McNally's Caper

by Lawrence Sanders

  ‘Yeah,’ Donohue said, ‘this is it. Whittier, Georgia. We’ll settle in around here.’

  ‘Why this place?’ I asked. ‘It doesn’t look special.’

  ‘It ain’t,’ he said, grinning. ‘That’s the point. Just another spot that the mapmakers forgot. There’s a hundred places like this around here. I know them all. One gas station, one general store, one feed and hardware store. Maybe a small branch bank. A restaurant and liquor place side-by-side. A church somewheres. Maybe a school.’

  ‘No motels?’ Fleming asked.

  ‘Motels?’ Jack said. ‘Who comes through here? Exceptin’ folks who go through. I mean, this is a non-stop place.’

  ‘So where do we stay?’ I said.

  ‘What I’m looking for,’ he told us, ‘is a private home owned by a spinster or widow lady. It’ll have a sign on the front lawn that says, like, “Tourists Welcome.” Or maybe just “Boarders.” There’s bound to be at least one around here.’

  He found it, too. A big white house set back on an improbably green lawn. The sign read: ‘Tourist Accommodations - Day, Week, Month.’ The house was all fretwork and gingerbread trim: a wedding cake of a house.

  On the wide porch, a woman swung slowly back and forth in a rocker, cooling herself with a palm leaf fan. There was a crushed stone driveway that led up to the house, then curved away to a clapboard building that looked like a barn converted into a garage.

  We pulled up on the edge of the dirt road. Donohue switched off the ignition, turned to Fleming in the back seat.

  ‘Hyme had a hat,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t wearing it when he got blown away. Is it back there? Or any hat?’

  Dick rooted through the scrambled mess, came up with a stained grey fedora. He handed it over. Donohue clapped it on his head. It slid down to his eyebrows. He shoved it back so it was hanging.

  ‘We leave the car here,’ he said. ‘All of us, we walk slowly up to the porch. Just looking around, casual-like. You’re a step or two behind me. Let me do the talking. Dick, you limp on that ankle of yours more’n you have to.’

  ‘What’s the hat for?’ I asked.

  ‘So’s I can take it off,’ he said, almost indignantly, like I was the stupe of stupes. ‘Anyone want to make a bet?’

  Dick and I looked at each other.

  ‘What kind of a bet?’ I said cautiously.

  ‘I’ll bet you a sawbuck her name is Rose, Opal, Pearl, Minnie, Faith, Hope, or Charity.’

  ‘Okay,’ Fleming said. ‘I’ll take you. It’s got to be Rose, Opal, Pearl, Minnie, Faith, Hope, or Charity, or you owe me ten - right?’

  ‘Right,’ Donohue said. ‘Let’s go.’

  We got out of the car. Closed the doors to keep in the air conditioning. We walked slowly up the driveway to the porch. The woman in the rocking chair watched us approach. Very calm. That chair didn’t pause or vary its rhythm for a second. As we came closer, I saw that she was a big woman in her mid-sixties. Tall rather than full. Almost gaunt. A face like an axe blade. Strong hands. Eyes as clear as water. Wearing an old-fashioned poke bonnet, calico housedress, thick elastic stockings. The shoes were unusual: unbuckled combat boots from World War II. She was chewing something placidly. Gum or tobacco or whatever. (I learned later it was a wad of tar, which she was convinced would make her remaining teeth whiter.)

  As we came up to the porch, Donohue motioned Dick and me to stop. He put a foot lightly on the bottom step of the three stairs leading up to the porch.

  ‘Afternoon, ma’am,’ Jack said, taking off his hat with what I can only describe as a courtly gesture.

  She nodded, quite regally.

  ‘Hot,’ she said, fanning herself. ‘For this time of year.’

  ‘Yes’m,’ Donohue agreed, ‘it surely is. Ma’am, my name is Sam Morrison. This lovely lady is my good wife, Beatrice. And this other feller is my brother, Dick. Richard, that is. We’re all from Macon, y’know? Well, we’re heading south for a couple of weeks. Figure to do some fishing down in the Florida Keys. But Dick, he up and sprained his ankle just this morning. You saw him limping? Nothing serious, the doc says, but keep the weight offen it a day or more. So we’re in no hurry and figured we’d just rest up awhile and give Dick’s ankle a chance to heal. Him being in pain, and all. So what we were wondering is this: if you could fit us out with two rooms, me and my wife in one, my brother in the other, like for a few days, a week at most? No trouble, no wild parties, oh no, ma’am, nothing like that. We all been working hard. This is our vacation. Rest is all we want, ma’am. Peaceful rest.’

  The rocker never stopped. The waving palm leaf fan never stopped. She and Jack Donohue looked at each other. It seemed to me the silence lasted for an eternity. But out there in that deserted countryside, I figured absolute silence was normal: no cicadas, no birdcalls, no passing traffic, no airliners overhead. Nothing.

  The stare between Donohue and the woman in the rocking chair never wavered. It was like they were talking to each other with their eyes. I didn’t understand it.

  ‘Sam Morrison, you said?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s right, ma’am,’ Donohue said gently. ‘I’m born and bred from up Macon way. My wife and brother, they’re from up north.’

  She nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world that a man from ‘up Macon way’ would have a wife and brother from the north.

  ‘Ten dollars a day,’ she said, still fanning her sharp face. ‘Per person. That includes breakfast. You all‘11 have to go into town for your other meals. The food ain’t great at Hoxey’s there, but it’s filling. For a week or so. No cooking in your rooms. I don’t hold with hard liquor, but if you want to drink in your rooms, quiet-like, I’m not one to complain. Ice cubes in the kitchen refrigerator. I got myself a TV in the parlor if you’re wanting. You’re welcome to watch.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Jack said softly, taking out his wallet. ‘That sounds just grand - a nice quiet place where we can rest up, and my brother, he can let his ankle get good again. And what’s your name, ma’am, if I may ask?’

  ‘Mrs Pearl Sniffins,’ she said firmly.

  From slightly behind me I heard Dick Fleming’s low groan.

  ‘You can pull in behind the garage,’ she went on. ‘The drive curves around to the back. Plenty of room in there. Just my old Plymouth. A few chickens. One goat. Two hounds. They won’t cause no trouble.’

  ‘We’ll take care, ma’am,’ Donohue assured her. ‘I’d like to pay in advance. IsMrSniffins …?’

  ‘Mr Sniffins has passed on.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am,’ Jack Donohue said, hanging his head. ‘But it’s a glory to know he has gone to his reward.’

  ‘I hope so,’ she said grimly.

  Those rooms we stayed in for eight days in the tourist home outside Whittier, Georgia, really belonged in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum. I don’t mean they were furnished with valuable antiques or in exquisite taste. But they were a touching reminder of how middle-class rural Americans lived fifty years ago.

  Wide, waxed floorboards. Gossamer, hand-hemmed curtains at the generous windows. Maple furniture with a high gloss. Beds with spindle posts. Armchairs covered in flowered cretonne. Pressed ferns framed on the white walls. Oval rag rugs on the floors.

  And all so neat, clean, and glowing that I felt like weeping. Because there was nothing chic, smart, or trendy about those rooms. They were just reminders of what home had once meant. The light filtering through those gauzy curtains seemed to infuse the old rooms with young beauty. They smelled faintly of lavender sachet, and sounded of peace, security, and a sense of the continuum of life.

  It was all so different from the speed, violence, loud noise, and sudden death of the preceding days. We were doused in peace, lulled by it. We had almost forgotten a world without fear.

  I don’t mean that the past was wiped away. But we did begin to forget.

  We carried all our luggage upstairs to the larger of the two rooms assigned to us. There w
ere three other bedrooms on the second floor, all empty, and one enormous bathroom with a tub on legs and a toilet seat with a needlepoint cover.

  ‘Mrs Pearl says she finds it hard to make the stairs,’ Donohue told us. ‘Arthritis. So she sleeps downstairs on a sofa in the parlor. Got a john down there. A colored lady comes in once a week to clean up for her.’ He looked at Dick Fleming meaningfully, ‘That’s Mrs Pearl Sniffins I’m talking about,’he said.

  ‘You son of a bitch,’ Dick said ruefully, handing over the ten dollars. ‘How did you know?’

  Black Jack pocketed the bill.

  ‘Sucker!’ he said. ‘One born every minute. This is my home. Mrs Pearl Sniffins? She’s every aunt I ever had.’

  ‘And your mother?’ I asked curiously.

  ‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘Not my mother.’

  We were all in the larger bedroom then, not yet having faced the problem of who was going to sleep with whom, and where. The fact that we had the entire second floor to ourselves simplified things, or complicated them. But I wasn’t worried; just curious.

  I sat in one of those neat armchairs. It was equipped with a crocheted antimacassar, naturally. And how long has it been since you’ve seen one of those things? The two men sat on the edge of the bed. It was covered with a patchwork quilt that looked like Betsy Ross had had a hand in it, after she knocked off Old Glory.

  When the men sat down, the bed sang and rustled beneath them. Donohue was amused and patted the coverlet with his palm.

  ‘Straw-filled mattress,’ he explained. ‘Great sleeping - if the noise doesn’t keep you awake. I’ll bet she bought the material and sewed up the tick herself, then stuffed it. A great old lady.’

  ‘And what a con job you did on her,’ Dick said. ‘She went for it hook, line, and sinker.’

  Jack turned slowly to look at him.

  ‘Think so? Think again, sonny. She knows we’re on the run.’

  I gaped at him.

  ‘Jack,’ I said, ‘how in hell would she know that? Your spiel sounded believable to me. I thought she went for it.’

  ‘Use your head,’ he said. ‘We pull up here in a big, dust-covered Buick. We say we’re on our way to Florida. If we were going from Macon to Florida, we’d be nowheres near this place. We’d be on Route 16, going over to 95. Or going straight south on 75, and then cutting over to 95 at Orlando. Listen, that lady’s no idiot. She knows we’re running and need a place to hole up for a while.’

  ‘Then why - ‘ I began.

  ‘Needs the money!’ he said, shrugging. ‘Wants the company. Whatever. When she was looking at me, it was nip-and-tuck; she knew but couldn’t decide. Finally she figured we were good for the green and wouldn’t cop her knitting needles. But that’s why she’s clipping us ten each per day. I’ll bet her regular rate is five.’

  ‘She won’t talk?’ Fleming asked nervously.

  ‘Nah,’ Donohue said. ‘It’s no skin off her nose who we are or what we done. If we behave ourselves she’ll keep her mouth shut. Most of the folks around here are like that; they mind their own business. It’s some of the white trash in town who’ll sell us out. But not Mrs Pearl Sniffins. She’s a lady, she’s seen a lot, and there’s no way you can surprise, shock, or scare her. Hey, listen, let’s take a look around this place. The land’s hers, but she’s got tenant farmers. She says it’s mostly peanuts and corn. Some okra. And she’s got a mud crick back aways. That I gotta see. Let’s go.’

  As we walked slowly across the stubbled fields, it seemed to me that day was so splendid that we would live forever. A fulgent sun filled a blue, blue sky, and even that hardscrabble land took on a warmth and glow that made me want to lie down naked in the dust and roll about. I began to understand why people might choose to live in such a bleak landscape - for days like that one, when the sun seemed created for that plot alone, coming low to bless, the firmament serene, the air as piercing as ether, the whole universe closed in and secret.

  We paused in the middle of an empty field, swallowed in silence. We followed Jack’s pointing finger and there, high up, saw a black thing no more than a scimitar, wheeling and soaring.

  ‘Chicken hawk,’ Donohue said somberly. ‘Big bastard.’

  We watched that dark blade cut through the azure. Then it came between us and the sun and was lost.

  ‘See that line of trees?’ Jack said. ‘That’s gotta be the crick. We’ll just go that far. How’s the ankle, Dick?’

  ‘I’ll live,’ Fleming said. ‘If there’s a drugstore in town I’ll pick up an elastic bandage.’

  ‘If not,’ Jack said, ‘Mrs Pearl will wrap it in rags for you. These country women can doctor anything from an ass boil to a mule down with colic.’

  I’ve seen bigger creeks than that after a water main break in Manhattan. But Donohue was enchanted with it and we humored him. It was a muddy stream, no more than twenty feet across, and looked to be about waist-deep.

  ‘Smell that?’ Jack demanded. ‘Catfish in there - I’ll bet on it.’

  ‘Where does it go?’ I asked him. ‘I mean, does it run into a deeper river?’

  ‘Who the hell knows? The Oconee maybe, but 1 doubt it. Probably just pisses out in a field somewheres and disappears. Most of them do.’ He looked around. Not a soul in sight. Not a sound. He began to unbutton his shirt. ‘I’m going in,’ he said.

  ‘In that?’ I said, astonished. ‘It’s a mudpuddle.’

  ‘So?’ he said, continuing to undress. ‘It’s wet and it’s cool. Used to be a crick just like this where we lived when I was a tad. A big old hickory hung over from the bank. My pappy rigged up a rope and an old tire so we could swing out and drop off. Jesus, those days!’

  Dick Fleming looked at me doubtfully, then sat down on the dirt bank and began to pull off shoes and socks. I sat down too, lighted a cigarette, watched the two men undress and wade, white-bodied, into the shallow stream.

  They plunged and began to shout, laugh, splash, dunk each other. They floated awhile, then leaped up into the air, glistening, and then slipped below the surface again. I watched them awhile, smiling. Then I ground out my cigarette, kicked off my shoes. I rose, stripped down. Took off my wig. Waded cautiously into the muddy water. It was colder than I expected. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and belly-flopped in.

  I think we spent about a half-hour in that shallow stream. I never knew muddy water could wash you clean, but that creek did. Washed away fears and tensions, terrors and regrets. We played with each other, then lay side by side, drying on the dirt bank. I wanted the moment never to end. Thought was lost, thankfully, and all I could do was feel the hot sun on my bleached skin, feel a finger-touch breeze, feel the closeness and the intimacy. No one spoke.

  After a while we rose, brushed ourselves off as best we could, dressed, and went struggling back across those shaved fields, still in silence. We heard Mrs Pearl moving about in the kitchen, and Donohue called to tell her we were back. She didn’t reply.

  We trudged upstairs, all of us weary with a divine, sunbaked tiredness. We took turns in the big bathroom, showering away the dust and the sun-sting.

  Then we went back into the big bedroom, locked the door. Got out a quart of vodka and drank it warm, passing around the big bottle like a loving cup. Then we all, the three of us, threw back the patchwork quilt and the top sheet (unbleached muslin, many times laundered) and got into bed together.

  It wasn’t the sex, but it was. What I mean is that it just wasn’t randiness that drove us together. It was sweet, loving intimacy. We had been through so much, shared so much. And perhaps we were all frightened; there was that, too. Whatever it was, we huddled, and were kind, solicitous, and tender with each other.

  I think that’s what I remember most - the tenderness. We comforted each other. I make no apology for having sex with two men at the same time; it was a delight. There was nothing vile, sweaty, or grunted about it.

  I think, after a while, we all slept for an hour or two. When we awoke, in a tangle of lim
bs, the room had cooled, and darkness was outside. We hadn’t banished that.

  That night we drove into town for dinner. We knew where we were going; as Mrs Pearl had said, in Whittier, it’s Hoxey’s or nuthin’.’

  Hoxey’s looked like it had been designed by the same benighted genius responsible for the Game Cock. It had identical scarred wood floor, bar, tables, booths, kitchen in the rear, raucous jukebox, and glittering cigarette machine. Even the odor was similar, although now the grease had a fried chicken flavor. In addition, Hoxey’s had a pool table off to one side and a table shuffleboard up near the bar.

  Just as at the Game Cock, conversation temporarily ceased and heads turned as we walked in. But things got back to normal when we slid into a booth, and the waitress came over to take our order. She was an older and plumper version of the Game Cock’s houri, and looked a lot jollier.

  ‘Evenin’ folks,’ she beamed. ‘My name’s Rose. You drinkin’, eatin’, or both?’

  ‘Both,’ Donohue said. ‘We’ll have vodka on ice to cut the dust. Then we’ll take a look at the menu, if you got one.’

  ‘Sure, we got one,’ she said. ‘Whaddya think, this is some kind of a dump? Don’t answer that question!’

  She left us three sheets of dog-eared paper, spotted with grease, that looked like they had been ripped from a memo pad. Each sheet was headed, in longhand: ‘Hoxey’s: Where the Elite Meet to Eat.’ The menu read: ‘Soup. Bread and but.’ Then it listed the entrees, followed by: ‘Pots and vegs. Ice cream or Jello. Coffee.’ Across the bottom was a stern admonition: ‘Don’t take this menu for a suvenire.’

  ‘Too bad,’ I said. ‘I wanted it for my Memory Album.’

  ‘Sounds like a real banquet,’ Dick Fleming said. ‘Should we start at the top and work our way down; a different entree every day? If we stay around here more than six days, we’re in trouble.’

  Rose came back with our drinks and a bowl of peanuts in the shell.

  ‘Just throw the shells on the floor, folks,’ she advised us breezily. ‘Keeps out the termites. You decided yet?’

  ‘What’re catfish balls?’ I asked, consulting my scrap of a menu.