The Nothing Man by Jim Thompson Read Free Book Online Page A

does a little it'll still be better than this. I just can't go on like-"
    "No," I said. "You can't, and you won't."
    And I brought the bottle down on her head.
    I stood looking down at her, and my head swam and I weaved slowly on my feet. The wetness and the exertion and the long talk were sobering me, and when I sobered I became drunk. Far drunker than any amount of whisky could make me. All my sureness was gone, and the ten thousand parts of an insane puzzle were scattered to the winds.
    She lay, twitching a bit and moaning, with her head and shoulders slumping toward her knees, her thighs in a tangent curve to her legs. A question mark. She was a question, and she had to be answered.
    Had it been necessary?
    Or had I done it because I wanted to?
    Was every move I made, as Dave Randall had once angrily declared, designed to extract payment from the world for the hell I dwelt in? Had I tried to destroy slowly and, failing that, killed wantonly?
    It was a nice question. It was something to think about on these long rainy evenings.
    I took another stiff drink.
    The terrible sobriety-drunkenness, with its terrible questions, began to fade. I slid back into the sideways world. This was the way it was, and the way it was was this.
    Yet it was hard to leave her like this. Something seemed to need doing, some small thing. Something she'd always wanted, perhaps, without conscious awareness of the want.
    I could think of only one thing.
    I pulled the sheet over her now semi-conscious body. I upended the bottle of whisky and sprinkled it over the sheet. I jerked several matches from a pad and struck them.
    "You said to," I said. "Remember, Ellen? You always said to burn you up…"
    And I let the matches fall.

6
    It was still pitch dark outside, still raining a downpour, but the wind was dying and the worst of the storm seemed to be over. I pushed the boat into the bay and hopped in. I started to row. And then, slowly, I let the oars slide out of my hands and drift away into the darkness… Let the boat decide, I thought. Leave it to the ocean. They brought me here; now, they can return me. Or not return me. I wash my hands of all responsibility.
    I leaned back across the thwarts, letting my fingers trail in the water. I closed my eyes, feeling the boat rock and roll, feeling it turn round and round gently as it moved out into the bay. It was very peaceful for a time. Very restful. I had had nothing to do with anything, and now I had nothing to do with this. I was a man following orders, cleareyed, clear-thinking, and if those orders had led me-led me…
    _She had looked very beautiful. She had glowed, oh, but definitely she had glowed. She had been all lit up, burning with a clear-blue flame, and then the mattress had started to smolder and_…
    I screamed but there was no sound. I was throwing up.
    The boat had begun to spin. It was caught in the trough between two tall shore-bound rollers, pulled by one and pushed by the other, and it spun faster and faster. Suddenly it reared up on end and shot to the crest of the first wave. It hung poised there for a moment, then it dropped down, spinning, to the other side.
    Tons of water plunged into it. It went down, vanished as completely as though it had never existed, and I went on. There was a thunderous roar, an incessant crashing. And then I was gripping something hard and slimy… one of the piles of the pier.
    That's the way it was to be, then. The decision had been made. I pulled myself from pile to pile until I found the ladder. I climbed up to the pier and returned to my car. I drove away.
    My house-to use the noun loosely-is some six miles north of Pacific City. Years ago it was occupied by a railroad section gang-in the days when section hands were largely itinerant Mexicans. When I discovered it, it was a lopsided ruin, headquarters seemingly for the county's population of creeping and crawling things.
    The railroad gladly rented it to me for five dollars a month. A hundred