Read Death's Sweet Song for Free Online Page B

watering his front lawn as I drove up.
    “You're late tonight, Joe.”
    “Got held up at the station again,” I said.
    He seemed distant, cool. He had been doing a lot of thinking and had just about decided that he didn't like me.
    “Beth's in the house, I think.” He went on with his watering.
    I sat in the car waiting for Beth to come out. Something made me look at Langford again. He was standing half crouched, rigid as a statue, with the squirting nozzle in his hands, almost as though it were a gun. I got it then. He was waiting for me to get out of the car, walk up to the front porch, and meet his daughter at the door.
    Well, I thought, the hell with him! I tramped the horn button and the blaring sound hit the silent dusk like a hammer. Bright crimson rushed to Langford's face as he stood there. I tramped the horn again, just for the hell of it. By God, I thought, if she doesn't want to come out of the house, that's fine with me!
    But she came out. I knew she was defying her father in doing it, but she came out.
    “Are you ready?” I said.
    “Sure, Joe.” Not looking at her father, she walked head down to the Chevy and got into the front seat beside me.
    That was all we said until we were away from the house. She sat stiff and silent as I worked the Chevy toward the highway. She looked clean and crisp in a white dress, and her tanned arms and small face made her look almost like a young girl. But she certainly was no Paula Sheldon.
    Well, I thought, I'm glad the end is in sight. And Beth knew it—it was written in the strained lines of her face. She was thirty years old, which is pretty old for a single girl in a town like Creston, and I could see it written in those lines of desperation at the corners of her mouth, in the steady glassiness of her eyes. There was just one thing I wished for: I wanted it to be calm and civilized. I had no wish to hurt her—all I wanted was to end it as cleanly as possible.
    About three miles out of town we turned off the highway, onto a graveled road, and before long we could see the dark stand of oak and blackjack that more or less surrounded Lake Creston . It was getting dark now and we began meeting cars heading back toward town, some of them towing small boats on two-wheeled trailers. Local fishermen.
    Pretty soon we could see the lake itself, a pretty good-sized body of water for that part of the country, sprawling over maybe three hundred acres and held in check by a big dirt dam. I glanced at Beth, and she looked surprised. It had been a long time since I had brought her out here.
    Maybe it was a mistake to come to this particular place, but it was the only place I could think of where we could talk and not be disturbed—where we could get mad and yell at each other, if it came to that, and not be afraid that somebody would hear us. I made a great business of watching the road as the lake rose up before us.
    It was always something of a shock to see that much water in a dry country. The lake had been built back in the thirties by the WPA. It furnished Creston with water, and was well stocked for fishing, and a few years back picnic grounds had been constructed below the dam. There was a dock where several fishing boats, and even a few snipe-class sailboats, were tied up. Up toward the head of the dam there was a small blockhouse where you could buy fish bait, fishing licenses, and beer. I stopped and picked up a can of beer before crossing the dam. Now that the sun had set, the night was almost cool near the water.
    “You want to take a turn around the lake?” I said.
    She said something, I didn't hear what, as I circled the car to get under the wheel. “It's really quite a place,” I said. “I wouldn't mind having a cabin out here somewhere, a place where a guy could knock off for a day or so and just take it easy.”
    I was just killing time, and Beth knew it. I could feel her staring at me, wondering what I was going to say.
    There was a narrow, single-lane