Twilight (8 page)

Breece’s eyes had adjusted to the halflight from the open
hearth, and by it he was covertly studying Sutter’s face. Sutter wouldn’t have noticed anyway. He seemed to be abstractedly talking out of a store of rage he’d laid by and a hot but unfocused anger burned in his eyes.

It was the first time they had ever talked face to face and Breece divined in a moment of dizzy revelation something about Sutter that no one had noticed before. Why, he is mad, Breece thought. He’s not what people say about him at all. He’s not just mean as a snake or eccentric or independent. He’s as mad as a hatter, and I don’t know how they’ve let him go so long.

What is it you want, anyway?

Someone has something that belongs to me, and I’m being blackmailed. I’ve got to have it back, and I think you’re the man to get it for me.

Sutter was rolling a cigarette. Who is it?

Well, there’s two of them in together, I think. A brother and a sister named Tyler. The girl is the one who actually approached me about the money, but I know for a fact the young man is the one who stole the article out of my car. That’s what I want back, and I’m willing to pay for it.

The article. Yes.

Say I try to do it for you. Do I get to know what the article is, or do I just wander around finding things that look like they might have belonged to you?

Of course, you’ll know what it is.

Then let me in on it.

All right. Some photographs were taken of myself and a…young lady. They are potentially very damaging. The photographs are of a very incriminating…a very intimate nature. The young woman is connected politically, and they are threatening to go
to her husband if I don’t pay them fifteen thousand dollars. I’ve been in a quandary. If anything goes wrong, my position in this community will be ruined.

This story was so monumentally absurd that Sutter did not even take offense at being lied to. He was even a little impressed. The idea of Fenton Breece doing things of an intimate nature to a politically connected young woman while someone else took potentially incriminating photographs was so far beyond the realm of probability that he permitted himself a small smile.

Of course, we both know that’s bullshit, he pressed on. But it’s your business what you done and what specie of animal you done it with. Pictures then. And you want em back. If they’re as bad as you say, why don’t you just give them the fifteen thousand dollars. That’s chickenfeed to you. What do you think, I’m goin to do it cheaper? I ain’t no bargain basement, ain’t runnin no sales.

Breece was silent for a time. He seemed unused to speech, as if he’d gone too long without the companionship of the living. He studied a bit and then he said, I flatter myself that I know something of human nature. I can read people. Ifit were simply a matter of the fifteen thousand dollars, I’d pay it and be done with it. However…there was something in the Tyler woman’s eyes. It was clear she means to ruin me. She’ll take the money and then want more. Or perhaps they’ve already had copies of the pictures made and she’ll show them about anyway. There was a vindictiveness in her face. Utter viciousness.

This utter viciousness, where do you reckon it came from? Wait a minute. I’m gettin an insight into human nature. Let me guess. You was doin things of an intimate nature to this
Tyler gal, and then your attention wandered to this gal who was politically connected, and the Tyler gal got pissed and aims to run you out of the undertakin business.

It’s not necessary to ridicule me.

Then quit actin like I’m a goddamn fool. Quit jerkin me around and get on with it. Make me an offer or get the hell out of here.

Very well. I’ll give you the money. All fifteen thousand dollars, half now and the rest when I have the pictures. I’m sure you could use a sum of money like that in your…legal difficulties. I’ve had no experience in that area, but I’m sure that would buy several lawyers.

Judges is what I’m shoppin for. And why are you goin roundabout like this if she offered to sell you the pictures straight out?

I told you. She wants to ruin me.

Sutter had an actual insight of his own then into human nature. He gave Breece an acute look. It’s not just the pictures, he said. They’ve got some kind of a deathlock on you and you want it off. You want me to kill them.

No, no, certainly not. I can’t condone murder, hire murderdone.

Sure you can. You just don’t want to know about it. You don’t even want to say it. You keep dancin all around it. You want me to do it for you.

You must be aware that you have a certain reputation. Your words would carry more weight than mine. Perhaps violence wouldn’t be necessary. Perhaps you could just talk to them.

Perhaps I could.

Breece was hesitant. How many…how many people have you killed?

You don’t owe me for them.

Will you tell me that if I tell you something of my own past?

What is this, you show me yours and I show you mine? I don’t care about your past. And whatever I done, I done it because it was what I had to do at the time and it’s yesterday’s news anyhow.

I’m aware you killed Conkle. I could hardly have avoided knowing that. Breece hesitated, studying Sutter warily. But this was business, and money had been promised. He didn’t have it on him, and that weighed in his favor.

You killed Conkle and laid a poker in his hand so you could claim self-defense. But Conkle was righthanded and you put the poker in the left hand. How smart was that?

In the warm halflight Sutter was smiling. I knowed he was righthanded.

Say you did? Then why did you mess up?

Sutter’s voice grew confidential, conspiratorial. I’ll let you in on a little secret. I didn’t mess up. I did it on purpose.

Why would you do a thing like that?

I don’t know. For sport, maybe. For sport? What the hell kind of an answer is that?

For sport, you know what sport is, don’t you. Anyway, I done it. And I’d not have even as sorry a piece of shit as you thinkin I didn’t know whether a man I was about to kill was righthanded or lefthanded.

Well. I was just curious. I killed someone myself once, while I was still in college. I killed a whore in Memphis.

Sutter just gave him a quick glance of dismissal as if murdered Memphis whores did not quite meet whatever arcane criteria he judged peers by. He leant and spit into the fire and rose and laid another stick of wood in the sparking coals.

I killed her with a Pop-Cola bottle.

This evinced some small interest. I expect that would do it, Sutter allowed.

Breece fell silent. Perhaps wandering down the alleys and byways of his curious past. Other whores, other bottles.

What’d she do, take your money and run out on you and you busted her head with it?

Oh, it wasn’t anything like that. She took to bleeding. You never saw so much blood. The bedclothes were soaked, white sheets with great crimson centers, like flowers…the bottle broke something loose inside her, punctured her in there somewhere, and all the blood ran out of her.

Inside? Sutter wondered, then he stared at Breece as comprehension came over him. I don’t want to hear anymore of this perverted shit, he said. You just keep anymore stories you got about Pop-Cola bottles to yourself.

Breece just sat bemusedly, hands laced across his corpulent belly. He seemed to be intently inspecting the shine of his shoes. After a time, he said, Did it ever occur to you that we’re a lot alike? Not hardly.

We’re both to a great degree involved with death. You in your way, I in mine. It’s only natural that a person as intimately associated with death as I am would think quite a lot about it. There’s a poem I’ve remembered that seems to best sum it up. Do you want to hear it?

Why, hell yes, Sutter said. I believe it’s been a day or two
since I’ve had anybody in here quotin rhymes at me.

It’s by Auden, W. H. Auden. Are you familiar with Auden?

Sutter leaned and spat into the coals again. Seems like I knowed him when he lived over on Jack’s Branch, he said.

As poets have mournfully sung,
Death takes the innocent young,
The rolling-in-money,
The screamingly-funny,
And those who are very well hung.

Sutter watched him with something approaching disbelief. This mad quoter of poetry, nightmare minister to the dead so far beyond the pale light could never fall on him.

Did you find it amusing?

Let me get this straight. You want the pictures and you want it hushed up. This threat to your social standin removed. Is that about it?

Breece thought it over for a moment. Yes, that’s what I want. What I really want is for everything to be back like it was before they stole my pictures.

He thought some more. He was aware that things could never really return to the way they were, for Sutter knew about it now, but he had already done some thinking about that. When the time came, he could take care of that himself.

Give me the money. I’ll have to get it from the bank. I don’t carry that kind of money around. I’m not a fool.

Sutter let that pass. Tomorrow, then.

Breece rose. He stood awkwardly a moment as if about to proffer a hand to seal this bargain, then thought better of it and made ready to leave.

I’ve kept you up long enough, he said. The money will be ready tomorrow.

When Breece was gone, Sutter closed the hearth door and turned down the damper and lay back on the bed still fully clothed with his hands clasped behind his head and stared at the ceiling and thought about the money. Fifteen thousand, but it could be readily turned into more. If Breece wanted the pictures desperately at fifteen, he would want them only a little less desperately at twenty. Perhaps twenty-five.

But it was more than the money. Something in his life that had been without form was taking shape. A dark, cauled shape that stood to the side and watched him with hooded, expressionless eyes. In some curious way he intuited that all his life previous had simply been a rehearsal for this.

By three o’clock Tyler had the roof of de Vries’s store painted and was cleaning out his brushes with gasoline. His hands and clothes were so smeared with red ochre he looked like the survivor of some terrible highway calamity. He wiped gasoline out of the brushes and stored them in the old milkcrate in the back of the truck and while he was loading the ladders de Vries came out. De Vries crossed the alley and stood on tiptoes against the building on the other side thebetter to see his own roof. Then he came back to where Tyler was.

You done me a good job, he said.

Well. It’s painted, anyway.

De Vries had taken out his wallet and was carefully thumbing through bills. He took out a sheaf of them and
counted money into Tyler’s hand. He held a five poised in midair as if in momentary indecision then laid it atop the others and put away his wallet.

That’s five more than we agreed.

You did me a good job. No accidents. You stayed with it and got done in good time. You’re a careful worker. Last time I had it done Clarence Treadway done it drunk, and he dropped a paintbrush loaded with bright red paint right on the hood of Clyde Tookie Bell’s car, and Clyde was drivin a white Buick that year.

You hear of anybody else wants anything done, try to get word to me. I’ll try most anything once.

I sure will. I’ll get you some work.

I better get on home then.

He started toward the truck parked in the mouth of the alley but something in de Vries’s manner or in his face made him hesitate.

De Vries cleared his throat. Hold on a minute, he called.

Tyler waited.

It’s a feller been hangin around out front waitin for you to get done. He figured you was up on top and said tell you he wanted to see you. He knowed you was down, I guess he’d done be back here.

Who is it?

Do you know Granville Sutter? I just know of him.

If you know of him, then you know he’s got a bad name.

What does he want with me? Did he say?

No, he didn’t, and I didn’t ask. Didn’t figure it was any of my business, and Granville would of let me know that right quick anyhow. Reason I told you back here, I figured if you
wanted to give him the slip, you wouldn’t have to go around front. You could just head up the alley there.

Well, I don’t mind talking to him. I never stepped on his toes that I know of. He may need some work done.

De Vries’s look said that this was not a strong likelihood. Any work Sutter needs doin you’d be well advised to pass on, he said. If he didn’t do nothing else, he’d figure a way to beat you out of your money. But you suit yourself on that.

I’ll talk to him.

There was an empty bench against the front of the store but Sutter was hunkered against the brick wall waiting with the calm patience of the country folk you used to see sitting about the town square. This bench was usually filled with loiterers or old men settling world affairs but Sutter’s mere presence seemed to have cleared it. Tyler approached him and for no reason he could name there was a tight empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something in Sutter’s remote eyes told him that this was the knock on the door at midnight, the telegram slid under the door in the dead of night.