Rock Island Line

by David Rhodes

  Back at Mal’s apartment, her roommate, Carol, heard the bell ring and, not knowing who it was, pressed the microphone button. “Who is it?” she asked.

  “It’s Gladys Schmidt,” came the returning voice. “And Earl,” she added proudly.

  Reluctantly, Carol pushed the release button, letting them into the building, waited and met them in the hall.

  “This is my brother Earl,” said Gladys, looking up at him fondly. “We were wondering if Mal was around. She’s been wanting to meet him.” Earl stood in perfect military form, excepting the broad, flat smile which he wore whenever being introduced. “This is Carol Pickney.”

  Carol frowned slightly, wishing to be rid of them both. “She’s at the museum. . . . In fact, you might go over there. There’s this weirdo who’d been bothering her, and as long as you’re looking for her anyway, why don’t you go down and make sure he isn’t giving her any trouble?”

  Earl immediately became intent. “What’s this guy like?” he asked quickly.

  “Just a creep—some degenerate who keeps forcing himself on her. I think he’s some kind of pervert.”

  “Come on,” said Earl to his sister in an authoritative tone, as though she were a small troop of men. “We better hurry. Even now we may be too late.”

  “I never noticed that,” said July, and fastened greedily on the little cat as a safe place for his eyes. “I never noticed that!” he exclaimed again. “And look here—here’s a box of fish.” Then he turned toward her again. “God, you must think I’m a fool.”

  “You’re so nervous,” she said. “I guess it makes me feel brave. Then maybe you’d be me and I’d be you,” and she laughed.

  July’s concentration was riddled with holes. Emotions swirled through him like sticks in a flooding creek. Joy and suspicion, openness and aversion. “Would you like to go for a walk?” he asked, looking back at the painting, then remembered an old joke of Bob Reed’s, “Or go for a ride on a bus?”

  Mal laughed, but looked at him a little oddly, he felt. She seemed to hesitate, then her face resumed her earlier friendliness and she said that, yes, that would be fun. They walked toward the front doors, Mal pulling her coat around her and July nervously zipping and unzipping his jacket and laughing whenever he had the slightest chance. I shouldn’t trust her, he thought, then the front door burst open with a loud bang, and Earl Schmidt hurled himself into the museum in full officer dress uniform, grabbing July by the front of his shirt and throwing him back toward the entrance with such force that he fell against the bar opening the door and stumbled outside. “Keep away from her, you creep,” he heard as the door began to fall back again.

  July’s mind raced. He got up. A small, dark girl stood on the steps to the museum. The cars along the street were watching him.

  He turned back to the glass door and through it saw the uniformed figure staring at him with obvious hatred. Behind him, Mal Rourke seemed to be shouting, but he couldn’t hear because the door was closed.

  Then it was flung open and the attacker came at him again, moving quickly and hunched over in a kind of fighting stance. The dark girl, in a low, private growl, said, “Get him, Earl.” Mal Rourke, now outside, was hurling insults—at whom July didn’t know, and thought perhaps at himself. This is serious, he thought. The man in the uniform sank several inches lower and was just about close enough to reach him.

  Mal had inadvertently been bumped to the side in the quick shuffle that followed the burst through the door. She was in complete bewilderment when after July Montgomery had been hurled through the door, the uniformed man had called after him to keep away from her. She thought that this might well be an old enemy from July’s past—something that, so to say, went with him. But when she looked outside she saw Gladys, and remembered she had a brother who wore a uniform and was coming home soon. Seeing through the window that July was completely bewildered, she decided there must have been an error somewhere, and began shouting, “You idiot! What did you do that for!” But by then it was too late.

  Though July had completely forgotten Earl Schmidt as surely as if he had never existed at all, Earl Schmidt had not forgotten him. And as soon as he’d turned around and Earl had seen him through the closed glass door, he remembered where he’d seen the face before: in the parking lot . . . the flashlight on his face. Here before him was a phantom from his own imagination, and as though locked in a dream, he filled with private hatred. Mal Rourke, screaming abuses directly behind him, might as well have been in another state. He pushed the door open and went out.

  To July it looked as if he’d have no more luck in outrunning him than he would in fair combat. He decided to charge, raised his fists and went toward him in one long lunge. Earl stepped quickly and professionally to one side, easily avoiding the assault, and July in passing, feeling helpless, managed only to kick him in the knee. Then he turned and waited for the inevitable.

  “Stop!” yelled Mal, but at this moment Earl was impervious to all sounds. He was overcome with the single-minded confusion of battle. All thoughts, all shades and lines were gone. Only the sensation of the fight. He went forward in blind, destructive joy, but felt himself sinking. Now six feet away stood July. How he wanted to get hold of him! He tried again to take the step, and sank down farther. Then he fell and tried to get up. He couldn’t. He couldn’t believe it. What had happened? He could get up on his right leg, but the left one wouldn’t work. It took a long time for him to figure out that his kneecap had been shattered by that one lucky kick, but even after he knew what had happened he couldn’t feel anything. He was speechless with rage.

  “What luck,” he heard his sister growl.

  “Hey,” said July, “I’m really sorry. I don’t know who you are. Believe me, there’s been some mistake.” With that he walked away down the steps. Earl hardly heard him. Mal was talking to Gladys, and she ran to catch up with him, the back of her head receiving a look of unforgiving malice from Gladys.

  “July,” she said when she had reached him, halfway across the street. “July, wait!”

  “What?” he said, still walking.

  “I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him before. He’s a friend’s brother. It was all a misunderstanding.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Wait, listen. Believe me, I had nothing to do with it. Nothing!”

  July stopped and turned abruptly. “That’s nice,” he said. “But listen, really, I don’t know what all this is about. I don’t want to. I don’t think I can realistically ever have anything to do with another person. See, I sort of decided not to.”

  “Why did you decide that?”

  “Because I just don’t want any involvement, or attachment. I like being alone. It suits me.”

  “Oh,” she said. It was beginning to get dark. “Well, I’m sorry to’ve been such a trouble to you.” With this she turned to leave. “And I’m sorry about this evening.”

  There was a long pause.

  July said, “Please don’t be offended.”

  “I’m not.”

  They walked together.

  “Listen, meet me in a week . . . not at the museum. Somewhere else,” he said cautiously.

  “That’s a funny thing for a person who’s decided to be alone to want to do.”

  “I know. I must seem like such a fool to you. You . . . Do you have a telephone number?”

  She gave it to him and they parted.

  July went directly home and sat on his bed looking out the window. He sank into a long period where time seemed fragmented and speeded up, and the remote spots of light, blue and red under the wings of the planes, crossfired in the dark sky. Half awake and half dreaming, his thoughts were no more coherent than swirling waters thick with brown mud. It was a druglike trance and it wasn’t until hours later that he finally came out of it and set about fixing himself something to eat in the kitchen while the rest of the boardinghouse slept like cats. But when returning to his room he purposely left the door open. In t
he hall, right outside, was the black public telephone on the wall; and looking at it made him feel funny. He’d never had anyone to call on it before. Now, if he wanted to, he’d just have to put in a dime, listen for the tone (he knew the phone worked, he’d listened to people making calls on it) and dial the number. Eight five two six nine four eight, listen to the ring, the click as the receiver was picked up, and hear Mal say hello. Or it might be her roommate, and in that case he could just say, “Hi, is Mal there?” as though he used a phone all the time. It all seemed unbelievable and a little frightening: standing right outside his own room where he lived by himself, he could talk to her. Also (and this he dared not even imagine) she could call him; the phone could ring, somebody would answer it and say, “Who?” Then pound on his door and say, “Hey, July, it’s for you.” The very thought made him blush, the receiver hanging from the cable cord . . . “Better hurry. Sounds like a girl.”

  He fed Butch and went to sleep. For the next week, until Friday, he forced himself not to think about the decision he had to make. Then he bought a packet of file cards on his way home from work. After dinner (canned stew), arguments would come to him and he’d write them down, one per card. All night he did this. Then he read them over to make sure he hadn’t written one argument twice, and weeded out any duplications that didn’t provide another consideration. For instance, on one card he’d written: having someone to talk to, and on another: being able to communicate ideas and feelings. But in the case where he had written: no privacy, and on another: not enough time to be alone, that was OK because there was a difference between them.

  He’d taken the following Saturday off (a thing that was a little disturbing in itself; he’d never done it before), and as soon as he got up he made straight for the cards. There were more than forty, one argument on each, and as he read them he wrote either 1 or 2 in the corner, 1 standing for no I won’t take the chance, and 2 standing for yes I will. After he did that he was so nervous he went out and walked around the block before coming back and dividing the 1s and 2s into separate piles. Then, assuring himself a final time that he had been as impartial as he could’ve been, he entrusted himself completely to the reasoning process and counted them.

  Nearing the end, he feared and anticipated the outcome. He’d had a feeling it’d turn out the way it did: the 2s had it, by a majority of one card. It was the argument of the possibility of life everlasting, he thought, that had tipped the scale. Living alone, nice as it was, was bound to get stale if it went on forever. That was the argument that had kept it from being both sides equal, to which there was no reasonable contradiction.

  So that job was over. The decision was made. He never once wondered whether he’d made the right choice. It was the only logical thing to do. The problem that lay before him now was the telephone call—and he had to do it.

  What if she’d given him the wrong number?

  Ring, hello, hello, is Mal there? Mal? Is Mal Rourke there? Listen, buster, somebody’s really pulled you through a wringer. There’s nobody here by that name, click.

  Or what if she’d decided he really wasn’t all that she’d cut him out to be, and what did he honestly know about that guy in the uniform? Maybe he’d slipped into the picture somewhere. Maybe he’d been in it all along. Ring, hello (male voice). Hello, can I talk to Mal? Who is this? July. Hey, it’s a guy named July! (Laughter in the background.) Sorry, buddy, click. His imagination was reeling.

  He went out into the hall, put in a dime, heard the tone and hung up. The next time he dialed the number and listened to the beginning of one ring and hung up. He went back into his room and sat on the bed, sure he would never have the nerve to make another try. This was at ten thirty in the morning. At a little before one o’clock he went outside, ran around the block twice, in the front door, up the stairs, slammed a dime into the slot, dialed the number without listening to the tone, made it through two full rings, heard the snap of the connection being completed and hung the receiver quickly and noisily back into the chrome handle.

  Each time the phone rang, Mal’s heart turned over. But she sat on the sofa and made herself look as though she had no feelings one way or the other. Her mother and father were going to Cincinnati and she had the whole weekend to herself . . . to wait for the phone.

  “Maybe we better call the phone company,” she said calmly to Carol, who was standing with the dead receiver still in her hand.

  “There’s nothing wrong with the phone,” she snapped. “I heard some creep hanging up that time.”

  “Oh well, at least it wasn’t an obscene call.”

  Carol put the receiver down, lifted it again and began to dial.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “The police. I’ll get them to put a tracer on our line. Then let whoever it is try to call again. They can have four squad cars over there before he hangs up. . . . Hello. Yes, this is Carol Pickney, and we just had an obscene phone call. . . . What do you mean, what did he say? He didn’t get a chance to say anything this time. . . . Very funny.” She hung up. “Wiseacre.”

  Mal crossed the room to stare at a painting she had half completed on the easel, a sequel to “The Crabs,” this one of magpies and giant cicadas among rocks.

  “Say, let’s go down to Delanie’s,” said Carol. “It looks like it might begin to rain, and I don’t want to be stuck here all day.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead? I think I’ll just stay home this afternoon and paint.”

  “Just for a little while. Come on. I hate going places alone. And besides there’s nothing here to eat.”

  “Nothing?”

  “That’s right, lazy. You ate all the potato chips last night.”

  “I did not,” she said automatically.

  “You did too.”

  “Well, so what, there was only a half a bag left.”

  “Half a bag, my eye!”

  Then the phone rang. “There he is again!” shouted Carol. “Whatever you do, don’t answer it.”

  “It might be somebody else,” Mal said, going for the phone as it rang a second time.

  “Leave it alone, Mal.”

  But Mal kept going toward the phone. It rang again.

  “I’ll get it,” said Carol. She reached over and picked up the receiver and, before Mal could say one word of caution, shouted into it: “Who is this? The police are after you.”

  There was a long pause at the other end, and a sound like somebody breathing. Then the line went dead.

  “Who was it?” asked Mal anxiously.

  “How do I know? The creep wouldn’t give his name.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. He just panted.”

  “Panted?”

  “Yes. Trying to make himself sound like an animal.”

  Mal didn’t know what to think. From experience she knew her roommate to be a little quick to jump to conclusions, and a little obstinate about hanging on to those she’d reached, and so with only her to talk to, it would be difficult to get to the bottom of the matter. Probably of no importance. Still, the possibility that July might have been on the other end of the line trying to call her, that Carol’d simply made up the panting part, and that he might never call back again made her angry, and she almost said something she would’ve regretted later. The weekend of waiting for the phone to ring promised to be long enough, without throwing in an emotional crisis.

  “Why don’t you go down to Delanie’s for a while?” said Mal, in a tone that was both friendly and earnest. Carol’d heard the tone before, and had even anticipated it earlier in the day—certain ways Mal betrayed being a little on edge. Like sitting perfectly still when the phone rang, and lighting cigarettes from the glowing ends of used ones. Carol resigned herself to being ignorant of whatever it was that was bothering her—at least for now—put on her blue coat and left.

  As soon as she was alone Mal felt some of the pressure of waiting lifted from her. She tried to paint but with no success; it seemed that everything
on the canvas was ending up in converging lines, and the color of the rocks continued to creep stroke by stroke toward muddy brown. Shadows were looking like holes, and at one time she became so fed up with herself that she threw her brush (one of her good brushes) against the wall, leaving a greenish-brown smear there and on the carpet. She picked it up, cleaned it with a rag and turpentine, put a piece of plastic over the canvas to keep the oils workable and gave up for the day.

  Then there seemed to be nothing that would occupy her. She picked up a book and read the same page four times. As it was Saturday afternoon, there was nothing but middle-aged entertainment and middle-aged advertisements on television. She wasn’t hungry and there wasn’t anything to eat even if she were. So she made coffee and smoked cigarettes, looking out the window toward South Philly. Finally, at four o’clock there was a movie on television and after that was over she kept the set on and began watching one program after another without bothering to change channels or even see what was on the other stations from TV Guide. She wished Carol would come back, but knew from the way she had left that it would be late—half so that Mal might have the opportunity to worry about her and half as a statement of her rights.

  At midnight she switched over to UHF. Then the phone rang. Mal turned the set down. It rang a second time. Let him wait, she thought. A third time. She went over to the phone. It rang again. Then she began getting nervous. It rang again. I’ve got to get it now, she thought. I better do it now. Too late already, maybe. RRIIINNNGGGGGGGG. Then she was overcome with anger. Who does he think he is? Just what does he think I have to do all day? RRIiinn—she picked it up. “Hello,” she snapped.

  “Hello, is Mal there?” came the voice from the other end and her heart melted.

  “This is she.”

  Pause. “This is July . . . July Montgomery.”

  “Oh hello. How are you?”