The Kill-Off

'And it amuses you,' I said. 'Well, I'll tell you, mother. Doubtless it is very funny, but I don't believe we'd better have any further displays of amusement. Not that I'd mind killing you, you understand. In fact, I'll probably get around to that eventually. But I have other projects afoot at the moment-more important projects, if I may say so without hurting your feelings-'

She moved suddenly, made a dash for her room. I followed her-it adjoins the kitchen-and leaned absently against the door. The locked door to my mother's room.

The door that had been locked for…

Yes, my recollection was right; it is always right. I had been about three the last time she had kissed me, the last time she had cuddled, babied, mother-and-babied me. I would have remembered it, even if I did not have almost total recall. For how could one forget such a fierce outpouring of love, the balm-like, soul-satisfying warmth of it?

Or forget its abrupt, never-to-be-again withdrawal?

Or the stupid, selfish, cruel, bewildering insistence that it had never been?

I was a very silly little boy. I was a very foolish, bad little boy, and I had better pray God to forgive me. I was not sweets or hon or darlin' or even Bobbie. I was Mister Bobbie-Master Robert. Mistah-Mastah Bobbie, a reborn stranger among strangers.

My continuing illnesses? Psychosomatic. The manifold masques of frustration.

My intelligence? Compensatory. For certainly I inherited none from either of them.

I listened at night, when they thought I was asleep. I asked a few questions, strategically spacing them months apart.

She'd had a child; she'd had to wet-nurse me. Where was that child? Dead? Well, where and when had he died? When and where had my mother died?

It was ridiculously simple. Only a matter of putting a few questions to a fatuous imbecile-my father-and an oversexed docile moron, my mother. And listening to them at night. Listening and wanting to shriek with laughter.

He'd be ruined if anyone found out. It would ruin my life, wreck all my chances.

It would be that way if. And what way did the blind, stupid, silly son-of-a-bitch think it was now? What worse way could it be than as it was now?

And, no, it did not need to be that way. Needn't and wouldn't have been for a man with courage and honesty and decency.

I had deduced the truth by the time I was five. Several years later, when I was able to be up and around-to post and receive letters secretly-I proved my deductions.

He, my father, had practiced in only one other state before coming to this one. It had no record of a birth to Mrs. James Ashton, or of the death of said Mrs. Ashton. There was, however, a record of the birth of a son to one Hattie Marie Smith (colored; unmarried; initial birth). And the attending physician was Dr. James Ashton.

Well?

Or perhaps I should say well!

As a matter of fact, I said goddammit, since the cigarette was scorching my fingers.

I dropped it to the floor, ground it out with my shoe and rapped on my mother's door.

'Mother,' I said. 'Mammy-' I knocked harder. 'You heah me talkin' to you, mammy? Well, you sho bettah answer then, or your lul ol' boy gonna come in theah an' peel that soft putty hide right offen you. He do it, mammy. You knows all about him-doncha?-an' you knows he will. He gonna wait just five seconds, and then he's gonna bus' this heah ol' doah down an'…'

I looked at my wristwatch, began counting off the seconds aloud.

The bed creaked, and I heard a muffled croak. A dull, weary sound that was part sigh, part sob.

'Now, that's better,' I said. 'Listen closely, because this concerns you. It's my plan for finishing you off, you and my dearly beloved father… I am going to take you out to some deserted place, and bind you with chains. I shall so chain you that you will be apart from each other, and yet together. Inseparable yet touching. And you shall be stripped to your lustful hides. And in winter I shall douse you with ice- water, and in summer I shall smother you with blankets. And you shall shriek and shiver with the cold, and you shall scream and scorch with the heat. Yet you shall be voiceless and unheard.

'That will go on for seventeen years, mother. No, I'll be fair-deduct a couple of years. Then I'll bring you back here, pile you into bed together, and give you a sample of the hell that could never be hot enough for you. Set you on fire. Set the house on fire. Set the whole goddamned town on fire. Think of it, mammy! The whole population. Whole families, infants, children, mothers and fathers, grandparents and great-grandparents-all burning, all stacked together in lewd juxtaposition. And it shall come to pass, mammy. Yeah, verily. For to each thing there is a season, mammy, and a time-'

She was moaning peculiarly. Keening, I suppose you would say.

I listened absently, deciding that Pete Pavlov should be spared from my prospective holocaust.

No one else. At least, I could think of no one else at the moment. But certainly Pete Pavlov.

It was early, around eight o'clock, when I arrived at the dance pavilion. The bandstand was dark. The ticket booth-where Myra Pavlov serves as cashier-was closed. Only one of the ballroom chandeliers was burning. There was, however, a light in Pete's office. So I vaulted the turnstile, and started across the dance floor.

He was at his desk, counting a stack of bills. I was almost to the doorway when he looked up, startled, his hand darting toward an open desk drawer.

Then he saw it was I and he let out a disgusted grunt.

'Damn you, Bobbie. Better watch that sneakin' up on people. Might get your tail shot off.'

I laughed and apologized. I said I hoped that if anyone ever did try to hold him up, he wouldn't try to stop them.

'You do, huh?' he said. 'How come you hope that?'

'Why-why, because.' I frowned innocently. 'You have robbery insurance, haven't you? Well, why risk your life for some insurance company?'

I suspect, from the brief flicker in his eyes, the very slight change in facial expression, that he had entertained some such notion himself-that is, I should say, a fake robbery to collect on his insurance. He needed money, popular opinion notwithstanding. A robbery would be the simplest, most straightforward means of getting it. And he was a simple (I use the term flatteringly) straightforward man.

I would have been glad to help him perpetrate such a robbery. Broadly speaking, I would have done anything I could to help him. Unfortunately, however-although I respected him for it-he distrusted me instinctively.

So he treated me to a long, unblinking gaze. Then he grunted, spat in the spittoon and leaned back in his chair. He rocked back and forth in it, hands locked behind his head, looking down at the desk and then slowly raising his eyes to mine.

'I tell you,' he said. 'Used to be a hound dog around these parts. Fast-footedest goddammed dog you ever saw in your life. You know what happened to him?'

'I imagine he ran over himself,' I said.

'Yup. Bashed his brains out with his own butt. Hell of a nice-looking dog, too, and he seemed smart as turpentine. Always wondered why he didn't know better'n to do a thing like that.'

I smiled. Pete would not have wondered at all about the why of his allegorical dog. Nor the why of anything. Like myself, Pete's concern was with what things were, not how or why they had become that way.

He finished counting the money. He put it in a tin cash box, locked it up in his safe and came back