No Tomorrow

by Jake Hinkson

  “No, can’t say I ever did. He works in a different part of town.”

  She grinned. “That’s too bad. That is one handsome man.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Some more folks came in and after a while Claude had a crowd of about twenty people. While the picture played, he sat up in the projectionist’s booth. I sat downstairs, just behind Lucy Harington and her brother.

  About five minutes into the movie, a drunk man opened the back door of the theater and stumbled in.

  “Picture showing? Picture showing?”

  Lucy Harrington turned around in her seat and said, “Dave, why don’t you have a seat and be quiet now?”

  Dave was about fifty and even in the silvery light from the screen I could see that he’d drunk himself to a scarlet hue.

  “Okay, okay,” he said.

  He stumbled to a seat and settled in.

  The picture is a crime thriller rip-off of Hamlet. A kid whose dad has died has a bizarre dream about his mother and the man she’s going to marry. Turns out the mom’s new boyfriend is the killer. It’s pretty predictable if you know Hamlet, but I was pretty sure the Eureka’s audience was skimpy on their Shakespeare.

  The drunk in the back probably couldn’t read – and even sober he probably couldn’t have decoded the film’s story – but he berated the picture and farted and giggled.

  Lucy Harrington leaned over and whispered something to her brother. Then she stood up and walked to the door at the back of the theater.

  Eustace stood up, all six foot five inches of him. He walked up the aisle, took the man under the arms and lifted him out of his seat. The man tried to protest, but Eustace just held him at arm’s length, like a man carrying a soiled baby, and Lucy opened the door. In a moment they were both out the door.

  The rest of the crowd barely noticed. They’d seen Dave drunk before on many occasions, I gathered, and they had not seen a movie in a while.

  I, on the other hand, had already seen Strange Illusion three times. I hustled out the back.

  Eustace had carried Dave to the grass in front of the theater and set him down.

  “Why’d you do that?” the drunk demanded.

  Lucy stood beside her brother and told Dave, “You go on home now before you get in trouble.”

  “I didn’t not … did not do nothing to nobody,” he said. “Listen here, Sheriff Harington – ”

  “You get on out of here before Eustace has to bop your ears. You remember what a headache that gave you last time?”

  Dave considered that for a moment, turned around, and staggered off without saying another word.

  I said, “You’re the sheriff?”

  I don’t know why, but in the same instant, I got scared. My palms started sweating as if I was a criminal with my face on a wanted poster back at the sheriff’s office.

  Lucy Harington smiled. “No,” she said. “Eustace is the sheriff, and I’m his administrative assistant. Which means I get to do all the paperwork.”

  “But you’re the sheriff?”

  “Well, let’s just say that together we get the job done.”

  I turned to Eustace. He grinned and nodded.

  ~ ~ ~

  While the Haringtons went back inside to watch the movie, I walked upstairs to the booth. “The sheriff wears a skirt?” I asked.

  “She’s a lady,” he said. “Ladies don’t wear britches in Stock’s Settlement. They wear skirts. You might remember that.”

  “I’m wearing a skirt.”

  “Yeah, but you seem like a woman what owns a pair of trousers. Am I wrong about that?”

  “No,” I said with a smile.

  “Might be best, you keep them in your luggage.”

  “You got a lady sheriff, though?”

  Claude watched the picture through the window. “Well, no, not exactly. Eustace is the sheriff, and Lucy’s his administrative assistant.”

  “Yeah, but – ”

  “Folks like the Haringtons. Their family’s been around these parts forever. The grandfather was mayor during the War Between the States and he kept things on track, so people like the Harington name. And ole Lucy is sharp as a tack, a real shrewd girl. Her daddy made out in the timber boom days and married a educated lady from a nice family down in Osotouy City. Lucy takes after her, I expect. Smart, pretty girl like that – it’s a shame she’s shaping up to be a spinster. I reckon she’s had her hands full with Eustace.”

  “Yeah, what’s the story with him?”

  “Well, if dumb was peaches he’d be a cobbler. Strong as a mule, though. Never goes nowhere without it’s with Lucy leading him around. Folks around here call him The Strong Arm and her The Law. That’s about right. Eustace is gentle as a kitten, but he’d rip off your head if she told him to do it.”

  “I got that feeling watching him carry the drunk out of the theater.”

  “Yeah, but Lucy only uses him when she has to. Most times she can talk a feller down. When she does turn Eustace loose, though, look out.”

  ~ ~ ~

  When the picture was over, Claude and I went downstairs. The folks filed out, and the Haringtons stopped to say goodnight.

  “How’d you like the picture?” I asked.

  Lucy Harington smiled. “Well, we missed that part in the middle when we had to drag out ole Dave, so I’m not real sure I caught everything, but something tells me I’d still be confused even if I’d stayed to watch the whole thing.”

  I laughed. “It’s a queer one, but I like it.”

  “Oh, I liked it, too. Any picture that steals the plot from Hamlet has something going for it.”

  “I’m surprised you caught that.”

  I must have said it with a little too much genuine astonishment because the lady sheriff replied, “My mother was the English teacher at our school for many years, Miss Dixon. Her great love was Shakespeare. I inherited her love of books along with the books themselves.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to imply anything.”

  She nodded. “Goodnight Miss Dixon.”

  I took a step toward her. “Lucy, I want to apologize. What I said was just a reflection of my own rather limited perspective. Please accept my apology. I’d surely hate for us to get off on the wrong foot. And, please, call me Billie.”

  She smiled, if not warmly, then at least politely. She said, “That’s nice of you to say, Billie.”

  She held out her hand and we shook. She had a farm girl’s grip and looked me in the eye. In another reality, I thought, she could have been governor of the state.

  The big man was too dense to take note of what had happened. He simply followed his sister out the door. I watched them walk down the street, back toward a little building that sat catty corner from city hall. A little sign on the side of the building read: Law Enforcement.

  I said so long to Claude, and I walked down Main Street to my motor lodge. It was late May and warm, but not yet too hot or humid. A full moon illuminated a sky that seemed crowded with stars. I walked through downtown, crossed Appleton Avenue, where Main Street effectively dead-ended at the front door of the American Quality Motor Lodge.

  The old man at the front desk raised his eyes from his chessboard just long enough to give me a wave, then returned to planning his next move against himself. The lodge had four rooms lined up in a row, but I appeared to be the only occupant.

  I went into my room and sat down on a chair in the corner. I lit a cigarette and sat there smoking, staring out the window at the empty street, thinking a little about Lucy Harington and a lot about Amberly Henshaw, thinking and thinking about tomorrow.

  Chapter Five

  I woke up the next morning to find out that the world had ended. Or at least the papers implied that things were winding down. I was on my way to wash up in the little bathhouse next to the manager’s office, and I heard a couple of old men in front of the lodge worrying over a newspaper.

  “Truman Doctrine,” a hunchbacked man in overalls said. “That’s what
they call it. Ole Harry wants us to run around the world shooting it out with the Reds.”

  The other old-timer leaned back and scratched the liver spots on his bald head. “Don’t hardly make no sense. Can’t see what bidness we got in Turkey. Sides, how long until that Stalin feller gets his fingers on the bomb?”

  His friend considered that. “Ah, them Russians ain’t smart enough to figure all that mess out – you know, the science and such.”

  The bald one said, “I don’t know. It’s just the way of things. You hit me, I’m a-gonna hit you back. You shoot at me, I’m a-gonna shoot back. And if you get your smart boys to cook up a bomb to blow me up … you think I ain’t a-gonna set my smart boys to working on the same deal?”

  The old men stopped talking when they saw me walking by with my towels and toiletries. Almost as one, they said, “Ma’am.”

  “Morning, gentlemen.”

  I walked to the little bathhouse and pulled open the creaking door. It was a one room affair with a toilet, tub and sink. One tiny window with a faded curtain faced the woods. I ran the cold clean water in the tub, and when it became apparent that there was no hot water to be had, I dampened a wash cloth and cleaned off that way. Then I washed my hair, dressed, and went back to my room.

  The old men were still contemplating the newspaper.

  The man in overalls said, “Well, it was foretold in the Book of Revelations that the world would end in fire.”

  “Did it?”

  “You ain’t never read Revelations?”

  “Attempted it in my youth. Couldn’t make no sense of it, so I left it to the preachers.”

  “Well, the fire’s a-coming,” the man in overalls said. “You can bet on that. The fire is a-coming.”

  ~ ~ ~

  I had breakfast at a greasy spoon on the town square called Dub’s Breakfast and Lunch. When I walked in, a waitress with sweptback hair, carrying an armload of plates to a young couple with a baby, said, “Howdy.”

  “Howdy.”

  “Anywhere you want.”

  The few customers in the place looked up and either gave me blank stares or slightly disapproving looks. The young couple with a baby stared at me so long I nodded at them. The man turned back to his wife and raised his eyebrows. She smiled at him.

  I sat near the front by the window, and looked down the street at the Sheriff’s office. I didn’t see any sign of the Haringtons.

  The waitress came over. She was probably no older than me, but she had the look of a woman who’d already started lying about her age. She wore more makeup than seemed to be normal for the town, and certainly more than was required for her job – though by the standards I’d seen in certain sections of Hollywood it was pretty tame.

  “Morning,” she said. “You staying over in the motor lodge?”

  “Yes,” I said, somewhat surprised by the question. “I’m in town on business.”

  “You’re the movie lady, right?”

  “Yes. How’d you know?”

  “Oh,” she said, “we only got a few hundred folks in the whole of the city limits. Every person that rolls into town becomes the local curiosity for a while. Folks don’t mean nothing by it. They’re just curious is all. Plus, you being a woman on her own, driving a car, from Hollywood of all places … Yeah, folks just want to get a look at you.” She held out her hand, “I’m Helen.”

  I shook with her. “I’m Billie,” I said.

  She smiled. “Yeah, you’re a real curiosity, all right.”

  Helen brought me some expertly fried bacon and eggs, along with coffee strong enough to power a B-17, and I ate and watched life drift by on the street. As people passed Dub’s, they all paused to take a look at me. Helen was right, though. There seemed to be no malice in it. I was just the town’s new oddity – like a one woman traveling geek show.

  I had settled my check and was about to get up from the table when I saw the preacher walk by.

  Carrying a Bible in one hand, in the other he swung a long cane rod that looked to have been converted from a fishing pole. He swung it in a wide arc, from side to side, as if driving away rats in his path.

  I checked the clock hanging on the wall next to a painting of a bowl of fruit. 11:04.

  Amberly said the preacher was going visiting after lunch. I took that to mean that he would return home for lunch, only to leave again afterwards. Or perhaps he had decided to do his visiting before lunch.

  I could feel the beat of my heart, could almost hear it echo through my body.

  I stood up and walked outside. The preacher was already far down the sidewalk, sweeping the cane pole before him. I moseyed after him, making as if I was taking an interest in the town square, giving the city hall a good once over.

  He turned at a corner. I quickened my pace, got to the corner and made the turn.

  The dusty side road led between a hardware store and a shuttered storefront. I walked down the road, passed the buildings, and found myself at some trees and another road leading off toward the river.

  But the preacher was gone.

  ~ ~ ~

  I went back to my room at the motor lodge and paced in front of the bed.

  11:30.

  I made a list of business connections to see on my drive back to California.

  11:35.

  I checked myself in the mirror. My hair was dark and short – not as short as Bergman in For Whom The Bell Tolls but more the finger wave style that been all the rage in the thirties. I’d kept it because it looked good on me. It covered my ears and bobbed just a bit at my cheekbones. My long, thin eyebrows arched over my eyes nicely. I hadn’t had a drink in a while so my hazel eyes were uncharacteristically bright. All in all, I looked pretty damn good. For me, anyway.

  11:39.

  My hands shook.

  Are you going to do this? Go see that woman? That woman married to an Arkansas preacher who killed three men?

  I sat down on the bed. The creak of the bedsprings stirred something in me. I lay back and stared at the cracked white ceiling. Amberly. I thought about the body that had moved beneath her clothes, the promise that clung to her skin like perfume.

  11:43.

  I decided I’d wait. I would make myself wait until one o’clock. But I would go.

  ~ ~ ~

  When I got the church, no one was around.

  Standing by my car, I called, “Hello” but no one came out.

  I walked up the steps and tried the double doors at the front of the church. I don’t think they even had a lock. Easily and silently, they opened into the blue sanctuary. Twenty pews divided into two sections faced a raised stage, altar and choir loft, while four stained glass windows seemed to breathe quivering rays of sapphire light into the center aisle.

  I walked down the red carpet leading to the altar. Bolted to the back wall was a cross no less than six feet tall and two feet wide. I walked to the back of the room, behind a piano flanking the stage, and opened the door I found there.

  It was the preacher’s office. Nothing adorned the wooden walls, and behind his bare desk stood skinny bookshelves with only a few scattered, dusty volumes.

  The only thing of interest in the office was another door.

  I opened it and stepped into a small apartment.

  The den was nearly as spare as the office had been, but it showed some signs of a female presence. On a chair seated in front of an unlit stove, I saw an old issue of Photoplay magazine with a cover photo of Judy Garland leaning against a piano.

  The den opened into a small dining room with a single round table and two chairs. A cupboard held some old china and glassware.

  I skipped the kitchen and went directly to the bedroom.

  It was as spare as the rest of the house. A simple queen-sized bed on a black wrought iron frame. A bureau with no jewelry, no makeup.

  But there was a brush. I picked it up and pulled out a long strawberry-blond hair. I wrapped it around my index finger.

  Floorboards creaked behind me an
d I turned and Amberly Henshaw stepped into the doorway.

  She looked the way she had before – hair down at her shoulders, a long dress down to her ankles, no shoes. The only difference was that she was not smiling.

  “Not much is it?” she asked. “My little home.”

  “I’m sorry I just came in,” I said. “I called outside, but no one answered.”

  She looked around the room as if she was seeing it for the first time. “You must think this is all so ugly and plain.”

  I placed the brush back on her bureau. “Not all of it.”

  She leaned against the door. “The church and this tiny parsonage were already here when we got here. He won’t let me dress it up. Too ostentatious, I suppose.”

  “Too … ostentatious?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see,” I said. I looked at her bare feet, then raised my eyes over her body until I settled on her face. “I’m sorry to hear that. I’m sure you’d make it beautiful.”

  “You must have seen some beautiful things, living in Hollywood, knowing all those famous people.”

  I nodded and took a step toward her as a shiver traced my spine like fingertip. “I have seen amazing beauty,” I told her. “I’ve seen hotels made of marble, and swimming pools as big and blue as the sky. I’ve seen millionaires and movie stars and models, but I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as the woman in front of me.”

  She smiled as if I’d just told her I liked her outfit, and said, “Well, aren’t you sweet.”

  I leaned against the doorway and crossed my ankles and slid my hands into the pockets on my skirt. Lowering my chin, I looked up at her.

  “Are you glad I came to see you?” I asked.

  “Of course. I get so few visitors. Obadiah is a man of single purpose. He’s not much for entertaining guests. And he expects his wife to follow his lead.”

  “And do you follow his lead?”

  “Mostly.”

  “You seem … I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you seem to be an odd fit for this life.”

  “It’s not what I had planned. That much is certain.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head. “I was the prettiest girl in town in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “He was a cute boy in an army uniform on his way to the front. He was good looking and a fast talker. Had a lot of plans for after the war, plans to take me out of Missouri and go out to California. We got married in a passion just before he got shipped out. I sent a lovesick boy off to war, and a month later I found out I was pregnant … No one around here knows about this. I’m not sure why I’m telling you… Isn’t that strange?”