Jordan County Read Free Page B

away but he did not notice. His face was not stiff-lipped now. He looked happy, with a peculiar glint to his eyes.
    When he had finished the coffee he rose from the booth and went up front, where the Greek stood looking into the register. “Hand me my suitcase, will you, bud?”
    “Here,” the Greek said, and held the swing door ajar.
    “Thanks.” Pauly leaned inside and took up the suitcase.
    He came back to the booth with it. The waitress was still there, removing the dishes, all except the uneaten pie, but he did not look at her. He set the suitcase on the floor and opened it. From the jumbled disorder of faded khaki and books and shaving gear he took out an Army .45 and four loaded clips. He set them on the table, then turned back to close the bag. “Wait,” he said. “Lets do this right.” He rooted in the suitcaseuntil he found what he was looking for — an Expert marksmanship badge, the maltese cross inclosed in a silver wreath, with three bars suspended beneath it like a ladder;
Pistol, Pistol, Pistol
, it said on the rungs. He pinned the badge to the rumpled lapel of his coat, and took up the pistol, drawing back the slide. It went back with a dry, thick, deadly sound, then forward with a snick, the hammer cocked. “Now,” he said. He was talking to himself by then, for the waitress was nowhere in sight.
    The first shot hit the coffee urn dead center and a half-inch amber stream came spouting from the hole the bullet made. He swung on to the right where the Greek stood round-eyed, his hands on the open drawer, looking toward the sound of the explosion. “You and your goddam money,” Pauly said. “You wouldnt even hand a man a suitcase.” He took careful aim and shot him in the head. As the Greek went down he pushed with both hands, closing the cash drawer. So Pauly took two shots at the register. The second hit something vital and the drawer ran out again, ringing a bell. “Cigar!” he cried, and turned to look for other targets.
    He found plenty of them — the light fixtures, the mirror behind the counter, the glasses racked along the wall, even the little cream jugs arranged on a tray beside a spigot. Each gave off its particular brand of fireworks when hit. The cream jugs were especially amusing, for they flew in all directions. He had thirty-five shots and he took his time, replacing the empty clips methodically. “This is doing me a lot of good,” he said at one point, and indeed it seemed to be true; he appeared to enjoy the whole display, from start to finish. The beer drinkers had disappeared, along with the three men who had sat at the counter. He had the place to himself. It was very quiet between shots. Between the sharp, popping explosions of cartridges he heard the rain murmur against the plate glass window and the low moans of the Greek proprietor from somewhere down behind the open register.
    Though it seemed considerably longer to those who crouchedbeneath the tables and behind the counter, the whole affair took less than five minutes by the clock. The thing that frightened them most, they said when they told about it later, was the way the shooter kept laughing between shots. He was sitting there eating the pie, quite happy, with the empty pistol and the four empty clips on the table in front of him, when the police arrived. He even smiled when they shook him, roughed him up. “Do your duty, men,” he said, “just like I did mine.”
    Next day it was in all the papers, how he shot up the place for no reason at all. The Greek proprietor, whose injury had been more bloody than serious — all he lost was the lobe from one of his ears — used that day to date things from, the way old people once spoke of falling stars. The waitress was quoted too: “I knew it was something wrong with that one from the minute I laid eyes on him.” DERANGED VETERAN the headlines called him, and the stories gave a list of the various institutions he had been in and out of since the war. Everyone