Manhunt. Volume 2, Number 10, December, 1954

I took him by an arm and led him down the cowpath into the pasture at the lower end and across the pasture toward the creek, and all the way he kept turning his head every few steps to look back toward Ivy and Gunner by the barn, and I could tell he was trying to figure it out, what had happened and why I had stopped him from finishing his song and why we had all said and done the things we had. My lips were split and beginning to swell, and one tooth was so loose that I could push it around with my tongue, but that wasn’t what hurt. A few cuts and bruises didn’t matter a damn. What hurt was the festering hatred and humiliation inside me that made me want to vomit and was all the worse because I couldn’t think of anything to do about it. At the edge of the timber along the creek I stopped and looked back myself, and I could see Ivy and Gunner walk across the barnyard and into the barn with their arms around each other, and I knew all of a sudden without any doubt at all just what they were going in there for. I think I knew because I understood that it would be necessary for Ivy to complete the cycle of intense physical excitement that the brief episode of violence and blood had aroused but hadn’t satisfied.

“What we stopping for, Jake?” Obie said. “I thought we were going to the fields.”

If he hadn’t said that, maybe I wouldn’t have done it. Maybe just a little thing like his saying something at the wrong time was the difference between doing it and not doing it.

“I just remembered that we’ll need a pitch fork, Obie,” I said. “Go back to the barn and get one.”

“What we need a pitch fork for?”

“Never mind that. Just go get it. It’s sticking in the hay in the loft.”

He started back the way we had come, and when he’d gone a few steps, I said, “Wait a minute, Obie. Listen to me. You be real quiet going in the barn. Don’t let anyone see you or hear you. You understand?”

His eyes got clouded and confused from the effort of trying to understand why I was telling him to get the fork in a way that was different from the way I had always told him to get it before.

“Why, Jake? Why don’t you want anyone to see me?”

“Never mind. I’ve got my reason. Will you do it the way I say?”

“Sure, Jake. If you say so.”

“Don’t forget, now. Promise?”

“Sure, Jake. I promise.”

He turned and started again, and I stood and watched him, watched his long, loping gait eat up the distance to Ivy and Gunner in the barn, and then I went on through the trees to the bank of the creek and sat down. I gathered a handful of pebbles and threw them one at a time into the dark green water, watching the little concentric circles move outward from the place where the pebble went in, and then, after the water had smoothed out, I lay back on the bank and closed my eyes and began to count, and I had counted a long way, I don’t remember how far except that it was a long way, when I heard Obie’s big clod-hoppers thumping the ground, and he came through the trees and sat beside me. He was breathing very hard. His breath was like a whinny in his nostrils.

Without opening my eyes, I said, “You get the fork, Obie?”

“Fork?”

“What’s the matter, Obie?”

He didn’t answer, and I guess he didn’t even hear me, but after a while he said more to himself than to me, “He oughtn’t to have done it. She oughtn’t to have let him.”

I knew then that it was both of them. I knew that he had seen what I’d sent him to see and that he’d done what I’d thought he might do. I couldn’t stand the sight of him sitting there crying, so I rolled over and buried my face in my arms, but I could still see him just the same, and I can still see him now, and I only wish they had, in the place where he is, a field where he could work under the hot sun with his big hands, and a creek where he could go when the work was finished.

The Red Tears by Jonathan Craig

Mrs. Hallaby had heard a sound she was sure was a gunshot. It looked like just another timewaster — until the cops found the dead girl.

1

It had been one of the slowest mornings we’d had all summer. And one of the hottest. There were a couple of electric fans in the squad room, but they did little good. They kept the desk tops reasonably free of soot, and occasionally whipped a report across the room, and that was about all. It was Fred’s and my morning to grab telephone squeals, but the phone hadn’t rung once since eight A.M., when we’d come on duty. We’d put the time to good use, though, catching up on odds and ends of paper work.

Fred rolled a form into his Underwood and mopped at the back of his neck with a handkerchief.

“I know why we haven’t had any squeals this morning, Jake,” he said. “It’s just too damned hot. No self-respecting criminal would—”

And then, as if on cue, the phone did ring, and I grabbed it.

Fred grimaced. “Now watch that thing make a liar out of me.”