He was heavy. He held the chair down like a stone. Perhaps he would get up. When he was halfway up, maybe…
He kept sitting. The car was gone outside and I could hear the water make sounds under the dock.
If a motor boat came, I might even scream. They wouldn’t hear it. If a car stopped-then I felt myself tremble. It hummed like before and I heard the car. Folsom. He forgot something. Maybe one of his gloves.
The steps were so soft I had to think of a cat.
“Are you alone?”
“Huh?” said Franklin.
But he didn’t get out of the chair. He looked at Pat coming in and watched how she walked.
Smooth and leisurely. She had soft shoes on, with no heels at all, and a summer dress which was like a bathing suit at the top. She stopped and put one hand on her hip.
“Something wrong with him?” and she must have been looking at me.
“Naw,” said Franklin. “Just passed out.”
I could hear her walking away and I opened my eyes again.
“You alone?” she said.
“Sure. Why you ask?”
“Call me Pat.”
“Sure. Why you ask?”
I could see her against the window. She shrugged. She rested against the window sill, next to the chair, and her shoulders had a sheen from the light by the window when she leaned back on her arms.
“Just so,” she said. “You know.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
She had smooth, bare arms. She folded them so that the line between her breasts became deep and high.
Franklin looked at her and knew what he wanted, but he wasn’t sure what she was after.
“You come out here often?”
“No,” she said. “Usually there’s nobody here.”
“Except today.”
“Yes. I know. I heard you talking to Walter.”
“Oh. You know where he is?” The question brought back the big one’s interest.
“No. Do you care?”
He shifted in his chair but didn’t get up.
“Well, one way only,” he said. “Just so he don’t show up here.” Then he laughed.
She laughed too. “Would I come?” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Lemme try it out.”
But he didn’t get up for it. He pulled her over by one arm and gave it a twist so she would sit on his lap. I could see only that they were close together.
“You’ll fill the bill,” he said.
She didn’t say anything. I heard a sound of material. Then he said, “What’s wrong with Lippit?”
“Wrong? Nothing wrong.”
“Then why this?”
“You’re bigger.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s right.”
They were close together and I couldn’t see much else. I saw her bare arm on his shoulder and I saw her move her head once.
Pick the winner, I thought. First rule to success, male or female, pick the winner. Pat had been with Lippit for quite a time.
“No,” she said. “Not here.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t like him there,” she said.
“He’s out.”
“I don’t care. I’ve never done it this way.”
“Listen,” he said, and laughed. “All you got to worry about…”
“Please, Franklin. No.”
They didn’t talk for a while and then he said, “You’ll come around.”
“I know,” she said. “Let me show you,” and she got up.
I don’t know if he let her or if she just caught the right moment, but when she got up she did so all the way, smiled at him, and went to the door to the lake.
I could see her good there, in the light. Everything else being normal, I would have gone after her, too.
Franklin got out of the chair and she went out of the door. He went that far, this side of the frame, before he stopped and turned around fast.
At first he just watched the chair, because it was moving and chairs shouldn’t move. This one flew.
I was up, hauling the line, trying to get the chair to me before he did.
He was fast like a rhino. He got ahead of the chair, heading my way, because the chair meant nothing to him, but I did.
He got ahead of the chair and then the chair caught up. It caught him in the back of the legs, and there was just a small stumble, a one moment chance and then it would be gone.
I missed the chance. I was afraid to take it. He kept thrashing his arms and I was afraid to get close. Then he flailed into the rope. That was his chance, and he muffed it. He tried to get free and threw the rope over his shoulder. I jumped away and the chair climbed on his back.
He stopped thrashing-I didn’t have to worry about that now-doubled forward to heave the chair off his back, and then I took the chance.
Nothing would come of wasting time on the knot at my ankle. I was close now and the rope was lax. I threw a loop and it fell as it should. Then I kicked. Not at him, but back. He gagged as the rope dug into his neck.
It got complicated after that. I don’t know how it all went. But once Pat was there, back in the door frame, standing there with a big stare on her face. When she saw me looking she turned and ran.
I didn’t have time for her. This was a weird dance.
I got him on the shin once, and once he dragged me over the floor. Then his gagging stopped him again. He tried to swing the chair off his back, the wrong way, with the loop going double. In the end I just stayed on the floor, throwing my leg up and away from the man. His ears went dark red but that could have been rage. There was the point where we both hit the floor and I had my foot on his head, not for kicking him but for leverage. To pull the rope up but not the man.
He was confused by then. He must have been because he had his hands on my foot and was keeping it settled on top of his head.
I wasn’t all clear, either. When he was lying still and I tried to get up I saw where he had torn my pants leg to shreds. There was blood on my leg, and I didn’t know whose.
But he lay still. I didn’t care enough then to see if he was breathing, but I worried the knot on my ankle as if that was all there was.
When I had it off I sat and just breathed.
That’s when she came back. I hadn’t heard anything. Like a cat She came into the room from the lakeside. It made things hard to tell. She was close before I made out the face and the right hand up, holding the revolver.
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t think so. His skull hasn’t stopped bleeding.”
“Oh,” she said. “Then you don’t need it.”
She dropped the revolver, as if it was too heavy, and then she stood, as if wondering whether she should fall.
She didn’t She was-in a figurative way-plenty tough. I took the revolver and then I took her arm.
“Can you walk?”
“Sure. Can you?”
We walked out. I said thank you to her at one point. “It was horrible,” I told her, “but I thank you.”
“I wanted to get him to the car,” she said. “I had the gun there and wanted him in the car.”
Then we drove back to town. Before driving, she said, “Will you zip me?”
“Of course, I’ll zip you.”
I did, and I drove her back to town.