to an explosion point.
He had done a job on me, all right.
I stripped off my shirt and jacket and ran warm water into the basin, glancing into the other room with my good eye from time to time; Holly had not moved. I washed my face, gently, trying not to cry out. I used a soft towel, and looked in the mirror again, and it was not quite so bad now; but I had to do something about that flap of skin hanging loose under my eye. It was still bleeding, trailing crimson down my cheek in a hellish tear stream.
I went into the other room, moving on enervated legs, and unlocked the front door and stumbled down to my car. There was a first-aid kit in the glove compartment, and I took that back inside, relocking the door. I poured Mercurochrome onto a gauze square and tore off two strips of adhesive tape and stuck them across the top of the pad; then I set my teeth and shut my eyes and placed the bandage gently over the cut, pressing the loose skin back into place.
I could feel the pain down through my groin, and a kind of whimper came out of my throat. After a moment the pain went away and I could breathe again. I poured more Mercurochrome onto some cotton swabbing and worked that over the left side of my face, and then I sat down on the edge of the bed and ate four aspirin dry from the kit.
In my open suitcase I located a package of cigarettes. I tore it open and lit one, drawing in the smoke, coughing, inhaling again. My hands were still trembling; I had not been in a slugging fight in ten years, and never one like this. I was too goddamn old for anything as physical as this, and the reaction was setting in. I thought: He’s like a bull, all right, just like a bull. How the hell did I take him?
I sat on the bed and smoked and trembled, and finally I began to feel a little better. The throbbing gentled in my head, and some of the terrible weakness in my legs and arms went away. I walked into the bathroom again and drank a glass of water and came out and looked down at Holly. He was stirring now, moaning deep in his throat.
He rolled over onto his back, and I saw that he looked as bad as I did-blood all over him, cuts, torn clothing, his nose twisted to one side and still flowing, a tooth missing in the front. I backed off a couple of steps, thinking: I hope he doesn’t try to start it up again, I don’t think I can handle any more. There was a writing desk in one corner of the room, and I went there and took the heavy redwood chair and stood it between Holly and me. If he made another play, I was going to use the chair on him and the hell with it.
Holly lay with his eyes shut, his belly heaving like a giant bellows as he sucked in breath through his broken nose and ruined mouth. Then he moaned and rolled over again and crawled up onto all fours; he shook his head, shook it again, prying his eyes open. He raised one hand, rubbed the back of it across his face, and then he saw me and my hands tensed on the back of the chair.
But he just knelt there, looking at me with his vacuous eyes. After an interval he let the lower half of his body relax, rolling his left hip onto the floor and resting his weight on that and on his left arm. He forced words through his thick lips, ‘You beat me. Nobody ever beat me before, and you beat me.’
‘You son of a bitch.’
‘You’re tough,’ Holly said. ‘You’re a tough guy.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Oh yeah, I’m a tough guy.’
‘Nobody ever beat me before.’
There was a certain respect in his voice, as if he held no more anger or animosity toward me, as if I was now a kind of hero for having beaten him. The bloody mask of his face was expressionless, but I had that feeling of grudging worship and it made me uneasy. I wanted to hate him, and yet I could not do it with him the way he was-a sort of huge child, a worshiping Brahma child. I stood there, trembling, watching him.
‘I waited for you two hours,’ he said. ‘You didn’t come.’
‘How did you know where to find me?’
‘Roxbury ain’t big.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I know Mr. Jardine. He said you was in number five.’
‘All right, now the big question: why?’
‘Huh?’
‘Why did you jump me?’
‘You upset Mrs. Emery today.’
‘Oh, that’s some fine reason.’
‘You’re a friend of his, that other one.’
‘What other one? You mean Sands?’
‘Yeah, him.’
‘I’m not a friend of his, I’m just trying to find him.’
‘That ain’t what you told Mrs. Emery.’
‘Did she send you after me?’
‘She don’t know nothing about it.’
‘It was all your idea, huh?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Just because of Sands.’
‘He killed Miss Diane. And you’re his friend.’
‘Christ!’
‘You deserved same as he got,’ Holly said.
I stared at him. A vague chill touched my back, staying on there in the saddle of it. ‘What?’ I said. ‘What did you say?’
He pressed his thick bluish lips together.
‘Did you jump Sands the same way you did me, Holly?’
Silence.
‘Goddamn it, Holly, did you?’
‘Yeah,’ he muttered.
‘Why?’
‘I told you. He caused Miss Diane to die. I heard him tell Mr. and Mrs. Emery what he done, and Mrs. Emery she started screaming for him to leave and Mr. Emery was all excited and took to drinking like he does, and when that guy left I just went after him. I had to do something. The Emerys, they’re just like my folks, they been real good to me. Miss Diane was real good to me, too, before she went away. I couldn’t just let that guy walk away without doing nothing.’
‘Where did you jump him? Here at the motel?’
‘No.’
‘Well, where?’
‘I followed him in the truck. I offered him a ride.’
‘You took him somewhere?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Where?’
‘To Hammock Grove.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A picnic place out at the end of Coachman Road.’
‘And then what?’
‘I hit him a few times.’
‘You beat him up.’
‘Yeah. He wasn’t tough at all.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘I left him there. I drove away.’
‘Was he alive?’
He stared up at me. ‘I never killed nobody.’
‘You’re sure he was alive?’
‘I told you, didn’t I?’
