The Anatomy of Violence (16 page)

Ann had strength, too, the strength that comes from living outward, totally unconcerned about herself. The first time I saw her I was sitting in the car, fuzzy from one too many after-dinner cocktails. She was walking down the sidewalk staring at me. I almost looked away, then saw the woman’s body straining beneath her little-girl clothes. I asked her where she was going.

“Home,” she said. “Do you know where I live, Mister Curtright?” She put her hands on the door, then took them away. I shook my head.

“You should.” She opened the door and slid in beside me. “My dad’s the new manager of your farm.”

I knew her then, the daughter of a sales executive whose popularity and ambition had swollen to the danger point. I’d kept putting bait in front of him, testing him; finally he’d taken it.

I started driving the girl home; it was a dull day, and I hoped the air would clear my head. After several miles, she said, “I guess I should thank you for not putting him in jail.”

I looked sharply at her. Did she think it was kindness? Her father knew better; he’d exchanged a year in jail, maybe two, for a lifetime of dirt-scratching. But as you said, Grandmam, a Curtright imposes his own discipline.

Just for the hell of it, I pulled off the road and kissed her. Her upper lip was beaded with sweat, her breath came quickly, and her hands—I was shocked at their strength—clutched at my back. I thought, this girl is too young, she thinks this is high-school variety necking. When she learned it wasn’t she broke my grip with her strong hands and ran from the car. I called after her, “I can still put your dad in jail.”

She turned and brushed back a handful of wild hair. “Could you?”

I leaned back and snapped my fingers. “Like that.”

She studied me for a minute, her head tilted. Then she came back to the car unbuttoning her blouse. “You’ll have to tell me what to do, Mister Curtright. I don’t know … anything.”

She was passive then, like one of Wilde’s marionettes. I resolved afterward to have nothing more to do with her; Eileen had taught me the frustration of dealing with young ones. But I met Ann often by accident, and it was too easy to reach out and take her.

The night I found her standing beside my car I realized it was happening too often to be accident. “Are you waiting for me?” I asked and she nodded at me. “Get in,” I said.

She didn’t ask where I was going; just sat in the car with her hands folded in her lap, her eyes on the road. Now and then she brushed the hair from her eyes. “Have you been following me, Ann?”

She gave me a quick smile. “Sort of. I know where you eat lunch, where you have your dinner, where you live, where you service your car—”

“Oh, Lord! Suppose I told you I wouldn’t put your daddy in jail?”

She frowned thoughtfully, then shrugged. “Tell me and find out.”

“Well …” I felt trapped. “Just don’t follow me. I’ll find you when I want you.”

She nodded slowly and smiled at the road ahead. “I’ll be easy to find.”

And she was, as though she’d given me title to her life. She was one of those girls who falls for the first man who takes her and never gets over it. But she had intelligence. She saw that soft passivity bored me, and she gave me pain. She’d dig her thumb into my shoulder just behind the collar bone and make me yell. An hour with her left my shoulder throbbing for days. Later she surpassed me in violence. Our bodies met more in combat than in love, as though we were gladiators each with a different weapon. She clawed with her strong hands as though she wanted to strip away my flesh, my mind and my body until all that remained of me was one single appendage. When the fire was out she became placid, as though she wanted to save her strength until we were in bed again.

Her affairs with the others began when I resumed my association with Eileen. If she was looking for a substitute, she never found it. Now and then I’d catch her watching with a dazed, accusing look, but she knew better than to interfere. I remember how her eyes sparkled the night I sent her to get Eileen. Maybe she knew what would happen. “If I do, can we go to the lodge afterwards?”

“Yes,” I said.

Her fingers were like pincers digging into my leg as she whispered, “I’ll wait in your car.” That night she nearly tore me apart.

She was different last Saturday when I told her what to do with the car and Richard. “You aren’t going to do anything to Laurie?”

“No. This is for Richard. He’s new in town; there are things he has to learn.”

“Don’t hurt Laurie,” said Ann. “Promise?”

I promised; afterwards I was sure she’d go to Laurie. That didn’t fit my plans. And her father was a piece of unfinished business. He looked fierce when I told him what Ann and I had been doing. “If I’d known this three years ago I’d have killed you, Jules.”

“Three years of charity changes anybody,” I told him. “You’ll find a way to rationalize this.”

He reacted as I thought he would and sent her out of town. I followed her across the state line to the lunch stop. She didn’t seem too shocked to see me; got her suitcase and said nothing as I drove inside an abandoned grain elevator.

She sat with her hands in her lap for several minutes and I finally had to break the silence. “Do you know why I brought you here, Ann?”

She spoke in a flat, dead voice as though she hadn’t heard. “You didn’t like me when I loved you. Do you love me now that I hate your filthy guts?”

“Ann, do you know why you’re here?”

Still she didn’t look at me. She spoke as though she’d rehearsed a speech and meant to say it. “You broke your promise about Laurie. You told me she wouldn’t be hurt.”

I heard rats scurrying upstairs and I wanted to get it over with. But I didn’t like the way it was going; she should show
some
emotion. I put my hand on her neck and pressed my thumb gently into the hollow of her throat. “You
do
know why I brought you here, don’t you?”

She lifted her head and smiled as though to herself. “I know you, Jules. I read about you in a book on abnormal psychology. I know how you get your kicks.”

“So?”

She turned her head and her eyes looked through me. “So do it. I’ve been ready since I saw you follow the bus out of Curtright City. I’m not going to fight you.”

“You aren’t?” I tore a length of binder twine from the wall, twisted it, and wound it about her throat. “Really?” I tightened it slowly.

“It … won’t be … any fun, Jules.” She tried to smile again, but the pressure on her throat pulled down the corners of her mouth. She kept her eyes on mine as she lifted her hands and gripped my wrist with gentle pressure. Then they fell into her lap and her eyes lost their focus. I turned my head and found myself looking into the bright interested eyes of a gray rat poised on the ladder.

Ann was right; there was no cold wind, no ache in my chest, just … killing. I kept seeing her eyes afterwards. I wanted to burn the elevator and her body too, but I had a use for it. Later, as we drove out to the State Line Club, it amused me to think of Ann in the trunk and Laurie in the front. Old and new.

Laurie … Both girls had spoken of her. She was the balance between them, diluting Eileen’s selfishness and slowing the gush of Ann’s generosity. In the end, because of me, each girl broke free of Laurie and went to her own extreme. Sometimes I wondered: If Eileen and Ann are strong, what about the girl Eileen envies and Ann worships? It was idle speculation until I saw her on stage last Saturday. I knew what Ann was doing; she switched scripts so Laurie would fluff and fail to impress me. But she didn’t fluff.

When she walked onstage, the crowd tightened up the way they do on New Year’s Eve when they watch the clock approach midnight. I noticed her hair, and wondered how a diamond tiara would look against it. She had the kind of hair that inspired tiaras; a deep carbon black that captures light and never lets it go. I wanted to walk up beside her, put my hand on her shoulder, and tell the crowd, “Close your eyes, peasants, this one is mine.” I hated them for a moment because they knew her as well as I did.

Later when I asked her to the banquet, she said without apology, “I have another date.”

I’d never been shy around women; suddenly I felt as though my suit fit me badly. “But I always escort Miss Stella to the banquet.”

She looked at me with her eyebrows raised as though she’d asked a question and was waiting for an answer. And I explained carefully, “See, my granddad set up the banquets. It’s tradition and I’m stuck with it. I always make a little speech and introduce Miss Stella. That’s you.”

“I was wondering …” She then caught her lip between her teeth and looked over my shoulder. “Do you give a lump sum on the scholarships or pay in monthly installments?”

I decided then I had to have her. “Anyway you want it. Now, about the banquet, we won’t have to stay long.”

“I’m not going,” she smiled. “But thanks for asking.” She walked away with her straight back, hips swaying just enough. She’s smooth, I thought, yet she’s vibrant. She had some of Eileen’s cold, careful polish and some of Ann’s ingenuous eagerness—plus a self-assurance that neither had.

I knew, as the evening passed studded with failures, that it wouldn’t be tomorrow or the next day. It had to be that night. And I was sure, as I waited in the ballpark, that she would fight. When she came it was like putting on a record I’d heard many times; I knew when I touched her how the rest would go; Warm flesh trembles, thrusts against taut, cool silk; girl breath, a warm milk smell … hands twist and grope and muscles bunch and slide … Then the wind, the terrible damp foggy wind blows my mind to shreds. Then comes the blackness; the tiny, momentary death …

I left her when I heard the car turn into the dirt road beside the bleachers. My arms still jerked from the strain of holding her. I crawled beneath the bleachers and watched light invade our private shadow. She looked like a doll someone had dressed, enjoyed, then thrown away. Her forehead glistened, veiled with dark, clinging hair. Her long lashes lay against her cheeks. She lay still for so long I knew I’d killed her. I felt a deep ache inside me because I’d robbed myself of an opportunity to know her.

When Koch told me she was still alive, I resolved to go slowly and learn the nature of her strength. Gradually another idea grew; why not set up the greatest test of all?

So far she has done beautifully. She has the strength of one whose every thought and action can, when she chooses, move in a single direction. I liked the way she refused my offers of escape to New York. If she’d accepted, perhaps I’d have killed her on the spot and ended the test. She suspected me early, and it intrigued me to sense the probing mind behind her questions. It thrilled me to watch her shooting on our estate, knowing that I was the object of her fierce determination to kill—even though she didn’t know it yet.

I liked the way she handled Koch, particularly in their encounter at the trailer court. Poor Koch … if he’d known I was dropping the clues he was so frantic to destroy. I had to make certain that she, and nobody else, knew I was the one. The photos of Eileen brought her to the lodge, as I intended they should when I sent the woman to plant them in the restroom.

Now we are alone on the island. I have cleared the board of all players except Laurie and me. Now the test enters its final phase. It’s unfortunate that if I win, I lose Laurie—but that’s the way it’s set up. Only one of us will leave.