Blood Sport Read online

  The hens got their grits, and the calves in a near compound their ration of water, and Matt retired for his breakfast. The morning wore on. The temperature rose. Nothing else happened.

  At noon I stood up for a while behind the rock to stretch my legs and restore some feeling to the bits that were numb from sitting. I drank some water and smoked a cigarette, and put on the sunglasses to circumvent a hovering glare headache: and having exhausted my repertoire except for a few shots from the Luger, folded myself back into the wedge of slowly moving shade, and took another look at the farm.

  Status quo entirely unchanged. Maybe Matt was asleep, or telephoning, or watching television, or inventing systems for his trip to Las Vegas. He certainly was not doing much farming. Nor did he apparently propose to exercise the horses. They stayed in their stalls from dawn to dusk.

  By two I knew intimately every spiny plant growing within a radius of ten feet of my rock, and found my eyes going far oftener to the broad sweep of desert on my left than to the dirty little farm below. The desert was clean in its way, and fierce, and starkly beautiful. All hills and endless sky. Parched sandy grey dust and scratchy cactus. Killing heat. A wild, uncompromising, lonely place.

  When I first felt the urge just to get up and walk away into it I dragged my eyes dutifully back to the farm and smoked the second cigarette and thought firmly about Matt and the horses. That only worked for a while. The barren country pulled like a magnet.

  I had only to walk out there, I thought, and keep on going until I was filled with its emptiness, and then sit down somewhere and put the barrel of the Luger against my head, and simply squeeze. So childishly easy; so appallingly tempting.

  Walt, I thought desperately. I couldn’t do it because of Walt and the unfinished business we were embarked on. The horses were there in front of me, and Walt and Sam Hengelman were on their way. It was impossible just to abandon them. I hit my hand against the rock and dragged my mind back to the farm and the night ahead. And when I’d gone through that piece by piece I concentrated one at a time on Yola and Offen, and Eunice and Dave Teller, and Keeble and Lynnie, trying to use them as pegs to keep me believing that what I did mattered to them. That anything I did mattered to anybody. That I cared whether anything I did mattered to anybody.

  My hand had been bleeding. I hadn’t even felt it. I looked dispassionately at the scraped skin, and loathed myself. I shut my eyes, and the desolation went so deep that for an unmeasurable age I felt dizzy with it, as if I were in some fearful pitch black limbo, with no help, no hope, and no escape. Spinning slowly down an endless shaft in solitary despair. Lost.

  The spinning stopped, after a while. The internal darkness stayed.

  I opened my eyes and looked down at the farm, only half seeing it, feeling myself trembling and knowing that there wasn’t much farther to go.

  Matt came out of the house, walked across the yard, took a look into the barn, and retraced his steps. I watched him in a disorientated haze: those horses in the barn, what did they matter? What did anything matter? Who cared a sixpenny damn about blood lines, it would all be the same in a hundred years.

  Dave Teller cared.

  Let him.

  Dave Teller cared a ten thousand dollar damn what happened to them.

  Crystal clear, like distilled water logic, it occurred to me that I could give us both what we wanted if I postponed my walk into the desert until later that night. I would pack the horses off with Hengelman, and instead of driving back to Kingman after him, I would set off on foot, and when it was nearly dawn, and everything looked grey and shadowy, and the step would be small … then …

  Then.

  I felt, immediately after making this firm decision, which seemed to me extremely sensible, a great invasion of peace. No more struggle, no more fuss. My body felt relaxed and full of well-being, and my mind was calm. I couldn’t think why such an obvious solution hadn’t occurred to me before. All the sweat and sleeplessness had dissolved into a cool, inner, steady light.

  This stage lasted until I remembered that I had once been determined not to reach it.

  After that, creeping in little by little, came the racking conviction that I had merely surrendered, and was not only despicable but probably insane.

  I sat for a while with my head in my hands, fearfully expecting that with the false peace broken up and gone, back would come the shattering vertigo.

  It didn’t. There was only so great a tiredness that what I’d called tiredness before was like a pinhead on a continent. The dreary fight was on again; but at least I’d survived the bloodiest battle yet. Touched bottom and come back. I felt that after this I really could climb right out, if I went on trying.

  A long way to go. But then, I’d have all the time I needed.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I had cramp right down both legs. Matt came out of the house and I woke up to find that the shade patch had moved round while I hadn’t. When he went into the barn I started to shift the necessary two yards and found my muscles in knots.

  The shade wasn’t much cooler, but much better cover. I sat in it waiting for Matt to come out of the barn and for my legs to unlock. What they needed was for me to get to my feet and stamp about: but if Matt caught sight of anyone moving so close to him the whole project would lie in ruins.

  He fetched water for the horses, for the calves, and for the hens. I looked at my watch, and was horribly startled to see it was nearly six. It couldn’t be, I thought; but it was. Four hours since I last checked. Four hours. I shivered in the roasting air.

  Matt brought the empty muck barrow around and into the barn, and came out with it filled. For the whole afternoon I’d fallen down on the surveillance, but looking back I was fairly sure nothing had changed at the farm. Certainly at this point things were as they had been: Matt had no helpers and no visitors, and when he left for Las Vegas the horses would be alone. For that piece of certainty I had been prepared to watch all day, and a poor job I’d made of it.

  Matt shut the barn door and went into the house. Half an hour later he came out in a cream-coloured jacket and dark trousers, a transformation from his habitual jeans and a checked shirt. He opened the doors of the shed containing the car, went inside, started up, and drove out across the yard, round the bend on to the road, and away over the desert towards Kingman.

  Satisfied, I finally got to my feet. The cramps had gone. I plodded tiredly off to the two-mile distant hidden car, and wished the night was over, not beginning. I hadn’t enough energy to lick a stamp.

  Matt’s dust had settled when I followed him along the empty road, but when I got into Kingman he was still there. With shock I saw him standing outside a garage I was passing, and I drew into the kerb fifty yards on and looked back. The black saloon he had hired and his own blue Ford were both standing there in the forecourt. An overalled girl attendant was filling the Ford’s tank from the pump, and Matt was looking in snatches at his watch and exhibiting impatience. Seven-twenty; and a hundred miles to Las Vegas. He would be a few minutes late for his appointment with Walt.

  Slumping down in my seat I fixed the driving mirror so that I could watch him. He paid the girl for the petrol and hopped into his car over the top, without opening the door. Then he pulled out on to the road, turned in my direction, and went past me with his foot impressively on the accelerator. I gently followed for a while at a respectable distance, content to keep him only just in sight, and turned back to the town once he was conclusively topping the speed limit on Route 93 to Las Vegas.

  Outside the unprosperous looking Mojave Motel Sam Hengelman’s horse van took up a sixth of the parking space. Inside, they told me that he had arrived at four-thirty and was along in Room 6, sleeping. I left him to it, because we couldn’t move anyway until I’d phoned Walt at eight, and went into the bus station for some coffee. It came in a plastic carton out of an automat, black but weak. I drank it without tasting and thought about some food, but I wasn’t really hungry enough to bother, and I
was too dirty and unshaven for anywhere good. Until after eight I sat on the bus station bench staring into space, and then used the bus station telephone to get through to Walt.

  He came on the line with little delay.

  ‘How’s things?’ he said.

  ‘Matt left Kingman for Las Vegas at seven-thirty, so he will be a little late.’

  ‘Left Kingman?’ Walt sounded surprised.

  I explained about Matt changing cars.

  ‘I suppose his Ford wasn’t quite ready when he got there. Anyway, he’s coming in that, not the hired one.’

  Are you all right?’ Walt said hesitantly.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You don’t sound it.’

  ‘Sam Hengelman’s here,’ I said, ignoring him. ‘He’s asleep along at the Mojave Motel. We’ll start as soon as I get back there and wake him up.’

  ‘It’s all safe at the farm?’ He seemed anxious.

  ‘Deserted,’ I assured him. ‘Has been all yesterday, all last night, and all today. No one around but Matt. Stop worrying. You just see Matt and put on your act, and then head straight back to Santa Barbara. As soon as Sam’s clear of the area I’ll follow you. See you for breakfast about twelve hours from now.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Well … keep your nose clean.’

  ‘You too.’

  ‘Sure thing. It’s not me that’s nuts.’

  The line clicked clear before I found an answer, and it left me with a vague feeling that there was more I should have said, though I didn’t know what.

  I knocked on Sam’s door at the motel, and he came sleepily stretching to switch on the light and let me in.

  ‘With you in a minute,’ he said, reaching for his shoes and looking round for his tie.

  ‘Sam, you don’t have to come.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Go back to sleep. I’ll go and fetch the horses. That way you won’t be so involved.’

  He sat on the edge of the bed looking down at the floor. ‘I’m still driving them to Lexington?’

  ‘Unless you want out. Leave the van, and fly home.’

  ‘Nope.’ He shook his head. ‘A bargain’s a bargain. And I may as well come all the way. That van’s none too easy in reverse … don’t know that you could handle it.’

  I half smiled and didn’t argue. I’d wanted him with me, but only willingly, and I’d got that. He knotted his tie and brushed his hair and then took a sidelong glance at my own appearance, which fell a ton short of his. He was a fleshy man of about fifty, bald, pale-skinned, and unexcitable. His nerves, I thought, were going to be at least equal to the evening’s requirements.

  ‘Let’s go, then,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I paid in advance.’

  I followed him across to the van and climbed up into the cab. Sam started the engine, told me he’d filled up with gas when he’d first reached Kingman, and rolled out south-east on the road to the farm. His broad face looked perfectly calm in the glow from the dashboard, and he handled his six-stall horsebox like a kiddicar. He went eight miles in silence, and then all he said was, ‘I’d sure hate to live this far from town, with nowhere to get a beer.’

  We passed the third of the three side roads and started on the last ten uninhabited miles to the farm. Three miles farther on Sam gave an alarmed exclamation and braked from his cautious thirty to a full stop. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘That gauge.’ He pointed, and I looked. The needle on the temperature gauge was quivering on red.

  ‘Have to look see,’ he grunted, and switched off the engine. My thoughts as he disappeared out of the cab were one enormous curse. Of all hopeless, dangerous places for his van to break down.

  He came back and opened the door my side. I jumped down beside him and he took me round to show me the exhaust.

  ‘Look,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘Water.’

  Several drops slid out, glistening in the light of his torch.

  ‘Gasket,’ he said, putting into one word the enormity of the disaster, and what he thought of fate for trapping us in it.

  ‘No water in the radiator,’ I said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And if we go on, the engine will seize up.’

  ‘Right again.’

  ‘I suppose you don’t carry any extra water in the van?’

  ‘We sure do,’ he said. ‘Never travel without it.’

  ‘Can’t we pour some in the radiator …?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘We can. There’s two gallons. We can pour in a quarter, and go three miles maybe before it’s all leaked out, and then another quarter, another three miles. Four quarts, twelve miles. And that’s it.’

  Thirteen miles out from Kingman. We could just about get back. Seven to the farm. We could refill the radiator at the farm, but Sam couldn’t set out on his two thousand mile journey with a stolen cargo in a van emptying like a dry dock.

  ‘There’s an extra gasket, of course,’ he said.

  ‘A spare one?’

  ‘Sure. Always carry a full set of spares. Never know where you’re going to need them. Universal joints, big ends, carburettors, I carry them all. Anyone with any sense does that.’

  ‘Well,’ I said in relief, ‘how long will it take you to fit the spare?’

  He laid the engine bare and considered it in the torch light.

  ‘Cylinder head gasket. Say three hours.’

  ‘Three hours!’

  ‘Won’t take much less,’ he said. ‘What do you want to do?’

  I looked at my watch. Eight-fifty. Three hours made eleven-fifty; and if we then went on to the farm and picked up the horses we couldn’t be back through Kingman until one-fifteen.

  Matt would reach Pittsville Boulevard by nine-thirty, and finish his insurance business long before ten. If he drove straight home again he would be on the farm road at midnight. If Sam changed the gasket, so would we.

  If Matt stopped to play the tables, he would be at least an hour later. His clothes had suggested he would stop. But whether for one hour or six, there was no way of telling.

  ‘Change the gasket,’ I said abruptly. ‘Then we’ll see.’

  Sam nodded philosophically. It was what he would have done in any case if the van had broken down anywhere else, and without more ado he sorted out what he wanted and started unscrewing.

  ‘Can I help?’ I said.

  He shook his head and clipped his torch on to a convenient spar to give a steady working light. There seemed to be little haste in his manner, but also no hesitation and a good deal of expertise. The heap of unplugged parts grew steadily on a square of canvas at his feet.

  I walked away a few steps and felt for the cigarettes. Two left. I’d still forgotten to buy more. The smoke didn’t help much towards making the next decision: to go on, or to go back.

  I’d already gambled on Matt staying to play. If it had been Yola, I would have felt surer that it would be for most of the night: but her brother might not have the fever, might only want a short break in his boring stint with the horses. How short? How long?

  The decision I came to, if you could call it that, was to wait and see what time Sam restarted the engine.

  The night, outside the bright pool by the van, was as dark as the one before. The stars glittered remotely, and the immensity of the American continent marked their indifference to the human race. Against such size, what did one man matter? A walk into the desert …

  Carefully I pinched out the end of my cigarette and put the stub in my pocket. A good criminal, I thought wryly: I’d always been that. I had a job to do, and even when I’d finished it, I was going for no walks into the desert. I was going back to Santa Barbara, to have breakfast with Walt and Eunice and Lynnie. The prospect at that moment seemed totally unreal, so far were the Arizona hills from the lush coast, so far had I been into the wasteland inside me.

  I went back to Sam and asked how it was going. He had the cylinder head off and was removing the cracked gasket.

  ‘So, so,’ he said calmly.
‘I’m breaking the record.’

  I did my best at a smile. He grunted, and said he could do with a cup of coffee, and I said so could I. We hadn’t brought any.

  He worked on. The air was still warmer than an English summer and he wiped sweat off his bald forehead with the back of a greasy hand. The light shone on his thick stubby fingers, and the click of his spanners echoed across the empty land. The hands on my watch went round in slow fractions. The gasket was wasting the night. And where was Matt?

  After two hours Sam’s spanner slipped on a nut and he cursed. In spite of his calm, the tension wasn’t far from the surface. He stopped what he was doing, stretched upright, took three deep breaths and a look at the night sky, and waited for me to say something.

  ‘You’re doing fine,’ I said.

  He sniffed. ‘What’ll happen if they catch us here?’

  ‘We won’t get the horses.’

  He grimaced at my non-answer and went back to his task. ‘What have you been doing all day?’

  ‘Nothing. Sitting still.’

  ‘You look half dead,’ he commented. ‘Pass me those two washers, will you?’

  I gave him the washers. ‘How much longer?’

  ‘Can’t say.’

  I stifled the urge to tell him to hurry. He was going as fast as he could. But time was ticking away, and the postponed decision had got to be made. Turning my back on the tugging desert I climbed up to sit in the cab. Eleven-twenty. Matt could be a bare quarter of an hour out from Kingman. Or glued to the green baize and the tricky numbers in Las Vegas.

  Which?

  For a long half hour I looked out of the back windows while no helpful telepathic messages flowed through them. A straightforward gamble, I thought. Just decide if the winnings were worth the risk.

  An easier decision if I’d come alone: but if I’d come alone I couldn’t have mended the gasket.

  At eleven-forty Sam said gloomily that he was having to fix the water pump as well. It was sticking.