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 twosince 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
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 twosince 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
Similar Books
