The Kill-Off Read Online Free PDF Page A

all the other estates. I made them all, just taking “no” for an answer at first, and then arguing and finally begging. And, of course, it was the same story everywhere. I was just wasting my breath and my time. They were sorry, sure; most of ’em said they were, anyhow. But Bobbie Ashton had asked for the work, and Doc Ashton was an influential man—and he treated most of them—so Bobbie was going to get it.
    It was noon by the time I’d gone to the last place I could go to. I drove down to the beach and ate the lunch I’d packed that morning. Gulping it down, not really tasting it.
    Twenty-five years, I thought. Twenty-five years, but no, a man like me would probably live a lot longer than that. Thirty-five or forty, probably. Maybe even fifty or sixty. Fifty or sixty years with everything going out and nothing coming in!
    Yes, there was a little work around town, for the local residents, you know. But it wasn’t worth bothering with. Just fifty cents here and a dollar there. Anyway, the kids had it all sewed up.
    I wondered if it would do any good for me to talk to Bobbie, but I didn’t wonder long. He’d made up his mind to run me out of town—to get back at Luane through me.
    Doc Ashton settled here a little short of seventeen years ago. His wife had died in childbirth, so he had this Negro wet nurse for Bobbie, the woman who still works for them as housekeeper. Doc was quite a young man then. The woman was young, too—in fact, she’s still fairly young—and pretty good-looking, besides.
    Well, Bobbie was sick when he got here, the colic or something. And he no sooner got over that than he was hit by something else. Every disease you ever heard of practically, why Bobbie had it. One right after another. Year after year. He couldn’t play with other kids, couldn’t go to school; he was hardly out of the house for almost twelve years. Then, finally, I guess because he’d had every blamed sickness there was to get, he didn’t get any more. He began to shoot up and broaden out. All at once, he was just about the healthiest, huskiest—and handsomest—kid you ever saw in your life. And smart! You couldn’t believe a kid could be that smart, and probably you won’t find many that are.
    I suppose he got a lot of it from all those books he’d read when he couldn’t do anything else. But there was plenty more to Bobbie’s smartness than book-learning. He just seemed to have been born with a head on him, a head with all the answers. He could do things without being told how or reading about ’em, or maybe even hearing of ’em before. Not just lessons, you know, but anything!
    He went through eight grades of grammar school in a year. He went through high school in a year and a half. At least he could have gone through, if he hadn’t dropped out the last semester. Now, it didn’t look like he’d be going to college; he wouldn’t be studying to be a doctor. And how Doc Ashton would be feeling about that, I hated to think.
     
    I wadded up my lunch sack and put it in a trash basket. Then, I got a drink of water from one of the picnicker fountains, and drove up to the dance pavilion.
    The big front doors were swung open. I went inside, circled around in front of the bandstand, and stopped in the doorway of Pete Pavlov’s office. He was at his desk, bent over some papers. He glanced up, squirted a stream of tobacco into a spittoon and bent back over the papers again.
    He’s one of those round-faced, square-built men. About fifty, I guess. He wore khaki pants with both a belt and suspenders, and a blue work shirt with a black bow tie. His hair was parted on the side, and there was a blob of shaving soap up around one of the temples.
    I waited. I began to get a little uneasy, even though I was practically sure that I had a job with him for the summer. Because any time Pete Pavlov could do anything to annoy people in Manduwoc, he was just about certain to do it. I mean, he’d go out of his way to get under