Carny kill

'No. But let's step around back a minute.'

We went around to the little tented area and lit up. There was a small locked shack back there and I knew he kept his twentytwos and live ammo inside.

I said, 'Look, Gabby. You mentioned something about if I ever needed a gun.'

He gave me a sharp look and forgot to drag on his smoke.

'Has it come to that, Thax?'

I shrugged. 'I've got a funny feeling it might.'

My funny feeling was a matter of nerves. I was getting spooky with suspense. Nothing was happening when I damn well knew that something should happen. Everything pointed to it.

The corners of Gabby's mouth dipped into points.

'Why don't you use your head, Thax, and cut and run?'

'I'm in too deep. I've got to go along with it.'

'You mean you want to go along with it,' Gabby said.

I thought about it. Maybe he was right, and maybe he had just put his finger on the cracked keystone of my character. I had been content to drift as a nonentity through a life I didn't understand or like, blaming my inadequacy on fate, when it was actually my own gutlessness that kept me a nothing, a Then person.

This train of thought was more of an emotion than an idea and the emotion had a personification. The picture I suddenly saw of myself made me lonely, empty, and it fified me with distaste.

'Well,'I said defensively, 'it doesn't really matter, does it? Because one way or another I'm going to see the end of it.'

'Yeah,' Gabby said, 'and I think you're a goddam sap.'

'You ain't alone in that thought. But can you help me or not?'

He made points with his mouth again.

'That's the thing. I ain't helping you any by giving you a gun.'

'Look, Gabby. Let's not make with the pseudo-profound platitudes. Let's just call it backass help and let it go at that.'

'Well, but you don't want to go wandering around with a twentytwo rifle over your shoulder like a goddam sentry, do you?'

No, I didn't want to do that. In fact I'd been thinking about kicking myself because I'd been so goddarn hasty in throwing away that pistol the night before.

'Look,' I said. 'A couple of days back you offered me the loan of a gun if I thought I needed one. You weren't thinking about a twentytwo then, were you?'

Gabby scowled at the ground. 'No,' he admitted. 'I've got a Roscoe put away-but you're a damn fool if you try to use it'

'Gabby-let me sweat it, will you? How about it? Do I get the Roscoe?'

Gabby shrugged. 'It's your neck.'

He unlocked the shack door and went inside and made some noise and climbed out again with an automatic in his hand. He didn't look one bit happy about it when he passed over the weapon.

It was a fortyfive, a Colt. I thumbed the clip latch and extracted the magazine. It was loaded. I palmed it home and pulled the slide and made sure the safety was on. Then I shoved it under my belt and buttoned my jacket over it and nodded at Gabby.

'Maybe I won't have to use it,' I said.

He looked at me and said, 'I hope not. I hope you figure out another way.'

'Maybe somebody will figure out another way for me,' I said.

The funny thing was-somebody already had.

Nothing happened. Six o'clock ticked around and I knocked off and went over to the Queen Anne Cottage and had a New York cut and amused myself kidding with the cute waitress over my smoke and coffee.

I asked her what she thought of _Treasure Island_ and she told me she had gone over there one night with one of the college boys who worked on the lot and had she ever had a time fighting him off, and I said no I meant the book, and she gave me a blank look and said huh? Then she said oh and went on to tell me that _Treasure Island_ was just a kid's book.

'You're only half right,' I said. '_Treasure Island_ was written for those who won't let youth slip away. For those whose attitude toward life has not been ruined by life.'

She gave me a look that was supposed to imply that I just might be some kind of nut.

'I can't imagine what you think you're talking about'

'Neither can I,' I said. 'Because my attitude doesn't fit in that picture. I've already been ruined for life by sexy young things like you.'

Now we were on her ground. She laughed and called me naughty and went rump-twitching on about her business. I spent a few seconds meditating on her locomotion, as viewed from the rear, and then I thought about _Treasure Island_ again.

The big clincher moment in the tale had been when Jim Hawkins and John Silver, George Merry, Tom Morgan and the lad known as Dick arrive at Flint's treasure cache and find that the map they have carefully followed is wrong. The treasure had been moved.

_There never was such an overturn in this world_, Stevenson had written about the pirates' shocked emotion.

I finished my coffee and went back to my stand and still nothing happened. Bill Duff had been giving me peculiar stares for about an hour, and finally around eight or so he strolled over and said hi.

'Bill,' I replied. I showed him the little pea and covered it and made a right-over-left pass and he tapped the right shell with his finger. I didn't palm it because there was no profit in it. Anyhow, he had something on his mind and I didn't want to derail his train of thought.

'You want your orchid gift wrapped?' I asked him.

'Keep it for your bitch,' he told me.

I was curious about what had brought him over to see me so I didn't get mad at that. Duff didn't look at me. He toyed with one of my walnut shells.

'I've been thinking, Thax, that you and I are a couple of saps.'

'I'll go along with half of that,' I said. 'I've been thinking that one of us was.'

He gave me the lovable old Duff dagger look.

'No, I'm serious. We've been at loggerheads when if we had any brains we'd be a team. You know what I mean?'

'Uh-huh, and it's a funny thing. I said the same thing to Ferris not so long ago.'

'You did?'

'Uh-huh. A slapstick team. You slap a pie in my face and then I plaster your face.'

'No, no, for godsake. I don't mean the cutthroat way we've always acted. I mean we should start putting our heads together. You know?'

'Like the two-headed calf in the illusion show.'

He gave me an aggrieved but patient look and said, 'Will you knock off the hilarity? I'm serious. And you know what I'm talking about. I figure together we could both do ourselves some good. Some real good.'

'Well, Bill, everybody's opinion is worth something. Even a clock that's stopped is right twice a day. What is it that you want to share with me?'

'C'mon,' he snapped. 'You know as well as I do what the score is. There's a fortune in it'

'Um. I said that to a man last night and nearly got my head blown off.' I started to rotate the walnut shells.

'The trouble with you, Bill, is you want to go fishing with my bait. You're seeing about a yard beyond Ferris' view- while I'm looking at the whole vista. No deal.'

I raised my head and started a spiel.

'This way, ladies and gentlemen! The one cylinder ballbearing ride is about to start again. Three little tepees with a little white medidne ball. Step aside, mister, let the little lady with the pretty face see the white rabbit.' I looked at Duff.