by Frances
Jerry had expected it. Pamela North’s view of air travel is extremely dim. She regards encouraging reports on passenger miles safely flown as without personal application, pointing out that she is not a passenger mile and that, if she can help it, Jerry is not going to be either. What happens to airplanes, Pamela North believes, is that they fall down. If others think differently, let others fly. But not Jerry—at any rate, not alone.
“You know perfectly well,” she said now, “that if you’re going to take this awful chance, I’m going to take it with you. For better or—or airplanes. As we agreed. I’m not going to sit home beside myself. Two can die as cheaply as one.”
“But—” Jerry said.
“It’s no use,” Pam said. “As you know perfectly well. Also, I’ll wear my oldest clothes.”
He blinked at that; he ran fingers through his hair.
“So Mr. Cunningham will see we can’t afford a million,” Pam said. “Or anything like it. We’ll both grovel. Much more—”
“All right,” Jerry said. There was no use arguing. Nor was he sure he wished to argue since, for him, all things are brighter when Pam shares them.
American Airlines could provide two seats on Flight 115, 8:40 A.M., for Little Rock, Arkansas. American Airlines, after talking it over with itself, and staring fixedly at credit cards, would accept a check, under the circumstances. The Norths drove home, through the rain.
It was raining Sunday morning, in the spiritless fashion so often characteristic of November rains. There was also fog. Pam was relieved. “They’ll never fly in this,” she told Jerry as a cab took them toward LaGuardia. “Thank goodness. Even they will know better.”
But “they” did not. American Airlines Flight 115 was loading in a manner entirely matter of fact—quite as if it were routine to plunge through a light fog, and a light rain, into a dark, unwelcoming sky. They must be crazy, Pam thought, and sat beside Jerry in a comfortable seat, and held Jerry’s hand with uncomfortable vigor. And we must be. And where is Bill?
The big plane filled, and Bill was not among those who filled it. “Something’s happened,” Pam told Jerry. “Probably Cunningham has turned up some place else. We ought to get out of this thing right now and—”
Bill Weigand came into the plane. The door of the plane was closed behind Bill Weigand. Bill Weigand came down the aisle and looked at them. “What the—?” Bill said, and the stewardess said, “Fasten your seat belts, please,” and an electric sign said, in red, the same thing. Another sign said, “No Smoking.” Bill shook his head, and sat in a seat some distance down the aisle, and fastened his seat belt, and shook his head again. And the plane began to move.
“Ouch,” Jerry said. “Your ring’s digging in.”
“What a thing to say,” Pam said. “In our last moment. Just before—just before we’re burned alive. Or—”
The plane stopped. Laboriously, after a few minutes, it turned around. Then it did nothing.
“Also,” Pam said, “we’re heading in the wrong direction. Little Rock is west of New York. Or, we’re on the wrong plane. This one’s going to Europe. And—”
The plane started up, taking off into the northeasterly wind. Pam closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see it happen. Just let it happen—all at once, without warning. It was the best way. One moment you were alive and the next—
The plane moved faster, and made more noise. Then it moved in a different fashion. Pam reached out and took Jerry’s other hand. She wanted to tell him how fine it had been, always, and how glad she was that, if it had to be this way, it would be both of them and—But she could not make her stiff lips move. So he would never know—never know how fine it had all been, or any of the things she had never remembered to tell him, because no matter how close you are to another person, there is never time to remember everything and—
“Why,” Pam North said, in a quite normal tone. “It’s cleared up. How sudden. It’s as if—” She looked out the window. Looked into sunshine; looked down at heaped, white softness, with sunshine on it. “We must,” Pam said, “be up. Quite a way up.”
“And,” Bill Weigand said, standing beside them, “what are you two doing here?”
“Praying,” Pam said. “In a manner of speaking.”
Jerry told Bill Weigand what they were doing there and Bill made a sound which, it seemed to Pam, expressed doubt or, at the least, considerable reservation. But, in words, he said only that he was glad Inspector O’Malley had not known in advance that the Norths, also, were flying west. Even without this knowledge, O’Malley had needed to be persuaded, it being his simple and direct theory that, if Weigand wanted Cunningham, and thought he had something on Cunningham, he should have him picked up and sent back. Told that it was not yet that simple, he snorted mildly and pointed out that wishy-washiness was growing on Weigand, doubtless because of his continued association with the Norths. But, not knowing that the Norths were going too, Inspector O’Malley had in the end authorized, only hoping that Weigand knew what he was doing.
The big DC-6 glittered its way west in sunshine. After a time there were no clouds below them, and the earth—the tiny earth—could be seen far below. It was, Pam thought, much neater from this distance—tiny fields regular as small green napkins, hilly country simplified, only threadlike roads still, for the most part, meandering to what appeared little purpose. “See?” Pam said, looking down. “It doesn’t really matter which road one takes, because they all join up again. We must remember that next time we drive some place.”
For three hours the diminished earth rolled under them and then, with cheerful matter-of-factness, the stewardess served lunch—served consommé, and veal sauté and broccoli, and french pastry and coffee. That, rushing through nothing, with peril on every side—and especially below—so pleasant a lunch should be so lightheartedly served (to so many people, too) struck Pam North as, in a fashion, preposterous. A triumph of the human spirit, Pam thought; a gallant gesture in the face of catastrophe. Those who dress for dinner in lion-infested jungles have nothing on us, Pam thought, and nibbled veal—and wondered, unexpectedly, just how they did it. Frivolous, Pam thought, and finished pastry and coffee. The condemned woman ate a reasonably hearty meal.
They had just finished when the airplane started to slant down toward the distant earth. Then Memphis—a stewardess identified it as Memphis—began to rush up at them. They fastened seat belts again, and put out cigarettes and then the airplane started to tip over. Pam closed her eyes with that, and held on to both Jerry’s hands and—thought frantically, once again, that she had let time slip through her fingers, and had not told Jerry all the things she had, in their years (now about to end), not remembered to tell him. But then the airplane landed, gently, and shuffled across the airfield, rather like a great goose, and stopped and the door was opened.
They had almost half an hour to walk on solid pavement, stretching their legs. Looking at Pam, Jerry took her arm and held it, since she might, he thought, run to stretch hers. But she did not, and they got back on the airplane—which now had fewer passengers, and some of them strangers—and went up again. It was not quite so bad as before. Pam kept her eyes open long enough to see that they were about to run into some gigantic trees. She closed her eyes then, and stiffened, and waited—and they cleared the trees by some hundreds of feet. They did not go so high, this time (so that the earth was much nearer and, as a result, looked much harder) and it seemed that they had hardly got into the air before they started to come down out of it, and once more to tip over—call it “banking” if you wanted to, but it was a kind of tipping over—and they fastened seat belts again. But Pam kept her eyes open, and was only a little paralyzed. Perhaps, Pam North thought, I can become a passenger mile, after all.
It was early afternoon in Little Rock, and a State trooper met the airplane—met it with a car for Weigand, and a road map and a look of mild surprise when Weigand introduced the Norths, as fellow members of the expedition. He said that the countr
y around Top Town was sort of rough-like for a lady. He said that, at last report, Cunningham—or somebody, anyhow—was still in the cabin on the hill, and that the postmaster at Top Town had instructions to get in touch if he came down out of it for his mail, or for provisions. And instructions not to tell Cunningham that the State police had expressed interest in him.
“Right,” Bill said. “We want to talk to him. Don’t want him to get scared and run.”
The trooper’s expression was that of a man who doesn’t get it, and whose business it isn’t. The car provided was a police car, although it did not look it. It had two-way radio, so if Weigand wanted help he could ask for it. He would have to remember that there weren’t many of them—there are never enough policemen anywhere, as any policeman will agree—and that help might take a time to get to them. Especially on the roads they would find up around Top Town.
Bill said, “Right,” and that he appreciated everything, and the trooper unhooked his motorcycle from the tow hitch on the back of the car and went off on it. Bill and the Norths found the road out of Little Rock—a road the map showed clearly; a road which would take them into the Boston Mountains, and to Harrison, Arkansas, near the State line in the north and, if they stayed on it long enough, to Springfield, Missouri. A hundred and forty miles to Harrison, and something less to the back road which would lead them to Top Town.
It was much warmer in Arkansas than it had been in New York and, at first, much dryer. They went through rolling country as they went north, the road turning between hills. But, consistently, they climbed and the hills grew higher. Summer still seemed to cling to the valleys, even where the hills shadowed them. But after an hour, clouds began to build up in the west and, very suddenly, the low November sun went behind the clouds. Then, almost at once, dusk spread through the valleys. It was only a little after four when Weigand switched on the car lights.
They were halfway from Little Rock to Top Town, then, and the road was climbing more sharply, descending more abruptly, twisting between increasingly more precipitous hills. They climbed a long way up and then, in the dusk, there were hills all around them, and narrow valleys, with streams running through them. The road surface was good, but it was a mountain road now, and not a road for speed. (Yet some cars, bearing Arkansas licenses, seemed unperturbed by steepness and sharp curves, and went up and down and around with impetuous confidence.)
“We are,” Pam said, “a long way from anywhere, aren’t we?”
Lights began to come on in houses they drove past.
“It is the saddest time of day,” Pam said. “Unless you’re going home. See all the people who are at home?”
She was sitting between them. Jerry put an arm around her.
They had gone a hundred miles by five-thirty, and it was then quite dark. The lights bored through darkness; on curves the lights shot off willfully, lighting the tops of valley trees. Bill pulled off at a tiny town for gas and Jerry lifted his arm down and found it heavy and powerless. He shook it and it tingled, while a man in overalls filled the tank, and said that the turnoff for Top Town was about twenty miles ahead, and not very well marked, and to the right. He said that it wasn’t much of a road, either, and that they’d have ten miles of it, and that it looked like rain. He said that if it rained much, the road to Top Town would be pretty tough going for a car like this one. Having thus cheered everyone, he said it would be five dollars and twenty-four cents.
Jerry drove when they started up again. After five miles, rain began. It was not a heavy rain, but it was the kind of rain which tends to its knitting. The rain skittered in the headlight beams, and the windshield wipers went methodically back and forth, and they were miles from anywhere in a small dark box.
“I’m not sure,” Pam said, “that this was such a very good idea.”
They churned on, through rain, hemmed in by hills. “Probably,” Pam said, “this would be very beautiful, if we could see it,” and then, “I’m just talking to keep our spirits up.”
“Mine soar,” Jerry told her, going very carefully around a corner, with the lights staring straight ahead, fixed and unco-operative. “We’ve gone about eighteen.”
They went another two. No road went off to the right. “He only said ‘about,’” Pam said, reassuring, “and even when people say ‘exactly’ they usually mean ‘about.’”
They had gone twenty-four miles from the filling station when Bill said, “Take it easy,” and shot a flashlight beam at the road’s edge. The beam picked up a wooden sign, a dejectedly sagging sign. Jerry stopped by it. It was a wedge at one end and, dimly, it said, “Top Town. Ten miles.” The road it pointed to was not immediately apparent. Then it was. It was a dirt road and water streamed on it, and it plunged down from the main road. Bill shone his light down the plunging road. At the bottom of its drop there was what appeared to be a bridge. Above that the road seemed to rise straight up.
The turn was at right angles. Jerry cut hard, and inched into the narrow road. The car skidded momentarily, and Jerry caught it out of its skid, and they crept down. They crept across the bridge, and loose planking banged under the car and the bridge perceptibly shook. They started on up the other side, and did not go straight up, but near enough, on a road built to the width of one car only, and with a sharp turn at the top of its first rise. The headlights shot up into the air, so that at the crest the road appeared not so much to turn as to vanish.
They crept up and around, and beyond there was another rise. They went on. Now and then the wheels slipped a little, spun a little on the slippery surface. Once they spun toward the side of the road, perilously—there was a ditch at the side of the road, and beyond it a steep pitch downward. But Jerry caught the car, and eased it on, and the wheels found traction. “Whew!” Jerry said, and went again, cautiously, up and around. And up and around, and up and over, in a twisting tunnel between trees—a thousand miles from anywhere, in the blackest of darkness. Here, on this road to Top Town—this road to nowhere—there were no reassuring lights in houses. Nobody, evidently, lived here, or near here, or ever had or ever would.
“It is,” Pam North said, “all very unreal, isn’t it?”
It was, and yet, real enough—real enough to Jerry, nursing the car upward; real enough to Bill Weigand, who felt urgency tightening in him, and impatience. They went four miles, and five, and always up and around, and if they met a car coming toward them it was inconceivable that any solution would arise, ever. The cars, Pam thought, would merely stand, glaring at each other, into infinity. They went six miles and seven and eight and around another curve, and almost missed Top Town, which was a place where the road widened, grudgingly; which was a two-story frame building, with an unrailed, high porch, and wooden steps leading up to it—which was a sign across the front of the building which read, “Perkins General Store,” and a smaller sign which read, “U. S. Post Office. Top Town, Arkansas.”
Jerry pulled the car up parallel to the porch. And then they could see, through a window—a window made almost opaque by grime—a single light burning inside the store. There was no sign of life in the store. Bill Weigand got out and climbed the wooden steps, his feet falling heavily on them, and crossed the porch and knocked at a closed door. It sounded as if he had knocked on a wooden drum. Nothing happened and he knocked again. Then another light came on in the building, and a man’s voice was loud—loud and, seemingly, angry. “Give a man time, can’t you?” the voice demanded.
Bill gave the man time. They could hear the man walking inside the building on a wooden floor, and it was as if he walked on a drum. Then the door opened.
The man was tall and thin; he wore overalls and a woolen shirt. He had long white hair which lay flat on his head, and fell straight down the back of his neck. He said, “Well? Want something?”
“Mr. Perkins?” Bill said.
“Suppose I am?”
“I’m looking for Carl Cunningham,” Bill told him. “The State police—”
“So you’re t
he one, air you?” He looked beyond Bill, at the car. “Who’re those other folks?”
“Friends of mine,” Bill said. “I’m a policeman. From New York.”
“Fars I know,” the white-haired man said, “Cunningham’s up at that shack of Nelson’s. Got mail here for him. He done something bad, I reckon?”
“I want to talk to him,” Bill said. “Can you tell me how to get to this shack?”
“Reckon maybe,” the man said. “Want to come in? You and these friends of yours? So as a person can get a look at you?”
They went in. The room was long and dusty; there was a counter along one side, and cans and packaged food on shelves behind it, and part of a cheese under a dusty glass cover, and at one end of the room there was an iron stove. Two lights dangled from cords and fought halfheartedly against darkness. And a shotgun leaned against the counter.
The tall old man looked at them; he looked longer at Pam than at the men and said, “City people, ain’t you?” His question was, apparently, directed to Pam.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m afraid so Mr.—Mr. Perkins?”
“Talk like a furriner,” the man said. “Who’d I be if not Perkins?”
“Well,” Pam said, “that’s a little hard to say, isn’t it? Almost anybody, probably. Are you Mr. Perkins?”
“Told you I was,” he said. “So you want to see Carl?”
“Yes,” Bill said. “You say he’s back in the cabin? Whatever it is?”
“Ain’t seen him,” Perkins said. “Like I told the troopers. Somebody’s up there. Place up the road a piece you can see a light, when there’s a light. Was last night. That’s all I know.”
“You didn’t go up to see?”
“What’d I do that for? He wants his mail, he knows where it is. You figuring on going up there? The lady too?”
“Well—” Jerry said, and Pam looked at him, looked around the store quickly, shook her head briefly.
“Yes,” Pam said, again.
“Never make it,” Perkins said. “Not in those city shoes, ma’am. If you call them shoes.”
