The Hunter and Other Stories Part 9

I saw him once after that, on the street, and went into a cigar store until he had pa.s.sed.

MONK AND JOHNNY FOX.

I was pretty tired. When Monk came over to my table I didn't see him until he put a hand on my shoulder, and then his face was fuzzy. He said, "I'm sliding, Kid. Why don't you?"

"Listen, Monk," I said, "I only had three drinks. I'm all right."

He smiled along one side of his mouth. "Sure, Kid sure, I know. It ain't that. But use a little sense. You're walking on your heels right now. I'm not trying to pull you out. All I'm asking is don't make it all night."

I said, "All right, all right," and he went away.

The blonde on my right asked, "What's the matter with that guy?"

"There's nothing the matter with that guy," I explained carefully. "He's a swell guy. He don't give a d.a.m.n for you and he don't give a d.a.m.n for me and he don't give a d.a.m.n for anybody but himself. He's a swell guy."

"I don't see anything swell about that," she said.

"Sometimes I don't either," I said, "but it's there. Listen, let's scram out of here, let's go some place where we can talk, take a ride or something."

She said, "I don't know about the fellow I'm with."

"All right. Forget it."

"Don't be like that," she said. "Wait till I see what I can do." She got up and went around the table.

Johnny Fox came over from the bar to shake hands with me. "What a fight, Kid!" he said. "Did you walk to and fro through that mug!"

I said I was glad he liked it, or something like that. If he-if none of them but Monk and me-didn't know it wasn't a good fight I wasn't going to argue.

I introduced Johnny to the others, waving a hand at the ones whose names I couldn't remember, and he said he would like to buy a drink.

The blonde came back to her chair, saying, "Yes, sir," to me as she sat down.

I said, "Swell. We'll break away after this drink."

We had to wait a little longer than that because Johnny was telling me a long story about something and then everybody said it was still early, but I told them I was all in-"Those pokes I stopped with my chin didn't harden me up any"-and we finally got away.

My car was around the corner on Fifty-Third Street. "Anywhere?" I asked. She said, "Sure," so I turned the car over towards the river.

She lit a cigarette, gave it to me, lit another for herself, slid down comfortable in the seat, and asked, "When do you fight again?"

"First of the month, in Boston."

"Who?"

"Pinkie Todd."

"I never saw him fight."

"Neither did I," I said, "but I hear he's all right."

She laughed. "He'll have to be a lot better than all right to-"

"Yes," I said, "I'm great, I'm marvelous, I'm the toughest, gamest, cleverest middle-weight since some guy whose name I forget. Now shut up."

"What's the matter with you?" she asked.

"Nothing," I said, "except I'd like to bust out crying."

We were riding over the bridge then. She put her face close to mine, staring at me, and said, "Listen, Kid, I don't care how fast you drive if you're sober. Are you?"

"I'm sober."

She said, "OK," and made herself comfortable again.

I said, "But I don't see why you take my word for it."

She sat up straight. "And I don't see why you brought me out here just to pick a fight with me. I never did anything to you. You never saw me before tonight. You don't know me from Adam."

"That's just it," I said. "Why do I have to pick up some girl I don't even know her name and might be any kind of tramp and go-"

"You didn't pick me up," she said. "We were introduced by Fred Malley and my name's Judith Parrish and I'm not any kind of tramp and you can let me out right here at the end of the bridge."

"Stop it. I didn't mean anything personal. I'm just trying to-"

She laughed and said, "You must be a honey when you get personal." Her laugh was nice.

"I'm just trying to get something straight, for myself I mean."

She put a hand in the crook of my arm. "It's that fight tonight that's worrying you, isn't it?"

I nodded.

"Fixed?" she asked.

"No. That's happened without bothering me, but tonight was on the level."

"Well, then, what's the matter with you? It was a swell fight. You were swell."

"I know better," I said, "and Monk knows better."

"That's what's the matter with you. That guy's got you buffaloed."

"You talk too much-what's your name?-Judith, about things you don't know anything about."

She took her hand away from my arm and said, "Listen, Kid, this was your idea. You said, 'Let's go for a ride where we can talk,' and now every time I open my mouth you jump all over me."

"Well, lay off Monk. He's a swell guy. He don't give a d.a.m.n for anybody but himself."

"You said that before, but you didn't say how that made him such a swell guy."

"It makes him a swell guy for me," I said, "because he's my manager."

She stared at me again. "Could a girl ask what that's supposed to mean without getting jumped on?"

"I mean he's smart and he gets thirty percent of my take."

She whistled. "I'll say he's smart if he's collecting a third of your money. You must be in love with that guy."

"You're being a cluck again. Light me a cigarette? Listen, did you-"

She interrupted me. "Listen, Kid, this way you talk to me doesn't mean anything? That you don't like me or something? It's just your way of talking, isn't it?"

"I like you fine," I said. "I'm just dead tired."

She gave me the cigarette I had asked for. "Go ahead," she told me. "I won't mind any more."

"I'm scared," I said and I didn't know I said it out loud until she jumped and asked, "What?" in a sharp voice. I wouldn't lie about it then. "I'm scared stiff," I said.

She put her hand back in the crook of my arm, her head against my shoulder. "You're just tired, Kid, and no wonder. Eight rounds of the kind of fighting you did tonight is enough to-"

"I'm scared too."

"Scared of what?"

"I don't know how to say it," I said, really talking to myself, "except it's Monk."

THE CURE.

"So I shot him."

Rainey screwed himself around in his chair to see us better, or to let us see him better.

I was sitting next to him, a little to the rear. Above the porch rail his profile stood out sharp against the twilight gray of the lake, though there was nothing sharp about the profile itself. It had been smoothly rounded by thirty-five or more years of comfortable living.

"I wouldn't have a dog that was cat-shy," he wound up. "What good is a dog, or a man, that's afraid of things?"

Metcalf, the engineer, agreed with his employer. I had never seen him do anything else in the three days I had known them.

"Quite right," he said. "Useless."

Rainey twisted his face farther around to look at me. His blue eyes-large and clear-had the confident glow they always wore when he talked. You only had to have him look at you once like that to understand why he was a successful promoter.

I nodded. I didn't agree with him, but I was there to put him in jail if I could, not to pick arguments with him. And with Rainey you had to agree or argue: he always treated his audience like a board of directors to be won over one by one to some project.

Satisfied with my nod, he turned to the fourth man on the porch, Linn, who sat on the other side of Metcalf. That-saving Linn till last-was another promoter's trick. Rainey never forgot his profession. He had turned first to Metcalf, his personal yes-man, then to me, who had managed to agree with him in most things during the three days of our acquaintance, and then, with our votes in his pocket, had turned to the one of whose agreement he was least sure.

Linn didn't say anything. He was staring thoughtfully down the lake, down where Rainey's and Metcalf's dam was not hidden by the dusk.

Rainey leaned toward him, trying to catch his eye, didn't succeed, settled back in his chair again, and asked: "Well, am I right, Linn?"

Linn cleared his throat and, still staring down at the dusky lake, replied: "I don't know." He said it as if he really did not know. "It's possible, isn't it, that a dog might run from a cat and not from a wolf? There are things-"

"Nonsense." Rainey's easy tone made his words sound more polite than they really were. "Either you're afraid or you're not. You can't pin fear on one form of danger. The things to be afraid of are pain and death. Either you have the nerve to do things that might bring them, or you haven't. That's all there is to it. Eh, Metcalf?"

"Quite right, I think," the engineer agreed without much interest. He was a lank sandy-haired man, hard and sour of face, who seldom spoke unless spoken to, and then, even when coming up with a yes for his employer, made no attempt to hide his indifference.

Linn turned his face slowly from the lake to the promoter. His face seemed a little pale under its sunburn, and a little tense, as if the conversation was of importance to him. Light from one of the hotel windows behind us made shiny ripples on his smooth black hair when he shook his head.

"You may be right," he said hesitantly, "about pain and death being the things men fear, but in one form they might frighten him beyond reason, while in other forms he might be able to face them quite calmly. Fear isn't a reasonable thing, you know."

Rainey clapped a hand on his thick knee and thrust his ruddy face-full-blooded and round-muscled under curly light hair-forward.

"I've heard of that," he said, "but I've never seen it. I've banged around some. The men I've seen that were afraid of one thing were afraid of others. All of them."

"I've seen it," Linn insisted quietly.

"Yes?" Rainey's deep-chested voice was openly skeptical. "Can you give us a specific instance?"

"I could."

"Well?"

"Myself," Linn replied, so low that the word was barely audible.

Rainey's voice was loud and challenging: "And you're afraid of-?"

Linn shivered slightly and turned his face from the promoter to nod simply at the dark water in front of us.

"Of that," he said, still speaking very low. "Of water."

Rainey made a little puffing noise with his mouth and looked with proprietary contemptuousness at the broad lake that had been little more than a pond before the organization of the Martin E. Rainey Development Company. Then he smiled with little less contemptuousness at the man who was afraid of the thing he had built.