Orrie's Story (7 page)

“What?”

“Let it go.”

“There won't be another chance,” Esther said! “If we don't get him now, he'll go back down South and marry that little chippy of his, taking the insurance with him.”

E.G. shrugged, offering no assistance.

“You just want to give up?” For the first time she began to doubt him.

“You got a better idea?”

“Plug the fan in again and drop it in the tub while he's still groggy.”

“Jesus,” said E.G. “You could go back up there and do that?”

“I was hoping I might get some help.”

“With the kid right down the hall?”

“Oh, God!” Esther said. “Did I leave the door open?” She dashed out and went up the stairs, almost whimpering in anxiety, but reaching the bathroom, saw the door had been closed all the while. She had to take command of herself.

Ellie looked out of the doorway of her room. “What's all the commotion?”

“I just forgot something,” said Esther, trying to catch her breath. “Is it any of your business?”

“Is Daddy going to be out soon?”

The innocence of the question took away Esther's pugnacity. “It won't be long now,” she said in a nearly affectionate tone. “He had a hard trip, can use a good soak.” But more was needed. “He's looking forward to seeing you, too.” Fearful that Augie might groan loudly enough to be heard, she repeated, “It won't be long.”

“Where are we going to eat?” asked Ellie.

Esther was immediately angry again. “Just wait till you're told!”

“You want me to change my clothes?”

“What I want you to do is run back to Harriman's and get some cold beer. That would be nice.”

“Yes, it would,” said Ellie.

Esther followed her downstairs and, when the girl had left the house, stepped into the living room.

“Come on,” she said to E.G. “We've only got a few minutes.”

“You mean, kill him?”

“Yes!”

“I don't like it.”

“Neither do I,” said Esther. “But I don't see any alternative.” She was the leader now and preceded him on the route to the bathroom.

Augie lay as before, though he did not groan, not even when she touched his shoulder, at first gently and then with the stiff prod of an index finger.

“Hell,” E.G. said, standing well back of her, “he's dead.”

“He's breathing,” said Esther. She picked up the fan and handed it to her lover, the wire dangling. He made no use of it, simply stood there. “Well, plug it in!”

He did as much, then lowered the fan as far as it would go. At the level of Augie's bare shoulder, the wire was taut, at its maximum extension.

E.G. straightened up. he had come out of his stupor. “Look at this,” he said furiously. “It's not long enough to reach the water. It wasn't
ever
long enough to reach the water. You didn't even test it, did you? I
told
you to test it, and you didn't. For Christ's sake,
you didn't test it!”

Esther felt only contempt for him. “I've had to do everything. All you've done is talk. Are you yellow? Is that it?”

His face was contorted, and his clenched fist was rising. She took no measures to protect herself, being incapable of dealing with physical violence.

Augie groaned again at this point and made a movement of his trunk, too slight to alter his position but enough to catch the attention of his would-be murderers.

E.G. shuddered. For an instant Esther thought he might run away, but then, his face blanched, eyes rigidly focused, nostrils flared, he hurled himself on Augie's shoulders and head, forcing them under water. Beneath him, Augie now showed some life and, bigger and stronger, even though wounded and semiconscious he might well have saved himself had he been able to get a purchase with any part of his body, but his arms were trapped and the surface of the tub was too slick to grasp. He finally got his hands flat, under his body, and pushed up, but it was now that Esther added her effort to E.G.'s and together they managed, with their combined weights and strengths, to hold him under despite a savage and prolonged resistance that was amazing in a maimed man. But finally the last bubble had come up and burst.

Esther sagged against the far wall. She had not expected to commit murder in such a personal way. It was a nasty business even though there was no blood except the little bit at the head wound. For a few moments, eyes closed, gasping, dripping, she forgot all about E.G. and imagined that she had done the deed singlehandedly and was appalled and yet exhilarated by the revelation of a capability she had not suspected she possessed. But then she was chilled, as though the water had been iced and not still quite hot when Augie died in it. He had always liked his bathwater at a temperature too high for anyone else to bear. She was
freezing!

She opened her eyes and looked towards the tub. E.G. was kneeling alongside it in an attitude of prayer, except that his fingers were not tented but rathe repulsive Unclether flattened on his thighs.

She started to ask a question. “You think…?” But forgot the rest of it. She would not have been startled to hear a posthumous groan from Augie, who had died so passionately, yet so quietly: he had some noise coming. But had his death been all that soundless? Was it rather that she had been deaf to the thrashing of legs, the bubbling of nose and mouth?

E.G. rushed, on his knees, to the toilet, the lid and seat of which he had hardly flung back when the vomit left him in a torrent.

Esther was revolted by this symptom of weakness, but then she was almost getting used to E.G.'s failures. He had not acted well since the beginning of this sequence, which by now seemed so long before. His part in Augie's death had been hysterical. If she had undertaken the murder so as to join herself indissolubly with E.G., she had been misguided.

Augie's upper half lay underwater, his legs as far as the calves protruding from the other end. E.G. pulled himself to his feet. She could smell the stench of his puke.

“Flush the toilet,” she said in disgust. “And wipe your chin. Ellie'U be back any minute. We've got to fix our story.” She turned so as not to see Augie's feet. “The fan fell and knocked him out. His head slipped under, and he drowned. There's not enough water in there now. Run it to the brim: that'll account for all of it that splashed out.”

They were standing in water. The knees of E.G.'s pants were soaked. Esther's housecoat was wet, and her mules were probably ruined.

E.G. moved to follow her orders, opening the cold tap. “Use the hot,” she said. “He always liked it almost boiling.” That she remembered to call for such verisimilitude stimulated her self-confidence. In an instant she had formulated the rest of the plan. “As soon as we hear her come in, we pull him out onto the floor and give him artificial respiration.”

“What if it works?”

“Do you know how to do it?”

“I've seen it in movies, but I don't really know how to do it.”

“Good,” said Esther.

He shrugged towards the tub. “Maybe we better start to get him out now? He might be heavier than we think.”

“Let him be for a while yet. We want to be sure he won't revive.”

E.G. was looking at her. “Jesus,” he said, “you're a cool customer.”

“It's taken me long enough,” said she. “I wasted a lot of time on the way.” At the moment she was not only more bitter towards Augie than when he was alive, but she resented E.G. as much.

The sound of the screen door reached, them. For once Esther was pleased that Ellie had let it slam, something that in normal times, even when the girl's arms were burdened, never failed to startle and infuriate, for it was like a gunshot.

“Quick now,” Esther whispered, and they went to the body and tried to lift it from the tub, she at the feet (which were still warm; a damp cornplaster was on the left little toe). But Augie's upper half proved too heavy for his cousin to move singlehandedly. Esther dropped the feet and pitched in at the shoulders, but as the tub butted against the wall, leverage could not be applied at its most effective place, so both of them grappled with one arm and shoulder as the lifeless head lolled on a limp neck.

Getting him out was as ugly an affair as killing him had been. At one point his upper back was across the rim of the tub but not yet so far as to outweigh that part of him still within, and unless strength was applied continually he threatened always to slip back. Then when at last the balance was effectively altered, he came out and over too rapidly, all at once, and hit the floor crown first, which had he been alive might have broken his neck in the lethal way but could do no meaningful damage now, and a great deal of water came with him.

Ellie was en route upstairs, her errand completed. The noises from the bathroom brought her at the run. By the time she reached the doorway, E.G. was straddling her prone, wet, naked father, hands on the bare back.

Her mother spoke quickly, before the girl could get past dumb horror. “Your dad had an accident in the tub. He's not breathing. Go phone the lifesaving squad.”

Ellie did not move. “Go on!” Esther cried. “Don't you want him to live?” The question was inspired, and had the desired effect. The telephone was on the ground floor, in a niche in the passage between front hallway and kitchen. Ellie could be heard running down the stairs.

“Okay,” Esther said to E.G. “You can stop pretending.” She had begun to feel the bruises she had received in the struggle to hold Augie under water, to which she had been anesthetic at the time. No doubt the victim's body would show more. “Any marks on him,” she told E.G., who was now rising, “got there when we had to pull him out to try to save his life.” She sought E.G.'s eyes. “We've got nothing to fear. It'll take them a while to get here and set up the pulmotor. By then he'll be beyond reviving.”

E.G. emitted a little groan that was reminiscent of Augie's last sound. “Oh, he's gone all right.”

Esther thought of something. “Here,” she said urgently. “Look through his pants pockets.” She took the uniform trousers from the knob of the closet door and gave them to E.G. and herself began to search through the tunic.

“What are we looking for?”

“I don't know.”

He found the wallet. “You don't mean take his money?”

“It won't be that much. Any pictures of his chippy? Name and address? We ought to notify her, so she won't come looking for him.”

“There's a return bus ticket,” said E.G., “and twelve dollars. Driver's license—it's expired.” He lifted his arms as if in supplication. “Nothing else…Jesus, it's one thing to do the other, but to go through his pockets makes me feel cheap.”

“Put the wallet back,” said Esther. “They'll be here before you know it.”

The members of the lifesaving squad were drawn from the ranks of the local volunteer firemen and included one of Augie's friends who had been at the welcome-home party. Despite his thick eyeglasses, Bob Terwillen served as both firefighter and lifesaver and in fact had at special times (such as carnivals) even been an auxiliary cop.

Terwillen had never gone to war but death was not an unprecedented sight to him. Fellow townsfolk now and again drowned or were accidentally electrocuted, and at least once in his experience there had been a local suicide-by-auto-exhaust. The squad was usually called in if there seemed any hope for resuscitation in such cases. Though all its members were employed locally, some worked on different shifts from others, so that part of the complement at any given time was available on the shortest notice. Those in bed kept their clothing nearby. But the men working in the factory, if they could hear the steam whistle that sounded the appropriate code identifying the part of town in which the emergency could be located (not always possible in the din), were almost as prompt to get where directed, which might be close enough to walk. Once in the proper quarter of town, you listened and looked for the ambulance, which was driven by Mel Furman, who kept it in one side of his large garage and could get behind its wheel within four minutes of the phone-call alert, less if the time was before he had gone to bed, for he worked out of the same garage, at auto repair.

Not everybody for whom the lifesavers were summoned died. In fact death was far and away the exception. Occasionally the squad really saved someone's life by its actions. At other times the men arrived to find their services unneeded—the subject was breathing again either by reason of God's help or interim first-aid measures taken by nearby loved ones. And then false alarms, sounded by the panicky, were not unknown.

Though having considered himself a friend of Augie Mencken's, Terwillen had never been in his home before; in fact, though in such a small town everybody knew where everyone else lived in an approximate way, he could not have identified the particular house as being Augie's, and the dispatcher (the police chief's wife) had not got a name from the individual who called in. So Terwillen had no idea of the identity of the victim until, with the other fellows, helping to carry the heavy pulmotor, he climbed the front steps, crossed the porch, and entered the front hallway, there encountering an urgent Esther Mencken, in a garment that was dripping wet.

“Upstairs, first door on the left,” said she to Mel Furman, the leader of the squad. “Bathroom, fan fell on his head, passed out in tub. We gave him artificial respiration, but I
_#
think he was too far gone.”

In the bathroom, the others got to the body before Terwillen did, and for a moment blocked his view of the head and trunk. He could see only the more pitiful half of the naked corpse, with the splayed feet and the skinny white shins and defenseless private parts.

From the edge of the closet door hung the beribboned officer's tunic. Protruding from the left chest pocket, erect against the decorations there, was the cigar he had given Augie not an hour earlier.