Oh, Susanna
By Brittany Hague
So, Bimbo had returned. I could recognize that slimy, slithery gait, even after forty-odd years. A snake on legs. And God did it burn me. The rage ignited in my gut and spread like a wildfire until my whole withered body was aflame with anger. But you would never have been able to tell. No one could ever tell. Guess you could call it my superpower. Nowadays, you might be blinded by my wrinkles and grey hair, my stooped back and gentle warbling voice. But back when Bimbo and I first met, in 1923, it was my fluttering eyelashes and golden locks, my green eyes and my childlike frame in that blue floral dress. Different illusion, same result: no one ever knows the depths of my hatred.
I was depressed the morning of Bimbo’s return. Usually, I rose early and watched the slow coming and goings of main street from my window. Cripple Creek was the dusty forgotten place I called home and was now a “Designated Historic” town. May as well have hung a sign around my turkey neck saying the same thing about me. I knew, logically, that I was a relic, but I still couldn’t quite fathom that the thin wrinkled hands that drew back the lace curtains, stirred the teacups, and made the bed were attached to me. The ache of old age and the repetitive, bland routine of our little dead mining town had me down in the dumps. So down, in fact, I nearly scuttled back to bed. If I had, if I’d not mustered the strength to sweep back the curtain and face another dry, bleak day, I would have missed him. And missed my chance for revenge.
Would he remember me, recognize me, I wondered, as I slowly hobbled down the dark and crooked steps to the front door. I rarely left the apartment on my own, so it was with a shocked and concerned smile that Mona greeted me. Mona ran the café below and forced her boy, a long-haired pissant named Earl, to bring me my groceries and escort me on the rare occasion I had a doctor’s or hair appointment.
“Oh, Susanna, dear,” she hastened to my side, put her hand round my waist, “You shouldn’t be climbing down those stairs on your own. Earl’ll be back soon enough.”
I twisted out of her embrace. “I’m barely seventy, Mona, not a hundred. Some exercise will do me good.” I glanced toward the bar I’d seen Bimbo enter. If he had already left while she dithered on, I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive her.
“You’re right, Susanna, you’re right. Why don’t you give me a minute to close and I can go on a walk with you.” She’d been hovering and fretting since my bad fall, like a mother hen whose bouffant head I wanted to chop right off.
“Actually, I was craving a beer. Think I’ll get one across the street,” I smiled.
Mona disapproved, of course. “A beer! This early and at your age, Susanna, really? Why don’t you let me pour you some Tang. Or some warm milk. You’d enjoy that.” Like every rotten person in my life, she thought she knew what I wanted.
Did I want to spend most of my life as a schoolteacher, stuck with the Sisyphean task of getting desert brats to remove their fingers from their noses and appreciate literature? I did not. Did I want to return to Cripple Creek, tail between my legs, hoping someone would honor an old mining share? I did not. Did I want to be widowed twice over from two fools? Well… So, what if I did? I still didn’t want any damn Tang or warm milk.
“I have so few desires anymore, Mona, let me have this,” I whined and crossed the street as swiftly as my brittle bones could carry me.
My carpet bag was slung over my arm. It hung heavy with a hardbound copy of “In Cold Blood,” a book I was not finding as fun as I expected. I should have left it at home, but I brought the rest: a sharp bowie knife, several vials, and my second husband, Albert’s, old snub-nosed revolver to keep my options open. I had never killed anyone with a knife nor with a gun and the idea of spilling Bimbo’s blood across the dank wooden bar was extremely appealing. I hadn’t felt this alive in years.
Stale liquor, ground into the boots of cowboys and the stink of ten thousand cigarettes smacked me hard in the face when I opened the door. Fitting, I thought, since I’d always associate a similar stink with that time Bimbo and I rolled around on the floor of the old casino, panting and tugging at one another like animals. It was in that smelly, sweaty embrace I had asked him for help. He promised. He swore. Anything for you, oh, Susanna, anything for you.
Bimbo sat alone at the bar, sipping something brown, Scotch if I were to guess, as Duane Eddy jangled from the jukebox. The dopey bartender, Fitz, napped, arms crossed at a table in the shadows. Bimbo gave me less than a moment’s glance. Just an old woman. He could hardly be called a young man anymore either, but he was nine years my junior, had just been a squirt of eighteen to my twenty-seven when we met. Age, which had ravaged me, had transformed him into something more distinguished; I assumed some ill-gotten money deserved some of the credit. He was always vain and liked to dress nice, and now it seemed he had the cash to keep up with the trends. He wore a collarless grey jacket as if he were in line to become the fifth Beatle, and even in the dark bar his shiny black pointed patent shoes shined.
My own shoes were tan, coated in dust, orthopedic. Born in the wrong decade, I was. I would have relished being young in this time of miniskirts and loosened morals, instead I got the Great Depression and one busted man after another.
I tried to saddle up next to him, but what with my wonky hip and short stature, Bimbo had to spin out of his stool and help me into place, politely smiling but annoyed.
“Your breath stinks worse than I remember,” I told him. The polite smile faded.
“I know you?” He squinted. It was damn dark in there and he struggled to make any connection.
“Sure, you do,” I began to hum “Oh, Susanna.”
I could see the light of recognition turn on. There was the slightest hint of fear in his eyes before they sparkled, and his smile widened. He still had his big white teeth and those deep dimples, but he was clean shaven now and I missed the old mustache. He joined in the song, his baritone awakening Fitz. Bimbo glided off his stool, spun and danced with eyes shut as he sang, hand to heart, in a serenade:
Oh, Susanna, don’t you cry for me
For I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee
Now I had a dream the other night when everything was still
I thought I saw Susanna she was coming down the hill
I applauded politely. He stared at me, pleased I was in such a diminished state. “Good golly, woman. Time, she sure stops for no one.”
Fitz came around to take my order.
Bimbo chuckled, “Oh, Susanna. I did not expect this. You, here,” he laughed again, “I feel like I went through a time traveling machine.”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve after what you did.” Fitz served my beer and shot a look at Bimbo, who cleared his throat.
“My good man, you know why they have those rear-view mirrors in cars?”
Fitz shrugged.
“It’s because everything you’ve passed by in life should remain behind you. No turning back. Forever march forward. That’s my advice to you.”
“Okay,” Fitz said and leaned against the back of the bar, watching the ceiling fan with detached amazement, once again disinterested in us.
“I think those rear-view mirrors are in cars so you can see if something big is coming to hit you from behind.”
“Is something about to hit me from behind?” Bimbo asked, then turned to examine me with his grey eyes.
My teeth were sore, I was clinching them hard, imagining that if I strangled him, I could watch those eyes bulge and pop out of his skull.
He tutted. “Why, Oh Susanna, I do believe you are sore with me. No, no. Angry is not a pretty look on you. And you’ve still got those pretty green eyes no matter how else time has misshapen you. Come on, I would think you’d realize by now. You shouldn’t be mad at me. You should be, in fact, grateful.”
“Grateful?!”
He patted my shoulder and whispered, “Some discussions are better had in private. If you really want to talk about all this, I’m parked at the corner of Golden and 3rd. It’s a shiny new Thunderbird. You can’t miss it; it’s probably the nicest thing in this town. We can chat in the back seat,” he winked, “It’ll be like old times. The walls have ears here and I’d hate to spoil your reputation.”
He gulped down the rest of his Scotch and left. Expecting me to follow, which I did.
It was no trouble finding the Thunderbird. The sun reflecting off its apple red shine and chrome was blinding. I patted the weapons in my bag, aware that I could have been walking into a trap, but fairly certain that he was not about to murder a little old woman in broad daylight, if only because it would stain his milky white leather upholstery.
He walked around to open the passenger door for me. Such a gentleman. In the light of day, he winced at the fading bruise on my cheek. “Been brawling?” he asked.
“Yeah, with gravity.”
“I’d hate to see the floor. Seeing as you’re so vindictive, I bet it took a beating.”
I laughed at that and made to sit. He raised his eyebrows at the back seat, “No? You sure?” He was enjoying teasing me.
I ran my fingers across the white leather as he settled into the driver’s seat. “You’ve done well for yourself I see.”
“Can’t complain.”
“Why are you here, Bimbo?”
“No one calls me that anymore. Just passing through. Went a bit out of my way for old time’s sake.”
“Out of your way from where?” I had noticed the passenger side door handle was damaged, pry marks along the window frame, and a striped tube of Yardley lipstick had rolled under my foot. If this was Bimbo’s car, I was Jayne Mansfield.
He evaded the question. “Never in a million years did I think I’d run into you.”
“I’m sure you didn’t. You would have sped the opposite way if you’d known, huh?”
He let out a whistle between those big pearly whites. “No. I’m happy to see you, Oh, Susanna.”
You can tell a man like Bimbo is lying when he opens his mouth and words spill out.
“You slimy snake.”
“Stop. I mean it. You owe me.” Bimbo said.
“Owe you? Owe you? Do you know I spent six years saving and gathering that money?”
“To kill your husband, Susanna!”
“Which you didn’t do.”
“You bet your bippy, I didn’t! And we are both better off for it. Imagine the guilt I’d feel, you’d feel, if we’d gone through with it. Besides, you ended up a widow anyhow, married his rich brother too. Oh yes, I saw you in the society column. Oh, Susanna, don’t you see? It all worked out for you. Fate intervened because I did the right thing. You might even say I saved your soul.”
“And the money you stole? Was that the cost of my soul?”
“Alright, so I feel rotten about that but if you had kept it, you would have just paid someone else to do it. You know that.”
I pulled the gun from my bag and nearly shuddered with delight at the shock on his face. “You owe me.”
“Be reasonable, I don’t have that kind of money on me.”
“I’ll take what you do have.” I guessed there was money somewhere in the car, and if I was wrong, well, I’d improvise. “You ruined my plans. Now I’m stuck in a one room apartment in an unserious town because my husbands couldn’t stay out of debt.” Without the shadows of the bar to hide his wrinkles and age spots, he looked pathetic in his mod suit. At least I had the dignity to accept my age. “Look at me, fancy man,” I said.
He did and he must have seen the darkness behind my eyes. Not many manage to catch a glimpse of it. Every once and a while, one of my young pupils could see it. They’d shrink from me, aware that I was not to be trifled with. Bimbo saw it then. And he told me to open the glove box. There was a stack of bills. I took it.
I held the gun on him as I counted the money. It totaled about $700, not nearly what he owed. “This is hardly a fair settlement,” I told him, cocking the gun.
“Oh, Susanna, please. Don’t. You don’t want to do this.” Someone else telling me what I wanted. His frantic pleas were absolute music to my ears.
I should point out that, at this point, he was already a dead man.
Ricin is flavorless, impossible to taste in a shot of scotch. When one ingests ricin, a cough develops in about three hours. Aches and pain, nausea and diarrhea follow, about eighteen to twenty-four hours later. There is no antidote. Bimbo would be dead within a few days.
I’m ashamed to admit, the saying ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’ is true. I was a poisoner. Had been since I was forced to take things into my own hands with my first husband. The gun and knife, I just couldn’t use them on old Bimbo. Too messy, too. . .I don’t know, crass. So, I let him go, let him think he had gotten the better of an old, helpless woman. Let him think he had saved my poor old soul. Again.
Brittany Hague (she/her) is a Seattle-based writer and designer. Her short stories have been featured on the Kaidankai and Short Story Today podcasts and have appeared in Last Girls Club, Willows Wept Review, Luna Station Quarterly, Stone’s Throw, and Starlite Pulp among other publications. She is a graduate of film and video at The Rhode Island School of Design and has earned a Certificate of Writing from the University of Washington.
