Three to Kill by Jean-Patrick Manchette

enthusiasm. “Have you ever hunted?”
    Gerfaut shook his head. Raguse returned the Weatherby to the gun rack and closed his chest. They went back into the main room.
    â€œHunting is my only pleasure,” said Raguse, looking sly and boyish now. “The National Forest of La Vanoise can kiss my ass,” he declared contentedly. “But I can’t see clearly anymore. Once I get that plaster off, perhaps you’ll help me. We can go hunting together, and you can be my extra pair of eyes, as you might say.”
    â€œWhy not?” answered Gerfaut with an affable smile—was it a derisive smile or a plain dumb smile? “Why not? I’m no use anymore. I’m nowhere. Lost. I might as well be someone’s extra pair of eyes.”
    That night Gerfaut had nightmares with Béa and the girls in them, and the two killers in their red car, and Baron Frankenstein transporting glass jars filled with extra pairs of eyes.
    At the beginning of September, Gerfaut’s plaster started falling apart of its own accord. Raguse finished the job. Gerfaut was greatly relieved to be able at last to scratch his foot. He still limped a little, and the old man muttered that it would never straighten itself out, and Gerfaut said that he could care less. Then Raguse rooted in his old chest and began poring over greasy old manuals with bindings crumbling away by themselves. They had anatomical drawings of men with mustaches. The Corporal gave Gerfaut an exercise program to be followed every day in order to reduce his limp and, above all, to obviate any possible misalignment of the spinal cord or of other bones.
    Gerfaut made himself useful by running little errands in the village; he would pick up tobacco, for instance, or Riz la Croix cigarette papers, or lighter fluid when the need arose. Occasionally, at the café-tabac, he would glance through the regional paper, Le Dauphiné Libéré , to see what was happening in the world. Sporting events took up as much space as ever. Third World riots, famines, floods, epidemics, assassinations, palace revolutions, and local wars still followed one another in quick succession. In the West the economy was not working well, mental illness was rife, and social classes were still locked in struggle. The Pope deplored the unrestrained hedonism of the age.
    After a brief period of natural curiosity, the villagers, old for the most part and less numerous than the houses, were content to accept a few half-truths and stopped asking Gerfaut questions. In the past, Corporal Raguse had taken in injured animals, lodged stray hikers, and allowed British campers to pitch tents in the meadow behind his house. Gerfaut seemed like just another of his broken wings, a taciturn semi-vagrant, a bit simple but serviceable enough, who gave the old man a hand. He even helped the local police shove their vehicle out of the mud one time when they had ventured this far up the mountainside during an early-autumn rainstorm. On another occasion, he had paid for a round of drinks at the café-tabac, then told his troubles: his wife had left him; he had once been a manager in a big firm, but he had left everything behind—just as a lot of people did, so it was said, in America: they become dropahoutes.
    â€œA dropahoute, yes, that’s it!” said Gerfaut. “That’s me exactly! Cheers, everybody!” And he emptied his glass.
    When fall came, Raguse began getting Gerfaut used to long mountain walks. These became longer and longer, and after a few weeks the two men took guns with them and the walks turned into hunting trips.
    Usually, they rambled in the wooded area. From time to time, they would bag game birds: partridge, plover, hazel grouse, capercaillie, or else a squirrel or hare. Raguse, whose eyesight had become really poor, missed everything he took aim at. After a time, he virtually gave up shooting altogether and let Gerfaut take over.
    One day in late October, with