Murder in the Wind (2 page)

Now he is home on a winter afternoon when you get out of school and it is like the world has fallen apart. Things have been strange at school this winter. The town has been strange this winter. But a strangeness that has not touched you. Except in little ways. The end of the piano lessons. Maybe you can start again later, dear. And a disappointing Christmas, but you did not let them know how badly you had wanted the Elgin Bicycle, and how certain you had been that you would get it, so certain that you got up in gray dawn and went down to look at it and touch it there under the tree, and if it was up on its stand perhaps turn the rear wheel and watch the spokes go around in silver pattern. Maybe they would bring the bike in later, but they did not.

Then he was home when he should be at work.

—Don’t go in there and bother your father.

—But why is he home?

—Go on out and play. Don’t think about it. Don’t worry about it. Go on out and play. Or go to your room and read.

Laid off. When you found out that those were the words they had a funny sound. Not laid down. Or laid away. Laid off. Off in a far place.

Home every day. Mend the porch. Paint the fence. Fix the roof. Fix the chair. Then nothing. Sit. Then be gone all day and come back and sit. No smile. Never again the laugh that made the walls spread out to make the room and the house and the world bigger.

And the funny time at supper that night. Later, when it was warm and the doors open. He held his hands out and he looked at them and curled the fingers and looked at his hands and his face was funny and he made a strange sound. Sam! mother said. Sam! But he went away. Bang of the chair falling. Bang of the front door. Clump of feet on steps and gone then.

—Eat your food, Harold.

The god did not die quickly. He died little by little. There were other jobs. Some of them were little jobs, very little jobs. They did not last long. They all worked. He remembered the exact moment when the god was finally dead. It was the summer before his senior year of high school. He had a road job. The first few weeks had nearly killed him, but he had lasted and the work became easier and he felt his body growing wider and tougher. He got paid and rode back into town and had some beers, home-brewed beers, and then walked home feeling bigger than the night, walked home thinking about Krisnak’s sister and the way she walked.

The old man sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee. The old man hadn’t worked in a couple of weeks. He sat there and he looked shrunken. He sat there in his pants and underwear, with cords on his neck and wattles under his chin, hair wispy on the naked skull, eyes dulled and chest hollow. Hal stood at the sink and pumped a glass of water and then turned around, sipping it, looking at the old man with a cold objective eye. The only thing big about the old man was his hands. They grew tough from the end of white wrists, tough and curled, horny and thickened. So this was what had been the laughing giant, strong enough to carry him all the way up the hill.

Old bum. Too damn dumb to hold a job. Stinking house in a stinking mill town. No car, no clothes, no future.

Not for me,
he thought.
Not for me. Not this crappy life, All A’s and one B last year. All A’s next year, I swear, because that’s the only way out. And I want out. I want out so bad I can taste it.

He drove the wagon through the heavy rain and he said to himself, “Old man, forgive me. I stood at your grave on that bright warm day. I felt affection, and regret, and contempt. Forgive me for the contempt.”

A sudden burst of rain slapped hard against the left side of the station wagon. The gust of wind swayed the wagon. Pine tops dipped and swayed.

“It’s getting windier,” Jean said.

[Windier. A cross wind pushing the flat side of the station wagon, so that the driver has to make quick little compensating twists of the wheel.

North, in the wind, in the rain, in the great anonymity of the highway. Even in the best of weather the roads of the land are curiously impersonal. In a day of heavy travel you see forty thousand cars, but you do not look at them as cushioned compartments in which ride humans as vulnerable as yourself. You see them as obstacles, as force and danger… a flash of chrome and roar of engine. But rarely you see the other person. Something fixes your attention. The fool who blocks your way. The top-down blonde at the light. The old crate full of kids and pots and pans, with crated chickens on top.

The man in the station wagon drives through the rain and the wind. A low sleek car passes him at high speed, startling him. The boy asks what it is. The man tells the child it is a Mercedes, and even as he says it he feels the dull burn of envy, and for no other reason he hates the driver.

Later he sees the car again. It is parked by a small restaurant. A young couple hurry through the rain to the restaurant door. He wonders if he will see the car again. Sometimes it happens that way on a long trip. The faster driver makes longer stops, and two cars leapfrog north.

He increases his speed. He wants to be as far north as he can get before the sleek car comes up behind him again.]

Bunny Hollis awoke before nine in a motel on Route 19 and he lay there listening to the hard roar of the rain. It was a rain so intense that when you listened to it carefully it seemed to be increasing in force from minute to minute. It was a muggy gray morning. He wondered what morning it was. He counted back and decided that it had to be Wednesday, October seventh. He stretched until his shoulders creaked, knuckled his eyes and sat up. There was a faint pulse of liquor behind his eyes, a sleazy taste in his mouth. He sat naked on the edge of the bed and took his pulse. Seventy-six. And no suggestion of a premature beat. Lately when he smoked too much and drank too much the premature beat would start. He had been told by a very good man that it was nothing to worry about. Just ease off when it started.

He turned and looked at his bride in the other bed. She lay sprawled as if dropped from a height, a sheaf of brown hair across her eyes. She had kicked off the single sheet in her sleep. The narrow band of white across her buttocks was ludicrous against the dark tan of her.

Betty did look better with a tan, he decided. And he had chided her into losing ten pounds. Another fifteen off her and she’d look even better. But not tan nor weight loss was going to do very much for pale eyes that were set a little too close together, for teeth too prominent and chin too indistinct. But she was young and she could be amusing and at twenty-one she was worth close to three million dollars, and when she became thirty there would be another chunk coming in that should bring it damn near up to ten million.

He went quietly into the bathroom, closed the door and turned on the light. He examined his face in the mirror with great care, as he did every morning. He thought the face looked about twenty-six, nine years younger than his actual age. And, as always, he wondered if he was kidding himself. It was a face in the almost traditional mold of the American athlete. Brown and blunt, with broad brow, square jaw, nose slightly flat at the bridge, gray wide-set eyes with weather wrinkles at the corners. A very short brush cut helped mask the encroaching baldness. It was a face made for grinning, for victory, for locker room gags, for Olympic posters.

He cupped cold water in his hands and drenched his face and rubbed it vigorously, massaging it with strong fingers, paying special attention to the area under the eyes, at the corners of the mouth and under the chin. He massaged his scalp and dried his face and head and then turned and studied his body in the full-length mirror on the inside of the bathroom door. Athlete’s body to match the face. Waist still reasonably lean, though not what it once had been. Deep chest and slanting shoulders. Brown body with the crisp body hair on the legs and arms burned white by the sun. Long slim legs with the slant of power. Muscle knots in the shoulders, square strong wrists.

At least the product she was getting was adequate,
he thought.
Cared for. Slightly rotted, but not enough to show. Years of wear left in it. Enough virility to be able to fake adequately the intensities of honeymoon.

Three zero zero zero zero zero zero.

And heah, ladies and gentlemen, we have a little girl who represents thu-ree million dollars. Who will be the lucky man?

Bunny Hollis, of course.

Bunny, who always ran out of luck every time but the last time. Like the good old Limeys. Never win a battle and never lose a war.

A long, long way from the skinny, sullen kid out in southern California, practically living at the public courts with a secondhand racket and one hell of a forehand drive for a twelve year old. No net game. No backhand. No lobs. No cuts. Just that base line drive that had heaviness to it, had power and authority.

Cutler had come down from his personal Olympus to look at a girl on the public courts. He hadn’t thought much of the girl, but he had seen Bunny Hollis. Life changed then.

“Do you want to learn the game, kid?” He looked at Cutler, heard the harsh voice, saw the red face, the round belly, the small unfriendly blue eyes.

“I know how to play.”

“All you know so far is which end of the bat to hold. You want to learn the game?”

“I got no money for lessons.”

“Where do you live?” Bunny told him. “Come on. My car’s over there. We’ll go out and see your folks.”

He learned the most important thing the first week. Cutler had him swinging the racket. No ball. No court. Foot work and swing on the count. One two THREE. One two THREE. “Too much break on the wrist on the backswing, kid. Elbow down.” One two THREE.

He tossed the racket onto the grass. “Nuts,” he said. The meaty hand cracked against his face and split his lip, knocked him down. He cried, more from anger than pain. Cutler leaned over him, eyes cool, voice low. “A wise kid. You come from nothing. You are nothing. You ever try that again and I’ll throw you out and you’ll stay nothing. Maybe you think this is a game. Pat ball. If you want to be something, do as you’re told. Who told you it would be easy? Get on your feet and pick up that bat. You’re going to do what I say, eat what I say, think what I say, live what I say. Every damn minute of every damn day of your stinking little life. Okay now. One two THREE. Better. But keep that handle parallel to the ground all the way through the imaginary ball. One two THREE. Brace that right leg. Put something in it, kid. I want to hear that bat whistle.”

When he was fifteen, the first year he really started winning, Cutler got him a job and a room at his own club, the Carranak Club. He had lost a lot of the sullenness. He was beginning to be treated as someone of importance. It felt good to be treated that way. He seldom went home. He’d never gotten along with his stepfather. His mother was having one kid after another, regular as a machine.

He was skinny and brown and tireless. He had the fundamentals of what could grow to be a big game. He won junior tournaments up and down the coast. Cutler would go along when he could, but Cutler had other players who were nearer their peak, who were on the national circuit.

He had learned to smile at the people, take adverse decisions with grace, enjoy the look of his name in the papers. They were good years, fifteen, sixteen and seventeen. Cutler insisted that the schooling continue. The right sort of strings were pulled and at eighteen he went into U.C.L.A. on an athletic scholarship. Cutler had good friends. He achieved the last of his growth at eighteen. He was six-one, one hundred and sixty-two pounds, rangy and fast, with power in every stroke. Under Cutler’s guidance, under his orders, Bunny led a monastic life, with every free hour subject to the discipline of constant practice. He no longer minded. He had learned to enjoy winning. If you had to live like this to win—it was little enough to have to do.

Bunny often wondered what the years would have been like if Cutler had been able to accompany him on that first big trip out of the state to the tournament in New Jersey. Cutler had planned to go. But an ulcer started to bleed and there had to be an operation. Cutler had given him his instructions in the hospital.

“It’s big time. Don’t get sucked into the social routine. You’ve got money enough to get your own place to stay. Eat right and sleep a lot. You’ll have three days to practice. The ball floats different there. Your timing will be off. Don’t get into the high society deal. A lot of them are sharks who want to feed on you. Play your game. I don’t expect a win. I’ll expect a win next year. I expect a good showing this year. Good enough so they’ll think about you for the cup.”

He went out by train. He felt scared of what was ahead. The letter told him where to report. It was a bigger place than he expected. He saw some people he knew because he had seen their pictures. They told him where to find the man with the list.

“Yes? Bunny Hollis. Let me see, F.G.H. Hollis. Singles. Let me check the schedule. Today is Tuesday. Here you are. Saturday, one-fifteen. Court number seven. Against Bill Tilley.”

Bunny felt enormous relief. He had beaten Tilley once in Sacramento and once in Los Angeles. “How about practice?”

“Find Mr. Glendinning. I think he’s down in the locker room. He’s assigning the practice courts and hours. Wait a minute. Don’t rush off. You’re billeted with the Lorrings.”

“I was going to a hotel.”

“Don’t be silly, Hollis. They’ve got a nice place and they’re nice people. Tennis fans. Great supporters of the tournament. They’ve got private courts just as well surfaced as these. You’ll live well there, better than you will in a hotel, and they’re glad to do it. If I remember, Mrs. Lorring asked for you particularly. She’s been following your career. Wait until I give her a ring.”

He waited out in front with racket case and suitcase. It was warm and he was sweating and he wondered if he should take his jacket off. A green convertible came in and swung around across the gravel with a certain flair and stopped so close to him that he stepped back. “Bunny? Of course it is. I know you from your pictures. I’m Regina Lorring. Sorry if I kept you waiting. I was in the tub when George phoned me. Put your stuff in back and get in. Now remember which way we go, so you can find your way back.”

She was a smallish woman. He could not guess her age. She could have been thirty or forty. She had a tanned pretty face, but so heavily lined it made him think of a small brown monkey. She wore a low-necked blouse and her breasts were large and it made him feel uncomfortable to look at the front of her. She drove very briskly and competently. Finally they went up a ridge road and turned through big iron gates and up a private road to a house that looked like a president had lived there. A polite man came and took the racket case and suitcase. She said he might as well look the place over and then she would show him where his room was. The keys would be in the little green convertible and he could use it as his own. He saw that she had a nice figure.

She showed him the courts and the stables. His room was big and the bed was vast. That night at dinner he met Mr. Lorring, a man who looked about eighty. His head shook all the time and he had white hair. Things kept dropping off his fork and he didn’t seem to be able to follow the conversation very well.

He went to bed early, following Cutler’s wishes. It took him a long time to get to sleep. He was awakened in the middle of the night and he was so confused and startled and dazed by sleep that it took him a long time before he understood that it was Mrs. Lorring who was in bed beside him in the dark room, holding him in her arms and smelling of liquor and laughing in a low funny way deep in her throat. He was a virgin. It shocked him and terrified him and yet at the same time it made him feel deliciously guilty. He was frightened and then it was all right and when he awakened in the morning she was gone, but she had left one of her slippers beside the bed. He hid it in the back of the bureau.

He had breakfast alone and got lost twice driving down to practice. He got home at five and she was having cocktails with some people he didn’t know. To look at her you would never know anything like that had happened. He began to wonder if it really had. But there was the slipper. He knew the slipper was real. She introduced him to the people and said they were going out to dinner, but she had arranged for him to have a nice dinner alone here. He went to bed early and he was still awake and waiting when he heard the car and later footsteps in the hall, and much later the sound of the door opening and closing, softer footsteps, then felt the edge of the bed sag under her weight, felt the softness of her under something sheer as she came into his arms.

He fought hard for the first set. Three times he got it to set point, but Tilley was very brave and very determined and he was playing over his head. Tilley took it eleven and nine. Bunny was stung and came back strong to take the first four games of the second set, breaking Tilley’s service twice. Tilley took the next game. Bunny took the next to make it five and one. The first point of the next game was a very long point It went on and on. Bunny began to feel oddly leaden. He could not float across the court. His feet came down heavily, jarring him. Tilley’s returns seemed to be where he could barely reach them. Tilley took the next two games, and then another one, to make it five and four. Bunny summoned up every ounce of energy and took the final game and the second set, six to four.

Bill Tilley, almost without opposition, took the final and deciding set by a score of six love.

As the train pulled out of the station he unwrapped the gift she had pressed into his hand on the station platform. There was gray heavy paper around a small flat box. It was tied with pale blue ribbon. Inside the flat box was tissue paper. When he opened it he saw a plain gold money clip. The engraving on it was very tiny. R.L. to B.H. There were five one-hundred-dollar bills in the clip, twice folded. It was the newest and crispest money he had ever seen.

He sat with the money in his hand. He thought of her and of her wrinkled simian face and her heavy breasts. He thought of the pleased and surprised look on Bill Tilley’s face when they had shaken hands after the match. He shut his hard brown hand on the money and he looked out the train window. After a long time he uncrumpled the bills, smoothed them out against his thigh and put them back in the money clip and put the clip in his pocket

Cutler looked thinner, tireder, older. “I heard about it. I got three letters about it, from dear friends. Get your stuff out of the Carranak today.”

“But I…”

“You threw it away. You were nothing. You wanted to keep on being nothing. Now I’m going to let you keep on being nothing. Get out of here.”

Cutler, he found out later, tried to fix his wagon with all tournament committees, but because Cutler had as many enemies as he had friends, it didn’t work. Bunny found sponsorship. He did better in the next few tournaments. Never top man, but a creditable showing. By the time he was twenty-one he was a tournament veteran. He knew several specifics for hangovers. His game was more clever, though not as powerful. Due to the peculiar customs of amateur tennis, he lived very well indeed. He had long since given up U.C.L.A. When not on the tournament circuit, he was a popular and engaging house guest. And he had learned to identify the Regina Lorrings of the tennis world at fifty paces, and to respond to them. From them he acquired his own car, matched luggage, a Rolex watch in a solid gold case, a Zeiss camera, cashmere jackets, cruise tickets and, whenever possible, cash.