The Baby in the Icebox: And Other Short Fiction Read online

  “And, anyway,” says Nick, “there was a couple of your own runners that knew where I was. Why didn’t you use them?”

  So of course that made me feel great.

  So they began to cuss at each other, and the generals can outcuss the privates, I’ll say that for them. So I kind of saluted and went off, and then Captain Madeira, he come to me.

  “What’s the matter?” he says.

  “Nothing much,” I says.

  “You didn’t make it, hey?”

  “No. Didn’t make it.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You did the best you could.”

  “Yeah, I done the best I could.”

  “You’re not the only one. It’s been a hell of a night and a hell of a day.”

  “Yeah, it sure has.”

  “Well—don’t worry about it.”

  “Thanks.”

  So that is how I come not to get no DSC in the late war. If I had of done what I was sent to do, maybe they would of give me one, because Shep, he got cited, and they sure needed me bad. But I never done it, and it ain’t no use blubbering over how things might be if only they was a little different.

  The Baby in the Icebox

  OF COURSE THERE WAS plenty pieces in the paper about what happened out at the place last summer, but they got it all mixed up, so I will now put down how it really was, and ’specially the beginning of it, so you will see it is not no lies in it.

  Because when a guy and his wife begin to play leapfrog with a tiger, like you might say, and the papers put in about that part and not none of the stuff that started it off, and then one day say X marks the spot and next day say it wasn’t really no murder but don’t tell you what it was, why, I don’t blame people if they figure there was something funny about it or maybe that somebody ought to be locked up in the booby hatch. But there wasn’t no booby hatch to this, nothing but plain onriness and a dirty rat getting it in the neck where he had it coming to him, as you will see when I get the first part explained right.

  Things first begun to go sour between Duke and Lura when they put the cats in. They didn’t need no cats. They had a combination auto camp, filling station, and lunchroom out in the country a ways, and they got along all right. Duke run the filling station, and got me in to help him, and Lura took care of the lunchroom and shacks. But Duke wasn’t satisfied. Before he got this place he had raised rabbits, and one time he had bees, and another time canary birds, and nothing would suit him now but to put in some cats to draw trade. Maybe you think that’s funny, but out here in California they got every kind of a farm there is, from kangaroos to alligators, and it was just about the idea that a guy like Duke would think up. So he begun building a cage, and one day he showed up with a truckload of wildcats.

  I wasn’t there when they unloaded them. It was two or three cars waiting and I had to gas them up. But soon as I got a chance I went back there to look things over. And believe me, they wasn’t pretty. The guy that sold Duke the cats had went away about five minutes before, and Duke was standing outside the cage and he had a stick of wood in his hand with blood on it. Inside was a dead cat. The rest of them was on a shelf, that had been built for them to jump on, and every one of them was snarling at Duke.

  I don’t know if you ever saw a wildcat, but they are about twice as big as a house cat, brindle gray, with tufted ears and a bobbed tail. When they set and look at you they look like a owl, but they wasn’t setting and looking now. They was marching around, coughing and spitting, their eyes shooting red and green fire, and it was a ugly sight, ’specially with that bloody dead one down on the ground. Duke was pale, and the breath was whistling through his nose, and it didn’t take no doctor to see he was scared to death.

  “You better bury that cat,” he says to me. “I’ll take care of the cars.”

  I looked through the wire and he grabbed me. “Look out!” he says. “They’d kill you in a minute.”

  “In that case,” I says, “how do I get the cat out?”

  “You’ll have to get a stick,” he says, and shoves off.

  I was pretty sore, but I begun looking around for a stick. I found one, but when I got back to the cage Lura was there. “How did that happen?” she says.

  “I don’t know,” I says, “but I can tell you this much: If there’s any more of them to be buried around here, you can get somebody else to do it. My job is to fix flats, and I’m not going to be no cat undertaker.”

  She didn’t have nothing to say to that. She just stood there while I was trying the stick, and I could hear her toe snapping up and down in the sand, and from that I knowed she was choking it back, what she really thought, and didn’t think no more of this here cat idea than I did.

  The stick was too short. “My,” she says, pretty disagreeable, “that looks terrible. You can’t bring people out here with a thing like that in there.”

  “All right,” I snapped back. “Find me a stick.”

  She didn’t make no move to find no stick. She put her hand on the gate. “Hold on,” I says. “Them things are nothing to monkey with.”

  “Huh,” she says. “All they look like to me is a bunch of cats.”

  There was a kennel back of the cage, with a drop door on it, where they was supposed to go at night. How you got them back there was bait them with food, but I didn’t know that then. I yelled at them, to drive them back in there, but nothing happened. All they done was yell back. Lura listened to me awhile, and then she give a kind of gasp like she couldn’t stand it no longer, opened the gate, and went in.

  Now believe me, that next was a bad five minutes, because she wasn’t hard to look at, and I hated to think of her getting mauled up by them babies. But a guy would of had to of been blind if it didn’t show him that she had a way with cats. First thing she done, when she got in, she stood still, didn’t make no sudden motions or nothing, and begun to talk to them. Not no special talk. Just “Pretty pussy, what’s the matter, what they been doing to you?”—like that. Then she went over to them.

  They slid off, on their bellies, to another part of the shelf. But she kept after them, and got her hand on one, and stroked him on the back. Then she got ahold of another one, and pretty soon she had give them all a pat. Then she turned around, picked up the dead cat by one leg, and come out with him. I put him on the wheelbarrow and buried him.

  Now, why was it that Lura kept it from Duke how easy she had got the cat out and even about being in the cage at all? I think it was just because she didn’t have the heart to show him up to hisself how silly he looked. Anyway, at supper that night, she never said a word. Duke, he was nervous and excited and told all about how the cats had jumped at him and how he had to bean one to save his life, and then he give a long spiel about cats and how fear is the only thing they understand, so you would of thought he was Martin Johnson just back from the jungle or something.

  But it seemed to me the dishes was making quite a noise that night, clattering around on the table, and that was funny, because one thing you could say for Lura was: she was quiet and easy to be around. So when Duke, just like it was nothing at all, asks me by the way how did I get the cat out, I heared my mouth saying, “With a stick,” and not nothing more. A little bird flies around and tells you, at a time like that. Lura let it pass. Never said a word. And if you ask me, Duke never did find out how easy she could handle the cats, and that ain’t only guesswork, but on account of something that happened a little while afterward, when we got the mountain lion.

  A mountain lion is a cougar, only out here they call them a mountain lion. Well, one afternoon about five o’clock this one of ours squat down on her hunkers and set up the worst squalling you ever listen to. She kept it up all night, so you wanted to go out and shoot her, and next morning at breakfast Duke come running in and says come on out and look what happened. So we went out there, and there in the cage with her was the prettiest he mountain lion you ever seen in your life. He was big, probably weighed a hundred and fifty pounds, and his coat was a
pearl gray so glossy it looked like a pair of new gloves, and he had a spot of white on his throat. Sometimes they have white.

  “He come down from the hills when he heard her call last night,” says Duke, “and he got in there somehow. Ain’t it funny? When they hear that note nothing can stop them.”

  “Yeah,” I says. “It’s love.”

  “That’s it,” says Duke. “Well, we’ll be having some little ones soon. Cheaper’n buying them.”

  After he had went off to town to buy the stuff for the day, Lura sat down to the table with me. “Nice of you,” I says, “to let Romeo in last night.”

  “Romeo?” she says.

  “Yes, Romeo. That’s going to be papa of twins soon, out in the lion cage.”

  “Oh,” she says, “didn’t he get in there himself?”

  “He did not. If she couldn’t get out, how could he get in?”

  All she give me at that time was a dead pan. Didn’t know nothing about it at all. Fact of the matter, she made me a little sore. But after she brung me my second cup of coffee she kind of smiled. “Well?” she says. “You wouldn’t keep two loving hearts apart, would you?”

  So things was, like you might say, a little gritty, but they got a whole lot worse when Duke come home with Rajah, the tiger. Because by that time he had told so many lies that he begun to believe them hisself, and put on all the airs of a big animal trainer. When people come out on Sundays, he would take a black snake whip and go in with the mountain lions and wildcats, and snap it at them, and they would snarl and yowl, and Duke acted like he was doing something. Before he went in, he would let the people see him strapping on a big six-shooter, and Lura got sorer by the week.

  For one thing, he looked so silly. She couldn’t see nothing to going in with the cats, and ’specially she couldn’t see no sense in going in with a whip, a six-shooter, and a ten-gallon hat like them cow people wears. And for another thing, it was bad for business. In the beginning, when Lura would take the customers’ kids out and make out the cat had their finger, they loved it, and they loved it still more when the little mountain lions come and they had spots and would push up their ears to be scratched. But when Duke started that stuff with the whip it scared them to death, and even the fathers and mothers was nervous, because there was the gun and they didn’t know what would happen next. So business begun to fall off.

  And then one afternoon he put down a couple of drinks and figured it was time for him to go in there with Rajah. Now it had took Lura one minute to tame Rajah. She was in there sweeping out his cage one morning when Duke was away, and when he started sliding around on his belly he got a bucket of water in the face, and that was that. From then on he was her cat. But what happened when Duke tried to tame him was awful. The first I knew what he was up to was when he made a speech to the people from the mountain lion cage telling them not to go away yet, there was more to come. And when he come out he headed over to the tiger.

  “What’s the big idea?” I says. “What you up to now?”

  “I’m going in with that tiger,” he says. “It’s got to be done, and I might as well do it now.”

  “Why has it got to be done?” I says.

  He looked at me like as though he pitied me.

  “I guess there’s a few things about cats you don’t know yet,” he says. “You got a tiger on your hands, you got to let him know who’s boss, that’s all.”

  “Yeah?” I says. “And who is boss?”

  “You see that?” he says, and cocks his finger at his face.

  “See what?” I says.

  “The human eye,” he says. “The human eye, that’s all. A cat’s afraid of it. And if you know your business, you’ll keep him afraid of it. That’s all I’ll use, the human eye. But, of course, just for protection, I’ve got these too.”

  “Listen, sweetheart,” I says to him. “If you give me a choice between the human eye and a Bengal tiger, which one I got the most fear of, you’re going to see a guy getting a shiner every time. If I was you, I’d lay off that cat.”

  He didn’t say nothing: hitched up his holster, and went in. He didn’t even get a chance to unlimber his whip. That tiger, soon as he saw him, begun to move around in a way that made your blood run cold. He didn’t make for Duke first, you understand. He slid over, and in a second he was between Duke and the gate. That’s one thing about a tiger you better not forget if you ever meet one. He can’t work examples in arithmetic, but when it comes to the kinds of brains that mean meat, he’s the brightest boy in the class and then some. He’s born knowing more about cutting off a retreat than you’ll ever know, and his legs do it for him, just automatic, so his jaws will be free for the main business of the meeting.

  Duke backed away, and his face was awful to see. He was straining every muscle to keep his mouth from sliding down in his collar. His left hand fingered the whip a little, and his right pawed around, like he had some idea of drawing the gun. But the tiger didn’t give him time to make up his mind what his idea was, if any.

  He would slide a few feet on his belly, then get up and trot a step or two, then slide on his belly again. He didn’t make no noise, you understand. He wasn’t telling Duke, “Please go away”; he meant to kill him, and a killer don’t generally make no more fuss than he has to. So for a few seconds you could even hear Duke’s feet sliding over the floor. But all of a sudden a kid begun to whimper, and I come to my senses. I run around to the back of the cage, because that was where the tiger was crowding him, and I yelled at him.

  “Duke!” I says. “In his kennel! Quick!”

  He didn’t seem to hear me. He was still backing, and the tiger was still coming. A woman screamed. The tiger’s head went down, he crouched on the ground, and tightened every muscle. I knew what that meant. Everybody knew what it meant, and ’specially Duke knew what it meant. He made a funny sound in his throat, turned, and ran.

  That was when the tiger sprung. Duke had no idea where he was going, but when he turned he fell through the trapdoor and I snapped it down. The tiger hit it so hard I thought it would split. One of Duke’s legs was out, and the tiger was on it in a flash, but all he got on that grab was the sole of Duke’s shoe. Duke got his leg in somehow and I jammed the door down tight.

  It was a sweet time at supper that night. Lura didn’t see this here, because she was busy in the lunchroom when it happened, but them people had talked on their way out, and she knowed all about it. What she said was plenty. And Duke, what do you think he done? He passed it off like it wasn’t nothing at all. “Just one of them things you got to expect,” he says. And then he let on he knowed what he was doing all the time, and the only lucky part of it was that he didn’t have to shoot a valuable animal like Rajah was. “Keep cool, that’s the main thing,” he says. “A thing like that can happen now and then, but never let a animal see you excited.”

  I heard him, and I couldn’t believe my ears, but when I looked at Lura I jumped. I think I told you she wasn’t hard to look at. She was a kind of medium size, with a shape that would make a guy leave his happy home, sunburned all over, and high cheekbones that give her eyes a funny slant. But her eyes was narrowed down to slits, looking at Duke, and they shot green where the light hit them, and it come over me all of a sudden that she looked so much like Rajah, when he was closing in on Duke in the afternoon, that she could of been his twin sister.

  Next off, Duke got it in his head he was such a big cat man now that he had to go up in the hills and do some trapping. Bring in his own stuff, he called it.

  I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time. Of course, he never brought in no stuff, except a couple of raccoons that he probably bought down the road for two dollars, but Duke was the kind of a guy that every once in a while has to sit on a rock and fish, so when he loaded up the flivver and blew, it wasn’t nothing you would get excited about. Maybe I didn’t really care what he was up to, because it was pretty nice, running the place with Lura with him out of the way, and I didn’t ask no ques
tions. But it was more to it than cats or ’coons or fish, and Lura knowed it, even if I didn’t.

  Anyhow, it was while he was away on one of them trips of his that Wild Bill Smith, the Texas Tornado, showed up. Bill was a snake doctor. He had a truck, with his picture painted on it, and two or three boxes of old rattlesnakes with their teeth pulled out, and he sold snake oil that would cure what ailed you, and a Indian herb medicine that would do the same. He was a fake, but he was big and brown and had white teeth, and I guess he really wasn’t no bad guy. The first I seen of him was when he drove up in his truck, and told me to gas him up and look at his tires. He had a bum differential that made a funny rattle, but he said never mind and went over to the lunchroom.

  He was there a long time, and I thought I better let him know his car was ready. When I went over there, he was setting on a stool with a sheepish look on his face, rubbing his hand. He had a snake ring on one finger, with two red eyes, and on the back of his hand was red streaks. I knew what that meant. He had started something and Lura had fixed him. She had a pretty arm, but a grip like iron, that she said come from milking cows when she was a kid. What she done when a guy got fresh was take hold of his hand and squeeze it so the bones cracked, and he generally changed his mind.

  She handed him his check without a word, and I told him what he owed on the car, and he paid up and left.

  “So you settled his hash, hey?” I says to her.

  “If there’s one thing gets on my nerves,” she says, “it’s a man that starts something the minute he gets in the door.”

  “Why didn’t you yell for me?”

  “Oh, I didn’t need no help.”

  But the next day he was back, and after I filled up his car I went over to see how he was behaving. He was setting at one of the tables this time, and Lura was standing beside him. I saw her jerk her hand away quick, and he give me the bright grin a man has when he’s got something he wants to cover up. He was all teeth. “Nice day,” he says. “Great weather you have in this country,”