not quite sure that you do.’
‘No,’ said the young man, ‘I do indeed, I do indeed. But I don’t think I’ll ever come back here again at twilight.’
The old man looked at him and nodded.
‘No, I don’t think you will. Not for a while, anyway. Maybe in twenty or thirty years. You’ve got too good a suntan and you walk too quickly and you look like you’re all revved up. From now on you should arrive here at noon and play with a real foursome. You shouldn’t be out here, walking on the Twilight Greens.’
‘I’ll never come back at night,’ said the young man. ‘It will never happen to me.’
‘I hope not,’ said the old man.
‘I’ll make sure of it,’ said the young man. ‘I think I’ve walked as far as I need to walk. I think that last hit put my ball too far out in the dark; I don’t think I want to find it.’
‘Well said,’ said the old man.
And they walked back and the night was really gathering now and they couldn’t hear their footsteps in the grass.
Behind them the lone strollers still moved, some in, some out, along the far greens.
When they reached the clubhouse, the young man looked at the old, who seemed very old indeed, and the old man looked at the young, who looked very young indeed.
‘If you do come back,’ said the old man, ‘at twilight, that is, if you ever feel the need to play a round starting out with three others and winding up alone, there’s one thing I’ve got to warn you about.’
‘What’s that?’ said the young man.
‘There is one word you must never use when you converse with all those people who wander out along the evening grass prairie.’
‘And the word is?’ said the young man.
‘Marriage,’ whispered the old man.
He shook the young man’s hand, took his bag of clubs, and walked away.
Far out, on the Twilight Greens, it now was true dark, and you could not see the men who still played there.
The young man with his suntanned face and clear, bright eyes turned, walked to his car, and drove away.
‘There are some people who would never commit a murder,’ said Mr Bentley.
‘Who, for instance?’ said Mr Hill.
‘Me, for instance, and lots more like me,’ said Mr Bentley.
‘Poppycock!’ said Mr Hill.
‘Poppycock?’
‘You heard what I said. Everybody’s capable of murder. Even you.’
‘I haven’t a motive in the world, I’m content with things, my wife is a good woman, I’ve got enough money, a good job, why should I commit murder?’ said Mr Bentley.
‘I could make you commit murder,’ said Mr Hill.
‘You could not.’
‘I could.’ Mr Hill looked out over the small green summer town, meditatively.
‘You can’t make a murderer out of a nonmurderer.’
‘Yes, I could.’
‘No, you couldn’t!’
‘How much would you like to bet?’
‘I’ve never bet in my life. Don’t believe in it.’
‘Oh, hell, a gentleman’s bet,’ said Mr Hill. ‘A dollar. A dollar to a dime. Come on, now, you’d bet a dime, wouldn’t you? You’d be three kinds of Scotchman not to, and showing little faith in your thesis, besides. Isn’t it worth a dime to prove you’re not a murderer?’
‘You’re joking.’
‘We’re both joking and we’re both not. All I’m interested in proving is that you’re no different than any other man. You’ve got a button to be pushed. If I could find it and push it, you’d commit murder.’
Mr Bentley laughed easily and cut the end from a cigar, twirled it between his comfortably fleshy lips, and leaned back in his rocker. Then he fumbled in his unbuttoned vest pocket, found a dime, and laid it on the porch newel in front of him. ‘All right,’ he said, and, thinking, drew forth another dime. ‘There’s twenty cents says I’m not a murderer. Now how are you going to prove that I am?’ He chuckled and squeezed his eyes deliciously shut. ‘I’m going to be sitting around here a good many years.’
‘There’ll be a time limit, of course.’
‘Oh, will there?’ Bentley laughed still louder.
‘Yes. One month from today, you’ll be a murderer.’
‘One month from today, eh? Ho!’ And he laughed, because the idea was so patently ridiculous. Recovering enough, he put his tongue in his cheek. ‘Today’s August first, right? So on September first, you owe me a dollar.’
‘No, you’ll owe me two dimes.’
‘You’re stubborn, aren’t you?’
‘You don’t know how stubborn.’
It was a fine late-summer evening, with just the right breeze, a lack of mosquitoes, two cigars burning the right way, and the sound of Mr Bentley’s wife clashing the dinner plates into soapsuds in the distant kitchen. Along the streets of the small town, people were coming out onto their porches, nodding at one another.
‘This is one of the most foolish conversations I’ve ever held in my life,’ said Mr Bentley, sniffing the air with glad appreciation, noting the smell of fresh-cut grass. ‘We talk about murder for ten minutes, we get off into whether all of us are capable of murder, and, next thing you know, we’ve made a bet.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Hill.
Mr Bentley looked over at his boarder. Mr Hill was about fifty-five, though he looked a bit older, with cold blue eyes, and a gray face, and lines that made it look like an apricot that has been allowed to shrivel in the sun. He was neatly bald, like a Caesar, and had an intense way of talking, gripping the chair, gripping your arm, gripping his own hands together as if in prayer, always convincing himself or convincing you of the truth of his exclamations. They had had many good talks in the past three months, since Mr Hill had moved into the back bedroom. They had talked of myriad things: locusts in spring, snow in April, seasonal tempests and coolings, trips to far places, the usual talk, scented with tobacco, comfortable as a full dinner, and there was a feeling in Mr Bentley that he had grown up with this stranger, known him from his days as a yelling child through bumpy adolescence to whitening senility. This, come to think of it, was the first time they had ever disagreed on anything. The wonderful thing about their friendship had been that it had so far excluded any quibblings or side issues, and had walked the straight way of Truth, or what the two men thought was truth, or perhaps, thought Mr Bentley now, with the cigar in his hand, what he had thought was the truth and what Mr Hill, out of politeness or plan, had pretended to take for the truth also.
‘Easiest money I ever made,’ said Mr Bentley.
‘Wait and see. Carry those dimes with you. You may need them soon.’
Mr Bentley put the coins into his vest pocket, half soberly. Perhaps a turn in the wind had, for a moment, changed the temperature of his thoughts. For a moment, his mind said, Well, could you murder? Eh?
‘Shake on it,’ said Mr Hill.
Mr Hill’s cold hand gripped tightly.
‘It’s