Hot Spot

by Charles Williams

  I switched on the light, and she repaired the damage. While she was poking around in her purse, something fell out of it, bounced once on the seat, and fell on to the floor mat. I groped around for it and found it for her. It was a money clasp, apparently of sterling silver and made in the shape of a dollar sign.

  “Say that’s a pretty thing,” I said.

  “My mother gave it to me when I graduated from high school.”

  I handed it back to her and she dropped it into her purse. “We can be married any time,” I said. “We’ve already got our silver started.”

  She laughed, and finished rubbing out the tear stains. She felt a lot better, and I kept on clowning so she wouldn’t know the way I was raging inside.

  When I left her at the gate it was like pulling off an arm to let her go, but I was anxious to get started before she thought to ask me what I was going to do. I didn’t want to lie to her any more than I had to, and I knew she’d be frantic and try to make me promise if she got an inkling of what was going on in my mind.

  When I got over on Main I stopped under a street light and got out and opened the trunk. I found what I was looking for, and threw them in the front seat. They were a pair of leather gloves I’d won on a punchboard one time and kept in the car for changing tyres. They were leather all over, very thick and tough. For a job like this they’d save your hands almost as well as having them taped.

  I was doing seventy by the time I got out of town. I’d forgotten about Tate and the Sheriff and the fact that they were still keeping an eye on me. If they tried to follow me, they got lost. I had to slow down when I left the highway, but I was crowding it all the way across the sandhills and through the river bottom. I went up over the second ridge bucking along like a madman in the uneven ruts, and when I hit the clearing I drove right up in his yard. And he wasn’t home.

  The car was gone, and in the beams of the headlights I could see the cabin door was closed. I sat there cursing for two or three minutes before I remembered it was Saturday night. A big sport like Sutton would be in town, or even in the county seat. He had to spend all that easy money some way.

  There was no use going back and looking for him around the beer joints and pool halls. The only thing to do was wait. I looked at my watch. It was a little after eleven.

  I waited until twelve. And then it was one a.m. Somewhere far off a train whistled for a crossing, and once in a while a little night breeze would rustle through the oaks around the clearing. What was the use of hanging around any longer? He was probably bedded down somewhere by this time and wasn’t coming back.

  I gave it up finally at two-thirty and went back to town. I took a shower and lay down in the darkness with an all-night pass on the merry-go-round. The ash-tray on the floor beside the bed filled up and overflowed, and the sheets stuck to me every time I’d turn. I’d think of him, not satisfied with squeezing her dry with blackmail but having to dress it up with that crawling joke of his and humiliate her for his own particular brand of laughs, and the anger would come boiling up and choke me.

  When was it going to end, and where? If I got him stopped, how about Dolores. Harshaw? The whole thing was changed now. I wanted to stay here, and I wanted to marry Gloria. So then she’d just wish us luck, and that Sheriff would get off my back and take up raising orchids? There wasn’t any way to guess what she was going to do.

  I must have dropped off to sleep sometime towards dawn, for the next thing I knew it was ten-thirty and I could hear church-bells ringing. Sutton was back in my mind with the opening of my eyes, as if he’d never been gone, and even while I was looking at my watch I was rolling out of bed. I dressed and went downtown. Sunlight was brassy in the streets, stabbing at my eyes. Only a few people were in the restaurant. I ordered orange juice and coffee, and while I sat drinking it a man in a white hat came in and sat down at the second stool on my left. It was Tate. He nodded.

  “How’s it going?” I asked.

  “All right, I guess.”

  “Anything new in the bank deal?”

  “No,” he said. “We’re still waiting.” He looked at me, the level gaze devoid of any expression at all, and then went back to the newspaper. “Just waiting.”

  I finished the coffee and put some change on the counter. “See you around,” I said, and went out. I could feel him there behind me. Waiting, I thought. They’d wait a long time. I threw my cigarette savagely into the street and headed for the car, forgetting them. He ought to be home by now.

  When I crossed the bridge over the river I thought of last night, and of her telling me, and began to ride the accelerator. And then when I hit the clearing I could see the car parked near the porch. He was home. I rolled to a stop in the front yard, grabbed the leather gloves off the seat, and got out.

  I went up on the front porch and in the door without knocking. He wasn’t there. I stood in the middle of the room, looking around, feeling the wicked proddings of impatience and baffled rage. It looked about the same as it had that other time, when I’d come out here with Gloria, the bed unmade and dirty dishes sitting on the table by the rear door. Maybe he’d gone hunting. I turned, looking along the walls. The .22 rifle was lying in a rack near the front door and just above it was a pump shotgun. He couldn’t have gone far. A sudden thought occurred to me and I went over and checked the guns. The .22 was empty, but when I worked the action on the shotgun it was loaded. I jacked the three shells out on to the floor, picked them up, and threw them under the bed.

  I sat down on the bed and leaned back against the wall. Outside I could hear a woodpecker hammering on a tree. The air was dead and very hot and I could feel sweat breaking out on my face. And then I heard him coming. He was climbing out of the ravine behind the house. I sat there as he appeared in the rear door, carrying a bucket of water in each hand.

  He was wearing overalls, but no shirt, and the black hair on his arms and chest glistened with sweat. The smooth moon face split open with a grin that didn’t get as far as his eyes.

  “Come in,” he said. “Make yourself at home.”

  “Sure,” I said. I pulled a foot back and put it behind the edge of the small table beside the bed and shoved. It shot across the room and crashed into the kitchen table. An ash-tray rolled, spilling butts, and the kerosene lamp hit the floor and shattered. Oil spilled down between the planks. “Sit down,” I said.

  He looked at the mess. “Tough, huh?” He set the buckets of water on a bench by the door.

  “Yes,” I said. “Tough.”

  His eye drifted towards the shotgun.

  “It’s not loaded,” I said.

  “Well, what’ll they think of next?” He looked at me. “What are we going to talk about? Not that I’m nosey, you understand—”

  “Gloria Harper. You’ve been on her back a little over a year now—”

  “And you came all the way out here to tell me to get off? Is that it?”

  “I’m going to do better than that,” I said. “I’m going to help you off.”

  I got up off the bed and started for him. He waited, not even putting his hands up. I walked in on him, watching the hands, and when they did move at last, the left feinting at my face, I turned sharply on my left foot and took the knee against my thigh. Maybe he was expecting somebody from the Golden Gloves, I thought, swinging very low and hard into his belly and moving in with it at the end. He bent over, sucking for air and sick, and I put the glove in his face and twisted it. He groped for me with a left, and I hooked a right to his face which spilled him on to the edge of the kitchen table. The legs caved in on one end and he slid down it, getting mixed up with the plates and a bottle of syrup. He tried to get up, the wind roaring in his throat, and I dropped him again. It was five times before he stayed down. I was winded and my hands hurt, and sweat ran down my face like rain. I got him by the bib of the overalls and hauled him up against the slant of the table-top with my knee in his belly and bounced his head against it three times more for a sales talk and then let h
im slide down and roll around in the dishes. He was a mess to look at. I went over to the water buckets, fighting to get my breath, and poured water over the gloves to get the blood off, then took one of his shirts off the wall and dried them, and threw it on the floor. I poured the rest of the bucket of water in his face.

  When I thought he could hear me, I squatted down beside him. “Now get this,” I said. “You can’t make trouble for her. But even if you could, there’s nothing you can do to me. I’ll still be here. And hell won’t be big enough to hold you. So if you want to go around the rest of your life singing to yourself and slobbering down the front of your shirt, go ahead and try it.”

  I went out and got in the car and drove back to town. Maybe I’d sold him, and maybe I hadn’t. The only thing I knew for sure was that next time I’d never get a chance to unload the shotgun.

  16

  THAT NEXT WEEK WAS WONDERFUL. We didn’t see anything of Sutton, and we were together nearly all the time. We had lunch together every day, and I spent a lot of time in the loan office under the pretext of familiarizing myself with the setup. When the other girl was gone we’d turn on to the phony notes, trying to get them organized and establish some sort of pattern for paying them off. She didn’t want to be married until the last one was paid.

  “It isn’t just stubbornness, Harry,” she explained earnestly. “It has to be that way. You want me to quit work when we’re married, and we both know I can’t quit till all these are paid. They’re my debt, and I have to pay them.”

  I had to admit she was right, in spite of my impatience. We couldn’t let somebody else take charge of the books until they were in order. I thought of the twelve thousand dollars buried in that old barn, just sitting there, and wanted to go right out and dig it up and pay off the whole fifteen hundred dollars at once. It didn’t take much thought, however, to throw that out. It wouldn’t do. And it might be very dangerous. In the first place, how could I explain to her where I’d suddenly got hold of that much money? And worse than that, I couldn’t be absolutely sure the Sheriff had been lying when he’d said the bank had the serial numbers of it. It would be suicide to try to run the stuff right back through the same bank it’d come out of, and this soon afterwards. I’d just be asking for it. That money was going to stay there a long time, maybe for years, and when it went back into circulation it would be a long way from here. I’d have to think of something. But I didn’t worry about it; I had plenty of time.…

  At odd moments I did some digging back into sales records on the lot, and I could see that even if I couldn’t build it up I’d still clear five or six hundred dollars a month with the commissions and the salary he was paying me. And I was working on a number of ideas for whooping sales up if we could get the cars. There wasn’t too much live competition around here, even in the county seat, and with some advertising and good promotion to stir it up there was no reason we couldn’t nearly double the business.

  The hardest part, of course, was going to be the waiting. We added it all up, and by pooling every nickel we’d make and could spare it would still take until sometime in November to get it all paid off. We wouldn’t have anything left to start with, but I’d have a good job and somehow we’d scrape up enough for at least a week’s honeymoon in Galveston.

  Once or twice she got scared and despondent again, thinking of Sutton, but I was able to talk her out of it. She asked me what I’d done and I was as evasive about it as I could be without making her suspicious. I told her I’d had a talk with him and warned him, which was true as far as it went.

  It wasn’t always so easy at night though, after I’d left her and was lying there in my room. We hadn’t seen anything of him, but how did I know we wouldn’t? Everything we had planned was based on the assumption that I’d scared him off and there wouldn’t be any more demands. So what if I was wrong? And there was always Dolores Harshaw. I didn’t know what she was going to do about it.

  I think it was Tuesday night when it hit me. I was lying there in the dark going around with it for the thousandth time, trying to guess whether she’d meant it or not and what my chances would be if she pulled her alibi out from under me and dropped me back into that hellhole of questions, when suddenly I sat up in bed with the whole answer perfectly clear in my mind. She didn’t have me. I had her. She couldn’t do a thing.

  I thought about it for a while, and then turned over and dropped off into an untroubled sleep for the first time in weeks. If she tried anything she was going to get the surprise of her life.

  I went out to see Harshaw Friday night to give him a short rundown on how we’d been doing. He looked a little better. He was still weak and shaky, but the dirty grey colour had cleared up and he appeared to be becoming reconciled to inactivity. He was sitting in the living-room reading “Lee’s Lieutenants” while she listened to some quiz show on the radio.

  I made the business talk as brief as possible, not playing up the advertising ideas too much because I didn’t want to run the risk of starting an argument and getting him heated up. He grunted more or less approvingly at most of the details, and nodded once or twice. “Sounds all right,” he said. “I guess you’ll make out.”

  “I think so,” I said. She had turned off the radio and was wandering restlessly around the room. I could see she was bored, and I wondered what she’d try next. But I wasn’t afraid of her any more.

  “How are you getting along with Miss Harper?” he asked.

  I grinned. “I remembered what you told me. We’re going to be married in November, so I’ll be able to mistreat her all I want.”

  He gave me that probing look, and then his face softened a little. I thought he was going to smile. “Marry her, huh? You’re beginning to show signs of intelligence. When you get that girl it’ll be the best day’s work you ever did.”

  “I know it,” I said. I happened to look up at her just then. She was behind him, adjusting the venetian blinds. She turned and looked at me with that malicious smile on her face.

  “I think that’s wonderful,” she said. “She’s such a sweet girl.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I know you’ll both be very happy.” The smile slipped a little and you could see past it. She was raging. I wondered how long it’d be before I heard from her.

  It wasn’t very long. It was that same night.

  It was around midnight. I was coming back from taking Gloria home and as I pulled up in front of the rooming house another car came up behind me. I stepped out, and it came up alongside and stopped. A voice said softy, “Get in,” and I knew who it was. I got in. It would be the last time.

  She went on around the block and over to Main, turning north and gunning it fast along the highway. “How’s the happy bridegroom?” she asked.

  “Not bad,” I said.

  “But I’m rushing it a little, aren’t I? You’re not a bridegroom yet; you’re just engaged. You’re lovely, and you’re engaged. Isn’t that sweet?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And what’s on your mind?”

  “You’d never guess, would you?”

  “I thought I told you the last time. We’re through.”

  “We are like hell. Remember?”

  She pulled off on to a side road and stopped.

  “Well,” she said, “so I’m just going to sit around on my hands and let you and that angel-faced candy kid get away with it, am I? The two of you’re just too cute for anything. You make me sick.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Tell me all about it. And when you get through I’ll tell you.”

  “You’re not going to marry her. In November, or any other time. I thought we’d straightened that out already.”

  “You’ve got some other plan in mind?”

  “You’re damned right I have. You’re going to marry me.”

  “I thought the bag limit was one husband at a time.”

  “Maybe I’m thinking of getting a divorce.”

  It was something about the way she said it. Sh
e didn’t mean divorce. Or I didn’t think she did. It was just an awful feeling that I was very close to knowing, for the first time, what she was really driving at. She could have left him any time, and he’d probably give her a divorce whenever she asked for it. Maybe she was waiting for more. He’d had two heart attacks—It was a little sickening.

  “All right,” I said. “Get a divorce. But not on my account. I’ve told you what I’m going to do.”

  “You think I’m bluffing, don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “What do you suppose the Sheriff’ll do when he finds out what really happened that day?”

  “So you’re going to tell him?”

  “Certainly I am.”

  “And have you thought over what’s going to happen when you do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll go to jail.”

  “Who do you think you’re kidding?”

  “Nobody. If I committed a crime, you’re an accessory to it. I say if I committed one. You don’t know, you see. But if I did, now you’re as guilty as I am. You not only withheld evidence, but you lied about it.”

  “I don’t believe you.” She was still loud and defiant and angry, but I could hear a little note of uncertainty creeping in.

  “Well, I’ve told you,” I said. “But if you’re such a hotshot hard guy, go ahead and try it. Personally, I don’t think they could convict either one of us of anything, but it’d certainly give people something to talk about. Such as, why did you lie about seeing me there in the first place? And what’s been going on, girls, that we didn’t know anything about?”

  “Why you dirty—”

  “Well, I just thought I’d tell you, pal, before your neck got out another foot. You’d better reel it in.”

  “So that’s the way it is?”

  “That’s exactly the way it is.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I think of it. And you. And everything about you. And her.”