by Orrie Hitt
She looked uncomfortable and hot, standing there in the sun in her black dress. I took her by the arm and led her over to the shade of a maple.
“You could let the taxi go if you want,” I said. “I’ll take you home.”
“Thank you,” she said. “But he’s a friend of ours and he’ll wait.”
I could hear the rattle of the dirt and stones as the workmen pushed the dirt down onto Dell’s casket. I knew that she heard it, too, because her face tightened up.
“Monday night Dell and I had a long talk,” she said.
I didn’t say anything. The boy walked away, around the tree, kicking at the grass with his shoes. His sister went over, took hold of one of his hands and walked with him. They were quite alone.
“He had so many plans,” she said, turning her head away. “His father left him a big place out in the country. I don’t mean a house. Just a lot of land and a lake. There’s a lot of fish in the lake and we’d talked of making it into a fishing club and resort.”
“I wish it could have worked out for you,” I said, as she paused.
“Yes,” she looked back at me again. There was a clean strength in her eyes, the kind of courage that would endure as long as the ground beneath us. “He did good. He sold a lot of insurance.”
“Dell was a good man,” I said.
“Then — well, you know about — her?”
“Yes.”
She seemed surprised. “He told you?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t make any difference,” she said. “He did it.” Her voice rose, stabbing at me. “God, why did he do it?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
I wished that she had found someone else to talk to. The thing was done and it was over with. I wanted to forget about it.
“He said — if anything happened to him — I might talk to you. There — there isn’t much insurance, Mr. Weaver.”
“I see.”
I wondered if she knew about the five thousand group coverage with the company, but I didn’t ask her. Austin would let her know about that.
“He had some insurance, but he’d borrowed on it.” Her tone was just a trifle resentful. “For her.”
The preacher and the undertaker drove away and the workmen kept piling the dirt into the grave. The boy and girl stood watching silently and I could see the boy’s chin quiver.
“He said you were a good man, Mr. Weaver. He said you were the only one who wanted to help him.”
“I liked Dell. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
“He said he thought you had some money, Mr. Weaver.”
I let that one slide by as though I hadn’t heard it.
“He told me what to do if anything happened to him. Of course I didn’t think — but, Mr. Weaver, he said to talk to you about that place out in the country. It’s free and clear, Mr. Weaver. It’s the one thing that he didn’t touch. He said that you might be interested in going into it with me.”
I just looked at her.
“As a business,” she said. She glanced away, at the hills, and I knew that the place was in that direction. “I can get along, Mr. Weaver. I can get a job. I’m not worrying about that. But that could mean so much for me — for my children — and for you. I wish that you’d think about it.”
“All right,” I said, hoping that it would make her feel better.
“Maybe you’d want to stop out there some time and look at it?”
“I could do that.”
She told me how to get there. It wasn’t far, maybe ten miles or so, and the directions sounded simple enough. I listened to her and nodded. I didn’t intend to go out there. I was just being polite.
“You can let me know,” she said. “Our address is in the phone book and you could call or come down.”
“I’ll try to get around to it.”
“No hurry, Mr. Weaver. Whenever you can.”
Her kids were shuffling their feet around, glancing at her and then over at the taxi. She smoothed her dress down with her hands and managed a smile.
“I’ll expect to hear from you, Mr. Weaver.”
“That’s right.”
“And thanks. It was good of you to listen.”
I watched her walk over to the cab, her shoulders square and proud, the boy on one side and the girl on the other. Then they got into the car, the motor started and they drove off.
I followed the path to the road and slid in behind the wheel of the Buick. I backed up, turned around, and headed down the gray strip of gravel. I glanced in the mirror and saw the workmen throw the shovels on the pile of dirt, sit down and light cigarettes. There was no need for hurry. Their work would wait.
When I hit the highway I turned left, not toward town, but in the direction of Pine Valley. It was early in the afternoon, and Friday, and I had plenty of collections to make — it was railroad payday and you either get some of those guys before they hit a bar or you don’t get it at all — but I figured the hell with it. I had a couple of apps for Monday’s report. One for Friday and one for Monday. Of course, both twenty-five-cent industrials were on the same life but that counted as two. I had learned that that was the smart way to do it. Austin wanted one industrial sale a day. So when I got anything over a quarter I split the business in two and wrote out two applications instead of one. Sometimes a policyholder didn’t like that, wondered why, and I just told him that if he ever wanted to cash-surrender one he wouldn’t have to bother the other. That always convinced them. Naturally it wasn’t necessary to do that, because you can always cut a life policy down to your size and keep of it what you want; but what the average joe didn’t know wouldn’t bother him and doing it like that made my life easier.
It was a hot day with a blue-gray sky marred with thunderheads on the horizon. It was a hell of a day for getting buried. It was the kind of a day that I felt like living. But that would have to wait until Monday.
I went past the Schofield place, slowing up and watching close. The car was in the garage and there was a flat-bottom boat upturned on a couple of sawhorses in the driveway. There didn’t seem to be anybody around, but just as I started to look away I saw her come out of the garage. She was brown and trim in red shorts and halter. I could see that she was carrying a paint bucket in her hand. I didn’t blow the horn, or wave, just let up on the gas and watched as long as I could. The last I saw of her she was putting the paint bucket down on the bottom of the boat.
I felt like turning around and going back there. But I didn’t. I kept on driving toward the hotel. Monday would be all the better, thinking about her and waiting for it.
I tried to find a parking place for the car in the shade but about a hundred other people with the same idea had been there long before me. Finally I left the car on the edge of the grass, in the sun, with the windows down.
Some fat women were taking sleeping exercises in sagging canvas chairs, waking up now and then to scream at their noisy kids. A couple of guys were pitching quoits at one end of the lawn, while at the other a mass of humanity was milling around, trying to get into a home movie that some retired chiropractor was making. The younger crowd, the people who had to work for a living and snatch their sunshine and booze over the week-end, never got up until late on Friday night. By eleven o’clock that night the place would be hopping and you wouldn’t be able to walk across the darkened lawn without stepping on some guy’s back or catching a girl in a sport that she would much rather keep private. Johnson had imported an orchestra from the Gay White Way and they made with the music in the casino from around nine until Christ knew when.
Standing down there on the lawn I could look up the side of the cliff and see the cabin. I could see the heat hanging off the rocks and it looked like a long way up there. It was. Too far. Much farther than the bar.
There wasn’t anybody in the bar, just the bartender, and he and I hadn’t hit it off so well since the Schofield incident. I sat around on one of the stools, drinking a couple of balls, until I go
t tired of the silence.
“You ruined my business,” he said, as I started out.
“That’s tough.”
“I got lots of guys asking for those pictures,” he said.
I gave him a sly wink.
“Maybe you could interest them,” I said.
He swore and came around the bar. I let the door suck shut and started back over there. He got behind the bar again.
I laughed and pushed out into the heat on the porch. A baby lay in its carriage, screaming with the day and the effects of nature. The mother looked up from her movie magazine and gave me a big smile. She didn’t pay any attention to the kid. I didn’t pay any attention to her.
Johnson was just leaving the lobby when I started in through the door. He looked pretty good, for him. Although he still wore the habitual overalls, he’d found time to put on a clean shirt.
“Any time you want something good,” he said, “just let me know.”
“Yeah?”
“The red-headed waitress,” he said. He laughed and kicked the door wide open. “And I thought I was a man!”
He went down the porch, the hard heels of his shoes rattling the gray boards. I shrugged and entered the darkness of the lobby. I could just see myself getting wound up with something like that. On the thirty-first day of February I could see it.
Sally was at the desk, sorting registration cards.
“Be with you in a moment, please,” she said, not looking up.
I watched the way her slim fingers shot through the cards, placing them in the proper piles. I could see that she had been out in the sun because her skin was burned a golden brown. There were also a couple of freckles on her chin which I hadn’t noticed before. She had on a silver-colored gray dress that appeared cool and stressed the fact that she’d cut the rest of her clothing down to the minimum early July standard.
She pushed the cards aside, glanced up and kept only half of the smile.
“Hello, Nicky.”
I hadn’t see her since that night in my cabin. The last I could remember I’d been holding her in my arms. When I’d wakened along toward morning, she’d been gone.
“How you doing, Sally?”
“Not bad.”
A deep color crept into her face. I knew what she was thinking about. She was thinking about the same thing I was, about how crazy she had talked that last night, and wanting a baby — and how stupid I had been not to have gone along with it.
“I heard that one of the men in your office died.”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” she said. She began messing with the cards again.
“I was talking to his wife,” I said. “She’s got a place over in the country that she’s thinking of making into a fishing club and summer resort.”
“I suppose she’ll have to do something.”
“I guess she wants me to go in with her.”
Sally got the cards mixed up and started all over again.
“I thought I might go over and look at it.”
“You’d almost have to,” she said. “Before you did anything.”
“What time do you get finished working, Sally?”
“Six,” she said. “Tonight, anyway.”
I didn’t have any reason for asking her. I’d taken care of her in Miss Hankins’ laundry and I’d turned her down the second time. It wasn’t that. Maybe it was because she was a good kid and I didn’t want her to feel any shame about what had been between us. I knew that there shouldn’t be, any more, and I wanted, somehow, to get her alone and tell her just how it was.
“You might like to ride along,” I suggested.
“I don’t know anything about fishing clubs, Nicky.”
“Neither do I.”
“Then there wouldn’t be much sense to it.”
“We’d only be looking.”
“That makes even less sense, doesn’t it?”
She sorted the cards furiously, mixed them up again and shoved them aside. She jerked the cash drawer open and did something with the money in there.
“God damn it!” I said, leaning across the desk. She looked up at me, startled. “I don’t care if I ever see that place. I just wanted to talk to you. Can’t you understand that, Sally?”
“I couldn’t tonight,” she said, fumbling in the drawer again.
“Cripes, I don’t know why not.”
She pushed the drawer closed. Her eyes flashed at me.
“It so happens I have a date,” she said. “I’m going to the movies in town.”
“Oh?”
“The early show. He has to be back for the dance.”
“He must be that orchestra guy,” I said, guessing at it. “He must be.”
I’d seen him just once, out on the lawn. Reed Starbuck. He was a big blond guy with wide shoulders and slim hips. He had a good face and a smile that came quickly. I’d liked him right off.
“Maybe he needs a singer,” I said.
“Maybe he does.”
Neither one of us was running up any score in this game so I decided to call it off.
“Be seeing you,” I said, and swung away from the desk. “Nicky.”
I stopped, not looking back. “Yeah?”
There was a moment of silence.
“About the other night, Nicky,” she said. “I didn’t mean for you to feel — ”
“That’s all right,” I said. I laughed, moving on. “I wasn’t up to par that night. Any other time, Sally — any other time and I’ll take care of you.”
I could hear her breath come in sharp and I kept right on going. There was a big hollow feeling inside of me. I had cut it off, sharp and clean. That was the way I wanted it. The hollow started to fill up, not hurting so much. I was doing it smart. Playing with something like that could sink me faster than the bottom falling out of a boat.
I met Johnson coming the other way through the door. “Jesus!” I said. “All you do is go out and come in.” He mopped the sweat on his face.
“Stop thinking about the readhead,” he said. Then he laughed at his own joke and blinked a couple of times. “Wanted to catch you, Mr. Weaver.”
“Okay.”
“Had a phone call for you while Sally was swimming with that orchestra guy. Your office called and said that a Mrs. Schofield called in and said for you not to come on Monday.”
I got the door open and stepped out onto the porch.
“You got that, Mr. Weaver?”
The emptiness in my stomach expanded to the size of an ashcan. “Sure,” I said. “Don’t call on Monday.”
Then I walked off the porch, across the lawn and slowly up the hill to the cabin.
CHAPTER X
THERE WERE QUITE A FEW LIGHTS IN the Schofield house, poking out through the blackness of the slanting rain like yellow candles. I wondered what was going on in there. It was Monday night and I should be inside that house, talking to her — or doing other things. But I shot the car past the driveway and wound it up on the way to the hotel.
It had been a tough day. I’d had dozens of railroad calls, some of which I’d had to double back on, plus the regular first-of-the-week race against the clock. Every once in a while I’d ducked into a phone booth and tried to call her. And each time the phone had buzzed its regular twelve times and died into the silence. Then I’d gone out and collected some more. I’d been making good time until I’d got down there to the Grand Union and saw the crowd of cops and people out front. They’d been carrying her out, in a basket, and the janitor of the building had been telling everybody how he’d smelled gas and gone in and found her. No one seemed to be particularly concerned about the girl, only that someone might go upstairs with a cigarette, or light a match up there, and blow the building apart. I guess the building was more important than a stupid little kid who’d got herself knocked up. I’d told one of the cops who I was, and asked about her insurance. He’d said that they’d try to get in touch with her people and that I could check on it at the station the next morn
ing. I’d told him I would and then gone about my business.
There weren’t many cars on the parking lot of the hotel. Most of the men had returned to the city the night before, or early that morning, to take up the struggle where they’d left it Friday. The dance hall was in full swing and I could hear the music as I stepped out of the car into the rain. Most of the men over there would be local swains who had dance permits at the hotel. These guys drove out from town in beat-up cars and finance company convertibles. They didn’t come out to dance so much as to try to lay some guy’s wife. I guess they had luck at it, because they kept coming back.
The path was slippery and thick with mud under my feet. The branches of the maples bent down with the water on them; once in a while the wind stirred and the leaves shed the drops in torrents. I made up my mind to make a practice of carrying the trench coat in the car at all times. The wet came through my sportcoat and lay cold on my skin. I had the debit book under my arm, up close, trying to keep it dry. If that thing ever got wet the ink would dry all over the pages and the company would raise hell about that.
I was glad to get up onto the porch of the cabin, out of the rain. From down below I could hear the music drifting up from the dance hall. I supposed that Sally was down there with that orchestra fellow, or maybe she was over in her room getting pointers from the redhead.
I unlocked the door and went inside.
The cabin was damp and it didn’t feel any better after I’d changed to dry clothes and slipped a robe on. There was some wood by the fireplace, so I got a handful of paper, used some of the sticks, and got a fire going. The fire burned brightly and I sat down on the davenport, facing it, and started to balance out my collections for the day. Overhead, the rain drummed down on the roof.
I had the sheet almost totaled when I felt the door open and the damp air across my knees. I looked up and the night became young again.
“Jesus Christ!”
I got up as she closed the door. She’d come up the path, just wearing the dress, and it was plastered to her like wet paper. “Hello, Nicky.”
“Jesus! Irene!”
She came over and held her wet face up to me. I bent and kissed her. Her lips were warm and parted. “You’d better get that dress off,” I said. She laughed and shook the rain from her hair. “You’re like a stud, Nicky.”
