by John Farris
"You okay?"
"Getting there, chum."
"Want me to read the paper to you?"
"No, thanks."
Nellie picked up the Star anyway and leafed through it. "Dorothy Dix says that the use of tears by any woman for a goal is con-temp-tible."
"Well, well."
"Can I turn the lights off so you can see the lightning bugs?"
"I might shave off the end of my nose."
"Why don't you use a Gillette safety razor?"
"They're vastly overrated."
The telephone rang down the hail and Nellie sprinted to answer it. She came back slowly as Jackson wiped lather from an earlobe.
"It's her again."
"Who?"
"The lady that called this afternoon. I told her once already you were sick. Do you want me to tell her again?"
"What lady are we talking about?"
"Oh, I forgot to ask! I'll go ask."
"I'll ask her myself," Jackson said. It was too hot, but he put a threadbare dressing gown on over his pajamas and went along the hall to the telephone stand by the stairs. Nellie followed and sat on the top step with her back to him and her ears flapping.
"Jackson," said Beggs, "how are you getting along?"
"Just a bout of malaria. I'm feeling my old—"
"Malaria! My God. In Kansas City?"
"I came down with it in Equatorial Africa. That was a long time ago, but I'll never be completely free of the organisms."
"I've seen some of the boys coming through here with the shakes. Must be awful."
"I'm feeling my old self again," he repeated, sounding a bit too evenhanded and patient. The inevitable awkward pause resulted. Jackson heard her exhale, as if she were smoking. There was background noise, an echoing clamor, sepulchral tannoy announcements, outside the booth from which Beggs was calling. She was at the station.
"I guess you're wondering why I phoned you. I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I'm not trying to get started again. Uh. It was. Well. Sorry I called you a rat. You know, just got in too deep before I looked where I was going. Surprised both of us, didn't it? Uh."
"Beggs. You know I'm very fond of you." On the steps Nellie was picking at a fresh scab on one shin. Jackson gave her a nudge with a slippered foot so she'd stop. Nellie turned and looked at him with a facial twitch that was a cross between a squint and a wink: Call it a squink. Nellie was witty and she was exasperating, and Jackson was happy that she was far from a marriageable age. Thus it will go on as long as children are gay and innocent and heartless, he thought, and tried to concentrate on his stalled conversation with Beggs, wondering, with a gritty sense of resignation, if next she would start to cry.
But instead she said wistfully, "I believe it. Otherwise I couldn't—to get down to brass tacks, there's a favor I want to ask."
Uh-oh. "Huge, or medium-size?"
"Maybe a little complicated to explain on the phone, and anyway I have to get back to work, the troop trains are really pouring in here tonight. I'll be off at nine-thirty for a while. Meet me in the Westport Room? No kidding, Jackson, I'll be on my best behavior. This time."
She sounded on the level, and he was bored, and not up to amusing Nellie until bedtime. "Okay, Beggs."
"And bring your medical bag," she said, hanging up before he could ask why.
"Got a date?" Nellie said.
"The lady's with the Red Cross, Nellie-Nell."
"Oh. Are you going to work for the Red Cross?"
"It's a thought."
"Well, good news," Nellie said, an all-purpose expression for her these days. "Are you going out?"
"For a little while. Have to talk to the lady."
Nellie lazed against the banister, her head falling this way and that. "Do you know her very well?"
"Might call her a good chum."
"You said you were vereh fond of her," Nellie retorted, trying out her English accent. Then her foot slipped on a step and she nearly fell down the flight of stairs. She picked herself up, momentarily infuriated. But her eyes were clear when she looked up at Jackson, who fortunately wasn't smiling.
"I don't have to go to bed until midnight."
"What makes you such a privileged character?"
"Dad said. Do you think you might be in before midnight?"
"Yes. Why?"
"No reason. I might see you then. Have a good time."
She started stiffly down the stairs.
"Where're you off to?"
"I'm going to Saint Joseph's. To light a candle for Donnie. Every time I think about Donnie I want to throw up. Somebody in the family better pray for him. And Lindy too." By then she'd turned on the waterworks.
"Hey, Nell?"
"Oh, what?"
"Thanks for the lightning bugs."
She reached the bottom of the stairs and sprang to the front door without looking back. "How'd you like a porcupine for a pillow?" she muttered, just loud enough for him to hear. Then the screen door banged as she went outside to the covered porch.
A USO band was playing passably good boogie-woogie in Washington Square when Jackson got off the Grand Avenue streetcar. Not wanting to sweat, he walked slowly across Pershing to the station plaza. He sweated anyway. At this time of night there were still double lines of customers waiting to get into Harvey House, which was located just inside the east entranceway of Union Station. Jackson made his way across the patterned marble floor of the lobby to the crowded Westport Room, where he checked his hat and medical bag.
Beggs was waiting where she wouldn't be conspicuous in her blue and gray uniform, at the banquette table for two which was hers whenever she wanted it, despite the fact that the Westport Room currently was the most popular dining spot in Kansas City. Jackson declined a menu and ordered a double scotch from Joe Maceu, the maitre d'. Beggs was already sipping a sloe gin fizz.
She was only a year or two older than Jackson, but her husband had been a cradle-robber and by the time Beggs was twenty she'd borne two children, both girls. Her daughters were now married and living on the West Coast. Her husband, a full colonel, was on active duty with Patton and she hadn't seen him for over a year. Beggs put in a sixteen-hour day as director of Red Cross services at Union Station, barely enough work to take the edge off her energies. She had a chunky firm body with an unusually trim waist, coarse bunned hair streaked three or four shades from wren brown to a tawny raw turpentine color. Her face was full, her mouth red and full and loquacious with a little predatory gleam of tooth showing in one corner; she had the thickly lashed, swart, knowing, almost brutally sexual eyes of a peasant sorceress.
The eyes were somewhat at variance with Begg's true nature. She needed men but was not aggressive in obtaining them, content to let the chemistry of her many contacts work itself out. Nor was she as lusty in bed as her looks led one to believe. Beggs was just an ample, softhearted lay who wanted a lot of patting and stroking and nuzzling, the rest of it not all that essential to her well-being, though she'd happily employ any erotic device in her desire to please. Unfortunately Jackson, just one of a hundred men who'd come along in three years' time, had made her heart ache. And Beggs had reacted badly to the dilemma of the lovelorn; made demands he couldn't fulfill even if he'd had a mind to.
But Jackson saw at a glance as he sat down with her that they were going to be on good terms, with no awkward review of the recent past.
"I really expected you'd be gone by now," she said.
"KC isn't as bad as all that."
She shrugged. "Making yourself useful?"
"I've looked into a situation or two. I just don't know yet."
She studied him with her sexual eyes and he had an intuition of what she'd be like at sixty, gone white in the head but with her whore-mother memories intact and still wanting to fiddle. "I wonder what makes you the footloose kind," Beggs said. "You must have had a good practice, out there in Washington—"
"Oregon."
"You could have a good practice anywhere
. Doesn't matter what kind of a doctor you really are. Not that I think you're a bad doctor."
"Thank you."
"When you're sleeping—when your hair falls a certain way, you can see the scars. Those terrible scars on your—"
"Beggs, let's not. Shall we?"
"Did you have an accident, or did someone put them there?"
"They're surgical scars."
Beggs took another Raleigh from her cigarette case. Jackson lighted it for her.
"If you're looking for someone in Kansas City," she used, blowing blue smoke away from him, "sooner or later you'll find him at Union Station. Particularly if he's the footloose kind, and a hit with the ladies."
"What are you getting at, Beggs?"
"Two men have been around, asking about you. They have a snapshot. Good likeness, and the girl you're with is a real beaut."
Jackson's scotch was brought by a waitress in a white uniform with a black bow tie. Beggs and the waitress chatted briefly about their respective families. Jackson drank half of his scotch and licked his tingling lips unobtrusively.
"What did they look like?" he asked Beggs when the waitress had gone.
"Plug-uglies, but not gangster types. A certain rawboned rectitude about them. They didn't west city clothes very well. Rumpled suits, cheap white shirts open at the neck. They do outdoor work. Boats? I'd say they could be fishermen—their hands were rough and broken-looking. A lot of fistfights, those two. There's a family resemblance—and one of them has a crooked back."
"A tree fell on him a few years ago. He's in constant pain but devoted to some shabby religious sect or other and won't take so much as an aspirin or a shot of whiskey to ease his suffering. I was able to do him a bit of good through my knowledge of balneology."
"I'd say you know them very well."
"Adam Easterlin is the cripple; the other one might be a brother or even a first cousin." He finished the scotch and wanted another. "Good odds more than two of them are on my trail. It's a large family. They're lumbermen, primarily, on an epic scale. But not a bit of flash to show for all their money. True sons of toil."
"Sounds as if you resent them."
"No, why should I? Almost married an Easterlin."
"The girl in the snapshot?"
"Evelyn, my—former—fiancée."
"Really?"
"Entire bloody clan seems to have missed that distinction. It's over."
"Her idea? No, of course not, assuming she's of sound mind."
"Don't cheapen me, I feel quite bad enough. Fact is we didn't discuss it. I simply bolted."
"When the walls started closing in?"
"A matter of not wanting to bring Evelyn to grief. As I would have done, sooner or later."
"Why, dear?"
"My life has been plagued by—unexplainable disorders. What does the poet say? I attract hard events as height does lightning. At the last moment I decided I was not ready to give fate another crack at me, and in the bargain destroy someone I truly care for."
"Love."
"Yes. Well—yes."
"Oh, Jackson. You know, there's something so sad and doggone tragic about you. That's part of your appeal—we all think we'll be the one to lick it, whatever it is. But why have they chased you halfway across the country? To drag you back for a shotgun wedding with kiddyboots? You couldn't have been so thoughtless."
Jackson surveyed the crowd waiting in the vestibule of the Westport Room for a table, and wondered bleakly if someone he couldn't see was staring at him. There were a lot of Easterlins, and he didn't know them all. Just pure luck he'd been flat on his back for the past two days and not in his usual haunts, the restaurant or the cocktail lounge.
"No, she isn't pregnant. It's a matter of family honor. My timing was rather too fine, they were all but filing into the church when I took to my heels. Their honor will be satisfied once they've chained me to a tree in a lonely place and done my back to bloody ribbons."
"Well, don't worry about that. They may have left Kansas City by now."
"Depends on what you told them."
"I said we'd had a few dates back in June. And that I'd scarcely seen you since to say hello to. Just the bare truth, that's all. Oh, I did leave them with the impression you'd gone up to Chicago to look around."
Jackson frowned, not sure he trusted her. "You could have put them onto me very easily."
"Why should I?" Beggs said, both eyebrows rising; but her mouth was amused. "Go on, relax," she said, one hand placed ostentatiously over her heart of gold. She puffed away at the cigarette, a habit that he'd warned her to give up after listening to her lungs.
"And I thought I was here to do you a favor," Jackson said, catching the eye of the waitress. He held up his shot glass.
"Better eat something, don't you think?"
"Still queasy from the jungle bug."
"Oh, sure. About that favor, since you mentioned it."
"Ummm-hmm."
"There's a man staying with me I need to do something about."
"Staying with you?"
"Sleeping in my bed when I left. But it isn't that. He's sick. He needs help."
"A serviceman?"
She nodded.
"Well, aren't you the Red Cross?"
"Yes, but it isn't so simple, if you'll just listen."
"Who is he, then?"
"Major Charles Bradwin, U.S. Army. Cavalry."
"Didn't know they still had any."
"Mechanized, I think. Anyway, he was in the Pacific and saw a lot of fighting earlier this year. He must have been good, he has a Silver Starr and a DSC, personally awarded to him by MacArthur. I found the medals while I was looking through his luggage. He wasn't wearing them when I picked him up outside in the lobby."
"Oh, you did pick him up."
"Not what you think. I literally took him out of the hands of the MPs yesterday evening about seven o'clock. They thought he was drunk, and he sure was abusive. Another few seconds and they would have delivered him to the provost marshal."
"What possessed you to interfere—"
"He looked as if he'd seen enough trouble in his life. Oh, hell, Jackson, I just couldn't resist him."
"What seems to be his problem? Battle fatigue? That sort can be extremely dangerous."
"The major was wounded in action—bayoneted. Apparently his regiment fought hand to hand with Imperial Marines on some godforsaken little island nobody ever heard of, but which we need to occupy at all costs. Until just recently he was at Letterman General. Now he's going home."
"Where is home?"
"Chisca Ridge, Arkansas. But he can't make it on his own."
"Then surely it's a matter for his family. Does he have a wife?"
"I think so. When he was half-asleep last night he talked about someone named Nancy. Only—I doubt if she can help."
"Why not?"
"He hasn't been crystal-clear about that, but he seems to believe she's in some kind of big trouble herself. That's why the major needs to get home in a hurry, and why he made such a fuss when he couldn't buy a ticket on a southbound train yesterday."
"All the railroads have a policy of accommodating sick or wounded servicemen on a priority basis. And the Red Cross Home Service Department will gladly arrange for a companion to travel with him."
The waitress came with a refill for Jackson and a roast beef sandwich for Beggs.
"Sure you aren't having any?"
"Don't mind me, dig in."
"I will."
"Beggs?"
"Your major friend is AWOL, isn't he?"
"I think so. I couldn't find any papers—emergency leave, travel orders."
"Which means his condition is such that they felt he shouldn't leave the hospital under any circumstances."
"He's not in the pink," she admitted between mouthfuls, "but I don't think he's going to die on us. What if he didn't apply for a furlough? He may have been so anxious to get home, he just walked out of the hospital and caught the first train
eastbound from Oakland. And I have a hunch he didn't want—someone to know where he was going."
"Doesn't make sense. He's a major in the U.S. Army, perhaps a career soldier. Even if he is a wounded war hero, he can't ignore basic regs without jeopardizing that career and risking a court-martial."
"Then there are more important things than career on his mind."
"His wife, you said. Assuming there's trouble at home, wouldn't a phone call or a telegram clarify matters? Perhaps it isn't as urgent as he believes."
"Jackson, I spent nearly all afternoon on the phone! You'd think I was calling Tibet. That Chisca Ridge must be some little dump of a town. We don't even have a chapter there. But the local telephone operator, when I was able to get through, said that she would have someone who knows Major Bradwin call me back. Waited and waited. About five there was a long-distance call. Terrible connection. It was a woman. I didn't catch the name, I assume she's a relative. She had an accent, but not the hominy-and-hog-jowl I expected. European. She was delighted to hear that 'Champ'—which is what she called him—was in Kansas City and on his way to Arkansas. She said arrangements would be made to meet the Ozark Scenic when it stopped at—I forget the name of the town but I wrote it down—tomorrow night at seven forty-five."
"What about the major's wife?"
"You have to understand just how bad our connection was. Her voice sounding a million miles away in space, fading in and out. I. think she said something like, 'But how could he know? How could he possibly know?' Then she said, 'Tell Champ everything that can be done is being done. Tell him—' Fuzz fuzz fuzz, click, and that was all; next thing I knew I was talking to a supply officer at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, who thought he was talking to the Defense Department."
"The upshot is, you don't know a great deal more than you did before you made the call."
"But I know, I feel, that something's mighty wrong down there, and that he's expected. Tomorrow night at seven forty-five on the MoPac. That train leaves Kansas City early in the morning."
"Beggs, the only legitimate thing for you to do now is contact your director and arrange for an emergency furlough."
"Jackson, the red tape! They'll have to know everything about him. He's been AWOL for at least three days, maybe longer. Under the circumstances, the most he could hope for would be detention in a hospital prison ward. He'd be a long time getting home, and he's come this far, and—"
