So he had sent the story.
And they had accepted it.
And he had let them accept it.
And they sent him a check for twenty-five dollars. ‘An honorarium,’ the accompanying letter had called it.
And then they had published it.
And Morton Rainey, overcome by belated guilt at what he had done, had cashed the check and had stuffed the bills into the poor box of St Catherine’s in Augusta one day.
But guilt hadn’t been all he’d felt. Oh no.
Mort sat at the kitchen table with his head propped in one hand, waiting for the coffee to perk. His head ached. He didn’t want to be thinking about John Kintner and John Kintner’s story. What he had done with
‘Crowfoot Mile’ had been one of the most shameful events of his life; was it really surprising that he had buried it for so many years? He wished he could bury it again now. This, after all, was going to be a big day – maybe the biggest of his life. Maybe even the last of his life. He should be thinking about going to the
post office. He should be thinking about his confrontation with Shooter, but his mind would not let that sad old time alone.
When he’d seen the magazine, the actual magazine with his name in it above John Kintner’s story, he felt like a man waking from a horrible episode of sleepwalking, an unconscious outing in which he has done some irrevocable thing. How had he let it go so far? It was supposed to have been a joke, for Christ’s sake, just a little giggle
But he had let it go so far. The story had been published, and there were at least a dozen other people in the world who knew it wasn’t his – including Kintner himself. And if one of them happened to pick up Aspen Quarterly
He himself told no one – of course. He simply waited, sick with terror. He slept and ate very little that late summer and early fall; he lost weight and dark shadows brushed themselves under his eyes. His heart began to triphammer every time the telephone rang. If the call was for him, he would approach the instrument with dragging feet and cold sweat on his brow, sure it would be Kintner, and the first words out of Kintner’s mouth would be, You stole my story, and something has got to be done about it. I think I’ll start by telling everybody what kind of thief you are.
The most incredible thing was this: he had known better. He had known the possible consequences of such an act for a young man who hoped to make a career of writing. It was like playing Russian roulette with a bazooka. Yet still … still …
But as that fall slipped uneventfully past, he began to relax a little. The issue of Aspen Quarterly had been replaced by a new issue. The issue was no longer lying out on tables in library periodical rooms all across the country; it had been tucked away into the stacks or transferred to microfiche. It might still cause trouble
– he bleakly supposed he would have to live with that possibility for the rest of his life – but in most cases, out of sight meant out of mind.
Then, in November of that year, a letter from Aspen Quarterly came.
Mort held it in his hands, looking at his name on the envelope, and began to shake all over. His eyes filled with some liquid that felt too hot and corrosive to be tears, and the envelope first doubled and then trebled.
Caught. They caught me. They’ll want me to respond to a letter they have from Kintner … or Perkins … or one of the others in the class … I’m caught.
He had thought of suicide then – quite calmly and quite rationally. His mother had sleeping pills. He would use those. Somewhat eased by this prospect, he tore the envelope open and pulled out a single sheet of stationery. He held it folded in one hand for a long moment and considered burning it without even looking at it. He wasn’t sure he could stand to see the accusation held baldly up in front of him. He thought it might drive him mad.
Go ahead, dammit – look. The least you can do is look at the consequences. You may not be able to stand up to them, but you can by-God look at them.
He unfolded the letter.
Dear Mort Rainey,
Your short story, ‘Eye of the Crow,’ was extremely well received here. I’m sorry this follow-up letter has been so slow in coming, but, frankly, we expected to hear from you. You have been so faithful in your submissions over the years that your silence now that you have finally succeeded in ‘making it’ is a little
perplexing. If there was anything about the way your story was handled – typesetting, design, placement, etc. – that you didn’t like, we hope you’ll bring it up. Meantime, how about another tale?
Respectfully yours,
Charlie
Charles Palmer
Assistant Editor
Mort had read this letter twice, and then began to peal hoarse bursts of laughter at the house, which was luckily empty. He had heard of side-splitting laughter, and this was surely it – he felt that if he didn’t stop soon, his sides really would split, and send his guts spewing out all over the floor. He had been ready to kill himself with his mother’s sleeping pills, and they wanted to know if he was upset with the way the story had been typeset! He had expected to find that his career was ruined even before it was fairly begun, and they wanted more! More!
He laughed – howled, actually – until his side-splitting laughter turned to hysterical tears. Then he sat on the sofa, reread Charles Palmer’s letter, and cried until he laughed again. At last he had gone into his room and lain down with the pillows arranged behind him just the way he liked, and then he had fallen asleep.
He had gotten away with it. That was the upshot. He had gotten away with it, and he had never done anything even remotely like it again, and it had all happened about a thousand years ago, and so why had it come back to haunt him now?
He didn’t know, but he intended to stop thinking about it.
‘And right now, too,’ he told the empty room, and walked briskly over to the coffeemaker, trying to ignore his aching head.
You know why you’re thinking about it now.
‘Shut up.’ He spoke in a conversational tone which was rather cheery … but his hands were shaking as he picked up the Silex.
Some things you can’t hide forever. You might be ill, Mort.
‘Shut up, I’m warning you,’ he said in his cheery conversational voice.
You might be very ill. In fact, you might be having a nervous br…
‘Shut up!’ he cried, and threw the Silex as hard as he could. It sailed over the counter, flew across the room, turning over and over as it went, crunched into the window-wall, shattered, and fell dead on the floor. He looked at the window-wall and saw a long, silvery crack zig-zagging up to the top. It started at the place where the Silex had impacted. He felt very much like a man who might have a similar crack running right through the middle of his brain.
But the voice had shut up.
He walked stolidly into the bedroom, got the alarm clock, and walked back into the living room. He set the alarm for ten-thirty as he walked. At ten-thirty he was going to go to the post office, pick up his Federal Express package, and go stolidly about the task of putting this nightmare behind him.
In the meantime, though, he would sleep.
He would sleep on the couch, where he had always slept best.
‘I am not having a nervous breakdown,’ he whispered to the little voice, but the little voice was having none of the argument. Mort thought that he might have frightened the little voice. He hoped so, because the little voice had certainly frightened him.
His eyes found the silvery crack in the window-wall and traced it dully. He thought of using the chambermaid’s key. How the room had been dim, and it had taken his eyes a moment to adjust. Their naked shoulders. Their frightened eyes. He had been shouting, He couldn’t remember what – and had never dared to ask Amy – but it must have been some scary shit, judging from the look in their eyes.
If I was ever going to have a nervous breakdown, he thought, looking at the lightning-bolt senselessness of the crack, it would have been then. Hell, that letter from Aspen Quarterly was nothing compared to opening a motel-room door and seeing your wife with another man, a slick real-estate agent from some shitsplat little town in Tennessee