The Postman Always Rings Twice (14 page)

      There's a guy in No. 7 that murdered his brother, and says he didn't really do it, his subconscious did it. I asked him what that meant, and he says you got two selves, one that you know about and the other that you don't know about, because it's subconscious. It shook me up. Did I really do it, and not know it? God Almighty, I can't believe that! I didn't do it! I loved her so, then, I tell you, that I would have died for her! To hell with the subconscious. I don't believe it. It's just a lot of hooey, that this guy thought up so he could fool the judge. You know what you're doing, and you do it. I didn't do it, I know that. That's what I'm going to tell her, if I ever see her again.

      I'm up awful tight, now. I think they give you dope in the grub, so you don't think about it. I try not to think. Whenever I can make it, I'm out there with Cora, with the sky above us, and the water around us, talking about how happy we're going to be, and how it's going to last forever. I guess I'm over the big river, when I'm there with her. That's when it seems real, about another life, not with all this stuff how Father McConnell has got it figured out. When I'm with her I believe it. When I start to figure, it all goes blooey.

      No stay.

      Here they come. Father McConnell says prayers help. If you've got this far, send up one for me, and Cora, and make it that we're together, wherever it is.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      James M. Cain (1892-1977) is recognized today as one of the masters of the hard-boiled school of American novels. Born in Baltimore, the son of the president of Washington College, he began his career as reporter on the Baltimore papers, served in the American Expeditionary Force in World War I and wrote the material for _The Cross of Lorraine_, the newspaper of the 79th Division. He returned to become professor of journalism at St. John's College in Annapolis and then worked for H.L. Mencken on _The American Mercury_. He later wrote editorials for Walter Lippmann on the _New York World_ and was for a short period managing editor of _The New Yorker_, before he went to Hollywood as a script writer. His first novel, _The Postman Always Rings Twice_, was published when he was forty-two and at once became a sensation. It was tried for obscenity in Boston, was said by Albert Camus to have inspired his own book, _The Stranger_, and is now a classic. Cain followed it the next year with _Double Indemnity_, leading Ross Macdonald to write years later, "Cain has won unfading laurels with a pair of native American masterpieces, _Postman_ and _Double Indemnity_, back to back." Cain published eighteen books in all and was working on his autobiography at the time of his death.

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