The complete short ficti.., p.59
The Complete Short Fiction of Peter Straub, Volume Two, page 59
“It’s funny,” Miller said. “By and large, I don’t, actually. I can’t really tell you why I got hard this time. It is sex, though.”
“It’s supposed to be sex for me, Miller, not for you. I don’t want to have sex with you, because I’m not a pansy. And what do you mean, you don’t actually enjoy sucking my dick? Maybe it doesn’t satisfy you, is that it?”
“I’m not supposed to be satisfied,” Miller wailed. “You don’t want me to be satisfied!”
“You got too fucking close!” Keith yelled at him.
Miller folded himself into a ball, shielding his head with his arms and his chest with his crossed legs. The offensive organ tried to contract into his body.
Keith slid off the table and batted the back of Miller’s head. His slave began to groan, “Please please please don’t hurt me I didn’t know anything was wrong please Keith please…”
Keith’s body responded to abjection in its typical manner. Hitting Miller again only made him feel even closer to orgasm. He placed his hand on his erection and gave himself the few rough up-and-down strokes that were all he needed.
“For God’s sake, clean yourself up,” Keith said.
As his slave crawled away toward the heap of filthy towels, a wonderful idea came to Keith Hayward. “I want you to meet someone.”
Miller quivered.
“Don’t worry,” Keith told him. “My uncle Till is a very, very cool guy.”
Before he entered high school, Keith had never bothered to wonder about the crimes Detective Cooper thought Tillman Hayward had committed. The air of genial lawlessness that surrounded his uncle seemed a sufficient explanation for police interest in his case. No doubt he had been responsible for hundreds of crimes, maybe more. Indifference to legal technicalities was part of his character. The way the man sauntered down the street, the way he slouched against his pillow with his hat on his head and his hand wrapped around three fingers of bourbon, the way he did practically everything would probably be seen as a violation of the proper order by someone like Detective Cooper. Some people, a lucky few, were born that way, and some of them, like his aunt Margaret Francis/Margot, managed to wriggle their way right up to the top of the world, where there was always enough money and you could have all the cars and clothes and good food you wanted. Wasn’t that what everyone wanted?
When Keith speculated about specific crimes Uncle Till might have committed, he dared go no further than the assumption that his uncle had a “private” room wherein he, much like Keith in the last few years of grade school, dissected other people’s pets. Beyond that, he could not think; beyond that lay an abyss.
All this time, the conversations in the back yard and the extra bedroom, which had been the best conversations of his life, coiled through his mind like smoke, now and then shining with meanings that in seconds melted away. He felt as though he stood trembling before a great dark door, too terrified even to reach out his hand. Keith had never seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie his uncle loved, for Shadow of a Doubt was too old for the cinemas and too disturbing to be shown during the family hours on network television.
During his grade-school years, Keith’s self-absorption kept him from much noticing the newspaper and radio stories about the Ladykiller. Perhaps for his sake, his parents avoided conversations about the murders and switched channels and radio stations when the subject came up. Keith knew that someone was killing women, six or seven of them a year, over intervals wide enough for him to forget about the murders. Although at times he wondered what sort of man the killer might be, these speculations soon darkened to opacity, as if unwelcome in his mind.
Uncle Till slid into town at long intervals, never twice by the same mechanism. If one time he drove up in an unfamiliar car, the next he would arrive by train, or at the bus station. Another time, he claimed to be short of cash and to have traveled the entire distance on his thumb. He arrived in new cars, borrowed cars, cars temporarily left to him by traveling friends.
Not until he was seventeen and a high school junior did Keith realize that the Ladykiller had chosen to murder two Milwaukee women during a period when his uncle had returned to the old spare room alongside the kitchen. This recognition might never have come to him had he not strayed into a shop on his way home from school at the same time a delivery van dropped off tied-up bales of The Milwaukee Journal, the evening newspaper. On his way in, Keith glanced at the most prominent headline atop a stack that had just finished rolling across the sidewalk. LADYKILLER CLAIMS DOWNTOWN VICTIM, it read. Beneath the headline, Detective Cooper’s weary, ironbound face angled down in lamplight at a cobbled alley and a rumpled gray-white sheet from which protruded a pale, upturned hand. The story began:
Police have identified the Ladykiller’s probable ninth victim as Lurleen Monaghan, 29, of 4250 N. Highland Avenue, a secretary in the trust department at the 1st Wisconsin Bank. Miss Monoghan’s body was discovered by pedestrians in the alley behind the Sepia Panorama, a N. 3rd Street nightclub, at 2:20 this morning. According to Homicide Detective George Cooper, the body had been moved to the alley after death.
“The Ladykiller murdered the victim in a private location and dumped her here, in back of a busy nightclub, where she was quickly discovered,” said Detective Cooper. “Wednesday of last week, he followed the same procedure with the body of Lori Terry. This monster is rubbing our faces in his crimes. Let me put this guy on notice. We are pursuing a number of active leads which will soon lead to his capture.” Keith continued on into the store, thinking only that it was strange that he had managed to stay essentially unaware of this villain’s existence. The discovery of Lori Terry’s body had missed him altogether
—and so would have this new outrage, had it not bounced up right before him. Now that the phrase had been placed in front of his eyes, he understood that he had after all heard of the Ladykiller. The phrase had entered his consciousness, but only barely. What struck him as strange was that this was precisely the sort of thing he thought he could find… irresistible, however greatly his parents would object to his interest.
On the other hand, Detective Cooper, that meaty piece of shit, had not neglected to leave a wide, greasy trail across his memory.
A pad of thumbtacks slipped into his coat pocket. Without breaking stride, Keith moved up the aisle, extended an arm, snapped up a pot of glue, and dropped it into the other coat pocket. He had entered the five and dime on Sherman, in the same block but across the street from his sacred place, his church, his theater, to acquire, ideally without payment, some items useful to him. Recently he had become aware that he could make good use of a hammer, also of a metal file, also of any kerosene-like solvent akin to that employed by his father in the spray room at the can factory, and after he had pocketed a roll of tape he headed toward the back corner where he thought he remembered seeing a little hardware section. The solvent or kerosene or whatever it was would probably be difficult to find, but you never knew. It might turn up right in front of him, like Miller. Or like the bundled newspapers that had greeted him outside the little store.
And from that wandering thought came….
Without even faintly trying, Hayward recognized the meshing of two separate calendars, his uncle’s and the murderer’s. Lori Terry had met her death late the previous Wednesday, the day Tilden Hayward had surprised his Milwaukee family by calling from the bus station to tell his brother’s wife hello, my dear one, here I am, no worries, I’ll get to the house on my own. Twenty minutes later, she had gone to the front window to see, on the far side of a great snowbank, her brother-in-law getting out of a strange woman’s car just in time to twirl his suitcase from the back seat and into the arms of his devoted nephew, who was arriving home from another deadly day at Lawrence B. Freeman. Together, Tillman and Keith came up the path through the snow, already deep in conversation.
They had talked long and often since that moment, but never, Keith now saw, of actual murders—murders of human beings. Here was the great dark door before which he had quailed; here was the true, the real abyss. And as he stood before it, the door swung open, and the abyss yawned wide. Lit with bright, wandering fires, his entire body seemed to tremble from within. A great confirmation rang through him and seemed to lift him off the ground. His head reverberated. For a moment he was conscious of nothing but his blood coursing through his brain and body in a continuous, racing stream. Then his knees went rubbery, and he began to slip toward the floor.
A female voice called, “Sir! Are you all right?”
It was like being pulled back to shore. His eyes cleared, and he found he could halt his descent. A woman with piled-up hair and cat’s-eye glasses stood perhaps ten feet down the aisle, extending one hand and one foot as though poised between flight and approach. She had big freaky eyes, and her mouth was a beak. He could not permit this woman to place her hand on his coat.
“I’m fine,” he managed to croak.
“It looked like you almost fainted.”
“Well, something happened,” he admitted. “But it’s over.” He straightened his spine, rolled his head back, and inhaled. Uncle Till, seated cross-legged on the spare bed with his hat on his head, a playing card in one hand, dark smiling eyes taking him in….
Oh, tonight I think I’ll just wander around, see if anything interesting turns up.
Who was the dame with the car? Just another dame with a car, nephew.
“Can I get anything for you?” She still held the posture of a bird coming in for a water landing.
“No, I was just looking for….” Keith tried to think to think of something small and affordable. “A notepad?”
“Aisle two.” The woman slowly pulled herself upright. She lowered her arms gave him an uncertain smile. “I ought to get back to the register.”
… wander around, see if anything interesting turns up.
Keith smiled back at her.
“Why, you’re just a boy,” the woman said. “I don’t know how I could have thought ….”
“I’ll get that notebook,” Keith said, and turned around slowly, wondering why he had not asked about files or hammers. Wondering, too, what age she had thought him. He had to go home, he had to talk to Uncle Till.
Could you have a conversation like that? One that acknowledged the great open door and the shimmering license that lay beyond it? Or were such conversation conducted in the silences between ordinary words and phrases? With the sense of standing on the lip of a great precipice, Keith rushed down the last aisle past displays of ribbons, pins, elastic bands, and buttons on long cards, seeing nothing.
His Uncle Till was the Ladykiller. Like a general or a great monarch, he had led his forces out into a dark, unknown territory, and seized control of all that lived there. His bed was a throne, his hat a crown. And his scepter…
… I don’t know how they’d do it, but for sure, if it was me, I’d use a knife.
Just before he sped through the shop door, he glanced sideways at the woman with the weird hair and could not refrain from twisting his mouth into something like a smile. He did not know if it was meant for a taunt or reassurance, and it felt like neither. Instead, it felt like the ghost of emotion—a gesture to an unknown force. The hesitant face under the tortured hair displayed sympathy and curiosity. Then the woman’s face hardened with suspicion, and she began to rise from her stool. Keith Hayward and his ghost of a smile had already fled into the cold and snowy street.
When he got back home, he raced through the business of dragging his boots off his feet and shedding his heavy coat and unwinding his scarf and pulling off his cap and transferring his stolen goods to his pants pockets and hanging up everything else. Then, finally, he could pass through the door to the kitchen, where his mother, engaged in an unruly shelf paper project, turned from the cabinets and a rank of plates of various sizes to look him over, make sure his shoes were civilized, and ask him about school. His response, as always noncommittal and vague, should have satisfied her, but instead of turning back to the shelf and the long curl of paper, she said, “What’s going on with you, Keith?”
“What? Nothing. Why.”
“You seem excited. You’re all wound up inside. Tight as a watchspring.”
“I guess I’m a little excited, Mom,” he said. “Mr. Palfrey gave me a B+ on my Grapes of Wrath paper.”
She cocked her head and smiled, mechanically. The smile vanished. “You didn’t have anything to do with the Rodenko’s cat, I hope. Mrs. Rodenko was talking to me about it for half an hour the other day. It’s been a week, and she’s worried sick. “
Keith put on an affronted, wounded look. “The Rodenko’s cat? Mom, are you still worrying about that time you saw me doing something dumb? I was twelve years old, Mom. I was a kid. You know Uncle Till talked to me all about that. Jeez.”
The hide of the Rodenko’s cat, an odorous, hissing monstrous creature either marmalade or tabby, hung on the wall of the secret room beside the pathetic poster the Rodenkos had taped to lamp posts and billboards.
“Sometimes I wonder about you and my husband’s brother,” she said.
“What?”
“Just lately, I don’t know…. Does he tell you what he does when he goes out at night?”
“Mom, he sees people. He has women friends. You know.”
“Oh, I know. Yes. I do.” She looked down at her hands, then cast a glance behind her at the stripped shelves and the curl of paper. “At least that policeman stopped hanging around here, making me feel like something was wrong. Bad wrong.”
“All that was a long time ago, Mom.”
“That man was very sure of himself. I saw him once, out in the alley. He was trying to look through our windows.”
“He doesn’t come around anymore.”
“That doesn’t mean something won’t bring him back.”
Now Keith understood: his mother had been reading the newspapers. “You shouldn’t worry about him, Mom. Don’t let yourself get carried away.”
She smiled. “That’s what your father says.” Keith forced himself to smile back.
His mother said, “You look more relaxed than you did when you came in.”
“You do, too,” he said. “Uncle Till’s here, isn’t he? Is it all right if I go see him?”
“Don’t make a nuisance of yourself.”
She waved him off and turned back to her work. Keith went out of the kitchen and stood before his uncle’s door. For a second he shocked himself by wondering if he should knock, if he should speak, if he should go ahead. Uncertain, he stood before the immensity of the choice that faced him. Stay or go? Speak or leave in silence? For one thing, he had just realized for the first time that his mother might be able to hear whatever passed between his uncle and himself: but the choice went far beyond questions of privacy. Breathless, he raised his hand, and yet he hesitated, unable either to knock or walk away.
“Keith, is that you?” came his uncle’s soft and rasping voice. “Come on in.”
He lowered his hand, and was surprised that sparks did not leap from the knob. Turning it slowly, he heard the bolt slide into the plate.
“Good boy,” the voice whispered.
Keith pulled the door fully open to reveal his uncle seated on his green blankets, his hat on his handsome head. Till had been reading a magazine, but had turned to face the doorway, that he might regard whatever spectacle was unfolding there. He was smiling, and his eyes were alight. “You can do it,” he whispered.
In full recognition of what he was doing, the boy came forward. Let this be said for Keith Hayward: when he came to the door, he entered his ruinous estate without hesitation. Once inside the room, he whispered back, “You do do it, Uncle Till.”
“Oh?” Till’s look of amusement deepened.
For the first time, Keith understood what sentimental authors meant when they spoke of falling into someone’s eyes. Long and narrow to begin with, his uncle’s eyes seemed to widen and enlarge with anarchic mirth. Tilden Hayward was irresistible: a satyr, a faun, a devil.
“Meaning what?” he said, softly.
In silence, Keith closed the door behind him. For a moment, he stood there with his hands folded behind his back. Here was another great threshold, and with only a second’s pause, he crossed it to stand within two feet of his hero.
In a voice just above a whisper, Keith said, “Lurleen Monaghan.” He searched his memory, and as a bear dips into a stream and snatches up a glittering fish, speared the second name. “Lori Terry.”
“Well, now.” Till’s amusement spilled over into soft, chuckling laughter. “Lori Terry, eh? Lurleen Monaghan, is that right?”
“I guess so.” In fact, Uncle Till’s response left no doubt as to his accuracy.
“How did you happen to learn those names, Keith?”
“The front page of the Journal.”
Never taking his eyes off his nephew’s, Uncle Till nodded, slowly, like a judge reaching a conclusion about a complicated legal point. “Our secret just got bigger, didn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
Till drew his head back a couple of inches. His eyes got narrower. Evidently he reached a conclusion about that complex matter. “Could be time I showed you my little place. What do you think?”
“I’d really like that,” Keith said.
After dinner, Till asked Keith’s parents if it would be all right for him to take their son to a theater on the east side, the Oriental, to catch a screening of a movie they both wanted to see. It was Charade, with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, which one reviewer had called “the best Hitchcock movie Hitchcock never made.”
“Leave me out,” said Keith’s father. “Cary Grant’s a homo, and Audrey Hepburn looks like a praying mantis.”
Keith’s mother looked wistful, but asked only if Keith had any unfinished homework.
“I did it in study hall, Mom,” he said, which was not entirely a lie. Shortly after dinner, uncle and nephew set off through a cold night glittering with stars.
Till led him past the vacant lot and around the corner, then down another long two blocks and around another corner before walking into the street and pulling out the keys to a long black Studebaker Keith had never seen before. Freezing inside his heavy coat, the boy waited for his uncle to get in and open the passenger door for him. The white clouds of his breath seemed to hang before him for an unusually long time, as if preserved by the cold. Although Uncle Till was wearing merely his hat, a sweater, and an unzipped leather jacket, he seemed to be unaffected by the temperature, even while blowing on his key to warm it.
