TWO O’CLOCK, EASTERN WARTIME

by John Dunning

  “Who else?”

  Jordan sipped foam and put a bill on the table.

  “Look,” Gary said. “You’re right, I don’t need this job. If you can do it just as well without me, that’s fine. I’m here to help you, not cause problems. I’m here because I owe the lady a debt that can’t possibly be paid in my time on this earth. It transcends her death, it’s always there. As I said, it’s simple.”

  “You also said it’s complicated.”

  “But the simple part is this. I will do whatever I can for Mrs. Harford’s radio station.”

  Jordan drank some beer. “What you’re telling me is I can count on you.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  Another moment passed. “I’ll sign a contract if you want,” Gary said. But Jordan was suddenly at ease. He decided the man’s word was as good as his own and when he spoke again it was not about contracts or obligations.

  “Tell me about her.”

  Gary shook his head but in the same instant he said, “She was the most incredible woman. It was Jocelyn who got me on The March of Time in nineteen thirty-one. I had been in a play of hers five years earlier, just a small part, but we hit it off from the start. We hadn’t seen each other in all that time but she never forgot anyone she’d ever worked with. That’s how she was.

  “Maybe you remember the winter of nineteen thirty-one, Jordan. Those were damn desperate times and I was going nowhere fast. One day I ran into Jocelyn on Fifth Avenue. We went to an Automat and she bought me some coffee and pie and we got caught up with each other. I didn’t need to cry on her shoulder; hell, she had eyes, she could see how things were with me. The next day I got a call to audition for The March of Time. I was down to my last nickel.”

  Gary shifted in his chair. “My first big network broadcast.”

  He coughed. “I was no kid then; hell, I was almost thirty years old. I was one of those guys like Blake, I’d been around but had never gotten that big break. She was my break. The world of network radio is just so goddamn tight, it can be almost impossible to break into it. But soon I was doing that show almost every week, and everything opened up from that.”

  He smiled. “So I owe her one. Even now, years after she’s gone, she’s the lifeblood of that station. There was just nobody who didn’t love her. I can feel her in my heart when I walk in there.”

  “Were you in any of those old Harford shows?”

  “Yeah, I did a few. Wish now I’d done a lot more, but I didn’t think I could spare the time then. I was too busy getting my career on solid ground; I was hungry for that big-time-network marquee billing. So I missed most of that mid-thirties stuff they did here. But I followed it religiously in the newspapers, and I always thought I should’ve been here.”

  “What do you think of Harford?”

  “I never met the man, I think he was shy around actors. But he seemed to treat her well and that’s what counts. If she wanted something he gave it to her. She didn’t care about material things, she wanted a place to work, so he gave her that. Built her a little village across the way for her group. Kidd tells me they’re finally going to use that place. They’re going to build themselves a rep company, a mix of network and homegrown talent, and that’s where they’ll stay when they come down. Jocelyn wanted it to be a little colony where ideas could flow and good things happen.”

  Jordan felt excited by such a thing.

  “It’s damned exciting,” Gary said. “Speaking as a network actor, I can tell you. I look forward to these breaks. Then I can go back and suck the network tit and have the best of both worlds, as Kidd would say.”

  Gary finished his beer. “So what do you say?—let’s sleep on it.”

  “I don’t need to do that. I want you for this show. We need everything you can bring to it.”

  “Then let’s do it. Let’s get on the air and kick some ass.”

  Jordan raised his mug. “For Mrs. Harford.”

  “For Jocelyn.”

  ( ( ( 17 ) ) )

  HE was swamped with fatigue but he tried to wait up. Holly would be home in an hour and he had much to tell her. They would talk for an hour, then he would love her and they would sleep till midmorning. He could do this now because he wasn’t punching clocks anymore.

  He sat at her table, and in the cool breeze coming up from the beach, in the infinite darkness of the eastern sky, he had a vision . . . Carnahan, marching across the veld with a small band of Boers. There was Kendall, dispirited and bringing up the rear, and in a while Carnahan dropped back and tried to help him find his courage again. They stopped at dusk and had no fire. Kendall sat on the ground and looked haggard and spent. Eat something, Carnahan said, but their rations were skimpy and poor. It doesn’t matter, Kendall said; we’re all dead, can’t you see that? . . . we’re all dead men. Carnahan smiled and waved his hat over the ration and it became a banquet. Kendall’s eyes lit up and he began to eat, and Carnahan rocked back on his heels and watched. His boots squeaked as he rocked and Kendall was amazed that he had found new boots. But they are old boots, Carnahan said . . . see how they’re worn through?

  Dulaney went to bed and his last waking thought was of that crazy image, almost like a dream. How strange that the boots were new, but they squeaked anyway.

  At two o’clock he opened his eyes. He took a shower and then, still bone weary, he lay down on her bed. As an afterthought he left her a note that said WAKE ME WHEN YOU COME IN. Again he fell into a deep sleep, and the next thing he knew it was daylight outside.

  He rolled over and looked at the clock. Quarter to nine. The house was dead quiet and he knew in that moment that some basic part of his life had changed.

  He got up and came into the kitchen. His note was there on the table, untouched where he’d left it. He went into the front room, feeling the first inkling of fear.

  From the front door he looked out at the empty space where she always parked her car. Unease became the beginnings of dread.

  Logic said she’d call. She was home by two thirty, almost without exception. She had never been later than three. She would call.

  The phone seemed to be working. He dialed the club, expecting no answer, but a tired-sounding man picked it up after two rings.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this the Magic Carpet?”

  “Yeah, but we’re closed. Call back after noon.”

  “Wait a minute. I’m trying to find Holly O’Hara.”

  “Join the crowd, pal. She didn’t come in last night.”

  His world tilted and spun out of control. He stood in the grip of a terrifying hunch and felt the blood drain from his face.

  It was all he could think of. She had gotten it in her head to go see the crazy old man alone. She had said as much and now she was missing.

  She had been missing more than twelve hours and he hadn’t known it. The enormity of it hit him like the kick of a horse.

  For the first time in his life he was truly afraid. Suddenly he was so afraid he felt almost faint in the face of it.

  ( ( ( 18 ) ) )

  HE roared into Pauline’s yard and left his motor running. Pounded on her door. Heard her moving about. Saw her face at the window and pounded again.

  She opened the door. “My God, Jordan! What’s the matter, what is it? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

  “Where’s Griffin?”

  “Well, he’s certainly not here. He doesn’t sleep here, you know.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “He was here Tuesday. Came over at noon and we walked to the pier.”

  “What about yesterday?”

  She shook her head. “He was supposed to come, but didn’t.”

  It seemed impossible but the level of his fear went up again. For a moment he had to grip the door to keep his legs steady.

  “He was supposed to come for a late dinner after the auditions last night but he never showed up. What do you want with him? Has something happene
d to him?”

  He stared numbly at the pulse in her neck.

  “Something’s wrong,” she said. “I knew it last night when he didn’t show up. He never stands me up, and this was going to be a special dinner. To celebrate my changing fortune.”

  “But he never showed up,” he said.

  She came out in the yellow sunlight and started to say something. But Dulaney didn’t hear it. He was gone.

  ( ( ( 19 ) ) )

  HIS sense of time and distance blurred to nothing. The bridge, the long stretch across the marsh, the rising mainland . . . he knew these things were there, but they had no substance. Once he looked at his speedometer. He had pushed the old car past seventy-five and left a blanket of blue smoke in his wake.

  He reached the Pineville cutoff and Harford’s road and the gate and the stone cottages in one long moment. Came to a running stop, leaped over the walk, and burst through the doorway into Griffin’s front room.

  The door swung back and forth, creaking on its hinges. A dusty beam of sunlight came through the east window and cut the room in half, and he stood peering beyond it. He walked through the sun to the other side of the room. Put his hand on the cookstove and found it cold. Then gave the rest of the place a hurried once-over.

  There was a small sleeping room off the front and a bathroom with indoor plumbing and a stand-up shower bath off that. The old man was neat, his place spotless. His bed made, his sink sparkling, his table cleared.

  Everything shipshape, everything calm, everything terrifying.

  He saw something lying flat on the table. A letter addressed to Pauline. He ripped it open. Felt a new wave of sickness and fear as he read the word Dearest.

  Aug. 4

  Dearest—

  I’ve always loved you. I have written a true account of what happenedon the night of June 19, 1936. This will be found in my papers. Good-bye.

  Tom

  A suicide note. The son of a bitch had written a suicide note. Sometime yesterday. Yesterday he’d written a suicide note and then gone off God knows where to do whatever he’d set his mind on.

  Oh God, Holly.

  Oh God.

  Oh God.

  He jerked open the back door and looked out across the road.

  Hurry, he thought. Maybe it’s not too late.

  He began to run. Five hundred yards into the underbrush he forced himself to stop. Tried to muster his inner strength.

  Don’t panic, he thought.

  Oh Jesus Christ.

  Don’t panic. Walk, don’t run.

  He made himself turn back to the cottage. Dabbed away tears of frustration. Thought, Oh God, please. Please let her be okay. Blotted his eyes on his shirtsleeve till he could pick his way back to the road.

  God, please let her be okay. Do what you want with me but let her alone. I will spend my life working for the sick and the poor, I’ll cut out my eyes, whatever you want, only please, please, please let her be well.

  He took a deep breath and a sudden calm came over him, and he walked up through the woods on steady legs. He went to each cottage but all were shuttered and locked. He resisted the urge to kick in the doors . . . he wouldn’t find her there and this would only waste more time. The sound of a running motor startled him, but it was only his car, still idling where he had left it. He turned it off and the silence was so oppressive that he had to keep moving or he knew the craziness would start again.

  His best chance was to find her car. She had probably driven up to the house, as he had. Parked somewhere here, close to the door, then got out and knocked. He bent to the earth and found the marks, the trace of another car and a few moist oil stains on the ground. Someone had pulled in here and stopped; then, no telling how much later, the car had been driven back out to the road, where the tracks disappeared.

  The terrain told him nothing: no flattened grass where the car might have pulled off, no ruts in the higher ground, nothing to tell him whether he should go ahead or walk back toward the gate where the brush was thicker.

  He went back for just that reason. The brush was thicker and that meant a better chance that a car might be hidden there. Soon he was in the tunnel of trees where the ground was softer, and here he found traces of cars coming and going. He moved slowly along the shoulder and stopped to look at the grass, to feel the earth with his fingers and rise up and look off in the woods for anything out of place. He found a track where a car had pulled off the road: he could see that spot of fresh oil, then the turning of the wheel as the car went on. He moved faster now. He could clearly see the traces here without having to stop every ten feet to dope them out.

  He reckoned he was halfway back to the gate when the trail took a sharp turn left and disappeared. It had veered back to the center of the road, blending into the tracks of other cars going in or out. This gave him a discouraging moment—did it mean that the car had driven on out of the estate, perhaps to the highway and on across the swamp to Maynard? In another moment he picked it up again where it had veered off on the opposite side of the road. Same tread, same car. It had bumped off the shoulder and crossed at a place where the ditch had crumbled and filled. Then it had cut across the country, heading south.

  He followed a trail of crushed saplings and broken branches and soon came into a field facing a thicket. Beyond that was a daunting wall of forest. The car had gone straight across to the thicket, leaving a clear track where it had rolled over an anthill. There were better tracks farther along: the grass gave way to lower, wetter ground where streams drained down from the swamp. Soon he saw something glinting and he ran, with his heart going mad, headlong into the thicket.

  There. It was her car, baking in the sun. It looked frightful. Both doors were open, the battery was dead, and the keys were still in the ignition. It looked abandoned, lifeless, pallid, gaunt.

  It looked like death. His heart sank but there would be no more panic. He was finished with that. Now he undertook the grim, methodical business of finding her. He got out the keys and opened the trunk.

  Empty. He breathed his relief and stood looking at the woods. Fingering her key chain, tracing the letters HOLLY on the little steel name charm. At once it conjured up a dozen visions of her face, all her moods. But what it told him was more about the old man, that in the long run he hadn’t been worrying about being found. As if there’d be no long run, as if the world ended today. Or yesterday, a scary thing, awful to contemplate. But it meant he’d be easy to follow, if the stalker went slow and saw what was there.

  Almost at once he saw a footprint—hers, he knew, and he cursed himself because in his approach to the car he had all but obliterated it. But it was hers—what was left was the mark of a woman’s shoe, not the bigger, heavier boots he had seen on the old man. This told him she had come this far alive and well, and it kept his heart thumping hard with fresh hope. She had been driving the car, not riding, and his next thought was obvious. He walked around the car and found the boot mark on the shotgun side.

  He followed the old man’s track around the hood and it merged with hers about twenty yards away. The ground sloped down, due south into the trees. Here they had crossed a brook. He picked up the trail easily in the moist earth on the other side. They had followed the brook for a short distance, then the old man turned away and . . . and, were his eyes deceiving him, or had she dropped behind him here? The trace seemed clear, with her footprints distinctly imposed over the boots as they entered the forest and the way winnowed down to a narrow path. Did this make sense? Would a captor, even one with a gun, turn his back on a prisoner? Holly was strong, the old man had seen better days, and Dulaney liked her chances in any even struggle. Here the path was littered with rocks. Here she could’ve picked up a stone the size of a man’s fist and knocked the old bastard’s head off. Why hadn’t she? Why follow him off to God knew where? All Dulaney knew was, it had happened, and he didn’t know what hope he could take from it.

  This new mystery did seem to work in her favor, but it did nothin
g to lighten his spirits. He had a strong feeling he was about to find her dead, and once this got into his head he found it almost impossible to shake. He dreaded each new crook in the path and he looked warily wherever a body might be hidden. But the path wound on, the tracks telling him he hadn’t lost them.

  He came to a fence, three strands of barbed wire that cut across the path. It looked like a boundary, probably Harford’s property line. He parted the strands and stepped through; then he saw a small patch of blue cloth caught on one of the barbs. A piece of dress, a fragment from the blue dress she had been wearing when he’d last seen her at noon yesterday. He folded it and put it in his pocket and went on.

  The tracks on the other side told a new story. The old man had gone on ahead while she struggled with her snared dress and finally ripped it free. The old man had gone on ahead!—you could see his steady gait and then her own hurried prints as she ran to catch up. What on earth, he thought: what the hell can possibly have happened here? He hurried along, at least a dozen hours behind them. The forest deepened and still it went. The ground got harder, the tracks less frequent. He had heard of foot trails that went on forever, paths centuries old that ran hundreds of miles across whole states. He knew one in South Carolina that had always turned him back short. The old folks said it could be walked to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, though no one they knew had ever done it.

  Sometime much later he reached a break, a place where the forest had been clear-cut for power lines. It was a swath fifty yards wide and miles long, running from somewhere inland to the beach towns in the east. Again he picked up their trail in the soft earth: again the tracks told a story. He could see her struggling to keep up. Having trouble with her delicate city shoes. A broken shoe buckle, a popped strap, the entire shoe discarded; then the other one, still whole but awkward; and finally she had thrown it down and hurried across the break in her bare feet. At the edge of the woods the old man had turned to confront her. Dulaney could see the marks of a scuffle where he’d made a quick turnaround and pushed her down. His boot marks digging into the earth as he’d spun on his heels. The place where she’d fallen, the smooth impression of a backside or hip, the clear prints of her hands as she’d shoved herself up to continue her chase. The trail led on into the trees and the path picked up again. Dulaney looked back, a reflex, and that’s how he happened to see the ranger tower rising over the trees a quarter mile west.