An Eye for an Eye Read Online Free PDF

the way a drowning man gulps air. The liquor hit him like a big fist. It dazed him for a minute and then it took hold and steadied him.
    I got it figured, he thought, looking at the brown fields and the bare trees with the sun on them. This is the way. There’s always time for the other if they push me into it. Always time.
    Slowly and sedately he turned the car around and drove back, feeling as though he were made of iron.
    The doctor’s house on this side of Forbes’ was set lower in a dip of the ground and there were trees between. The way the two houses were built you couldn’t see what was going on at Forbes’ back door from the doctor’s place at all. Pettits could, but there was nobody home. Al approached the Forbes driveway. And now he was cool and strong, not excited at all. Everything was right, everything was his way. There was not even a car in sight on the road when he turned in.
    He pulled all the way to the back, letting the car roll easy. Then he set the brake and got out. The motor was still running. He tilted the seat forward and lifted the baskets of potatoes from the floor in the back, making sure that the hinge of the wide door caught right so it would stay open. Carrying a basket in each hand, he went to the kitchen door, which was set in the back wall of the house so as not to show from the road.
    He set the baskets down and knocked.
    She opened the door.
    She looked at the baskets by his feet and then she smiled and shook her head and said, “No, I don’t need—”
    He hit her on the jaw. He could knock a big man out with one punch if the man was set up for it. He caught her as she sagged down. There was still no one in sight on the road. He hauled her fast to the car and hustled her onto the floor in the back, and now his head was hot and pounding again and his hands shook because he knew he had to hurry. Hurry. The tape was all ready on the seat. Tear it. Over the mouth. Around the wrists. Around the ankles. Christ, she’s squirming around, didn’t I hit her hard enough? Hit her again. Hit—Good. That’s good. Now the blanket.
    Now.
    He was halfway into the car before he remembered the potatoes. He ran back to the door. It was standing open, and he struck the flat edge of his hand behind the knob and yanked it shut. Then he picked up the baskets, shoved them onto the floor in the front, and backed out of the drive, onto the quiet peaceful empty road.
    And it was as easy as that.

 
five
     
    The blow had come so fast that Carolyn had not had time to be frightened. Afterward she had not been conscious of anything until now. And the first sensation that returned to her was not fear but a dim awareness of pain and physical discomfort. She tried to move, to turn over and stretch out. But she was in a narrow place, too narrow, and her arms and legs were caught.
    A narrow place.
    Where?
    I must have fallen, she thought. Hit my head. It hurts. Oh, Ben, Ben, what have I done to myself? Ben, come help me.
    There was something over her mouth. There was a smell, one she knew, and yet it wasn’t familiar either.
    Where was she?
    A picture of the kitchen came to her. Herself moving around in it. Getting lunch. Eating it. Washing the dishes, tidying up. Then what?
    The floor. She had swept the floor. She saw the pattern of the linoleum very clearly with the bristles of the broom going over it. They were shiny red bristles, some new kind of plastic. She had finished sweeping and hung the broom and dustpan away and then that car had driven in and she had thought, Another one of those peddlers. She had seen him take baskets out of the back of the car and she had thought, If he has good apples I’ll take some. And she had opened the door, but they were potatoes he had in the baskets and—
    And—
    No, that’s crazy. I’m just dreaming that, making it up. I went back into the house and slipped and fell—
    But I didn’t. I didn’t, I didn’t, I—
    She made a noise. It would have been quite a loud