In Cold Blood - Truman Capote [57]
"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 sun-drugged 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