In Cold Blood (4 page)

“On your breath?” inquired Kenyon.

“No, funny one. Yours.”

That quieted him, for Kenyon, as he knew she knew, did once in a while sneak a puff—but, then, so did Nancy.

Mr. Clutter clapped his hands. “That’s all. This is an office.”

Now, upstairs, she changed into faded Levis and a green sweater, and fastened round her wrist her third-most-valued belonging, a gold watch; her closest cat friend, Evinrude, ranked above it, and surmounting even Evinrude was Bobby’s signet ring, the cumbersome proof of her “going-steady” status, which she wore (
when
she wore it; the least flare-up and off it came) on a thumb, for even with the use of adhesive tape its man-size girth could not be made to fit a more suitable finger. Nancy was a pretty girl, lean and boyishly agile, and the prettiest things about her were her short-bobbed, shining chestnut hair (brushed a hundred strokes each morning, the same number at night) and her soap-polished complexion, still faintly freckled and rose-brown from last summer’s sun. But it was her eyes, wide apart, darkly translucent, like ale held to the light, that made her immediately likable, that at once announced her lack of suspicion, her considered and yet so easily triggered kindliness.

“Nancy!” Kenyon called. “Susan on the phone.”

Susan Kidwell, her confidante. Again she answered in the kitchen.

“Tell,” said Susan, who invariably launched a telephone session with this command. “And, to begin, tell why you were flirting
with Jerry Roth.” Like Bobby, Jerry Roth was a school basketball star.

“Last night? Good grief, I wasn’t flirting. You mean because we were holding hands? He just came backstage during the show. And I was so nervous. So he held my hand. To give me courage.”

“Very sweet. Then what?”

“Bobby took me to the spook movie. And
we
held hands.”

“Was it scary? Not Bobby. The movie.”

“He didn’t think so; he just laughed. But you know me. Boo!—and I fall off the seat.”

“What are you eating?”

“Nothing.”

“I know—your fingernails,” said Susan, guessing correctly. Much as Nancy tried, she could not break the habit of nibbling her nails, and, whenever she was troubled, chewing them right to the quick. “Tell. Something wrong?”

“No.”

“Nancy.
C’est moi
 …” Susan was studying French.

“Well—Daddy. He’s been in an awful mood the last three weeks. Awful. At least, around me. And when I got home last night he started
that
again.”

“
That
” needed no amplification; it was a subject that the two friends had discussed completely, and upon which they agreed. Susan, summarizing the problem from Nancy’s viewpoint, had once said, “You love Bobby now, and you need him. But deep down even Bobby knows there isn’t any future in it. Later on, when we go off to Manhattan, everything will seem a new world.” Kansas State University is in Manhattan, and the two girls planned to enroll there as art students, and to room together. “Everything will change, whether you want it to or not. But you can’t change it now, living here in Holcomb, seeing Bobby every day, sitting in the same classes—and there’s no
reason
to. Because you and Bobby are a very happy thing. And it will be something happy to think back about—if you’re left alone. Can’t you make your father understand that?” No, she could not. “Because,” as she explained it to Susan, “whenever I start to
say
something, he looks at me as though I must not love him. Or as though I loved
him
less
. And suddenly I’m tongue-tied; I just want to be his daughter and do as he wishes.” To this Susan had no reply; it embodied emotions, a relationship, beyond her experience. She lived alone with her mother, who taught music at the Holcomb School, and she did not remember her own father very clearly, for years ago, in their native California, Mr. Kidwell had one day left home and not come back.

“And, anyway,” Nancy continued now, “I’m not sure it’s
me
. That’s making him grouchy. Something else—he’s really worried about something.”

“Your mother?”

No other friend of Nancy’s would have presumed to make such a suggestion. Susan, however, was privileged. When she had first appeared in Holcomb, a melancholy, imaginative child, willowy and wan and sensitive, then eight, a year younger than Nancy, the Clutters had so ardently adopted her that the fatherless little girl from California soon came to seem a member of the family. For seven years the two friends had been inseparable, each, by virtue of the rarity of similar and equal sensibilities, irreplaceable to the other. But then, this past September, Susan had transferred from the local school to the vaster, supposedly superior one in Garden City. It was the usual procedure for Holcomb students who intended going on to college, but Mr. Clutter, a diehard community booster, considered such defections an affront to community spirit; the Holcomb School was good enough for his children, and there they would remain. Thus, the girls were no longer always together, and Nancy deeply felt the daytime absence of her friend, the one person with whom she need be neither brave nor reticent.

“Well. But we’re all so happy about Mother—you heard the wonderful news.” Then Nancy said, “Listen,” and hesitated, as if summoning nerve to make an outrageous remark. “
Why
do I keep smelling smoke? Honestly, I think I’m losing my mind. I get into the car, I walk into a room, and it’s as though somebody had just been there, smoking a cigarette. It isn’t Mother, it can’t be Kenyon. Kenyon wouldn’t dare …”

Nor, very likely, would any visitor to the Clutter home, which
was pointedly devoid of ashtrays. Slowly, Susan grasped the implication, but it was ludicrous. Regardless of what his private anxieties might be, she could not believe that Mr. Clutter was finding secret solace in tobacco. Before she could ask if this was really what Nancy meant, Nancy cut her off: “Sorry, Susie. I’ve got to go. Mrs. Katz is here.”

DICK WAS DRIVING A BLACK 1949 Chevrolet sedan. As Perry got in, he checked the back seat to see if his guitar was safely there; the previous night, after playing for a party of Dick’s friends, he had forgotten and left it in the car. It was an old Gibson guitar, sandpapered and waxed to a honey-yellow finish. Another sort of instrument lay beside it—a twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun, brand-new, blue-barreled, and with a sportsman’s scene of pheasants in flight etched along the stock. A flashlight, a fishing knife, a pair of leather gloves, and a hunting vest fully packed with shells contributed further atmosphere to this curious still life.

“You wearing that?” Perry asked, indicating the vest.

Dick rapped his knuckles against the windshield. “Knock, knock. Excuse me, sir. We’ve been out hunting and lost our way. If we could use the phone …”

“Si, señor. Yo comprendo.”

“A cinch,” said Dick. “I promise you, honey, we’ll blast hair all over them walls.”

“ ‘Those’ walls,” said Perry. A dictionary buff, a devotee of obscure words, he had been intent on improving his companion’s grammar and expanding his vocabulary ever since they had celled together at Kansas State Penitentiary. Far from resenting these lessons, the pupil, to please his tutor, once composed a sheaf of poems, and though the verses were very obscene, Perry, who
thought them nevertheless hilarious, had had the manuscript leather-bound in a prison shop and its title,
Dirty Jokes
, stamped in gold.

Dick was wearing a blue jumper suit; lettering stitched across the back of it advertised BOB SANDS’ BODY SHOP. He and Perry drove along the main street of Olathe until they arrived at the Bob Sands establishment, an auto-repair garage, where Dick had been employed since his release from the penitentiary in mid-August. A capable mechanic, he earned sixty dollars a week. He deserved no salary for the work he planned to do this morning, but Mr. Sands, who left him in charge on Saturdays, would never know he had paid his hireling to overhaul his own car. With Perry assisting him, he went to work. They changed the oil, adjusted the clutch, recharged the battery, replaced a throw-out bearing, and put new tires on the rear wheels—all necessary undertakings, for between today and tomorrow the aged Chevrolet was expected to perform punishing feats.

“Because the old man was around,” said Dick, answering Perry, who wanted to know why he had been late in meeting him at the Little Jewel. “I didn’t want him to see me taking the gun out of the house. Christ, then he would have knowed I wasn’t telling the truth.”

“ ‘Known.’ But what did you say? Finally?”

“Like we said. I said we’d be gone overnight—said we was going to visit your sister in Fort Scott. On account of she was holding money for you. Fifteen hundred dollars.” Perry had a sister, and had once had two, but the surviving one did not live in Fort Scott, a Kansas town eighty-five miles from Olathe; in fact, he was uncertain of her present address.

“And was he sore?”

“Why should he be sore?”

“Because he hates me,” said Perry, whose voice was both gentle and prim—a voice that, though soft, manufactured each word exactly, ejected it like a smoke ring issuing from a parson’s mouth. “So does your mother. I could see—the ineffable way they looked at me.”

Dick shrugged. “Nothing to do with you. As such. It’s just they
don’t like me seeing anybody from The Walls.” Twice married, twice divorced, now twenty-eight and the father of three boys, Dick had received his parole on the condition that he reside with his parents; the family, which included a younger brother, lived on a small farm near Olathe. “Anybody wearing the fraternity pin,” he added, and touched a blue dot tattooed under his left eye—an insigne, a visible password, by which certain former prison inmates could identify him.

“I understand,” said Perry. “I sympathize with that. They’re good people. She’s a real sweet person, your mother.”

Dick nodded; he thought so, too.

At noon they put down their tools, and Dick, racing the engine, listening to the consistent hum, was satisfied that a thorough job had been done.

NANCY AND HER PROTÉGÉE, JOLENE Katz, were also satisfied with their morning’s work; indeed, the latter, a thin thirteen-year-old, was agog with pride. For the longest while she stared at the blue-ribbon winner, the oven-hot cherries simmering under the crisp lattice crust, and then she was overcome, and hugging Nancy, asked, “Honest, did I really make it myself?” Nancy laughed, returned the embrace, and assured her that she had—with a little help.

Jolene urged that they sample the pie at once—no nonsense about leaving it to cool. “Please, let’s both have a piece. And you, too,” she said to Mrs. Clutter, who had come into the kitchen. Mrs. Clutter smiled—attempted to; her head ached—and said thank you, but she hadn’t the appetite. As for Nancy, she hadn’t the time; Roxie Lee Smith, and Roxie Lee’s trumpet solo, awaited her, and afterward those errands for her mother, one of which concerned a bridal shower that some Garden City girls were organizing for Beverly, and another the Thanksgiving gala.

“You go, dear, I’ll keep Jolene company until her mother comes for her,” Mrs. Clutter said, and then, addressing the child with unconquerable timidity, added, “If Jolene doesn’t mind keeping
me
company.” As a girl she had won an elocution prize; maturity, it seemed, had reduced her voice to a single tone, that of apology, and her personality to a series of gestures blurred by the fear that she might give offense, in some way displease. “I hope you understand,” she continued after her daughter’s departure. “I hope you won’t think Nancy rude?”

“Goodness, no. I just love her to death. Well, everybody does. There isn’t anybody like Nancy. Do you know what Mrs. Stringer says?” said Jolene, naming her home-economics teacher. “One day she told the class, ‘Nancy Clutter is always in a hurry, but she always has time. And that’s one definition of a lady.’ ”

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Clutter. “All my children are very efficient. They don’t need me.”

Jolene had never before been alone with Nancy’s “strange” mother, but despite discussions she had heard, she felt much at ease, for Mrs. Clutter, though unrelaxed herself, had a relaxing quality, as is generally true of defenseless persons who present no threat; even in Jolene, a very childlike child, Mrs. Clutter’s heart-shaped, missionary’s face, her look of helpless, homespun ethereality aroused protective compassion. But to think that she was Nancy’s mother! An aunt—that seemed possible; a visiting spinster aunt, slightly odd, but
nice
.

“No, they don’t need me,” she repeated, pouring herself a cup of coffee. Though all the other members of the family observed her husband’s boycott of this beverage, she drank two cups every morning and often as not ate nothing else the rest of the day. She weighed ninety-eight pounds; rings—a wedding band and one set with a diamond modest to the point of meekness—wobbled on one of her bony hands.

Jolene cut a piece of pie. “Boy!” she said, wolfing it down. “I’m going to make one of these every day seven days a week.”

“Well, you have all those little brothers, and boys can eat a lot of pie. Mr. Clutter and Kenyon, I know they never get tired of them. But the cook does—Nancy just turns up her nose. It’ll be
the same with you. No, no—why do I say that?” Mrs. Clutter, who wore rimless glasses, removed them and pressed her eyes. “Forgive me, dear. I’m sure you’ll never know what it is to be tired. I’m sure you’ll always be happy …”

Jolene was silent. The note of panic in Mrs. Clutter’s voice had caused her to have a shift of feeling; Jolene was confused, and wished that her mother, who had promised to call back for her at eleven, would come.

Presently, more calmly, Mrs. Clutter asked, “Do you like miniature things? Tiny things?” and invited Jolene into the dining room to inspect the shelves of a whatnot on which were arranged assorted Lilliputian gewgaws—scissors, thimbles, crystal flower baskets, toy figurines, forks and knives. “I’ve had some of these since I was a child. Daddy and Mama—all of us—spent part of most years in California. By the ocean. And there was a shop that sold such precious little things. These cups.” A set of doll-house teacups, anchored to a diminutive tray, trembled in the palm of her hand. “Daddy gave them to me; I had a lovely childhood.”