The Alcoholics by Jim Thompson Page B

know what they like, don't I?"
    Mama murmured indistinctly. Mr. Leemy tried to pinch her again-and failed; and his teasing became edged.
    "Little boy," he said. "That's the way little boys talk. Too bad. Yes, sir, it's certainly too bad you aren't a little girl. I like little girls and little girls like me. Don't you want to be a little girl so…?"
    And at last, at merciful last, Mama had said, "I'm afraid the child's a little overwrought. Say good-night to Mr. Leemy, darling."
    "I'll bet she can't even say good-night," he said. "You can't say it like a little girl, can you?"
    And Mama was starting to pull her away, by then, but she took the time to answer. She had to convince him. She had to make sure that he would not like her… as he liked little girls.
    "No, thir," she said. "Good-nighthe."
    Thereafter, she had had very little contact with Mr. Leemy. The house was large and there was only Mama, the housekeeper, to do the work; so there was always something to be done, by way of helping Mama, in some part of the house where he was not. Mr. Leemy took his meals on a tray, in his room or the library. She and Mama ate alone. She was sent to bed early, in her own room, and she was made to understand that, once there, it was necessary to stay. Mr. Leemy, because of his legs, occupied a downstairs bedroom. So they saw very little of each other. Sometimes she was almost able to persuade herself that he didn't exist. Sometimes, that is, in those few years before she entered school. Never after that. There were whisperings and snickerings and frank questions about bogey men. (" He'll getcha, I bet. My mama oughta know, I guess, an' she says …") The teachers looked at her peculiarly, often with distaste, more often and more hateful to bear with pity. And once at recess, when she was coming up the stairs from the girls' basement, she heard a group of teachers talking on the landing above. Talking about Mama and Mr. Leemy.
    Almost three months passed before she ascertained the truth for herself, the false and ugly truth of adulthood, as opposed to the sparkling and wholly splendid truth of her infancy. Three months of thinking and preparing herself, of waiting on a necessity so urgent as to outweigh the prohibition against leaving her room at night.
    It came: the compelling excuse she had waited for. It came, yet she continued to wait for a few nights, until a night when she heard a soft creaking of the stair treads and, a moment or two later, the squeaking rattle of the library doors as they rolled open and shut again. She waited nearly ten minutes-some four hundred heart beats. Then, noting that she was slightly feverish-and she actually was, she had been so for several days-and that her water glass was empty, she went quietly down the stairs and into the kitchen and drew a drink from the tap.
    She had had to get the drink of water. And, as a person incipiently ill, it was certainly wise to pause midway on the long, steep flight of stairs; to sit down and rest for a… for as long as was necessary.
    She had polished the library transom no later than yesterday, doing it well as she did everything. The spotless glass seemed to magnify the bloated body of Mr. Leemy, seated as always before his stingy fire. It framed him, as in a picture, its oblong outline thrusting him into prominence even as it thrust everything outside its periphery into oblivion.
    She could not see Mama. Her head swayed and her eyes drooped shut for a moment. When she opened them again, Mr. Leemy was hoisting himself from the chair with his canes.
    He was standing, and her view of him was cut off at the waist.
    He braced himself with one cane, and lifted the other.
    And she still could not see Mama, but she could him-see the slick wetness of his mouth, his glazed eyes, as he slashed with the cane at… at…
    Whatever was there on the floor.
    She could see the cane swing up and down, jerkily. Faster and faster…
    That should have been enough. The thought that