But that was foolish, too. There wasn't any store. There was only Old Man Hammil here, shrunk to the size of a cockroach, in his rusty brown suit, looking at him from the footboard of the bed and telling him in pantomime not to kill himself.
“I will too!” cried Mr. Gooley to Old Man Hammil. And he repeated, “It's none of your damned business!”
But how? Not with a knife. He had none. Not with a gun. He had none. Not with a rope. He had none. He thought of his suspenders. But they would never hold him.
“Too weak, even for me,” muttered Mr. Gooley. “I have shrunk so I don't weigh much more than Old Man Hammil there, but even at that those suspenders would never do the business.”
How did people kill themselves? He must squeeze his head till the pain let up a little, so he could think. Poison! That was it—yes, poison! And then he cackled out a small, dry, throaty laugh, his Adam's apple fluttering in his weazened throat under his sandy beard. Poison! He hadn't any poison. He hadn't any money with which to buy poison.
And then began a long, broken and miserable debate within himself. If he had money enough with which to buy poison, would he go and buy poison? Or go and buy a bowl of soup? It was some moments before Mr. Gooley decided.
“I'd be game,” he said. “I'd buy the soup. I'd give myself that one more chance. I must remember while I'm killing myself, that I'm not killing myself because I want to. I'm just doing it because I've got to. I'm not romantic. I'm just all in. It's the end; that's all.”
Old Man Hammil, on the footboard of the bed, permitted himself a series of gestures which Mr. Gooley construed as applause of this resolution. They angered Mr. Gooley, those gestures.
“You shut up!” he told the cockroach, although that insect had not spoken, but only made signs. “This is none of your damned business, Old Man Hammil!”
Old Man Hammil, he remembered, had always been a meddlesome old party—one of the village gossips, in fact. And that set him to thinking of Mapletown again.