Then she ran away, weeping noisily, and slammed the door on Sam. Her father came out presently, looking patient, and asked Sam to go home so Rosie could finish crying and he could read his newspaper in peace.
* * * *
On the way back to his own house, Sam meditated darkly. By the time he got there, he was furious. The him in the week after next could have warned him about this!
He rang and rang and rang, on the cut-off line with his gadget hooked in to call July the twelfth. But there was no answer.
When morning came, he rang again, but the phone was still dead. He loaded his tool-kit in the truck and went off to work, feeling about as low as a man could feel.
He felt lower when he reported at the office and somebody told him excitedly that Joe Hunt and the Widow Backus had eloped to North Carolina to get married. Nobody would have tried to stop them if they had prosaically gotten married at home, but they had eloped to make it more romantic.
It wasn’t romantic to Sam. It was devastating proof that there was another him ten days off, knowing everything he knew and more besides, and very likely laughing his head off at the fix Sam was in. Because, obviously, Rosie would be still more convinced when she heard this news. She’d know Sam wasn’t crazy or the victim of a practical joke. He had told the truth.
It wasn’t the first time a man got in trouble with a woman by telling her the truth, but it was new to Sam and it hurt.
He went over to Bradensburg that day to repair some broken lines, and around noon, he went into a store to get something to eat. There were some local sportsmen in the store, bragging to each other about what the Bradensburg baseball team would do to the Dunnsville nine.
Sam said peevishly, “Huh! Dunnsville will win that game by two runs!”
“Have you got any money that agrees with you?” a local sportsman demanded pugnaciously. “If you have, put it up and let somebody cover it!”
Sam wanted to draw back, but he had roused the civic pride of Bradensburg. He tried to temporize and he was jeered at. In the end, philosophically, he dragged out all the money he had with him and bet it—eleven dollars. It was covered instantly, amid raucous laughter. And on the way back to Batesville, he reflected unhappily that he was going to make eleven dollars out of knowing what was going to happen in the ninth inning of that ball game, but probably at the cost of losing Rosie.
* * * *
He tried to call his other self that night again. There was no more answer than before. He unhooked the gadget and restored normal service to himself. He rang Rosie’s house. She answered the phone.
“Rosie,” Sam asked yearningly, “are you still mad at me?”
“I never was mad at you,” said Rose, gulping. “I’m mad at whoever was talking to you on the phone and knows all our private secrets. And I’m mad at you if you told him.”
“But I didn’t have to tell him! He’s me! All he has to do is just remember! I tried to call him last night and again this morning,” he added bitterly, “and he don’t answer. Maybe he’s gone off somewheres. I’m thinking it might be a—a kind of illusion, maybe.”
“You told me there’d be an elopement last night,” retorted Rosie, her voice wobbling, “and there was. Joe Hunt and the Widow Backus. Just like you said!”
“It—it could’ve been a coincidence,” suggested Sam, not too hopefully.
“I’m—w-waiting to see if Dunnsville beats Bradensburg seven to five tomorrow, tied to the ninth, with George Peeby hitting a homer then with Fred Holmes on second base. If—if that happens, I’ll—I’ll die!”
“Why?” asked Sam.
“Because it’ll mean that I can’t m-marry you ever, because somebody else’d be looking over your shoulder—and we wouldn’t ever be by ourselves all our lives—night or day!”
She hung up, weeping, and Sam swore slowly and steadily and with venom while he worked to hook up his device again—which did not make a private conversation on a party line, but allowed a man to talk to himself ten days away from where he was. And then Sam rang, and rang, and rang. But he got no answer.
The following day, in the big fourth of July game, Dunnsville beat Bradensburg seven to five. It was tied to the ninth. Then George Peeby hit a homer, with Fred Holmes on second base. Sam collected his winnings, but grimly, without joy.
He stayed home that night, worrying, and every so often trying to call himself up on the device he had invented and been told—by himself—to modify. It was a nice gadget, but Sam did not enjoy it. It was a nice night, too. There was moonlight. But Sam did not enjoy that, either.
Moonlight wouldn’t do Sam any good so long as there was another him in the middle of the week after next, refusing to talk to him so he could get out of the fix he was in.
* * * *
Next morning, though, the phone woke him. He swore at it out of habit until he got out of bed, and then he realized that his gadget was hooked in and Central was cut off. He made it in one jump to the instrument.
“Hello!”
“Don’t fret,” said his own voice patronizingly. “Rosie’s going to make up with you.”
“How in blazes d’you know what she’s going to do?” raged Sam. “She won’t marry me with you hanging around! I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get rid of you—”
“Quiet!” commanded the voice on the telephone irritably. “I’m busy. I’ve got to go collect the money you’ve made for us.”
“You collect money? I get in trouble and you collect money?”
“I have to,” his voice said with the impatient patience of one speaking to a small idiot child, “before you can have it. Listen here. Where you are, it’s Wednesday. You’re going over to Dunnsville today to fix some phones. You’ll be in Mr. Broaddus’ law office about half-past ten. You look out the window and notice a fella setting in a car in front of the bank. Notice him good!”
“I won’t do it,” said Sam defiantly. “I ain’t taking any orders from you! Maybe you’re me, but I make money and you collect it. For all I know you spend it before I get to it! I’m quitting this business right now. It’s cost me my own true love and all my life’s happiness and to hell with you!”
“You won’t do it?” his own voice asked nastily. “Wait and see!”
So, that morning, the manager told Sam, when he reported for work, to drive over to Dunnsville and check on some lines there. Sam balked. He said there were much more important lines needing repair elsewhere. The manager explained politely to Sam that Mr. Broaddus over in Dunnsville had been taken drunk at a Fourth of July party and fallen out of a window. He’d broken his leg, so it was a Christian duty to make sure he had a telephone in working order in his office, and Sam could get over there right away or else.
On the way to Dunnsville, Sam morosely remembered that he’d known about Mr. Broaddus’ leg. He had told himself about it on the telephone.
At half-past ten, he was fixing Mr. Broaddus’ telephone when he remembered about the man he was supposed to get a good look at, sitting in a car in front of the bank. He made an angry resolution not, under any circumstances, to glance outside of the lawyer’s office. He meditated savagely that, by this resolution, the schemes of his other self in the future were abolished.
Naturally, he presently went to the window and looked to see what he was abolishing.
* * * *
There was a car before the bank with a reddish-haired man sitting in it. A haze came out of the exhaust, showing that the motor was running. None of this impressed Sam as remarkable. But as he looked, two other men came running out of the bank. One of them carried a bag and both of them had revolvers out and they piled into the car and the reddish-haired man gunned it and it was abruptly a dwindling speck in a cloud of dust, getting out of town.
Three seconds later, old Mr. Bluford, president of the bank, came out yelling, and the cashier came after him, and it was a first-rate bank robbery they were yelling about. The men in the get-away car had departed with thirty-five thousand dollars.<
br />
All of it had taken place so fast that Sam hardly realized what had happened when he went out to see what it was all about, and was instantly seized upon to do some work. The bankrobbers had shot out the telephone cable out of town with a shotgun, so word couldn’t get ahead of them. Sam was needed to re-establish communications with the outside world.
He did, absorbedly reflecting on the details of the robbery as he’d heard them. He was high up on a telephone pole and the sheriff and enthusiastic citizens were streaking past in cars to make his labors unnecessary, when the personal aspect of all this affair hit him.
“Migawd!” gasped Sam, shocked. “That me in the middle of next week told me to come over here and watch a bank robbery! But he didn’t let on what was going to happen so’s I could stop it!” He felt an incredulous indignation come over him. “I woulda been a hero!” he said resentfully. “Rosie woulda admired me! That other me is a born crook!”
Then he realized the facts. The other him was himself, only a week and a half distant. The other him was so far sunk in dastardliness that he permitted a crime to take place, feeling no more than sardonic amusement.
And there was nothing he himself could do about it! He couldn’t even tell the authorities about this depraved character! They wouldn’t believe him unless he could get his other self on the telephone to admit his criminality. Even then, what could they do?
Sam felt what little zest had been left in living go trickling out of his climbers. He looked into the future and saw nothing desirable in it.
He painstakingly finished the repair of the shot-out telephone line, but then he went down to his truck and drove over to Rosie’s house.
There was but one thing he could do.
* * * *
Rosie came suspiciously to the the door.
“I come to tell you good-by, Rosie,” said Sam. “I just found out I’m a criminal, so I aim to go and commit my crimes far away from my home and the friends who never thought I’d turn out this way. Good-by, Rosie.”
“Sam!” said Rosie. “What’s happened now?”
He told her about the bank robbery and how his own self—in the week after next—had known it was going to happen, and told Sam to go watch it without giving him information by which it could have been stopped.
“He knew it after it happened,” said Sam bitterly, “and he could’ve told me about it before! He didn’t, so he’s a accessory to the crime. And he is me, which makes me a accessory, too. Good-by, Rosie, my own true love! You’ll never see me again!”
“You set right down here,” Rosie ordered firmly. “You haven’t done a thing yet, so it’s that other you who’s a criminal. You haven’t got a thing to run away for!”
“But I’m going to have! I’m doomed to be a criminal! It’s that me in the week after next! There’s nothing to be done!”
“Says who? I’m going to do something!”
“Like what?” asked Sam.
“I’m going to reform you,” said Rosie, “before you start!”
* * * *
She was a determined girl, that Rosie. She marched inside and put on her blue jeans, then went to her father’s woodshed where he kept his tools and got a monkey wrench and stuck it in her hip pocket.
When she came to the truck, Sam said, “What’s the idea, Rosie?”
“I’m riding around with you,” replied Rosie, with a grim air. “You won’t do anything criminal with me on hand! And if that other you starts talking to you on the telephone, I’m going to climb that pole and tell him where he gets off!”
“If anybody could keep me from turning criminal,” acknowledged Sam, “it’d be you, Rosie. But that monkey wrench—what’s it for?”
Rosie climbed into the seat beside him.
“You start having criminal ideas,” she told him, “and you’ll find out! Now you go on about your business and I and the monkey wrench will look after your morals!”
This tender exchange happened only an hour or so after the robbery and there was plenty of excitement around. But Sam went soberly about his work as telephone lineman. Rosie simply rode with him as a—well, it wasn’t as a bodyguard, but a sort of M.P. escort—Morals Police. Where he worked on a line, he called the central office to report, and he heard about the hunt for the bank robbers, and told Rosie.
* * * *
It was good fortune that he’d been in Dunnsville when the robbery happened, because his prompt repair of the phone wires had spoiled the robbers’ get-away plans. They hadn’t gone ten miles from Dunnsville before somebody fired a load of buckshot at them as their car roared by Lemons’ Store. They were past before they realized they’d been shot at. But the buckshot had punctured the radiator, and two miles on, they were stuck.
They pushed their car off the road behind some bushes and struck out on foot, and the sheriff ran right past their car without seeing it. Then rain began to fall and the bank robbers were wet and scared and desperate. They knew there’d be roadblocks set up everywhere and they had that bag of money—part bills, but a lot of it silver—and all of Tidewater was up in arms.
Taking evasive action, they hastily stuffed their pockets with small bills—there were no big ones—but dared not take too much lest the pockets bulge. They hid the major part of their loot in a hollow tree. They separated, going to nearby towns—while rain fell heavily and covered their trails—and went to bed with chest colds. They felt miserable. But the rain washed away the scent they had left and bloodhounds couldn’t do a thing.
None of this was known to Sam, of course. Rosie had taken charge of him and she kept charge. She rode with him all the afternoon of the robbery. When quitting time came, he took her home and prepared to retire from the scene.
But she said grimly, “Oh, no, you don’t! You’re staying right here! You’re going to sleep in my brother’s room, and my pa is going to put a padlock on the door so you don’t go roaming off to call up that no-account other you and get in more trouble!”
“I might mess things up if I don’t talk to him,” Sam objected.
“He’s messed things up enough by talking to you! The idea of repeating our private affairs! He hadn’t ought to know them! And I’m not sure,” she said ominously, “that you didn’t tell him! If you did, Sam Yoder—”
Sam didn’t argue that point, for there was no argument to make. He was practically meek until he discovered after supper that the schedule for the evening was a game of cribbage played in the living room where Rosie’s mother and father were.
He mentioned unhappily to Rosie that they were acting like old married people without the fun of getting that way, but he said that only once. Rosie glared at him. And when bedtime came, she shooed him into her brother’s room and her father padlocked him in.
He did not sleep well.
* * * *
Next morning, there was Rosie in her blue jeans with a monkey wrench in her pocket, ready to go riding with him. She did. And the next day. And the next. Nothing happened. The state banking association put up five thousand dollars reward for the bank robbers and the insurance company put up some more, but there wasn’t a trace of the criminals.
There wasn’t a trace of criminality about Sam, either. Rosie rode with him, but they exchanged not one single hand-squeeze, nor one melting glance, nor did they even play footsie while they were eating lunch in the truck outside a filling station. Their conduct was exemplary and it wore on Sam. Possibly it wore on Rosie, too.
One day Sam said morosely, as he chewed on a ham sandwich at lunch, “Rosie, I’m crazy about you, but this feels like I been divorced without ever even getting married first.”
And Rosie snapped, “If I told you how I feel, that other you in the week after next would laugh his fool head off. So shut up!”
Things were bad, and they got no better. For nearly a week, Rosie rode everywhere with Sam in his truck. They acted in a manner which Rosie’s parents would in theory have approved, but didn’t even begin to believe in. They did nothing the
world could not have watched without their being embarrassed, and they said very little that all the world would not have been bored to hear.
It must have been the eleventh of July when they almost snapped at each other and Rosie said bitterly, “Let me drive a while. I need to put my mind on something that it don’t make me mad to think about!”
“Go ahead,” Sam invited gloomily. He stopped the truck and got out the door. “I don’t look for any happiness in this world any more, anyway.”
He went around to the other side of the truck while she slid to the driver’s seat.
“Tomorrow’s going to be the twelfth,” she said. “Do you realize that?”
“I hadn’t given it much thought,” admitted Sam, “but what’s the difference?”
“That’s the day where the other you was when he called you up the first time.”
“That’s right,” said Sam morbidly. “It is.”
“And so far,” added Rosie, jamming her foot viciously down on the accelerator, “I’ve kept you honest. If you change into a scoundrel between now and tomorrow—”
She changed to second gear. The truck jerked and bounced.
“Hey!” cried Sam. “Watch your driving!”
“Don’t you tell me how to drive!”
“But if I get killed before tomorrow—”
Rosie changed gear again, but too soon. The truck bucked, and she jammed down the accelerator again, and it almost leaped off the road.
“If you get killed before tomorrow,” raged Rosie, “it’ll serve you right! I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking. And even if I stop you from being a crook, there’ll always be that—other you—knowing everything we say and do.” She was hitting forty miles an hour and speeding up. “So there’d still be no use. No hope, anyway.”
She sobbed, partly in fury and partly in grief. And the roadway curved sharply just about there and she swung the truck crazily around it—and there was a car standing only halfway off the road.
Sam grabbed for the steering wheel, but there wasn’t time. The light half-truck, still accelerating, hit the parked car with the noise of dozens of empty oil-drums falling downstairs. The truck slued around, bounced back, and then it charged forward and slammed into the parked car a second time. Then it stalled.
The Murray Leinster Megapack Page 110
