Jim Thompson - The Criminal

ALLEN TALBERT

It had been a pretty good day in many ways, so I might have known it would turn out bad. If you've read any papers lately I guess you know that it did. It's always that way with me, it seems like. I've never known it to fail. I'll wake up feeling rested and be able to eat breakfast for a change, and maybe I'll even get a seat on the 8:05 into the city. And it'll go on like that all day-no trouble, everything rocking along fine. My kidneys won't bother me. I won't get those crazy headaches up over my eyes. Then, I'll come home, and somehow or another, between the time I get there and the time I go to bed, something will happen to spoil it all. Always. Anyway, it seems like always. There'll be a dun from the Kenton Hills Sewer District or a gopher will have eaten up what blamed little lawn we have left or Martha will break her glasses. Or something.

Take the night before last, for example. I'd had a pretty good day that day-as good as any day can be, now. Then, after dinner, I sit down to read the paper, and-bingo!-I hop right back up again. Martha's glasses were in the chair, or, rather, what was left of 'em. Both lenses were broken.

"Oh, my goodness," she said, fluttering around and picking up the pieces. "Now, how in the world did that happen?"

"How did it happen?" I said. "How did it happen? You leave your glasses in my chair, and then you wonder how it happens when they get broken."

"I must have left them on the arm of the chair," she said. "You must have brushed them into the seat when you sat down. Oh, well, I needed some new ones anyway."

I looked at her, taking it all so calm and casual, and something seemed to snap inside my head. I wanted to hurt her, to hurt someone and she was the nearest thing at hand.

"So you needed some new ones," I said. "That's all you've got to say. You throw fifteen dollars down the drain, and it doesn't make any difference to you, does it? You'll never change, will you? If you weren't so scatter-brained, if you'd kept an eye on Bob instead of letting him run wild and do as he pleased he wouldn't have-"

Her face went white, then red. "And what about you? What kind of a father are you to-to-" Her hand went up to her mouth, pushing back the words. "D-Don't," she whispered. "I-I d-don't need any glasses. I can't read any more, anyway. I can't-all I can think about is Oh, Al! Al!"

I put my arms around her, and she tried to pull away- but not very hard-and then she buried her face against my shirtfront, and she cried and cried. I didn't try to stop her. I wished I could have cried myself. I stood holding her, patting her on the head now and then; noticing how gray she had gotten. It was funny, strange I mean. You hear about someone turning gray almost overnight, and you think, oh, that's a lot of nonsense. It couldn't really happen, not to normal people anyway. And then it does happen, right to your own wife, and I don't imagine they come more normal than Martha.

It's like it is with Bob. With Bob's trouble. You hear about some fifteen-year-old boy killing a neighbor's girl-raping and strangling her, and you think, well, I'm pretty well off after all. My boy may be a little wild but but Bob was never really wild; he was just all boy, I guess, just about average but my boy would never do a thing like that. That could never happen in our family. He-

Your wife couldn't turn gray overnight, and your fifteen-year-old couldn't do what that other fifteen-year-old did. The idea is so crazy that-well, you just laugh when you think about it. And then

"Al," Martha whispered. "Let's move away from here!"

"You bet," I said. "We'll go to work on it tomorrow. We'll move way off somewhere, clear to the other side of the country."

I was just talking, of course, and she knew it. I couldn't start in all over at my age, get a job that would support us. We don't have any money to move on. I had to borrow against the house to pay that lawyer. All the equity we've got in it now you could stuff in your ear.

Anyway, moving wouldn't do much good. Because it isn't the other people so much, the way they talk and act and the way we imagine they talk and act: it's not them so much as it is ourselves. Wondering about it, and not being sure. Sure like you've got to be about a thing like that.

"Al," Martha whispered, "h-he-he didn't do it, did he?"

"Of course, he didn't," I said. "It's too ridiculous to think about."

"I know he didn't do it, Al!"

"I do, too. We both know it."

"Why, he just couldn't! I mean, why-why-how could he, Al?"

"I don't know," I said. "I-it doesn't matter. He didn't, so there's no sense wondering about it. We've got to stop it, Martha. We've got to stop wondering and talking and- and-"

"Of course, dear," she said. "We won't say another word. We both know he didn't, that he couldn't have. Why, my goodness, Al! How could our Bob?"

"SHUT UP!" I said. "Stop it!"

It ended as it usually ends. We kept telling each other that he hadn't done it, and it was crazy even to think he had. Finally, we went to bed, and all night long, whenever I woke up, I heard her mumbling and tossing. And in the morning I caught her looking at me worriedly, and she asked me if I'd slept well. So I guess I must have been doing some mumbling and tossing myself.

Well

I guess there's no right place to begin this. A thing like this, it probably starts a long way back, before you were ever married probably and ever had a son named Bob. And maybe you didn't have too much to do with it yourself; you didn't have too much control over it. You just rock along, doing the things you have to, and you get kind of startled sometimes when you stand off and look at yourself. You think, my God, that isn't me. How did I ever get like that? But you go right ahead, startled or not, hating it or not, because you don't actually have much to say about it. You're not moving so much as you are being moved.

Maybe I'm making excuses, but what I'm trying to say is that it might have begun with another person. Or other people. My parents, say. Or their parents. Or people I'd never met in my life. It I don't know. I couldn't say. There's no way of telling, and one beginning place is probably as good as another. So maybe I'd better lead off with the start I had.

Maybe I'd better go back to the day it happened. The day that had been a pretty good one until it did happen. If I start right in with the beginning of the day and follow it on through, maybe maybe I'll spot something.

I do that down at the office sometimes, down at the Henley Terrazzo & Tile Company. I mean, the books will be off a few cents when I try to strike a balance, so I'll take a new set of transcript sheets and recopy my figures, checking them off item by item. And sooner or later I'll find the error. It'll pop up at me. Providing, of course, that it's in that day's work.

Well, I've told you I'd had a good night's sleep and a pretty good breakfast. Bob and I ate together that day, and I kind of joked with him a little, like I don't often have the time nor the inclination for, and afterwards he walked part of the way to the station with me on his way to school.

It had been a long time since he'd done that. In fact, I couldn't remember when the last time was he'd done it, It used to be, back when he was in the grades, we'd walk together almost every morning, It put him to school earlier than he had to be, but he insisted on doing it, He'd actually get upset if Martha let him sleep and I'd go off without him.