The Hunt aka 27 (23 page)

“That’ll be perfect,” she had answered and turned her head as he whirled the chicken around at arm’s length until it was totally dizzy, then laid it on the wooden block and
whap!
chopped off its head with his big, shiny cleaver. Usually, the dark deed done, Hobart would stick the chicken, neck down, in a bucket until it stopped twitching, but on this day it had jumped
—ju
m
ped!—out
of his hand. The headless pullet had run frantically around the store, blood spurting from its neck, bouncing
off the counters and slipping in the sawdust until it fell, twitching, on the floor and Hobart had retrieved it. Louise had become
faint
and stepped outside, later confessing she had a dif
f
icu
lt
time cooking it. Roger had been five at the time. It was one of his most amazing memories.

Roger had described the headless chicken incident in detail many times to Poppy Scoby and later to Fred. Bending his head down to his chest and folding his arms up under his armpits, he ran around the kitchen bumping into things as the chicken had done. He flailed his arms over his head and made disgusting squishing sounds as he described the blood spurting from the running chicken’s neck, and then he collapsed on the kitchen floor and imitated the pullet’s last violent twitching moments as he concluded his description of the bizarre incident. Poppy had explained that it was a reflex action and that the chicken was really dead all the time, which only made the phenomenon more intriguing to Roger.

On this particular Saturday when they got to the market, and after two years of thinking about it, Roger mustered the courage to request a repeat performance. He cried out, “Put him on the floor and let him run around,” as Hobart began whirling the chicken around. Louise turned immediately to him, shocked.

“Rogie, how dare you even
suggest
such a thing! Don’t you dare, Mr. Hobart. Roger, go outside and wait.”

“Aw, Weezie
. .

“Out, young man.”

Fred was sitting on the bench in front of the hardware store, as he always was on Saturday morning, chatting with Mayor Oglesby. Roger ran down the wavy, heat-buckled length of sidewalk to him.

“Weezie wouldn’t let Mr. Hobart do the dead chicken trick,” he complained as Louise brought up the rear.

“Aw,” Fred sympathized, “what a spoilsport.”

“Don’t you start,” she scolded.

“Tell you what, I suggest we go to the Dairy Foods and have a soda while Weezie’s getting her hair done. Then when she’s done we’ll go to Barney’s and have a hot dog and drop you by for the matinee at the Tivoli.”

“Yeah!” Roger yelled, jumping up and down even though they had roughly followed the same schedule every Saturday for the past six months. He looked up the street at the marquee of the Tivoli. Johnny Weismuller in
Tarzan the Ape Man
and Chapter four of
Hurricane Express,
plus “selected short subjects”—which meant a cartoon, too.

“Oh boy,” he whispered,
“Tarzan!”

Louise rolled her eyes.

“It’s a jungle story,” Fred said reassuringly. “A lot of wild animals.”

“I
know
the movie, Fred,” Louise said with mock anger. “All right. I’ll finish the shopping and pick up the chicken after the show.”

“Hooray,” Roger said, then reaching up, he whispered to Fred, “Can we go by Mr. Bailey’s, too?” And Fred winked and nodded.

Saturday afternoons were special times for Fred and Louise. They deposited Roger at the matinee, finding out exactly when he would be out, then walked to her house, got her Buick and drove the three blocks to the small frame house he had rented. The house was one of the few that had a garage.
it
was attached to the house, enabling them to enter and leave without being seen by the neighbors. Since Fred frequently borrowed Louise’s Buick and washed it in his driveway, nobody paid much attention to him when he drove home in it. Louise sat on the floor in the front seat, often getting the giggles because of the charade they played to outwit the local gossips.

The Saturday “parties” had been his idea. Roger usually met Paul and Tommy at the theater so he was happy, and that gave them two hours together. When they got to the house, their lovemaking was frenetic and hungry. This Saturday was no different. As she crouched on the floor of the car she reached up, sliding her hand under his thigh and stroking the inside of it.

“What happened to that shy young lady
I
met nine months ago?” he wanted to know.

“She discovered what the word love really means,” she said, rubbing her head against his leg.

“And what’s that?”

“It means having fun. It means feeling
sooo
good.”

Dempsey had avoided the relationship with Louise Scoby for several months but eventually he was drawn into it. Roger had adopted him quickly as a father figure and as their friendship grew, so did Dempsey’s relationship with his sister. There was a danger that, in this small town, marriage would be inevitable, but Dempsey finally dismissed that notion. The idea of marriage did not appeal to him but he would worry about that when he had to. In the meantime, she had proven to be a furious and passionate lover.

Once inside the house, a demon seemed to be released in her. She had suppressed her desires for years, acting as mother and sister to Roger and daughter and mistress of the house to her father. None of the men in the town appealed to her, she had known most of them since childhood. Then Fred Dempsey had sneaked into her life. It was natural for Ben to invite his new employee home to dinner. Roger wasn’t the only one who had taken to him immediately. She had secretly been attracted to him the first time he came over. But he was shy, a very private man who took the bus to Chicago to visit his ailing mother once a month and rarely talked about himself. Even his opinions seemed guarded and noncommittal. But when he talked about art and books or the theater or music, she was drawn immediately to him, sensing the same repressed passion within him that she had endured since puberty.

The first time they had made love was in the backseat of the Buick out beyond the railroad switching station. They had avoided it for weeks, their petting getting more impassioned every time they were alone together as they explored and touched and were lost in the ecstasy of
discovery. Finally she had suggested they get in the back. The moment he closed the door she had unbuttoned her blouse, baring her ample bosom to his hungry kisses. Then he had touched her and he had taken off her panties and guided her hand to him. It had all been done in such a rush that she still only remembered parts of her first seduction. She remembered only that he was considerate and gentle, that she had enjoyed every moment of it and had almost fainted when she had her first orgasm.

The moment they entered the house she threw off her blouse.

“Let’s take a shower together, I’ve been thinking about it all week,” she said, taking his hand and leading him up the stairs
to the bathroom. But when they got there and he started to undress her, stroking her flat stomach and teasing her breasts, she frantically took down his pants and once having freed him, pulled her to him.

“Do it now, right here,” she breathed and he lifted her and sat her on the edge of the sink and stroked her until she began to moan and stiffen and when he cried out, he entered her.

Dempsey lay on his back with his eyes closed, relaxing. They were both naked. Louise sat cross-legged on the bed at Dempsey’s feet, rolling a cigarette. Dempsey liked to roll his own, preferring the sweet taste of Prince Albert tobacco to harsh cigarette tobaccos, and Louise had become a superb cigarette maker. She held two of them up, one in each hand.

“Beautiful,” he said. “You’re becoming an expert in all my vices.”

She lit them, keeping one and putting the other between his lips. He took a deep drag and let the smoke ease out slowly toward the ceiling.

Not a bad way to spend Saturday afternoon,
he thought.

“How much time do we have?” he asked.

She looked past him to the Westclox alarm clock on the night table.

“Forty minutes,” she said.

“Time for another quickie.”

She straddled his legs and leaned over him, brushing her nipples lightly against his.

“I don’t like quickies,” she whispered, “they always leave me wanting more. Why don’t we go to the dance at the Y after dinner tonight—and leave early. You can think about it while we’re eating.”

“I spent fifteen minutes longer at the hairdresser than usual this morning because everyone wants to hear about
Anthony Adverse,”
Louise said as they finished dinner. She had been first on the list when the best-seller arrived at the public library. “And all they want to hear about are the She looked over at Roger.

…..
bawdy parts.”

“What’s bawdy parts?” Roger asked.

“The love parts,” she answered quickly. He made a face and lost interest. The boy fingered the two-inch-thick stack of Cops ‘N’ Robbers bubble gum cards carefully wrapped with a worn and dirty rubber band that lay beside his dinner plate.

“Tommy’s got two John Dillingers.
T
w
o! And
a Melvin Purvis,” Roger complained. “And he wants live of my cards for one of his John Dillingers. Don’t seem fair.”

“Doesn’t seem fair,” Louise corrected.

“It’s business, son,” Ben Scoby said. “Called the law of supply and demand. He’s got the supply, you’ve got the demand.”

“But he’s my friend!”

“Don’t count in business matters,” Scoby said.

“Doesn’t,” Louise corrected.

“Doesn’t,” Scoby said with a frown.

“You and Fred do business at the bank ‘with your friends,” said Roger.

“Different,” Scoby said, and started explaining collateral and interest and payments to the seven-year-old, who quickly tuned him out and concentrated on how he was going to get the Dillinger card away from Tommy Newton without severely depleting his own collection.

“Which card is worth the most?” Fred asked.

“Oh, John Dillinger by far,” Roger said. “‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd is second, but he’s nowhere near John Dillinger.”

Scoby sighed. “Here I am in the banking business and my son’s primary interest in life is to acquire a gum card with the face of the worst bank robber in history.” He shook his head. “What’s the world comin’ to?”

“It’s supply and demand,” Roger answered, and they all laughed.

Dinner at the Scobys’ was routine. The conversation centered around Roosevelt and how he was handling the economy, and the baseball season, and the county fair coming up in two weeks, and what the Dillinger gang was up to now, and whether Jack Sharkey had the stuff to whip the German, Max Schmeling, for the heavyweight championship of the world. That was about as close as they ever got to German affairs. After all, Europe was half the world away from Drew City.

“Tell you what, Rog,” Dempsey said. “I’ve got to go up to Chicago this weekend and see my mother. Maybe I can find you a John Dillinger up there.”

“Really!”

“Maybe. Can’t promise but I’ll check around.”

“Why don’t you take the Buick,” Louise offered. “I won’t be using it and you can get back a lot earlier on Sunday.”

Dempsey reached in his pocket and took out the makings of a cigarette.
Roger watched with rapt attention as he pulled a sheet of the thin paper from the pac
k
et and curled it with his forefinger into a little trough, then shook tobacco out of the package along the length of the curve of paper, rolled it into a tight cigarette and licked the paper and sealed it.

When Dempsey took out his lighter, Louise held out her hand. He put it in her palm. She loved the sensual feel of its smooth, gold sides, rubbing her
thumb
up and down its length and across the unique wolf’s head on the top, before she snapped it open and lit his cigarette.

Dempsey finally shook his head. “I’ll take the Greyhound like I always do,” he said.

He walked home in the cool spring rain and when he got to Third Street he stopped across the street from the old Victorian house that sat by itself in the middle of the block. Shoulders hunched against the rain, his hands stuffed in his pockets, he stared at Miss Beverly Allerdy’s parlor, where the shades were always drawn and you could hear the loud, Negro blues music playing inside the jaded walls and men sneaked in the back door and there was a lot of laughter. Wo
m
en’s laughter. He wondered how far the ladies would go in this small town. He could not risk visiting the house. As he stood there he felt the familiar urge again, felt the familiar tighten
in
g in his crotch and the anger building up.

Dempsey had invented the story of an ailing mother in Chicago when the familiar urge had first come over him. Since then he had taken the four o’clock b
u
s to Chicago every six or seven weeks, checked into the Edgew
a
ter Beach Hotel and employed one of the most expensive party girl services in the Midwest, girls who were willing to endure- his sadistic games for the
right price. He had been thinking about taking the trip for several days. The need was building in him.

He decided he would bring up the trip to Chicago again and accept Louise’s offer of the car for the weekend—after a reasonable protest, of course. It might be interesting for a change, cruising the streets of Chicago, looking for something different.

As he walked home in the rain, Dempsey thought about what he had learned about Americans in the nine months since he had come to Drew City. They were generous. Too trusting. Good friends when they got to know you. They were crazy for fads. They loved sports and entertainment and elevated ballplayers and movie actors, even the very rich, to a
kind of royalty status. They were radically independent. Their slang expressions changed from one place to the next, impossible to keep up with. Everyone went to church on Sunday. They all seemed to have an unusual fascination with the weather. And the entire nation seemed to gather around their radios every night.

But most encouraging of all, thought 27 with satisfaction, they were complacent.