THE KILLER...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 664, 28 March 1952, Page 10

THE KILLER...

... A Short Story by

MAURICE

DUGGAN

ARRY raised the old -fashioned Service revolver and squinted along the sights. The late flowering orchard and the bright-. ening oaks lay at his mercy; the unwavering muzzle held at bay the pale sky and the few rising clouds. He squeezed the _ trigger. The world which, mur-. dered, should have fallen blasted to the grass, stared imperturbably back and a sparrow, ig--norant of its danger, flew. down from a tree. Harry tried again; the hammer was stiff and, though he was growing up, he hadn't’ the strength to prise it back. The gun, at first so rare a find, irritated him now.

"He was growing up, and his sense of fantasy could no longer transform the painted toys of his childhood; but this, so old and so inefficient, fell almost as greatly short as did the toys. He put both thumbs over the hammer and tried to pull it back: the metal cut into his flesh but the hammer would not move. What a frost, he thought. The guns he knew, from comic strip and film, made this one seem a clumsy and ancient toy. Here was no blue-steel barrel, no faultless and accurate and lethal machine, no trigger that moved at even a feather’s touch. He looked at it: and it was old and rusty with its dull aluminium colour pitted and discoloured with age. He took it in both hands, pressed the hammer against the edge of the table, and very slowly it came back. The gun was cocked. Now; as he raised it, though its chambers were empty, it seemed deadlier. He sighted at the sparrow and pulled the trigger; it took both hands to move it. The hammer fell forward and a piece of metal dropped to the floor. Harry examined the damage, picking the piece of metal from the kitchen mat. His make-believe was defeated. He threw the gun back into the cupboard, back among the other souvenirs, the bayonet, the dress sword that was stuck fast in its scabbard, the unprimed Mill’s bombs, the tarnished medals. What a frost, he said to the empty room. : * 3 a E went through the orchard and let himself out through the rustic gate and walked into the garden through all the new growth of spring. His‘ uncle was thinning rows of carrot seedlings, kneeling above them where they grew in the garden bed. . Hallo there, he said, Hallo, Harry said. He watched the thick slow fingersthe thick gold wedding ring-pluck and pick among the rows. Their slowness irritated him. He was a town boy, never really happy on these visits to a country uncle, and slightly contemptuous of the slow unending round-chore after chore as he thought of it-jobs which, once done, had only to be done again

and again. It did not occur to him that his uncle might enjoy it. Are all those yours? he asked. All those swords and things? You’ve been looking at the armoury, his uncle said. Yes, they’re mine. Were you in the war? Harry asked. But he didn’t need to see his uncle’s nod to know the answer. His mother had shown him photos: newly commissioned, uncle was back from leave, in a war that seemed to Harry even more remote than the wars whose dates hag troubled him all through term; a plodding war without spectacle or speed, without real bombg or real weaponsmen in aeroplanes firing at one another with rifles-a war much different to the one which he had followed, through headline and photograph, with excitement and with envy. That was a war:. it came closer to his own conception; it moved with speed; it was filled with heroes, with men in flying kit running through the rain to their planes, vapour trails in the sky, dogfights, men in tanks racing over deserts, men in submarines, parachutists. . . Hundreds of thousands of heroes, a stake in life. or vegetable gardens or orchards or chores, matched grim-jawed before his eyes. He did not care to tell his uncle he had broken the revolver. ’ I was looking at the bayonet, he pe A wicked looking, thing, his uncle said. Harry continued to watch the hands with their slightly spatulate fingers. plucking down the, row. Some of the blokes made breadknives out of them when they got back, his uncle said. Turning the swords into ploughshares, if you see what I mean. Did you kill anyone? Harry asked. The hands were still; they lay, pale earth-streaked animals, slightly stirring on the earth. I fired five shots, his uncle said. I was one of the lucky ones. All my shots were fired on the rifle range, Harry stared. I got five bulls, though, his uncle went on. But I wouldn’t ask anyone to believe that. First time I'd fired a rifle, too. Almost resentfully Harry decided that it was true. (Don’t think Tom stupid, ‘his mother had said. It’s only that he’s

slow, more like a real countryman, I suppose.) And yet to see him now, kneeling in the dirt, having somehow admired him, or the brave myth the family of daughters had made of him, without at all caring about him, Harry felt respect going sour. It’s not something I’d believe myself, his uncle said. I believe you, Harry got sullenly out. His uncle went back to the weeding. What would you have said if I'd said hundreds? he asked, with his face towards the earth. I don’t know, Harry said. Someone has to, I suppose. Everyone did, his uncle said. Everyone did, in one way or another, You said you didn’t, Harry said. Not in a direct way, I didn’t, his uncle said. But in an indirect way I did. I was a quarter-master for a while; you know, sending stuff up to the front, bread and bullets and the rest. That isn’t killing anyone, Harry said, almost with contempt. A gun can’t do anything on its own, his uncle said. It’s got to have bullets and fingers on the trigger and all the rest. You have a part in all the killing when you’re a soldier. Sometimes even when you're not, he added. But Harry was hardly listening. He thought his uncle rather tame. Still, one knew that, his uncle said. Or some of us knew it, I should say. Anyway, it isn’t a question for you. Why not? Harry asked, interested again now that he seemed about to be excluded. : You’re not ready, his uncle said. You’ve got the rest of your childhood to play out. It isn’t a thing to be mixed up with Tom Mix and the wild west, or space-ships and ray-guns, whatever they are.

But Harry was moving away. So Many opportunities seemed to him lost in that voice, so many adventures, so many chances of famous death. His uncle, like Tom Mix and the wild west, was old-fashioned and dull. I’ve been talking over his head, his uncle thought. He bent again over his plants, doing a job that he could do all day, a job he enjoyed. He was not sure that he liked his nephew. He felt in him the peculiar insolence and boredom he associated with cities. Cinemas and theatres and bars, he thought. Hundreds of thousands of people-and _ boredom. He'll be better here in the country. Town’s no life for a growing ‘boy. He'll like it here, he thought. And as he watched the boy go through the gate he remembered the cupboard and thought: -I used to be rather keen on souvenirs, a regular collector. They might amuse him. Harry did not close the gate. ok * as | {ARRY had found the largest souvenir of all. He pulled open the trapdoor and dragged the machine-gun out from the tangle of bed-ends under the house. It was very rusty and very old: there wasn’t about it, any more, a lethal air. He propped it up and crouched behind it, swinging it experimentally on its creaking tripod: he squatted behind it and ran his eye along its rusty barrel. He could see his uncle, kneeling still, moving back along the next row of plants. His finger touched the trigger and he swung the gun away. Then, without any malice, he settled down, systematically and with accuracy, to annihi-. late the hens in the poultry run, making machine-gun noises with his mouth.