Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [29]
“I’m sorry,” Odd said.
“It was a long time ago.”
“Not that long, though.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes, not long enough by half. I loved that girl.”
I waited for Odd to return the sentiment, but he held silent.
Karl went on, “If I knew who did that to Jeannie, I’d kill him with my bare hands.”
Minus two fingers. I asked him, “If she didn’t dump you for James, who then?”
“You guys want a Coke?”
We said we did. With the sun out it was getting a little warm for late May, sixty-one, two, degrees.
He took off his cap again and stuffed it back into his pocket. It seemed to be his emotional abacus. He opened up the Coke machine with a key and pulled out three cold ones. We took them to a log bench down by the main road, put there I supposed for customers to sit and watch the traffic go by as they waited for their own rides to be serviced. Odd and I took the bench, Karl sat on a large painted white rock, his back to the southeastern flow of traffic, of which there was precious little, and not a bit more in the opposite direction, but what little there was slowed down to have a better look at us.
“Jeannie was, how do I put this…?” he said. “She matured earlier than a lot of us, earlier than me, for sure. We were crazy in love, from the end of our junior year, through the summer. She was ready, you know.”
“Ready for what?” I asked.
“She was sexually ready. One night, in my father’s car, she just went and put her hand on my…I almost went through the roof. It was the sixties and everybody was doing it or talking about doing it or talking about how many times they’d already done it, but I was scared, frankly. I worried that I’d be too small, that I’d be too fast, too awkward all down the line, if you know what I mean.”
I was surprised to hear a man my age recollect his youth in this way. At the same time I was dying to crack wise to Odd about what a slut he was in his former life, but I kept it zipped.
Odd said, “Do you still get the hiccups when you’re nervous?
Karl got them right then and there, had to put down his Coke, almost brought some of it up.
I patted him on the back and said, “It’s a trick he does, don’t let it rattle you.”
It wouldn’t rattle you, if someone knew about every idiosyncracy? I urged him to go on, and finally he was able to, keeping one eye on Odd.
“What scared me most was the risk of losing her. I thought that if we did it, and it was bad, I would lose her, but if we didn’t do it, and we had more time for her to, you know, get attached to my other qualities, we would have a better future together.”
I was beginning to like this grease monkey. “So what did you do?”
“I moved her hand away and said pretty much what I just said to you, and that if we loved each other we’d get to that when the time was right.”
He was hiccuping all the way, until I said, “You were a sensible young man.” After that, he wasn’t nervous anymore, just regretful.
“I was an idiot. If I had done what she wanted, she might not have left me for someone who would, and it was that person who killed her. She might be alive today, if…. And me? Who knows? The only lesson I learned was, never refuse a willing woman.”
“That’s a fairly stupid lesson,” I said.
“I won’t argue it. But that’s how I’ve lived my life. Married three of those willing women. Only because they asked me. Cheated on every one of them.”
“You are an idiot.”
“Yeah, but I’m not a murderer. Life could have been different, if only…”
“So who was this guy, then?”
“I wish I knew, because he’s the one who murdered her. He murdered her because she dumped him for James.”
“That one,” said Odd, “was the man who taught her about making love, but that was all she wanted from him. She couldn’t know all that he would want from her.”
Karl Gutshall looked gut-shot. “What makes you know so much?” he said.
“It’s a long story,” said I. “Look, I’m assuming yours