At some secret blood level, I had always known I would not use the weapon. I had brought it with me, yes, but Time had gotten here before me, and age, and smaller, more terrible deaths.…
Bang.
Six shots through the heart.
But I didn’t use the pistol. I only whispered the sound of the shots with my mouth. With each whisper, Ralph Underhill’s face aged another ten years. By the time I reached the last shot he was one hundred and ten years old.
“Bang,” I whispered. “Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.”
His body shook with the impact.
“You’re dead. Oh, God, Ralph, you’re dead.”
I turned and walked down the steps and reached the street before he called:
“Doug, is that you?”
I did not answer, walking.
“Answer me,” he cried, weakly. “Doug! Doug Spaulding, is that you? Who is that? Who are you?”
I got my suitcase and walked down into the cricket night and darkness of the ravine and across the bridge and up the stairs, going away.
“Who is that?” I heard his voice wail a last time.
A long way off, I looked back.
All the lights were on all over Ralph Underhill’s house. It was as if he had gone around and put them all on after I left.
On the other side of the ravine I stopped on the lawn in front of the house where I had been born.
Then I picked up a few bits of gravel and did the thing that had never been done, ever in my life.
I tossed the few bits of gravel up to tap that window where I had lain every morning of my first twelve years. I called my own name. I called me down in friendship to play in some long summer that no longer was.
I stood waiting just long enough for my other young self to come down to join me.
Then swiftly, fleeing ahead of the dawn, we ran out of Green Town and back, thank you, dear Christ, back toward Now and Today for the rest of my life.
Hammett? Chandler? Not to Worry!