Hot Springs (Earl Swagger)

by Stephen Hunter

  Earl just looked him over, then transferred the Thompson to his left hand.

  “Take your belt off and throw it over here.”

  “Yah. See. I knew you weren’t the type,” said Owney, doing the job with one hand.

  “Thought you was English,” said Earl.

  “Only when I want to be, chum. Come on, tie me, let’s get this over. I want to get back in time to hear Frankie on the radio.”

  But then he stopped. He looked quizzically at Earl.

  “I have to know. You’re not working for Bugsy Siegel, are you?”

  “That guy?” said Earl. “Don’t know nothing about him.”

  “You fool,” said Owney. “You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  Owney joined his hands together for Earl to loop them with the belt. Earl knelt to retrieve the belt. As he rose with it, Owney stepped forward and seemed to stumble just a bit and then his hand fled to his arm. He was fast.

  But Earl was faster. His right hand flew to the Colt automatic in his belt like a bolt of electricity shearing the summer air. It was a fast that can’t be taught, that no camera could capture. He caught the pistol in his other hand and thrust it toward Owney even as a crack split the air. Owney had fired one-handed. Owney had missed.

  Hunched and doublehanded, Earl knocked five into the gangster, all before Owney could get the hammer thumbed back on the bike gun for a second shot. The rounds kicked the gangster back and set him down hard as the little weapon fell from his fingers into the grass.

  Now Earl knew who had killed his father. Now Earl knew what had happened to his father’s little gun. But he didn’t care. His old father meant nothing to him now. He thought of his new father, the man who’d died for him in the railyard. Now he’d tracked D.A.’s true killer down and paid out justice in gunfire.

  Earl walked over to Owney. Five oozing holes were clustered in a slightly oblong circle on his white shirt under his heart. They were so close you could cover them with one hand, and they were wounds nobody comes back from.

  “W-who are you?” Owney asked.

  “You’d never believe it,” said Earl.

  67

  She had borne so much pain she had become numbed by it. Her eyes were vague, her sense of reality elongated, her sense of time vanished. The pain just came and came and came, and had its way, though now and then a moment of lucidity reached her, and she concentrated on the here and now, and then it all went away in pain.

  She heard someone say, “She’s at fifteen. We’ve got to do it.”

  “Yes, doctor.”

  The young doctor’s face flew into view.

  “Mrs. Swagger, I have been on the phone all over the state trying to get an OB-GYN, even a resident, even a horse doctor over here. Someone can be here in an hour, I’m sorry to report. So I have to act now, or we will lose both you and the child.”

  “Don’t take my baby!”

  “You will bleed to death internally in a very short while. I’m sorry but I have to do what’s right. Nurse, get her prepped. I’m going to go scrub.”

  She had fought so hard. Now, at the end, she had nothing left.

  “It’s all right,” she heard Mary whispering. “You have to get through this. You’ll have other babies. Honey, he’s right, you’ve fought so hard, but it’s time to move on. You have to survive. I couldn’t live without you, I’m so selfish. Please, your mama, your papa, everybody, they are pulling for you.”

  “Where’s Earl, Mary?”

  “I am sorry, honey. He didn’t make it.”

  Then she felt herself moving. A nurse was pushing her down the dimly lit hallway. The gurney vibrated and each vibration hurt her bad. A bump nearly killed her. She was in a brightly lit room. The doctor had a mask on. Then he turned away from her. A mask came and she smelled its rubbery density. She turned her face, waiting for the gas, and saw the doctor with his back to her. He was working with a long probe but she saw that it had a pointed end to it, like a knitting needle.

  My baby, she thought. They are going to use that on my baby.

  “She’s ready, doctor.”

  “All right, give her—”

  There was a commotion.

  A woman had broken in. Angry words were spoken. Then she heard the doctor say, “I don’t care about all that. Get him in here.”

  The doctor was back.

  “Well, Mrs. Swagger, your husband just showed up.”

  “Earl!”

  “Yes ma’am. And he has another doctor with him.”

  But there was something on his face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This is your part of the country down here, not mine. You would understand better than me. I don’t understand, but that nurse says if we let this doctor in here, there will be some trouble.”

  “Please. Please help my baby.”

  “All right, ma’am. I knew you’d say that.”

  “The doctor—?”

  “The doctor your husband brought. He’s colored.”

  • • •

  Earl explained it once again.

  “Ma’am, I don’t care what your rules say. That’s my wife in there and my child, and you need another doctor and this doctor has kindly consented to assist and he’s delivered over a thousand babies through the years, so just step aside.”

  “No Negroes are allowed in this hospital. That’s the rule.” This was the hospital shift supervisor, a large woman in glasses, whose face was knit up tight as a fist as she clung to her part of the empire.

  “That was yesterday. There are new rules now.”

  “And who has made that determination?”

  “I believe I have.”

  “Sir, you have no right.”

  “My wife and baby ain’t going to die because you have some rule that never made no sense and is only waiting for someone to come along and blow it down in a single day. This is that day and I am that man.”

  “I will have to call the sheriff.”

  “I don’t give a hang who you call, but this doctor is going to help my wife, and that’s all there is to it. I’ll thank you to move or so help me God I’ll move you and you won’t like it a bit. Now, for the last time, madam, get the goddamned hell out of our way.”

  The woman yielded.

  The two men walked in the corridor and a neighbor lady was standing there.

  “You are not a man to be argued with, Mr. Swagger,” said Dr. James.

  “No sir. Not today.”

  A woman rushed to join them. She looked tired too, as if she’d been through it the same as Earl.

  “Thank God you got here.”

  “You’re Mary Blanton. Oh, Mary, ain’t you the best though. I called and your husband told me what was going on. Dr. James was good enough to say he’d come along.”

  “Thank God you’re here, doctor.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  The young resident came out into the hall.

  “Dr.—?”

  “Julius James. OB-GYN. NYU School of Medicine, 1932.”

  “I’m Mark Harris, Northwestern, ’44. Thank God you’re here, doctor. We’ve got a posterior presentation and she’s dilated all the way to fifteen and she’s been in labor for twelve hours. That little bastard won’t come out.”

  “Okay, doctor, I’ll scrub. I believe I can flip the baby. I’ve managed to do it several times before. We’ll have to perform an episiotomy. Then you’ll have to cut the cord when I get into her so it doesn’t strangle the infant in the womb. Then you’ll have to stitch her while I resuscitate the infant. Make sure to have …”

  Earl watched the two men drift away, and they disappeared into the delivery room.

  He went back outside, to the waiting room, which was now deserted. The woman who had given him so much trouble was gone.

  He couldn’t sit down. He tried not to think about what was going on in the delivery room, or the hours since he’d dumped the bodies, called home, talked to Phil Bla
nton, driven to Greenwood, begged Dr. Julius James to accompany him, and driven here.

  “I am worried about the doctor,” he said to Mary. “This could be dangerous for him. He doesn’t deserve all this bad trouble.”

  “Mr. Swagger, if they should move against him, they will be moving against you. I don’t believe they will do that. They are bullies and cowards anyhow, not men.”

  “I do hope you are right, Mary.”

  In time, after Earl paced and Mary sat dumbly, a law officer approached, as if skulking. He wore a deputy’s badge and had the look of the kind of old cop who sat in offices all day long.

  “Are you the man that brought the Negro doctor?”

  “Yes, I am,” said Earl.

  “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “I grew up down in Polk County.”

  “Then you know this is not how we do things. We keep white and nigger separated. We have laws about it. I have to arrest you and the Negro doctor.”

  “I think you’d best go on home, old man,” said Earl. “I do not have time for all this.”

  “Mr.—?”

  “Swagger. Earl Swagger.”

  “Mr. Swagger, this is a great principle we are defending. It’s bigger than your wife and your baby. We have the future of the nation at stake here.”

  “Deputy, possibly you know of my father, Charles Swagger? He was a man who done what he said he would do. He was famous for it. Well, sir, I am that kind of man only more so. So when I say to you, go away, go far away, then you’d best obey me or there will be hell for lunch.”

  The sheriff slunk away.

  But he paused at the door.

  “Your beefiness may work with an old man like me, Swagger, when all the deputies are out hunting Owney Maddox. But there are some boys at the end of the street getting liquored up who will take a different view.”

  “I’ll deal with them when they come. If they have the guts. And don’t you worry none about Owney Maddox. That bill was settled.”

  Another half hour passed. Mary sat, now hugging herself. Earl walked back and forth, smoking, like a man in a Saturday Evening Post cartoon. He kept glancing at his watch, kept looking at the door, kept trying to calm himself down. He was so desperately exhausted he could hardly think straight, but he was in that keyed up state where he couldn’t sleep either. He was just a raw mess.

  At last the door opened, but it wasn’t a doctor. It was a janitor, a black man.

  “Sir,” he said.

  “Yes, what is it, Pop?” Earl asked.

  “They’s coming. A mob. Seen it before. It happens onct a while. They done got to set things back the way they was and when they do that, some boy’s got to swing or burn.”

  “Not this time, Pop. You can bet on it.”

  He turned to Mary.

  “I’ll take care of this.”

  “Mr. Swagger, I—”

  “Don’t you worry none. I faced Japs. These boys ain’t Japs. But just in case, I want you down on the floor. If some lead sails through, you don’t want to catch a cold from it.”

  Earl walked out onto a porch.

  He watched them come. The old man was right. There were about fifty of them, and from the groggy, angry progress, he could tell there had been much liquor consumed. The mob spilled this way and that, and shouts and curses came from it. He watched as supposedly decent people stepped aside, or stood back in horror, but he noted too that nobody stood up to these boys, nobody at all.

  It was now four o’clock in the afternoon. He’d lost most sense of time and wasn’t sure how long he’d been here, how long they’d been drinking, how mad they were. The sun was low in the western sky, and flame-colored. The mountains were silhouettes. A wind blew, and the leaves on the trees all shimmered.

  On the boys came. He saw shotguns, a few rifles, a few squirrel guns, hoes, shovels, picks. They’d grabbed everything they could fight with. They were killing mad.

  The leader was a heavyset man in overalls with a battered fedora and the hardscrabbled face of a fellow life hadn’t treated kindly. His compatriots were equally rough, men who’d been purged of pity by bad breaks, brushes with the law, beatings from bigger men, and a sense of lost possibility. They looked like a ragtag Confederate infantry regiment moving out agin the bluebellies at some Pea Ridge or other. Earl had known them his whole life.

  Earl watched them come, standing straight. His hat was low over his dark and baleful eyes. His gray suit was dusty and rumpled but not without some dignity to it. His tie was tight to his throat and trim. He calmly smoked a Chesterfield, cupping it in his big hands.

  Finally they were there, and only his imperturbability stood between him and the doctors and his wife.

  “You the feller brought that nigger here?”

  “I brought a doctor here, boys. Didn’t stop to notice his color.”

  “We don’t ’low no niggers in this end of town. Bad business.”

  “Today, that changes. I’m here to change it.”

  In the crowd faces turned to faces and low, guttural exchanges passed electrically among them. Like an animal they seemed to coil and gather strength.

  Finally, the leader took a step forward.

  “Mister, we’ll string you up next to that coon in a whisker if that’s what you want. Now you stand aside while we take care of business, or by God this’ll be the day you die.”

  “Boys, there’s been lots of days when I could die. If this is the one at last, then let’s get to it.”

  He flicked aside the cigarette, and with a quick move peeled off his coat.

  He had a .45 cocked and locked in the shoulder holster that Herman Kreutzer had been wearing, another .45 cocked and locked in the speed holster on his hip that Johnny Spanish had been wearing and a third stuffed into his belt backward to the left of his belt buckle. His shirt pocket was stuffed with three or four magazines.

  “I can draw and kill seven of you in the first two seconds. In the next two seconds I’ll kill seven more. In the final two seconds, I’ll get the third seven. Now if some of you boys in the back get a shot into me, you’d best make it count, ’cause if it only wounds me, I may get a reload or two in, and each time I reload that means seven more of you boys are going down. So I figure a sure twenty-one of you are dead, and probably more like twenty-eight or even thirty-five.”

  He paused. He smiled. His hand fell close to the gun on his hip, and there wasn’t a lick of fear in him.

  “Well, boys, what do you say? Are we going to do some man’s work today? You will be remembered, I guarantee you that. You will go into history, you can bet on it. Come on, Fat Boy, you’re up front. Is this the day you picked to get famous?”

  The fat man swallowed.

  “Ain’t so much fun when somebody else has the gun, is it, Fat Boy?”

  The fat man swallowed again, looked back to his mob and saw that it was leaking men from the rear. It seemed to be dissolving.

  Suddenly he and four or five others were alone.

  “Fat Boy, I am tired of standing here. You make your play or I just may shoot you so I can sit a spell.”

  The others left and the Fat Boy was alone. A large stain spread across his crotch as his bladder yielded to stress. But he didn’t blink or swallow. He peered ahead intently at nothing.

  Earl walked down to him.

  He reached into his back pocket. The man stood stock-still, quivering.

  Earl took out his wallet, opened it.

  “I see your name is Willis Beaudine. Well, Willis, here’s something for you to remember. If anything ever happens to that good doctor in there, it’s you I’ll come visit in the night. And Willis Beaudine, don’t think you can run and hide. Many a man has thought that and they are now sucking bitter grass from the root end.”

  He dropped the wallet down Willis’s overalls.

  “Now scoot, Willis.”

  Willis turned and in seconds disappeared. Odd a fat man could move so fast.

  Earl picked up
his coat, threw it over his shoulder and walked back into the hospital waiting room.

  Dr. James was waiting, along with Mary.

  “How’s my wife?” Earl demanded.

  “Your wife is just fine, Mr. Swagger,” the doctor said. “She’s not bleeding anymore, and she’s going to recover very nicely.”

  “And—”

  “Yes,” he said, “congratulations. You have a son.”

  EPILOGUE

  1947

  68

  He didn’t have any trouble finding Beverly Hills but Linden Drive proved difficult. Finally, he stopped on a street corner where a kid was selling Maps of the Stars.

  “You’re almost there, sir. Three blocks up to Whittier Avenue, then left and Linden is the next one on the left.”

  “Thanks, kid.” He handed the boy a quarter.

  The house was big. A star’s house should be big. It had that Southern California Mexican palace look to it, with a crown of red tiles over white stucco, some kind of towerlike or churchlike assemblage in the front, immaculate gardens and lawns. He’d seen something like it in China, but the ones in China had all been smashed to rubble by Mao’s Pioneers or Chiang’s shock infantry.

  He parked, checked his watch, saw that it was exactly 7:00 and went up the flagstone walk toward the dark wood front door, a massive slab of carved oak. It was still, and the sun was oozing through the trees toward the Pacific on one corner of the sky. It was so quiet here, the plush quiet of a very rich neck of the woods, where voices were never raised, dinner was served at 8:00 and the only noise would be the solidity of the Cadillac limo doors being gently shut by butlers or drivers.

  He knocked, and a man answered.

  “I’m here to see Mr. Siegel,” he said. “I think he’s expecting me.”

  “Yeah, come on in,” said the fellow, some sort of flashily dressed Hollywood type. “I have to pat you down. Just to be sure. You know.”

  “No problem,” said Frenchy.