of jelly beans;
munching, he wandered back to the car and lounged there watching the young attendant’s efforts
to rid the windshield of Kansas dust and the slime of battered insects. The attendant, whose
name was James Spor, felt uneasy. Dick’s eyes and sullen expression and Perry’s strange,
prolonged sojourn in the lavatory disturbed him. (The next day he reported to his employer, «We
had some tough customers in here last night,» but he did not think, then or for the longest while,
to connect the visitors with the tragedy in Holcomb.) Dick said, «Kind of slow around here.»
«Sure is,» James Spor said. «You’re the only body stopped here since two hours. Where you
coming from?» «Kansas City.»
«Here to hunt?»
«Just passing through. On our way to Arizona. We got jobs waiting there. Construction work. Any
idea the mileage between here and Tucumcari, New Mexico?»
«Can’t say I do. Three dollars six cents.» He accepted Dick’s money, made change, and said,
«You’ll excuse me, sir? I’m doing a job. Putting a bumper on a truck.»
Dick waited, ate some jelly beans, impatiently gunned the motor, sounded the horn. Was it
possible that he had misjudged Perry’s character? That Perry, of all people, was suffering a
sudden case of «blood bubbles»? A year ago, when they first encountered each other, he’d
thought Perry «a good guy,» if a bit stuck on himself, «sentimental,» too much «the dreamer.» He
had liked him but not considered him especially worth cultivating until, one day, Perry described a
murder, telling how, simply for the hell of it,» he had killed a colored man in Las Vegas — beaten
him to death with a bicycle chain. The anecdote elevated Dick’s
opinion of Little Perry; he began to see more of him, and, like Willie-Jay, though for dissimilar
reasons, gradually decided that Perry possessed unusual and valuable qualities. Several
murderers, or men who boasted of murder or their willingness to commit it, circulated inside
Lansing; but Dick became convinced that Perry was that rarity, «a natural killer» — absolutely sane,
but conscienceless, and capable of dealing, with or without motive, the coldest-blooded
deathblows. It was Dick’s theory that such a gift could, under his supervision, be profitably
exploited. Having reached this conclusion, he had proceeded to woo Perry, flatter him — pretend,
for example, that he believed all the buried-treasure stuff and shared his beachcomber yearnings
and seaport longings, none of which appealed to Dick, who wanted «a regular life,» with a
business of his own, a house, a horse to ride, a new car, and «plenty of blond chicken. «It was
important, however, that Perry not suspect this — not until Perry, with his gift, had helped further
Dick’s ambitions. But perhaps it was Dick who had miscalculated, been duped; if so — if it
developed that Perry was, after all, only an «ordinary punk» — then «the party» was over, the
months of planning were wasted, there was nothing to do but turn and go. It mustn’t happen; Dick
returned to the station.
The door to the men’s room was still bolted. He banged on it: «For Christ sake, Perry!»
«In a minute.» .
«What’s the matter? You sick?»
Perry gripped the edge of the wash basin and hauled himself to a standing position. His legs
trembled; the pain in his knees made him perspire. He wiped his face with a paper towel. He
unlocked the door and said, «O.K. Let’s go.»
Nancy’s bedroom was the smallest, most personal room in the house — girlish, and as frothy as a
ballerina’s tutu. Walls, ceiling, and everything else except a bureau and a writing desk, were pink
or blue or white. The white-and-pink bed, piled with blue pillows, was dominated by a big pinkand-white Teddy bear — a shooting-gallery prize that Bobby had won at the county fair. A cork bulletin board, painted pink, hung above a white-skirted dressing table; dry gardenias, the
remains of some ancient corsage, were attached to it, and old valentines, newspaper recipes,
and snapshots of her baby nephew and of Susan Kidwell and of Bobby Rupp, Bobby caught in a
dozen actions — swinging a bat, dribbling a basketball, driving a tractor, wading, in bathing trunks,
at the edge of McKinney Lake (which was as far as he dared go, for he had never learned to
swim). And there were photographs of the two together — Nancy and Bobby. Of these, she liked
best one that showed them sitting in a leaf-dappled light amid picnic debris and looking at one
another with expressions that, though unsmiling, seemed mirthful and full of delight. Other
pictures, of horses, of cats deceased but unforgotten — like «poor Boobs,» who had died not long
ago and most mysteriously (she suspected poison) — encumbered her desk.
Nancy was invariably the last of the family to retire; as she had once informed her friend and
home-economics teacher, Mrs. Polly Stringer, the midnight hours were her «time to be selfish and
vain.» It was then that she went through her beauty routine, a cleansing, creaming ritual, which on
Saturday nights included washing her hair. Tonight, having dried and brushed her hair and bound
it in a gauzy bandanna, she set out the clothes she intended to wear to church the next morning:
nylons, black pumps, a red velveteen dress — her prettiest, which she herself had made. It was the
dress in which she was to be buried.
Before saying her prayers, she always recorded in a diary a few occurrences («Summer here.
Forever, I hope. Sue over and we rode Babe down to the river. Sue played her flute. Fireflies»)
and an occasional outburst («I love him, I do»). It was a five-year diary; in the four years of its
existence she had never neglected to make an entry, though the splendor of several events
(Eveanna’s wedding, the birth of her nephew) and the drama of others (her first REAL quarrel
with Bobby» — a page literally tear-stained) had caused her to usurp space allotted to the future. A
different tinted ink identified each year: 1956 was green and 1957 a ribbon of red, replaced the
following year by bright lavender, and now, in 1959, she had decided upon a dignified blue. But
as in every manifestation, she continued to tinker with her handwriting, slanting it to the right or to
the left, shaping it roundly or steeply, loosely or stingily — as though she were asking, «Is this
Nancy? Or that? Or that? Which is me?» (Once Mrs. Riggs, her English teacher, had returned a
theme with a scribbled comment: «Good. But why written in three styles of script?» To which
Nancy had replied: «Because I’m not grown-up enough to be one person with one kind of
signature.») Still, she had progressed in recent months, and it was in a handwriting of emerging
maturity that she wrote, «Jolene K. came over and I showed her how to make a cherry pie.
Practiced with Roxie. Bobby here and we watched TV. Left at eleven.»
This is it, this is it, this has to be it, there’s the school, there’s the garage, now we turn south.» To
Perry, it seemed as though Dick were muttering jubilant mumbo-jumbo. They left the highway,
sped through a deserted Holcomb, and crossed the Santa Fe tracks. «The bank, that must be the
bank, now we turn west — see the trees? This is it, this has to be it.» The headlights disclosed a
lane of Chinese elms; bundles of wind-blown thistle scurried across it. Dick doused the
headlights, slowed down, and stopped until his eyes were adjusted to the moon-illuminated night.
Presently, the car crept forward.
Holcomb is twelve miles east of the mountain time-zone border, a circumstance that causes
some grumbling, for it means that at seven in the morning, and in winter at eight or after, the sky
is still dark and the stars, if any, are still shining — as they were when the two sons of Vie Irsik
arrived to do their Sunday-morning chores. But by nine, when the boys finished work — during
which they noticed nothing amiss — the sun had risen, delivering another day of pheasant-season
perfection. As they left the property and ran along the lane, they waved at an incoming car, and a
girl waved back. She was a classmate of Nancy Clutter’s, and her name was also Nancy — Nancy
Ewalt. She was the only child of the man who was driving the car, Mr. Clarence Ewalt, a middleaged sugar-beet farmer. Mr. Ewalt was not himself a churchgoer, nor was his wife, but every
Sunday he dropped his daughter at River Valley Farm in order that she might accompany the
Clutter family to Methodist services in Garden City. The arrangement saved him «making two
back-and-forth trips to town.» It was his custom to wait until he had seen his daughter safely
admitted to the house. Nancy, a clothes-conscious girl with a film-star figure, a bespectacled
countenance, and a coy, tiptoe way of walking, crossed the lawn and pressed the front-door bell. The house had four entrances, and when, after repeated knockings, there was no response at
this one, she moved on to the next — that of Mr. Clutter’s office. Here the door was partly open;
she opened it somewhat more — enough to ascertain that the office was filled only with shadow but she did not think the Clutters would appreciate her «barging right in.» She knocked, rang, and
at last walked around to the back of the house. The garage was there, and she noted that both
cars were in it: two Chevrolet sedans. Which meant they must be home. However, having applied
unavailingly at a third door, which led into a «utility room,» and a fourth, the door to the kitchen,
she rejoined her father, who said, «Maybe they’re asleep.»
«But that’s impossible. Can you imagine Mr. Clutter missing church? Just to sleep?»
«Come on, then. We’ll drive down to the Teacherage. Susan ought to know what’s happened.»
The Teacherage, which stands opposite the up-to-date school, is an out-of-date edifice, drab and
poignant. Its twenty-odd rooms
are separated into grace-and-favor apartments for those members