by Jack Finney
The flashlight reflecting from the dark store window behind Harry, Lew could see that this was a cop in insigniaed blue cap and silver-badged, short-sleeved uniform shirt. A black-and-white plastic name plate pinned to his shirt read FLOYD PEARLEY. He was tall, extremely thin, his forearms skinny but muscularly corded. His uniform pants were too large, cinched in with a belt, and strangely short, a good several inches of bony ankles in white socks showing. Under the shiny peak of his uniform cap his face—and now Lew recognized the coffee-drinking cop at the Standard station two weeks earlier—was hostile, thin and wedge-shaped, black pistol-grip sideburns to below his ears. The flashlight flicked nervously from one to another of them but, Lew noted, at waist level now: the man had lost some nerve.
For a moment of mutual assessment they stood, the cop’s eyes darting angrily from one face to another as they stared back at him. It was too chill to be out on foot in a short-sleeved shirt: he’d been trying store doors, Lew decided, in nightly routine, his patrol car somewhere. And—Lew was conscious of a reluctant attempt to be fair—he had turned a corner to come upon something so strange and out-of-routine he’d had no prepared reaction. Without it he was blustering, and before Harry could continue Lew came in as peacemaker.
“No harm intended, Officer.” He smiled, waggling a palm placatingly, but no response appeared in the black hostile eyes. The beam of the flashlight swung to the bench, played along it, froze on the shopping bag with the upended bottle protruding greenly, then swung to Lew’s chest, a question in itself, and Lew tried to answer it. “We just had this . . . idea, is all,” he began, voice carefully slow and easy; for a moment it seemed possible to explain. “You know: with the music playing, no one else around, we thought . . .” His voice trailed off. What they had been doing here could not be explained to this mind: the man stood in narrow-eyed impatience listening without comprehension. No words of Lew’s would bring a sudden smile of understanding to this face, but out of sheer momentum Lew continued, “Didn’t realize you were here, but all we were doing—”
The cop cut him off, and Lew understood that to this man a conciliatory tone meant weakness, had restored his feeling of having the upper hand. “I don’t give a good god-damn what you were doin’; this ain’t no playground! Now, you just haul ass out of here”—his light brushed the bench—“and take this here crap with you!”
Harry said, “I’m afraid I don’t allow men I don’t know to say ‘ass’ in front of my wife. I can say it. So can my friends. So can she: say, ‘ass,’ Shirley. But you can’t, Floyd.” His face dead serious still, he was clowning now, amusing himself and the others, the Western gunslinger facing down the sheriff. In deliberate parody, Harry hooked his thumbs into the top of his pants, fingers tensely splayed, knees bent in a slight crouch—ready to go for the nonexistent gun on his hip. Slowly, menacingly, he began walking toward the cop.
“You want trouble!?” The man’s skinny rear shot backward as he bent forward and began to retreat, hand flying to the butt of his holstered revolver, the beam of his light hard on Harry’s chest.
“Harry, for godsake,” Shirley murmured, but Harry continued to walk slowly after him, and in the man’s face Lew could see the effort to make himself stand still. But his feet wouldn’t obey. For each slow step forward of Harry’s, the other could not prevent a synchronized backward step. “That what you want! You want trouble! Because you’ll get it! I’m tellin’ you, mister, and that’s the Pure-D truth!”
Lew wanted to grin but did not: this was an angry, worried man and a cop, his hand on a gun he was licensed to use. Lew reached out, and took Harry’s elbow, saying, “All right,” trying to give his voice a touch of authority and quiet common sense, “there’s no need for the gun: we’re going, we’re going.” He demonstrated this immediately, turning to the bench, deliberately presenting his defenseless back, taking their glasses from the women’s hands, thrusting them into the canvas bag. Stooped over the bench, face hidden from the cop, he released his bottled-up smile; from the corner of his eye he saw Jo watching him, and winked.
But then, bag in hand, turning to cross the walk to the store front for Harry’s glass, Lew’s smile faded and he felt the heat swiftly rising in his face. He took Harry’s glass from the window ledge, ready to shove it into the bag, but suddenly there wasn’t even time for that, and he swung around from the store front to face the cop. “But some time, old buddy, when you’re contemplating your shriveled-up little soul, ask yourself what harm we were doing. And why you couldn’t have just asked your questions, smiled, and walked on. Or stopped for a drink with us; you’d have been welcome. Because if we were here to rob the place, this isn’t quite the way we’d go about it!” He swung angrily back to the store front before he could say too much, and snatched up the empty bottle from the walk where Harry had left it. Still he wasn’t quite finished, had to turn back. “Or if you had to run us off, what exactly would have happened if you’d made it an ordinary, decent request? Would they kick you off the force for unauthorized courtesy? Is there some rule that when you put on that uniform you have to act like a shit?”
“Watch your mouth! Don’t talk to me like that or I’ll put you under arrest! The whole damn lot of you!”
Lew turned angrily to the curb. “Come on,” he said to the others, “let’s get the hell out of here.”
They walked off, angling across the big lot toward the cluster of parked cars and the service road beyond them, Lew half a step behind Jo, then Shirley, with Harry last. Eight or ten steps, no other sound but the scuffle of their shoes, the soft sweet music fading behind them: it astonished Lew; it was still “All the Way.” A step or two more, then he had to glance back, and as he turned, so did Harry. Continuing to walk on, they stared back over their shoulders. The cop stood just under the eaves of the walkway, watching them, his flashlight gone now, stuck in a back pocket probably. They began angling between the cluster of parked cars out in the middle, and Lew turned away, the episode over, when he heard Harry call softly, and turned. His hand on a fender, Harry stood facing the walkway: “Hey, stupid,” he called pleasantly, “your pants are too short,” and that did it.
“You’re under arrest!” His hand flew to his gun butt. “All of you!”
Lew felt his face drain white. “Go fuck yourself,” he yelled, voice shaking, and he walked on after Jo between the cars.
The gun yanked out. “Stop! Right there! Freeze or I’ll shoot! You’re under arrest!”
But Harry had shoved Shirley hard, on between the cars, instantly ducking low and hurrying in after her. Then they stopped beside Lew and Jo, turning to face the walkway, the metal bulks of several cars between them and the angry violent man with the gun.
Through the glass of the cars they watched him step out onto the asphalt of the parking lot, gun pointing. “Come out of there, I’m warning you, god damn it! You’re under arrest!”
Lew called, “No. We’re not. What’s the charge? What do you think has happened to be arrested? You can’t arrest for personal spite! We’re not taking an arrest. Now, put that gun away: I’m a lawyer, and I—”
“Fuck you, lawyer! I’ll put nothin away! Come on out of there, or I’m comin’ in after you!”
“You do that,” Harry called. “Come on in here, Floyd; that’s a personal invitation. And I’ll take that fucking gun and shove it up your ass.”
The man stood in classic TV pose, feet wide apart, bent slightly forward, pistol in hand at waist level, his other hand behind him and out to the side as though to maintain a delicate balance: Lew wondered if he’d ever before drawn a pistol in threat. Several seconds passed; no one moved. “Come out of there! I’m warning you!” But the voice had lost authority; he had to decide now that he would walk into the narrow dark aisles between the cars, Lew thought, but he didn’t know what would happen if he did. They waited motionless, protected by the car bodies, and Lew wondered if the absurd situation seemed as unreal to Floyd Pearley as it did to him. Four or five more seconds, th
en the man whirled, and ran hard along the covered walkway, holstering his gun; they could hear the leathery scuff of his shoes on the concrete. They stared puzzledly out at him, then Lew said, “He’s going for the phone! Let’s move!” They turned and ran hard toward the service road, leaped the foot-high hedge onto the road, and ran straight down it into the darkness, the women first, Harry jogging beside Lew. In Lew’s sack the glassware jingled musically, and he thought momentarily of abandoning it—the sack brushed his leg at every step—but was angrily unwilling to.
“Lawsy, lawsy, ah heahs de bloodhounds!” Shirley said.
Over her shoulder Jo said, “I planned all this, you know; I do hope you’re enjoying it.”
They were at the Shell station, running past it, their breathing audible. Stretching ahead into the dark lay a half-mile of straight road lying between the freeway fence beside them and, at their left after a ten-yard width of weed-grown flatness, the abrupt rise of the ridge paralleling the road. It occurred to Lew that they were running into a long, narrow trap, if headlights should suddenly appear ahead or behind them. “Harry! He could have help here in two minutes; let’s get off the god-damn road.” Lew took Jo’s elbow, and veered sharply off to the left.
Harry following with Shirley, they ran through the high weeds beside the dark station. The building stood between them and the Safeway pay phones; the cop couldn’t see them.
Harry said, “Son-of-a-bitch, I hate to run from that shit. He hasn’t got a charge he can make stick: we didn’t do anything, damn it!”
“He’d lie,” Lew said. “Say we spit on the flag.”
Shirley said sweetly, “If the sheriff comes, Harry, just take his gun away.”
Reaching the abrupt rise of the slope, they began clambering up it, women first, then the men, and as they climbed laughed semihelplessly, hilarious with the excitement of what they found themselves so unexpectedly doing. The slope was rocky and steep; almost immediately they had to climb on all fours, finding footholds, grasping handfuls of weeds to pull themselves higher. These sometimes ripped loose and someone would slide back, cursing or snickering. Each time Lew managed a step upward he had to find a place overhead to set his bag.
Here on the slanted face of the ridge it was almost but not quite completely dark; they were still just within range of the freeway lighting. From the service road Lew knew they’d be moving shadows on the slope, and he glanced back over his shoulder to scan the road. “Freeze,” he called softly.
Instantly motionless, they lay sprawled on the rocky face: Lew had seen headlight beams begin to lighten the road. Staring back over their shoulders, they watched the asphalt brighten waveringly as a fast-moving car rocked toward them. It flashed past, then brake lights flared, tires squealing, and the headlights jounced as the car shot up the shopping-center driveway. Staring across the low roof of the Shell station, they watched it, accelerating, flash across the angled white lines, the unlighted dome light winking red as it passed under the overhead lights. A side of the car momentarily illuminated, they recognized the green body and white door of a Marin County deputy sheriff car. Its brake lights flashed, the front end dipping as it abruptly stopped: from around a far corner of the long row of store fronts a Mill Valley patrol car had appeared. It drove over to the sheriff’s car, swung in beside it, and stopped, the drivers’ doors side by side.
Jo said, “I’d love to know what they’re saying.”
Shirley said, “That we resisted arrest—”
“Hell he will,” said Harry. “The last thing he’ll ever tell another cop is that he couldn’t arrest us. He’ll say he saw us at a distance or something, and that we ran off into the shadows and he lost us. Probably sorry now that he called for help, the dumb son-of-a-bitch.”
A sudden tire squeal: off to their left and now well below them, the Mill Valley police car shot forward toward the service road, the sheriff’s swinging in a tight, rubber-screeching half circle toward a side entrance of the big lot, headlights whitening the store fronts as it turned. Onto the service road, fishtailing dramatically, headlights jouncing, came the first car; instantly it slowed, and a spotlight shot out. Slowly the car moved toward them, the hard narrow beam of intense white light steadily crisscrossing, searching both sides of the road. “Don’t move, don’t move,” Lew murmured.
“Hide your faces,” said Harry, “he could take a notion to flash it up here.”
But he did not. Harry, Shirley, and Jo lay pressed to the slope, faces on their folded arms, but Lew pulled down his face mask, and lay watching, fascinated by the searching swath of hard-edged light. Engine barely audible, the car rolled by, then the others lifted their heads to stare after it.
Her voice awed, pleased, Shirley said, “Just think, he’s looking for us . . .
The car merged with the darkness ahead, only its headlight beams visible, then these were cut off by the little motel half a mile down at the foot of Ricardo Road.
They resumed their climbing, the men occasionally reaching up to give the women a boost, and once Shirley said, “Harry, god damn it!”
“Only helping.”
“At least I trust it was you.”
“But hoping what?”
They reached the top, Harry moving past the women to turn and give them a hand up onto the path that wound along the ridge, then he took Lew’s sack, and Lew scrambled up. His mask still down, Lew turned to face the direction of the vanished car and, slowly thumping his chest with a fist, called in a pseudo-shout, “Hey, Floyd! Come and get us!”
Harry said, “Che, I’ve got a machine gun buried up here. And a cache of rice; we can hold out for days. Shirl, Jo: now’s the time to leave, if you want to rat out. It’s no surrender once the action starts.”
Shirley said, “Did Bonnie leave Clyde? I’m staying right here. With my foot on the bumper and a cigar in my mouth.”
Lew said, “Remember, Short Pants Pearley is mine.”
“What if a cop comes up here?” Jo said. “When they don’t find us along the roads.”
“No,” Lew said. “The sheriff isn’t going to come climbing around up here in the dark; it’s not a big enough thing. And you know Short Pants won’t.
“Anyway,” Harry said, “they’ll think we had a car somewhere—who walks? The sheriff will cruise around for a while, then let it go; probably get another call. And Short Pants will have to pick up on checking doors again. We’ll just keep off the roads for a while; work our way back along the ridges as far as we can.” He picked up the canvas sack. “Probably break our ass in the dark.”
“I don’t allow anyone to say ‘ass’ in front of Jo,” Lew said, and they laughed quietly, and began following Harry along the ridge.
A mile and twenty minutes later, when finally they had to descend to the roads, it again became possible that headlights might suddenly pick them up; or that, rounding a bend, they could come upon a police car parked in the dark waiting for them. But in fact they encountered no one. And when presently they turned into their own driveway to stand indecisively between the two buildings, Lew understood that to simply say good night now would be anticlimactic. The adrenaline still flowed, and when Harry lifted the canvas sack to rattle the glass, saying, “Well, come on, there’s some champagne left,” turning toward his building, the others followed. “We’re not letting the fucking cops spoil Jo’s party.”
In the Levys’ living room, a newly opened bottle on the table beside Harry on the chesterfield, they sat in semi-darkness, each holding a filled glass. Harry had circled the room, pouring, then turned out the lights, drawn back the drapes, and slid open the glass doors to the balcony. Now, sipping, they sat watching the motionless green-lighted street just outside, curious to see whether or not a slowly cruising police car would prowl by. Voices low but still tinged with the exhilaration of their encounter and flight, they talked about what had happened, laughing at the cop and at themselves, quietly hilarious.
Then—it was very late now, the street outside utterly st
ill—they fell silent. On the chesterfield beside Harry, Shirley sat watching her glass, slowly revolving it to and fro by the stem. “Damn cop,” she murmured. “I was having the most marvelous, nutty kind of time.”
“I know,” Jo said. “And then he spoiled it. He’s spoiled them all.”
“What do you mean ‘all’?” said Harry.
“Well, we can’t go out again after tonight.” She smiled. “Be a long time before they forget four people dancing and drinking champagne at the shopping center. At three in the morning.”
“Of course,” said Shirley. “From now on any cop cruising Strawberry at night will have an eye out for that foursome. And would see us sooner or later.”
“So?” Harry demanded.
“Well, it spoils it, Harry, that’s all.”
“Why?” he insisted, wriggling forward to sit at the very edge of the chesterfield, glaring at the others. “If the cop is Short Pants we deny it was us; must have been four other people. He’ll know better, but let him try to prove it weeks later. And if it’s some other cop, we’re just out taking a walk; so what?”
“At like 3 A.M.?” said Shirley.
“Why the hell not if we feel like it! It’s what we’ve been doing, isn’t it? No law against it! Jesus Christ, we’ve gotten to believe the police are all-powerful!” He snatched the bottle from the table beside him, jumping up to refill their glasses. Then he strode over to the balcony doors, and closed them: “The cops aren’t coming, screw the cops.” He turned on the nearest lamp, yanked the drapes closed, then turned to grin at them, lifting the nearly emptied bottle to his mouth, and draining it. “Pah!”—he popped his lips in a long, satisfied exhalation, rubbing his stomach. “Stuff’s beginning to work its familiar magic once more. Right, Jo?”
She nodded, smiling. “Most ridiculous night I ever spent,” she said, and surprised herself by giggling.
“Lew?” said Harry, and Lew said, “This may be the answer to everything. Unlimited champagne, day and night. Piped into every house.”
