Fools' Gold

by Dolores Hitchens

  With the greatest caution he crept into the hall. He saw the open door of the pantry, the light burning within, the sewing room across the hall, beyond these more doors, and then, at a point where the hall turned in a right angle, the edge of a hall runner and a bright glow from above. He recalled the location of Stolz’s room as described by Skip, and noted that ahead and to the right a closed door had a bright, brass-colored, apparently new lock set into the wood.

  Walking softly, walking on the edges of his shoes, he went to the door and tried the knob; the door opened at once. Inside the light burned in the overhead fixture. His gaze swept the room and took in the wardrobe, the open door of its clothes compartment gaping on nothing, the spilled drawers and other signs of search. Alarm caught him, froze him in the doorway. Everything seemed to hammer to a stop inside him: his heart, his breath, thought itself. He stood arrested by fright, gawking, until he remembered the hall and his unprotected back and moved on into the room.

  He went over to the wardrobe and looked at it for a moment and then touched it with his gloved hand, shutting the little door. He looked around then, and certain facts occurred to him. If the money had been where Skip had expected it to be, there wouldn’t have been a search.

  The search had been successful, though, or they’d still be here.

  It occurred to Big Tom to wonder where Mrs. Havermann was.

  He stood in the middle of the room, undecided, listening for any scratch of sound. The sense of warning drilled through him again, but he resisted it. The curiosity was like a nagging itch inside his brain. He wanted to see what was in the rest of the house, make sure what had happened here, allay the hope that the money might remain.

  He waited for another minute, listening to the creaking stillness punctuated now and then by the dog’s yapping, and then went back into the hall.

  Skip walked out to the car and approached it opposite the driver’s seat. He heard Eddie say something, and Karen lifted her head and smoothed her hair; and a slight smile touched Skip’s mouth, increasing the foxy look, narrowing his thin lips. He stood close to Eddie’s door, and Eddie rolled down the glass.

  “I’m going back,” Skip said.

  The two in the car looked out as if not understanding what he’d said. Karen’s wet eyes gleamed in the dimness. All at once Eddie caught on and said, “Chrissakes, for why? You must be nuts.”

  “Ah, I just . . .” Skip’s manner was completely relaxed. “I just want one more chance. The dough’s there. Got to be.”

  “But she’s dead in there,” Karen said, leaning past Eddie, her voice shaking. “You can’t go back!”

  “Yell a little louder,” Skip encouraged. “I don’t think they quite heard that in the diner.”

  “Please! Please—let’s not go back,” she begged.

  “Like I say,” he went on, “the money’s in there, maybe lying some perfectly ordinary place we just forgot to look at, some place I’d notice right away if I went back.”

  “You’re crazy,” Eddie said. “How do you know the cops aren’t there right now?”

  “Why should they be?” Skip demanded.

  “Didn’t you hear what she said about Stolz coming?” Eddie’s nervous tension made his words jump.

  “Ah, she just made it up to get rid of us.” There was a moment of silence and then Skip said, “You remember what Karen told us, she was kind of sweet on Stolz? Hell, she must have been. She died trying to save his dough for him.”

  Karen cried brokenly then, and Eddie was distracted, trying to comfort her. He looked around, found that Skip had opened the door beside him. “We’re going to change places. You’ll do the driving now. You’re going to drive by and drop me off at those trees. I’ll work my way back to the house.”

  Eddie got out, went around the car. It was absolute insanity to stay in the neighborhood, much less go anywhere near that house. He wondered in an instant of self-revelation why he let Skip dictate this crazy course to him.

  Skip got in on the other side of the car, shut the door. “Give me thirty minutes. I’ll come out the same way, through the trees. If I’m not there give me another half hour before you come back again. But go by the house, size it up, before you stop anywhere either time.”

  “What’ll we do?”

  Skip looked slyly from Eddie to Karen. “Just drive around. And keep out of trouble.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Uncle Willy was surprised, a little disappointed, to see what a large gathering it was. The place was a grammar school auditorium. He and his sponsor slipped into their seats just as the proceedings opened. A big husky-looking guy on the stage at the front of the room rapped a gavel on a table and said, “Will the meeting please come to order?”

  Willy looked all around. He had to make enough of an impression here so that he would be remembered, his time accounted for. A smaller group would have been better, easier to handle.

  The chairman waited until the rustling and whispering subsided. Then, looking directly and rather fixedly at the people nearest the platform, he said, “Good evening, folks. My name is Jerry. I’m an alcoholic.”

  The audience answered in unison, “Hello, Jerry.”

  “He’s an alcoholic?” Willy whispered to Mitchell. Willy thought he’d never seen a healthier specimen in his life than the man in front of the room. Mitchell nodded, smiling encouragement.

  “He got his five-year pin a couple of weeks ago,” Mitchell replied.

  Jerry, the chairman, now said, “You all know Betty. Betty, will you please open our meeting by reading the twelve steps?”

  Betty stood up in the front row, turned around holding the A.A. manual. She was a woman of around thirty, smartly dressed, rather good-looking. She read the twelve steps of the A.A. program in a firm clear voice.

  “That’s another one?” Willy wondered, squinting at her.

  “Look,” Mitchell said, “this is a closed meeting. Everybody here has been through the mill. Some of these people would be dead if it weren’t for A.A. All these people, sober and presentable, interested in helping each other, were once just as confused and lost as you are.”

  On the way here Willy had given Mitchell a line composed equally of imagination and the recollections of his old cellmate. Now he wondered if he might have overdone it a little. No matter. Mitchell’s expression was friendly, and he was safely in the midst of a group with all their wits about them. Willy nodded to Mitchell and gave his attention to the program.

  The speaker of the evening had come all the way from Riverside to be with them. He came forward smiling after Jerry’s introduction, a stocky man nearly bald, and looked out over the audience and said, “Yes, folks, this is me—Bob. I’m an alcoholic. Hello, everybody.”

  The murmur responded from the listeners, “Hello, Bob.”

  As a preamble, Bob began: “Whenever I address a meeting like this I always wonder how many first-timers there are to hear what I have to say. I’d like to see hands of any first-timers here tonight.”

  Mitchell glanced at Willy, smiling. Willy raised his hand. A woman down the row, who had a hatbrim pulled over her eyes as if afraid she might be recognized, also put up her hand.

  Bob counted the scattering of hands. “Six. Well, that’s fine. I’m especially interested in you beginners. If I could, to encourage you, I’d turn the clock back and show you, for a couple of minutes, how I looked, acted, and felt just three years ago.” Bob shook his head over the memory. Then his voice hoarsened, took on an edge of authority. “I was a bum,” he stated bluntly. “I was down in the gutter. I mean gutter—I laid in it or near it night after night right here in L.A. skid row. I was a thief, too. Anything I could find that wasn’t nailed down I sold to a junk dealer for money to buy wine. I panhandled. I rolled other drunks. I’d have stolen the dimes off my dead grandmother’s eyes if I could have gotten to them. Lucky for her, my grandmothe
r is perfectly healthy and lives in Iowa. She never knew what a close call she had.”

  The audience responded with a ripple of mirth. The stocky balding man had won his listeners. What he lacked in skill as a speaker he more than made up in sincerity and force. In spite of a determined inward cynicism and a wish to disassociate himself and daydream over the money, Willy found himself engrossed and impressed. My God, what the man had done with himself was almost unbelievable!

  Bob went on to tell other details of his life as an alcoholic. His attitude was without bitterness, had instead a rather clinical air of reflection. Somehow, Willy sensed, Bob had made peace with whatever demons had driven him.

  Bob related incidents which in other company would have been the cause of raised eyebrows, the bum’s rush, or even calling the cops. He confessed to crimes committed under the influence of drink, horrible involvements with other skid-row denizens, blackouts, jail sentences, narrow escapes from death. His audience listened tolerantly, respectfully, laughing once in a while, and occasionally someone would nod as if an anecdote had hit home.

  Bob told of the loss of home, family, and friends. His wife had deserted him early in his downward progress. His mother and father had forbidden him ever to set foot in their home. His brothers and sisters refused to recognize him on the street.

  “In skid row and in jail I seemed to have come home at last,” Bob said. “The environment made a kind of shelter, taking the place of all I had lost through alcoholism. I knew I couldn’t adjust to normal people, normal surroundings. I kept myself stupefied on drink and stayed where I felt at home—in the gutter.”

  Willy was almost overwhelmed with a sense of compassionate brotherhood. True, he’d never been a drunk. Thievery had been his compulsion, separating him from decent companions and decent surroundings as effectively as liquor had done for Bob. In Willy’s mind he translated what Bob had said into circumstances which applied to himself and was astounded at the parallel.

  Bob’s voice dropped to a confidential, hopeful note. “Well, one night when it seemed all that was left to me was a wretched death and a drunkard’s grave,” he went on, “by accident I found myself in the back room of a mission where an A.A. meeting was going on. I don’t remember how I got into the place. I think I might have gone in there with the idea of stealing a snooze under a bench—out of sight of the mission people, who might have wanted me to bathe and eat and get my clothes laundered. I needed a bath. Yes, I remember that much. I noticed that a bum, almost as bad-looking a bum as I was, moved away when I sat too close to him.”

  Bob smiled cheerfully over the memory, and the audience smiled with him. Willy felt something run down his cheek from the corner of his eye. He put up an inquiring finger, found a damp streak. Oh, God, he was crying! Making an ass of himself! At the same moment he felt Mitchell’s hand patting his arm. Willy wanted to run.

  Bob continued: “And so, stinking and sick, hardly able to sit erect on the bench, I waited out the meeting. Somehow—this was a miracle—some of the meaning of the A.A. program got through to me. I got to talking to the bum who had moved away on the bench. He said he’d been a member for three weeks now and had tapered down to one quart of wine a day.”

  The audience laughed.

  Bob waited until the amusement subsided. “When the meeting was over I went up to the front of the room and collared the speaker and said something to him—I don’t remember what. This man, someone I’d never seen before and have never seen again—took time to sit down and discuss my problems with me. He urged me to stay at the mission, get some rest, clean up. He even—now get this—he even offered to take me home with him to help me straighten up.”

  There was a silence now, a few sighs. Willy thought, My God, that guy was a sucker, offering to take a drunk home, maybe get his place torn up by a maniac with the D.T.s. At the same time, the generosity of the offer touched him immensely, and he sensed that it had made a great change in Bob.

  Bob continued soberly, “In the days that followed, while I wandered in a drunken haze, the thought of this man’s trust and confidence kept coming back. Finally I returned to the A.A. meeting on another night at the mission. I won’t try to fool you and say that I changed overnight or never had any trouble with liquor afterwards, or any such lies. It was tough. There were days when I didn’t think I could make it.”

  Willy was shaking his head now, trembling. Again he noticed Mitchell’s hand on his arm.

  Mitchell whispered, “You just wait and see, friend. Things are going to be different for you, too. From here on out.”

  Willy wanted to be caught up in the peace and security that seemed to surround these people. God knows, he thought, being a thief and not able to stop is a lot like being a hopeless drunk. If I could find some way to get over the craving . . . What’s being poor, what’s working my ass off for old man Chilworth, if I had a little self-respect and could know in my heart that I’d never be in trouble again? Why, that feeling would be the most wonderful thing in the world! To be safe. To be absolutely clean. Forever.

  Willy leaned forward and put his face in his hands. He was almost swept away by an intense welling of emotion, as though Bob’s speech had touched old, forgotten springs. The shell of silence and suspicion built up by the years in prison was crumbling. He felt newborn, and scared to death, and utterly naked mentally—all at once.

  Bob’s voice went on, and Willy shivered and shook under its sound and Mitchell kept patting his arm to comfort him.

  Finally Mitchell leaned closer and spoke. “Don’t worry, don’t be afraid. Let yourself go. You’ll be around the corner and on your way before you know it. Nothing can stop you now.”

  Befuddled, Willy glanced up at him. “Really?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Experience.” Mitchell winked at him. “Just between us—I’ve never reminded Bob of it, and he’s never remembered me. He was pretty soused that night. But I’m the guy who wanted to take him home from the mission.”

  Eddie had no watch, no way of keeping track of the time so he would know when to go back for Skip. He began to drive close to the curb, looking for a clock in some shop window. Finally, in a closed barbershop, he saw a clock on the back wall, made out the time by means of the light reflected from the street. It was a little past ten-fifteen.

  Karen sat huddled opposite. She hadn’t said a word while he was dropping Skip, while Skip was giving instructions as to when he must return. She wasn’t asleep, though. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead, as if she were watching something that kept pace with them just outside the windshield. He kept glancing her way. His impression was that she was beginning to get over the first shock of Mrs. Havermann’s death, beginning to accept and believe it, and that new torments were rising in her.

  Finally she said, “What will they do to us?”

  “Who?”

  “When they catch us.” She licked her lips. “When the police catch us.”

  “There’s something you’ve got to remember,” Eddie said, “if you get caught and they want you to talk, and promise you things, promise they’ll make it easy for you, or argue with you. It’s this. Keep your mouth shut. It’s the only way to stay out of trouble. If you answer just one time, correct them on one little detail they’ve got wrong on purpose, they’ll have you tripping over your own feet before you know it.”

  Her eyes moved around to study him. “You mean, just say nothing at all?”

  “Don’t even nod your head or blink your eyes. Shut yourself up inside yourself and think about something else. Don’t listen to them. Count things, remember things. Try to remember all the shoes you’ve ever owned, all the shoes you’ve worn all the way back as far as your memory goes. Or count the shows you’ve seen. The movies. Try to think of the titles. But don’t let their words get through to you.”

  Her eyes were big now. “You’ve
done that?”

  He nodded. “I had to. Somebody told me about it a long time ago, and it’s the only way to beat them. Just don’t listen.”

  She went back to staring through the windshield. Eddie was driving aimlessly. He was scared all the way through, sick over the old woman’s death, and if he’d had his way would have headed out of town as fast as the jalopp would take them. But of course they had to go back for Skip. Skip was still trying to find the money.

  They were in the hills above Altadena now, on a rough rutted road. Eddie looked around, seeing the sudden dropping away of lights. They had come to a section where new homes were being built. A cluster of red lanterns loomed up ahead, topping the piled earth of a new excavation. Eddie braked to a halt.

  Karen roused and looked out. Some of the houses were just framework buttressed with chimneys, not roofed over. Others were almost completed. Karen said tonelessly, “Look, it’s a new neighborhood.”

  “I’ve got to turn around, go back. We can’t get past that ditch.”

  Karen was looking out now with a touch of interest. “No, let’s stop here for a while. We’ve got to wait somewhere. Do you think there’s a watchman out here?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not,” Eddie answered, thinking of the times he and Skip had stolen things out of unfinished houses. Karen was opening the car door on her side. “Where are you going?”

  She said, “I just want to get out of the car. I just want some fresh air.” She stood with her head back, looking at the stars, and then moved off across the dark, rubble-dotted ground. Eddie doused the lights, got out, shut the car door. It was quite dark here now; there were crickets in the distance that only seemed to emphasize the silence around them. The red lanterns at the excavations in the distance looked like glowing coals. He could make out Karen, a dim shape under the starshine, going toward a half-finished place with a big front porch. She sat down there facing the street, put her elbows on her knees, leaned her face on her palms. She looked small and unutterably lonely.