The Best American Noir of the Century

He’d had enough. Hero Jim, standing there like a gook, like he’d never seen a gun before and didn’t know what to do about it. Now was Benny’s time to laugh, but the gun made too much noise. Nobody could have heard him laughing with all that noise. Even if Nan hadn’t started screaming. Standing there, her eyes crazy and her face like an old woman’s, just screaming and screaming and screaming. He only turned the gun on her to make her keep quiet. He didn’t mean that she should fall down and spread on the floor like Jim. She shouldn’t have dropped like Jim. She had on her good blue dress. They looked silly, the two of them, like big sawdust dolls, crumpled there on the rug. Scared to death. Scared to get up. Scared even to look at him. That’s the way a hero acted when a real guy came around. Like a girl. Like a soft, silly girl. Lying down on his face, not moving a muscle, lying on his face like a dog.

They looked like shadows, the two of them, big shadows on the rug. When the gun clicked instead of blasting, Benny stopped laughing. The room was so quiet he could hear the beat of his heart. He didn’t like it so quiet. Not at all.

He said, “Get up.” He’d had enough of their wallowing, of their being scared.

“Get up.”

He said, “You look crazy lying there. Get up.” Suddenly he shrilled it.

“Get up.”

Louder. “Get up! Get up! Get up!”

Scared to death …scared to death …

The gun made such a little noise dropping to the rug. Because his fingers couldn’t hold it. Because his fingers were soft as her hair. They couldn’t get up. They couldn’t ever get up.

Not ever.

He hadn’t meant to do it. He didn’t do it on purpose. He wouldn’t hurt Nan. He wouldn’t hurt Nan for anything in the world, he loved her.

She was his girl.

He wouldn’t hurt Nan. He wouldn’t kill — he wouldn’t kill anyone.

He hadn’t! They were doing this to get even with him. He began shouting again, “Get up! Get up!”

But his voice didn’t sound like his own voice. It was shaky like his mouth and his hands and the wet back of his neck.

“Get up!”

He heard his mouth say it and he started over to take hold of Jim and make him stop acting like he was dead.

He started.

He took one step and that was all. Because he knew. He knew whatever he said or did couldn’t make them move. They were dead, really dead.

When his mind actually spoke the word, he ran. Bolting out of the house, stumbling off the stoop down the steps to the curb. He didn’t get there too soon.

He retched.

When he was through being sick, he sat down on the curb. He was too weak to stand. He was like the leaves blowing down the street in the little moans of wind.

He was like the shadows wavering against the houses across the street.

There were lights in most of the houses. You’d think the neighbors would have heard all the noise. Would have come running out to see what was going on. They probably thought it was the radio.

They should have come. If they had come, they’d have stopped him. He didn’t want to kill anyone. He didn’t want even to kill Jim. Just to scare him off. Just give him a scare.

She couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t be, she couldn’t be, she couldn’t be. He sobbed the words into the wind and the dark and the dead brown leaves.

He sat there a long, long time. When he stood up his face was wet. He rubbed his eyes, trying to dry them so he could see where he was going.

But the rain came into them again, spilling down his cheeks, filling up, overflowing, refilling, over and over again.

He ought to go back and close the blurred door. The house would get cold with it standing wide open, letting the cold dark wind sweep through.

He couldn’t go back there. Not even for his gun.

He started down the street, not knowing where he was going, not seeing anything but the wet dark world.

He no longer feared the sound and shadow behind him.

There was no terror as bad as the hurt in his head and his heart.

As he moved on without direction he saw through the mist the pinprick of green in the night. He knew then where he was going, where he must go. The tears ran down his cheeks into his mouth. They tasted like blood.

1952 HOWARD BROWNE MAN IN THE DARK