“If we went home we could stay in a motel,” she added, wiggling his cock some more. “That’d be romantic, wouldn’t it? I ain’t stayed in a motel since I went home in fifty-four.”
Royce tried to think about it. At the moment his cock had no more sensation in it than any of the thousands of used tires piled outside the window; but it didn’t matter, because sex wasn’t what he was thinking about. He was thinking about driving his potato chip truck around California.
“Where’s Hollywood at?” he asked, stimulated by the thought.
“A good long way from Barstow,” Shirley said. “Just get out of your mind.”
“We could go to Hollywood,” Royce said. “Where’s Disneyland?”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing Disneyland so much, but I’d have to be a rank fool to take you to Hollywood,” Shirley said. “One of my sisters works there and she’s always said it was full of whores and promiscuous women.”
“Pro what?” Royce asked nervously. Shirley’s habit of wiggling him was what made him nervous. She was so careless about it that she was always hitting him in the balls with the head of his own cock. Royce couldn’t think of a nice way to ask her to be careful, so he drank beer to take his mind off the danger.
“You know, women that do it with anybody,” Shirley said. “I ain’t taking you into no mess like that. You just remember to go get that truck this week. My vacation starts in ten days.”
For the next day or two Shirley entertained herself between bouncings with fantasies of the two of them driving to California in Royce’s truck. Royce himself had never been farther west than Navasota, but it all sounded fine to him. He kept thinking every day that he’d get out of bed and go over to Lyons Avenue and get the truck, but every day it occurred to him that he didn’t really need to produce it until the day Shirley’s vacation started, so he stayed where he was and drank beer.
Rosie took a dim view of Royce’s rapprochement with Shirley, but there was one person in Houston who took an even dimmer view. That person was Mitch McDonald. When Rosie had carted Royce home after the accident at the J-Bar Korral, hope had sprung up afresh in Mitch’s breast. He knew Rosie, and it never occurred to him that she would be so careless as to let Royce slip away again. He knew Shirley too and was quite positive she wasn’t going to want to do without somebody’s old thing to sit on—not for very long anyway. He gave her a day or two and then installed himself as a fixture in the bar where she worked. As proof of his gentlemanly intentions he drank two dollars’ worth of beer before he even broached the subject of Royce.
“Well, what do you hear from your old friend Royce?” he asked finally as he was starting on this third dollar’s worth.
“None of your business, you little cocksucker,” Shirley said brutally. In fifteen years as a barmaid she had acquired some vulgar habits of speech.
“Aw, stop it,” Mitch said. “Me an’ Royce is best buddies.”
“Then why are you over here tryin’ to put the make on his girl friend?” Shirley asked.
“You wasn’t always his girl friend,” Mitch said.
“You wasn’t always a fuckin’ weasel, neither,” Shirley said.
“You keep sassin’ me an’ I’ll bust you right in the mouth,” Mitch said.
“Lay a finger on me an’ I’ll have Royce twist your other arm off, you little turd,” Shirley said.
Mitch was forced to conclude his first day’s courtship on that unpromising note, but he refused to let it discourage him. He decided the gallant approach was best, and the next day he presented Shirley with a box of chocolate-covered cherries.
“To show you my heart’s in the right place,” Mitch said. “I’ve learned some new tricks since you an’ me was in love.”
“What do you mean new tricks?” Shirley asked. “You never knew no tricks.”
Heartlessly she proceeded to pass out the chocolate-covered cherries to a tableful of truck drivers.
After that humiliation Mitch decided to try the silent treatment. He went to the bar every day and invested a few dollars in beer. He allowed Shirley to see that he was suffering, but suffering humbly, and he expected that any day she would follow him home and pounce on his lap. Instead she flounced in one day and announced that Royce was back.
“Royce?” Mitch said. It was a bolt from the blue.
“Yep, he’s getting a divorce, an’ me an’ him’s gettin’ married, soon as we get time,” Shirley said blithely.
“So that sorry son of a bitch has left his wife and kids agin,” Mitch said. “You two-timin’ slut. You home-breakin’ bitch. You an’ him’ll be sorry. I’ll get you both.”
After that Mitch transferred his business to the Tired-Out Lounge. He knew Royce would hobble in sooner or later, and Royce did. In the interim, Mitch had taken to spending his nights with a bottle of bourbon and his days getting in shape for the night’s drinking. As soon as Royce hobbled into the bar he announced his intentions.
“I never figured you for a coward, Dunlup,” he said, breathing whiskey fumes in his friend’s face.
“You been drinkin’,” Royce said. Actually he had been getting lonesome lying around Shirley’s all day with no one around but Barstow. He was rather glad to see Mitch and ignored his remark.
“Just tell me one thing,” Mitch said. “Just tell me one thing. Why’d you steal my girl?”
Royce couldn’t remember, so he didn’t answer the question. He stared across the bar, waiting for Mitch to change the subject.
“All right then, you dumb shit,” Mitch said. “You ain’t good enough for that girl. You ain’t good enough for nothin’. You wouldn’t be good enough for a nigger.”
Royce remained silent. He had never been very responsive to insults, and besides he had Shirley. As long as he had Shirley, there was not much need to talk.
“Wanta beer?” he asked, motioning to Hubert Junior.
“Ain’t you heard nothin’ I said?” Mitch asked, exasperated. “I just called you ever’ name in the book. I ain’t just about to drink with you.”
Royce took his beer gratefully. Mitch was not turning out to be very good company. “You’re drunk, you ol’ son bitch,” he said.
“Dunlup, you got a brain like a goddamn brick,” Mitch said. His fury was beginning to rise at the thought of such a dumb person getting to fuck a sensitive woman like Shirley.
“I guess you think ‘cause I’m a cripple I won’t fight,” he added. “I’ll give you two days to get out of Shirley’s house, and if you don’t I’m gonna kill your ass. Hubert Junior’s my witness.”
“I don’t want to be no witness to no murder oath,” Hubert Junior said nervously. Since opening the Tired-Out Lounge, scarcely a day had passed without him overhearing one or more ghastly threats, a fair number of which had actually been carried out. He didn’t quite see how Mitch was going to manage to kill anyone as big as Royce, but then Mitch answered the question before he even had time to ask it.
“It don’t take but one hand to hold a gun, Dunlup,” Mitch said, breathing more whiskey fumes at Royce.
“Kill your ass if you don’t let Shirley alone,” Royce said in response.
After a few more threats from Mitch, to which Royce didn’t reply, the conversation petered out. Mitch went over to his one-room living quarters on Canal Street to get a little drunker, and it occurred to him while walking home that if Shirley ever decided to tell Royce about the chocolate-covered cherries Royce might well try to kill him. It was an ominous prospect, and the more Mitch thought about it the more likely it seemed. That night he found he could barely drink bourbon fast enough to keep the prospect out of his mind, and the next morning, as soon as things opened, he staggered down Canal Street to Son’s Surplus store and bought himself a beautiful machete, complete with scabbard, for $4.98. He meant to buy a pistol, but then pistols cost twenty dollars, and it occurred to him that it would be just his luck for a pistol to jam. As Son explained to him, there was no way you could jam a machete. Son even loaned him a
whetstone to sharpen it on.
For the next three days Mitch sharpened and drank and sharpened and drank, and as he did, his frame of mind got steadily worse. His hatred of Royce and Shirley increased minute by minute. Jealousy lit his brain like a large hot lightbulb. Somehow the chain that was supposed to turn the bulb off had gotten broken, so the bulb burned on and on. After three days of sharpening and heavy lonely drinking it seemed to Mitch that the only way he could forestall his own murder was to go over and whop Royce’s balls off with the machete. With his balls missing, Royce was not likely to be up to killing anyone.
Soon Mitch’s waking consciousness was only a haze of jealous thoughts, and he developed a great desire for revenge. After all, Royce and Shirley had insulted his own manhood. Prolonged drinking always made Mitch bitter sooner or later—bitter about his lost arm and lonely life—and one night with no thoughts in his head at all he found himself stumbling down Harrisburg with the machete under his arm. The time had come; hell would be to pay. They’d be sorry they insulted him when they looked up and saw him coming through the door with his machete.
He got to Shirley’s house and took his machete out of its scabbard. Barstow was on the porch, and Mitch gave him a pat. Then he let himself into the house with a key he had refused to give back when Shirley kicked him out of the house. When Mitch opened the door Barstow managed to sneak in. Barstow lived in constant hope of being able to get in his mistress’s house, where there were always shoes to chew. Mitch kept a good grip on his machete, expecting to have to cut Royce down at any moment, but Barstow made no sound and the whole house was quiet. All Mitch could hear was the soft sound of an electric fan, and that came from the bedroom.
Since no one seemed to be moving around and no immediate action was required, Mitch sat down in a big stuffed chair in the living room to think things over. He pulled out his bourbon bottle and took a few swigs. Before he knew it, being back in old familiar surroundings caused his anger to rise. Shirley’s house was the only place he had been happy since losing his arm, and Shirley had been the only person to be nice to him. To be deprived of it all and have to live in a squalid little room on Canal Street was a terrible unfairness, and Royce had caused it—Royce who had had a hardworking wife and a job too.
A pulse began to pound in Mitch’s temple. After it had pounded for a while Mitch started to shake. He got out of the chair and stumbled into the bedroom, gripping the machete tightly. The sight that met his eyes was what he had expected—Royce and Shirley were in bed, both mother naked and both sound asleep. Though it was what he might have expected, he hadn’t expected it. He had somehow expected Royce to be in his work clothes, the way he had always known him to be, and the sight of him sprawled out on his back with his mouth open was horrible. It was worse than Mitch had thought it would be, arid the worst part of it was that Royce took up almost all the bed. Shirley was crowded off on an edge, all scrunched up and about to fall on the floor.
Mitch had more or less expected that Royce would have a huge cock, but instead he seemed to have none at all. Whatever he had was completely hidden under the vast fold of his lower belly. Royce had always had a beer gut, but a few months of doing nothing but drinking beer had caused it to swell to enormous size. It was the hugest, grossest thing Mitch had ever seen. The idea that his little Shirley would have anything to do with such a lard-gut as Royce was intolerable. The lightbulb of his jealousy popped back on, blinding hot, and without otherwise announcing himself Mitch took a poke at Royce’s big gut with the machete. Unfortunately, his hand was unsteady, and instead of sticking him in the gut he merely stuck him in the breastbone. That’ll wake you up, you fat bastard, Mitch thought as he started to jerk the machete out and get ready for another poke.
Oddly, though, Mitch was wrong. Royce did not wake up—nor did the machete come out. It was well lodged, and Mitch’s hand was sweaty. When he jerked, his hand slipped off and he staggered two steps back and stepped on Barstow, who yelped loudly. The yelp woke Shirley, who reached over instinctively to see what state Royce’s old thing was in. “Shut up, puppy,” she said sleepily, before she noticed that a machete was sticking out of her lover’s chest. As soon as she noticed that, she screamed and rolled off the bed in a faint, knocking over the little electric fan as she fell. Stepping on Barstow had caused Mitch to fall down too, and he didn’t bother to get up. He crawled out of the house as fast as he could and began to stagger down the street in the direction of the Tired-Out Lounge.
Shirley’s scream woke Royce. Automatically he reached over for the can of beer he had set on the bedside table before going to sleep. He took a sip and discovered that it was warm, just as he had feared; still, it was handy, and it was not until his second sip that he got his eyes open enough to notice the machete sticking out of his chest.
“Uh-oh,” he said; then his panic accelerated and he screamed loudly. Mitch, more than a block down the street by that time, heard the scream and assumed it was Royce’s death cry. He managed to keep stumbling on.
Royce too assumed it was his death cry, although he didn’t really hear it. He grabbed the phone but then dropped the receiver and had to pull it slowly up onto the bed.
“Help, they kilt me, cut my guts out!” Royce yelled into the phone, but since he had not remembered to dial, the phone didn’t answer.
At that point Shirley began to come out of her faint. She turned over and tried to pull herself back onto the bed, thinking maybe it had all been a nightmare, only it wasn’t, because the machete was still sticking out of Royce’s chest. The only non-nightmarish thing about it was that Royce was still alive and was trying to talk on the telephone—calling his wife, Shirley concluded.
“Who you calling, Royce?” she asked. For several weeks she had suspected him of sneaking calls to his wife.
Then the sight of it all made her feel weak all over, and she clung to the edge of the bed as if it were a ledge.
“Help, help, help!” Royce cried into the phone. Then he managed to dial the operator and one answered. “Help, ’mergency,” Royce yelled.
The operator was not slow to catch the note of desperation. “Just be calm, sir,” she said. “Where are you, sir?”
Royce went blank. He knew he was on Harrisburg, but he couldn’t have remembered the street number if he had had several weeks, and he knew very well he didn’t have any weeks. He handed the phone to Shirley, who released one hand from the ledge she was clinging to and managed to mumble the address.
“Oh, gawd, lady, hurry up with an ambulance,” she said. While she was talking Royce passed out.
Mitch, meanwhile, had managed to stumble into the Tired-Out Lounge, and from the look on his face Hubert Junior knew at once that he must, to the best of his ability at least, have fulfilled his oath.
From wanting Royce to suffer, Mitch had very quickly come around to not wanting Royce to die.
“I kilt Dunlup,” he said, panting. The statement got him the immediate attention of everyone in the bar. Hubert Junior, used to emergencies, picked up the phone at once and gave the ambulance driver he knew best precise instructions as to where to go. Then he scooped the money out of his cash register in case a robber came wandering in while he was gone. In a matter of seconds he and everyone else in the bar were racing down the street toward Shirley’s house, leaving Mitch sitting at a table, aghast and weak, trying to think of how he could begin his story when the police came.
So efficient was Hubert Junior that the police, the ambulance, and all the former customers of the Tired-Out Lounge arrived at Shirley’s house almost at once. “Is anybody in there armed?” a young policeman asked.
“Naw, it’s just an attempted murder,” Hurbert Junior said. Two policemen got up their nerve and opened the door. They weren’t convinced it was safe, but the crowd at their back gave them little choice. At the sight of so many people Barstow yelped once and scuttled into the bedroom to hide under the bed. He had never been much of a watchdog.
When the crowd press
ed into the bedroom they were given a choice of two sights: a large man lying unconscious on a bed, a machete sticking out of his chest or a large woman sitting naked on the floor. Shirley in her shock had been too weak to try to dress. She sat by the bed in a kind of stupor waiting for Royce to finish dying; the next thing she knew twenty men were in, the bedroom.
“Ma’am, we’re the police,” the young officer said, taking off his hat.
“This is terrible. We wasn’t doin’ a thang,” Shirley said. Then she remembered her nakedness and hurriedly got to her feet and scrambled through the men to the bathroom, holding a brassiere in front of her. Everyone watched silently, aware that they were witnessing the real thing: a crime of passion, naked woman, dying man. Only almost immediately the sight of Royce began to act on their unsteady stomachs. Several rushed to the porch to begin puking. Only the ambulance drivers were blasé. They set about getting Royce on a stretcher, and soon the ambulance raced away. Several of the men stayed around to comfort Shirley, who had come out of her faint and said several times that she wished she was dead. Hubert Junior got in the police car and took the officers back to his bar to get Mitch. He was sitting at a table shaking when they walked in.
“What happened?” he asked. “Did Royce die?”
“They don’t know if he’s critical,” Hubert Junior said gently. An air of solemnity settled over the bar as the officer led Mitch away.
“Pore bastard,” one of the men said. “Ruint his life over a woman.”
It was their theme—their only theme—and as the patrons began to stumble in they began to worry it, to tell one another for the first time the story, as they variously fancied it, of Royce Dunlup’s tragedy—a story they would embellish for many a year.
2.
AURORA RECEIVED the call at three A.M. When the phone rang she assumed it was Emma about to go be delivered of her child. But the voice wasn’t Emma’s.
“Ma’am, sorry to wake you up,” the officer said. “Would you know the whereabouts of Mrs. Rosalyn Dunlup? We understand she works for you.”