He got better in a few minutes. The sound of his screaming died away. He looked up at me from the floor, his eyes wet with pain.
“Sit up.”
He sat up, I found the pencil and paper and gave them to him. I asked: “Who hired you to tail me?”
He wrote: “The police.” I hit him, and said: “You better come clean, brother.” Blood began to seep through the gag.
He wrote: “McGee.”
I blinked at that. “McGee, eh! Why did he want me tailed?”
He shook his head. I hit him. He wrote: “McGee wanted to frighten you out of town.”
“How much did he pay you to do it?”
He wrote: “$200.”
“You're earning it,” I said. “Get up on the bed.”
He crawled up on the bed. I got a hundred-dollar bill out of my pocket. “Where'd you come from?”
“Kansas City.”
I tore the bill. “Listen. I'll give you half of this now, and I'll send half to Kansas City, care of Paul Smith, General Delivery, if you telephone me from there in the morning.”
He reached for half the bill. “And if you're still in Paulton tomorrow, I'll kill you, so help me,” I said. His eyes got big and I stuck the bill in his hand and went to my room. I locked the door and pulled the shades down and undressed. I looked at his pistol. It was loaded. I took it to bed with me.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE COUPE slid along the cement at a smooth sixty, heading for a bank of heavy clouds that steadily got higher on the horizon. The country was flat and dry-looking, and when the coupe got near the edge of the road dust swirled up. It was hot, but the air smelled of rain. We came to a sign saying: Temple-one mile.
Ginger was driving. “If Pug ever hears I took you,” she said, “he'll bump me.”
There wasn't much I could say to that, so I didn't say anything. Ginger let up on the gas. I heard a rumble of thunder. The black clouds covered half the sky. We went by a long field of corn, and then we came to a row of elms. There was a farmhouse and a white fence, and on the lawn two kids were playing with a collie. Temple had two garages, a general store, a drug store, five service stations, a movie with a sign saying: Next Saturday-Clark Gable in San Francisco, and a combination restaurant and pool hall. There were about thirty frame houses in the town.
Ginger said: “Now where?”
The dashboard clock said eleven-ten. “The cemetery, I guess.”
“Where's that?”
Two old men were sitting on the porch of the general store. I leaned out the window and asked one of 'em: “Dad where's the cemetery?”
One of the old men had a drooping moustache. He spat through it at a post. “Which one?”
Ginger said: “Jesus! have you got two?”
“How's that?”
I told the old man we wanted the Pendis funeral. He knew about it. It was at Rock Creek Cemetery. He told us how to get there. It was about a mile from town, along a dirt road.
We could see tombstones in the grass on the side of a hill. There was a winding path into the graveyard, and on it were parked five cars. Ahead, and a little off the path, was a hearse. A sudden breeze made yellow flowers nod in the grass, then died away. Apple trees grew in the graveyard.
,”The funeral's drawing good,” I said.
“She was always a popular girl,” Ginger said.
I looked at her, but there was no particular expression on her face. She drove in back of the other cars. People were standing by the hearse. We got out and went over to them. The punk saw me. He had on a blue suit that was too big for him. “Thanks for coming,” he said. He gave me back sixty-five from the two hundred I'd given him. “And thanks for the dough.”
“It's okay,” I said.
A wind came again, and with it thunder. The preacher started over to where the coffin was by an open grave. I got the wreath out of the rear of the coupe. Ginger walked on with the punk, and all the others followed the preacher, too. When I caught up I saw there were a bunch of young girls in the crowd. They shied away from me, their faces frightened. I thought, what the hell! Then I saw an older woman with them, and I knew the reason. It was the madam and the babes from the whorehouse.
While the preacher was saying what he had to say, it began to rain. The drops of water felt queer. They were warm. They didn't cool anything at all. I looked around the crowd and saw the punk. His face was white and he was crying. He looked as though he was going to be sick. I guess he had loved her. The preacher's voice died away and some yokels began to lower the coffin in the grave. The whores were weeping, all but the madam. She stared at me, her face sullen. She was probably thinking of her radio-phonograph combination.
The coffin reached the bottom of the grave and the men slipped off the ropes. All the women in the crowd were crying now, and some of the men. It made me feel a little tight at the throat. The preacher said a few words more, standing bent over so the warm rain wouldn't hit his face. He finished and some of the people threw flowers in the grave. They began to move away. I took a peek into the grave. Flowers had almost covered the coffin. I thought: there goes $135. It was the first time I'd ever spent that much on a doll without getting something in
