and cry. I’m sorry you don’t like whisky because you should always have one for the road and besides it makes everything easy. Just put your hand out here to me across the table and let me hold it. Here . . .”
She tried to draw back and she wanted to look over at me for help but was afraid to because I might jump for him. He had the gun up in his right hand now and there was no way he could miss if the thing went off, not from that distance. He caught her hand in his left, drew it gently across the table toward him, folded the fingers over into a little fist, and closed his own fingers over it. I could feel a great scream coming up inside me and fought with everything I had to hold it in.
“Lee!” I said, still trying not to scream like a woman. “Put down that gun!” I wondered if I were saying it over and over like a phonograph. Maybe I had been saying it for hours.
He looked at me as if I were a stranger speaking a foreign language. Whatever world he was in, I wasn’t in it and he didn’t know me.
“Lee!” I tried again, still yelling, and it got the same deadpan lack of interest. I fought to get my voice down to the same conversational level as his. “Listen, Lee.”
“Yes?”
I had to get through to him some way. I had to make him listen. He was loaded and ready to go and if there was to be any stopping him it was going to be now. “Listen, Lee.” I leaned forward as far as I could without giving the appearance I was going to jump him.
“Listen and get this.” Afterward I remembered that some part of my mind was off by itself very objectively thinking what a damn fool thing that must sound like, saying, “Listen,” over and over. “I want you to understand. You’re drunk but you can understand me and know what I mean if you try. You can shoot that gun only once before I’ll be on you and I’ll have it. You know that. I’ll break your arm but I’ll have the gun. You’ll have one shot. Just one.” I knew I was saying the thing over and over like a parrot because I could hear my voice somewhere a long way off, coming through the roaring in my ears, and I wondered if I were yelling again or keeping it down so he could understand it or would listen.
“Maybe you haven’t figured out yet what I mean by just one shot with it before I take it away from you. It means that if you shoot her you won’t have time to turn it on yourself the way you think you’re going to. And if you want to try it on me first you’ll be taking a long chance too, because you’re drunk and can’t aim straight enough to get me cold the first time, and there won’t be any second.” He wasn’t very drunk and I wasn’t at all sure he couldn’t hit me in any spot he pleased with one shot, but I hoped he was just drunk enough to believe me.
“But if you shoot her, I’ve already told you I’ll have the gun before you can shoot again. So get this and do your best to get a good picture of what I mean. When I get it we’re going to sit here.”
I watched his eyes to see if it were getting through to him. If it did there was a chance, but if it didn’t we were all done, and I tried not to look at her because I was afraid I couldn’t take it.
“We’ll sit here for an hour or two hours or whatever it takes until you’re cold sober and shaking and scared. And then I’ll shoot you. Sober.”
I stopped. It seemed all time must have stopped too but I could hear the ticking of the clock in the living room. I tried to stop counting. Slowly Lee’s hand opened and I saw Angelina slide hers out of his grasp and pull her arms in toward her on the table.
“Get up, Angel,” I said. “Go into the bedroom and close the door.”
She wasn’t crying now but she was white as chalk and was holding her face together like something made of glass that was already broken and would come apart any minute. She got up very slowly and started around the end of the table. I watched Lee. He still had the gun in his hand and his eyes followed her until she turned at the corner of the table and started across the room toward the door behind him and then he turned his head away, straight forward, and let it slump down.
She went into the bedroom and closed the door and I could feel her there on the other side in the darkness holding onto herself and waiting and trying not to cry out, still standing because I hadn’t heard her fall.
Lee looked up at me. Neither of us had moved. A strand of hair had fallen down across his forehead and it looked like a pen slash in India ink against the dead white of his face. My knees were weak and I could feel the muscles twitching in them.
“Bob,” he said. Only that—”Bob.” He said it as if he were going to add something else, but he never did. He raised the gun until it was just under his right temple and fired. Just at the end, in that last thousandth of a second, he jerked it a little as he pulled the trigger and it went higher man he had aimed but it wasn’t high enough to make any difference.
I heard her fall then but I didn’t go in to her until after I had gone over to where Lee was slumped forward over the table. His right arm was hanging down and I put it up on the table and stood there crying.
THE END
Charles Williams, Hill girl
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