No, we never met them.
I saw Mr. Clutter once. In the Federal Building.»
Early in December, in the course of a single afternoon, two of the cafe’s steadiest customers
announced plans to pack up and leave not merely Finney County but the state. The first was a
tenant farmer who worked for Lester McCoy, a well-known western-Kansas landowner and
businessman. He said, «I had my-self a talk with Mr. McCoy. Tried to let him know what’s going
on out here in Holcomb and here abouts. How a body can’t sleep. My wife can’t sleep, and she
won’t allow me. So I told Mr. McCoy I like his place fine but he better hunt up another man.
‘Count if we’re movin’ on. Down to east Colorado. Maybe then I’ll get some rest.»
The second announcement was made by Mrs. Hideo Ashida, who stopped by the cafe» with three
of her four red-cheeked children. She lined them up at the counter and told Mrs. Hartman, «Give
Bruce a box of Cracker Jack. Bobby wants a Coke. Bonnie Jean? We know how you feel, Bonnie
Jean, but come on, have a treat.» Bonnie Jean shook her head, and Mrs. Ashida said, «Bonnie
Jean’s sort of blue. She don’t want to leave here. The school here. And all her friends.»
«Why, say,» said Mrs. Hartman, smiling at Bonnie Jean. «That’s nothing to be sad over.
Transferring from Holcomb to Garden City High. Lots more boys — «
Bonnie Jean said, «You don’t understand. Daddy’s taking us away. To Nebraska.»
Bess Hartman looked at the mother, as if expecting her to deny the daughter’s allegation. «It’s
true, Bess,» Mrs. Ashida said.
«I don’t know what to say,» said Mrs. Hartman, her voice indignantly astonished, and also
despairing. The Ashidas were a part of the Holcomb community everyone appreciated — a family
likably high-spirited, yet hard-working and neighborly and generous, though they didn’t have
much to be generous with.
Mrs. Ashida said, «We’ve been talking on it a long time. Hideo, he thinks we can do better
somewhere else.» «When you plan to go?»
«Soon as we sell up. But anyway not before Christmas. On account of a deal we’ve worked out
with the dentist. About Hideo’s Christmas present. Me and the kids, we’re giving him three gold
teeth. For Christmas.»
Mrs. Hartman sighed. «I don’t know what to say. Except I wish you wouldn’t. Just up and leave
us.» She sighed again. «Seems like we’re losing everybody. One way and another.»
«Gosh, you think I want to leave?» Mrs. Ashida said. «Far as people go, this is the nicest place we
ever lived. But Hideo, he’s the man, and he says we can get a better farm in Nebraska. And I’ll tell
you something, Bess.» Mrs. Ashida attempted a frown, but her plump, round, smooth face could
not quite manage It. «We used to argue about it. Then one night I said, ‘O.K., you’re the boss, let’s
go.’ After what happened to Herb and his family, I felt something around here had come to an
end. I mean personally. For me. And so I quit arguing. I said O.K.» She dipped a hand into
Bruce’s box of Cracker Jack. «Gosh, I can’t get over it. I can’t get it off my mind. I liked Herb. Did
you know I was one of the last to see him alive? Uh-huh. Me and the kids. We been to the 4-H
meeting in Garden City and he gave us a ride home. The last thing I said to Herb, I told him how I
couldn’t imagine his ever being afraid. That no matter what the situation was, he could talk his
way out of it.» Thoughtfully she nibbled a kernel of Cracker Jack, took a swig of Bobby’s Coke,
then said, «Funny, but you know, Bess, I’ll bet he wasn’t afraid. I mean, however it happened, I’ll bet right up to the last he didn’t believe it would. Because it couldn’t. Not to him.»
The sun was blazing. A small boat was riding at anchor in a mild sea: the Estrellita, with four
persons aboard — Dick, Perry, a young Mexican, and Otto, a rich middle-aged German.
«Please. Again,» said Otto, and Perry, strumming his guitar, sang in a husky sweet voice a Smoky
Mountains song:
«In this world today while we’re living
Some folks say the worst of us they can,
But when we’re dead and in our caskets,
They always slip some lilies in our hand.
Won’t you give me flowers while I’m living . . .»
A week in Mexico City, and then he and Dick had driven south — Cuernavaca, Taxco, Acapulco.
And it was in Acapulco, in a «jukebox honky-tonk,» that they had met the hairy-legged and hearty
Otto. Dick had «picked him up.» But the gentleman, a vacationing Hamburg lawyer, «already had a
friend» — a young native Acapulcan who called himself the Cowboy.* «He proved to be a
trustworthy person,» Perry once said of the Cowboy. «Mean as Judas, some ways, but oh, man, a
funny boy, a real fast jockey. Dick liked him, too. We got on great.»
The Cowboy found for the tattooed drifters a room in the house of an uncle, undertook to improve
Perry’s Spanish, and shared the benefits of his liaison with the holiday maker from Hamburg, in
whose company and at whose expense they drank and ate and bought women. The host seemed
to think his pesos well spent, if only because he relished Dick’s jokes. Each day Otto hired the
Estrellita, a deep-sea-fishing craft, and the four friends went trolling along the coast. The Cowboy
skippered the boat; Otto sketched and fished; Perry baited hooks, daydreamed, sang, and
sometimes fished; Dick did nothing — only moaned, complained of the motion, lay about sundrugged and listless, like a lizard at siesta. But Perry said, «This is finally it. The way it ought to
be.» Still, he knew that it couldn’t continue — that it was, in fact, destined to stop that very day. The
next day Otto was returning to Germany, and Perry and Dick were driving back to Mexico City — at
Dick’s insistence. «Sure, baby,» he’d said when they were debating the matter. «It’s nice and all.
With the sun on your back. But the dough’s going-going-gone. And after we’ve sold the car, what
have we got left?»
The answer was that they had very little, for they had by now mostly disposed of the stuff
acquired the day of the Kansas City check-passing spree — the camera, the cuff links, the
television sets. Also, they had sold, to a Mexico City policeman with whom Dick had got
acquainted, a pair of binoculars and a gray Zenith portable radio. «What we’ll do is, we’ll go back
to Mex, sell the car, and maybe I can get a garage job. Anyway, it’s a better deal up there. Better
opportunities. Christ, I sure could use some more of that Inez.» Inez was a prostitute who had
accosted Dick on the steps of the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City (the visit was part of a
sightseeing tour taken to please Perry). She was eighteen, and Dick had promised to marry her.
But he had also promised to marry Maria, a woman of fifty, who was the widow of a «very
prominent Mexican banker.» They had met in a bar, and the next morning she had paid him the
equivalent of seven dollars. «So how about it?» Dick said to Perry. «We’ll sell the wagon. Find a
job. Save our dough. And see what happens.» As though Perry couldn’t predict precisely what
would happen.
Suppose they got two or three hundred for the old Chevrolet. Dick, if he knew Dick, and he did now he did — would spend it right away on vodka and women.
While Perry sang, Otto sketched him in a sketchbook. It was a passable likeness, and the artist
perceived one not very obvious aspect of the sitter’s countenance — its mischief, an amused,
babyish malice that suggested some unkind cupid aiming envenomed arrows. He was naked to
the waist. (Perry was «ashamed» to take off his trousers, «ashamed» to wear swimming trunks, for
he was afraid that the sight of his injured legs would «disgust people,» and so, despite his
underwater reveries, all the talk about skin-diving, he hadn’t once gone into the water.) Otto
reproduced a number of the tattoos ornamenting the subject’s over muscled chest, arms, and
small and calloused but girlish hands. The sketch-book, which Otto gave Perry as a parting gift,
contained several drawings of Dick — «nude studies.»
Otto shut his sketchbook, Perry put down his guitar, and the Cowboy raised anchor, started the
engine. It was time to go. They were ten miles out, and the water was darkening. Perry urged Dick to fish. «We may never have another chance,» he said.
«Chance?»
«To catch a big one.»
«Jesus, I’ve got the bastard kind,» Dick said. «I’m sick.» Dick often had headaches of migraine
intensity — «the bastard kind. «He thought they were the result of his automobile accident. «Please,
baby. Let’s be very, very quiet.»
Moments later Dick had forgotten his pain. He was on his feet, shouting with excitement. Otto and
the Cowboy were shouting, too. Perry had hooked «a big one.» Ten feet of soaring, plunging
sailfish, it leaped, arched like a rainbow, dived, sank deep, tugged the line taut, rose, flew, fell,
rose. An hour passed, and part of another, before the sweat-soaked sportsman reeled it in.
There is an old man with an ancient wooden box camera who hangs around the harbor in
Acapulco, and when the Estrellita docked, Otto commissioned him to do six portraits of Perry
posed beside his catch. Technically, the old man’s work turned out badly — brown and streaked.
Still, they were remarkable photographs, and what made them so was Perry’s expression, his
look of unflawed fulfillment, of beatitude, as though at last, and as in one of his dreams, a tall
yellow bird had hauled him to heaven.
One December afternoon Paul Helm was pruning the patch of floral odds and ends that had
entitled Bonnie Clutter to membership in the Garden