“Where between Gary and Hammond?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed.
“Then I don’t go there,” he said.
The toothpick switched back again. I know when I’ve been dismissed. I wandered over to the bus area. There was a uniformed driver leaning against a bus marked Gary-Hammond, gazing about with total disinterest. I decided I’d like to have the toothpick concession at O’Hare Airport, but at least he didn’t shift it when I addressed him:
“Could you tell me if I can take this bus to Athens?”
“Where?”
“Athens, Indiana.”
“Where is that?”
“Between Gary and Hammond. It’s an incorporated village.”
He looked at me doubtfully.
“Population 3,079 in 1939,” I added helpfully.
“No shit?” he said. “Between Gary and Hammond?”
I nodded.
“You stand right there,” he told me. “Don’t move. Someone’s liable to steal you. I’ll be right back.”
He went over to the dispatcher’s desk and talked to a man chewing a toothpick. The bus driver gestured. Both men turned to stare at me. Then the dispatcher unfolded a map. They both bent over it. Another uniformed bus driver came along, then another, and another. Finally there were five men consulting the map, waving their arms, arguing in loud voices, their toothpicks waggling like mad.
The driver came back to me.
“Yeah,” he said, “I go to Athens.”
“You learn something every day,” I said cheerfully.
“Nothing important,” he said.
An hour later I was trying to peer through a misted window as the bus hurtled southeastward. I saw mostly darkness, a few clumps of lights, flickering neon signs. And then, as we crossed the state line into Indiana, there were rosy glows in the sky, sudden flares, views of lighted factories and mills, and one stretch of highway seemingly lined with nothing but taverns, junkyards, and adult book stores.
About ninety minutes after leaving O’Hare Airport, with frequent stops to discharge passengers, we pulled off the road at a street that seemed devoid of lighting or habitation.
“Athens,” the driver called.
I struggled from my seat, lifted my suitcase from the overhead rack, and staggered down the aisle to the door.
I bent to look out.
“This is Athens?” I asked the driver.
“This is it,” he said. “Guaranteed.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
I stood on a dark corner and watched the bus pull away, splashing me from the knees downward. All I could feel was regret at not staying aboard that bus to the end of the line, riding it back to O’Hare, and returning to Manhattan by the earliest available flight. Cold, wet, miserable.
After a long despairing wander I came to what might be called, with mercy, a business district. Most of the stores were closed, with steel shutters in place. But I passed a drugstore that was open, a mom-and-pop grocery store, and at last—O Lord, I gave thanks!—a liquor store.
“A pint of brandy, please,” I said to the black clerk.
He inspected me.
“Domestic?” he said.
“Anything,” I said. “Anything at all.”
He was counting out my change when I asked if there were any hotels in the immediate area.
“One block down,” he said, pointing. “Then two blocks to the right. The New Frontier Bar and Grill.”
“It’s a hotel?”
“Sure,” he said. “Up above. You want to sleep there tonight?”
“Of course.”
“Crazy,” he said, shaking his head.
I followed his directions to the New Frontier Bar and Grill. It was a frowsy beer joint with a dirty front window, a few customers at the bar with blue faces from the TV set, and a small back room with tables.
The bartender came right over; it was downhill. The whole floor seemed to slope toward the street.
“Scotch and water, please,” I said.
“Bar Scotch?”
“All right.”
He poured me what I thought was an enormous portion until I realized the bottom of the shot glass was solid and at least a half-inch thick.
“I understand you have a hotel here,” I said.
He looked at me, then bent over the bar to inspect me closely, paying particular attention to my shoes.
“A hotel?” he said. “You might call it that.”
“Could you tell me your rates?”
He looked off into the middle distance.
“Five bucks,” he said.
“That seems reasonable,” I said.
“It’s right next door. Up one flight. The owner’s on the desk. Tell him Lou sent you.”
I quaffed my Scotch in one meager gulp, paid, walked outside, and climbed the narrow flight of stairs next door. The owner-clerk, also black, was seated behind a desk enclosed in wire mesh. There was a small hinged judas window in front.
He was a husky man in his fifties, I judged, wearing a T-shirt with a portrait of Beethoven printed on the front. He was working a crossword puzzle in a folded newspaper. He didn’t look up. “Five bucks an hour,” he said. “Clean sheets and running water. Payable in advance.”
“I’d like to stay the night,” I said. “To sleep. Lou sent me.”
He wouldn’t look up. “What’s an ox with three letters?” he said. “With a long tail and short mane.”
“Gnu,” I said. “G-n-u.”
Then he looked up at me.
“Yeah,” he said, “that fits. Thanks. Twenty for the night. Payable in advance.”
He opened the window to take the bill and slide a key on a brass medallion across to me.
“Two-oh-nine,” he said. “Right down the hall. You’re not going to do the dutch, are you?”
“Do the dutch?”
“Commit suicide?”
“Oh no,” I protested. “Nothing like that.”
“Good,” he said. “What’s a four letter word meaning a small child?”
“Tyke,” I suggested.
Oh, what a dreadful room that was! So bleak, so tawdry.
It was about ten feet square with an iron bed that had once been painted white. It appeared to have the promised clean sheets—threadbare but clean—but on the lower third of the bed, the sheet and a sleazy cotton blanket had been covered with a strip of black oilcloth. It took me awhile to puzzle that out. It was for customers too drunk or too frantic to remove their shoes.
I immediately ascertained that the door could be double-locked from the inside and that there was a bolt, albeit a cheap one. There was a stained sink in one corner, one straight-backed kitchen chair and a small maple table, the top scarred with cigarette burns. There was no closet, but hooks had been screwed into the walls to compensate, and a few wire coat-hangers depended from them.
I went into the corridor to prowl. I found a bathroom smelling achingly of disinfectant. There was a toilet, sink, bathtub with shower. I used the toilet after latching the door with the dimestore hook-and-eye provided, but I resolved to shun the sink and tub.
I went back to my room and hung up my hat and overcoat on a couple of the hooks. After a great deal of struggling, I opened the single window. A chill, moist breeze came billowing in, still tainted with sulfur. It didn’t take long to realize that there was no point in sitting around in such squalor, and soon I had reclaimed my hat and coat and headed back downstairs.
“Going to get something to eat,” I said to the owner-clerk, trying to be hearty and cool simultaneously.
“A monkey-type creature,” he said. “Five letters.”
“Lemur,” I said.
The New Frontier Bar and Grill had gained patrons during my absence; most of the barstools were occupied, and there were several couples, including a few whites, at tables in the back room. All the men were big, wide, powerfully built, with rough hands, raucous laughs, and
thundering angers that seemed to subside as soon as they flared.
I was pleased to note the bartender remembered what I drank.
“Scotch?” he asked as if it were a statement of fact.
“Please. With water on the side.”
When he brought my drink, I asked him about the possibility of getting sandwiches and a bag of potato chips.
“I’m a little fandangoed at the moment,” he said. “When I get a chance, I’ll make them up for you—okay?”
“Fine,” I said. “No rush.”
I looked around, sipping my shot glass of whiskey. The monsters on both sides of me were drinking boilermakers, silently and intently, staring into the streaked mirror behind the bar. I did not attempt conversation; they looked like men with grievances.
I turned back to my own drink and in a moment felt a heavy arm slide across my shoulders.
“Hi, sonny,” a woman’s voice said breezily.
“Good evening,” I said, standing. “Would you care to sit down?”
“Sit here, Sal,” the man next to me offered. “I got it all warmed up for you. I’m going home.”
“You do that, Joe,” said the woman, and a lot of woman she was, too, “for a change.”
They both laughed. Joe winked at me and departed.
“Buy a girl a drink?” Ms. Sal asked, swinging a weighty haunch expertly atop the barstool.
“A pleasure,” I said.
“Can I have a shot?” she asked.
“Whatever you like.”
“A shot. Beer makes me fart.”
I nodded sympathetically.
“Lou!” she screamed, so loudly and so suddenly that I leaped. “The usual. I’ve got a live one here.”
She dug a crumpled pack of cigarettes from a stuffed purse. I struck a match for her.
“Thanks, sonny,” she said. She took a deep inhalation and the smoke just disappeared. I mean, I didn’t see it come out anywhere.
She was a swollen, bloated woman in her middle forties. She looked like the kind of girl who could never be surprised, shocked, or hurt; she had seen it all—twice at least.
The bartender brought her drink: a whiskey with a small beer chaser.
Sal looked me up and down.
“You work in the steel mills, sonny?”
“That Sal,” the bartender said to me, “she’s a card.”
“Oh no,” I said to her. “I’m not from around here. I’m from New York.”
“You could have fooled me,” she said. “I would have sworn you were a puddler.”
“Come on, Sal,” the bartender said.
“That’s all right,” I told him. “I know the lady is pulling my leg. I don’t mind.”
She smacked me on the back, almost knocking me off the stool.
“You’re okay, sonny,” she said in a growly voice. “I like you.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“What the hell you doing in Gary?”
“Gary?” I said, fear soaring. “I thought this was Athens. Isn’t this Athens, Indiana?”
“Athens?” she said. She laughed uproariously, rocking back and forth on her barstool so violently that I put out an arm to assist her in case she should topple backward.
“Jesus Christ, sonny,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, “this place hasn’t been called Athens in years. It was absorbed by Gary a long time ago.”
“But it was Athens?” I insisted.
“Oh sure. It was Athens when I was a kid, more years ago than I want to remember. What the hell you doing in Athens?”
“I work for a law firm in New York,” I said. “It’s a matter of a will. I’m trying to locate a beneficiary whose last address was given as Athens, Indiana.”
“No shit?” she said, interested. “An inheritance?”
“Oh yes.”
“A lot of money?”
“It depends on what you mean by a lot of money,” I said cautiously.
“To me,” she said, “anything over twenty bucks is a lot of money.”
“It’s more than twenty bucks.”
“What’s the name?”
“Knurr,” I said. “K-n-u-r-r. A woman. Goldie Knurr.”
“Goldie Knurr?” she repeated. “No,” she said, shaking her head, “never heard of her. Lou!” she screamed. When the bartender came over, she asked, “Ever hear of a woman named Goldie Knurr?”
He pondered a moment, frowning.
“Can’t say as I have,” he said.
“Buy me a double,” Sal said to me, “and I’ll ask around for you.”
When she returned she slid onto the barstool again, spanked her empty glass on the bar.
“What the hell’s your name?” she demanded.
“Josh.”
“My name’s Sal.”
“I know. May I buy you another drink, Sal?”
She pretended to consider the offer.
“Well…all right, if you insist.” She signaled the bartender, holding up two fingers. “Bingo,” she said. “I found a guy who knows Goldie Knurr. Or says he does. See that old swart in the back room? The gray-hair, frizzy-haired guy sitting by himself?”
I turned. “I see him,” I said.
“That’s Ulysses Tecumseh Jones,” she said. “Esquire. One year younger than God. He’s been around here since there was a here. He says he knew the Knurr family.”
“You think he’ll talk to me?” I asked.
“Why not?” she said. “He’s drinking beer.”
“Mr. Jones?” I said, standing alongside his table with my drink in one hand, a stein of beer in the other.
He looked up at me slowly. Sal had been right: he had to be ninety, at least. A mummy without wrappings. Skin of wrinkled tar paper, rheumy eyes, hands that looked like something tossed up by the sea and dried on hot sands.
“Suh?” he said dimly.
“Mr. Jones,” I said, “my name is Joshua Bigg and I—”
“Joshua,” he said. “Fit the battle of Jericho.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, “and I would appreciate it if we could share a drink and I might speak to you for a few moments.”
I proffered the stein of beer.
“I take that kindly,” he said, reaching. “Set. Sal says you asking about the Knurrs?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, sliding onto the banquette next to him.
The ancient sipped his beer. He told me a story about his old army sergeant. He cackled.
“What war was that, sir?” I asked.
“Oh…” he said vaguely. “This or that.”
“About the Knurrs?” I prompted him.
“It was about ‘58,” he said, not bothering to tell me which century. “On Sherman Street that was. Am I right? Sherman Street?”
“You’re exactly right, sir,” I said. “That’s the address I have. One-thirteen Sherman Street.”
“If nominated, I will not run,” he recited. “If elected, I will not serve.”
“That’s wonderful,” I marveled. “That you remember.”
“I still got all my nuts,” he said, nodding with satisfaction. He suddenly grinned. No teeth. No dentures. Just pink gums.
“This was in 1958?”
“Nineteen and fifty-eight,” he said. “Maybe long before. I tell you something funny about that family, suh. They was all G’s. Everybody in that family had a name with a G.”
“Goldie Knurr,” I said. “Godfrey Knurr.”
“’Zactly,” he said. “The father, George Knurr. The mother, Gertrude Knurr. Three other tads. Two sons: Gaylord Knurr and Gordon Knurr. Another daughter: Grace Knurr.”
“You’ve got an incredible memory, sir.”
“I sure do,” he said. “Ain’t nothing wrong with my nuts.”
“What happened to them?” I asked. “The Knurr family?”
“Oh…” he said, “the old folks, George and Gertrude, they died, as might be expected. The kids, they all went away, also as might be expected. Goldie, I hear tell, is the
only one around still.”
It was not good news. If this old man’s memory was accurate, Goldie Knurr was indeed the sister of my target.
“Mr. Jones,” I said, “how is it you know so much about the Knurr family?”
“Oh,” he said slowly, “I used to do this and that around their house. Little jobs, you know. And my third wife, Emily that was—no, Wanda; yes, the third was Wanda—she was like a mother to the kids.”
“You don’t recall anything about Godfrey Knurr, do you, Mr. Jones?” I asked. “One of the sons?”
“Godfrey Knurr?” he repeated, his eyes clouding. “That would be the middle boy. Became a preacher man, he did. Left town. Can’t blame him for that.”
“No indeed,” I said fervently, “I really can’t. You don’t remember anything else about Godfrey? Anything special?”
“Smart young one,” he said. “Big and strong. Liked the girls. Played football. Something…”
He stopped suddenly.
“Something?” I prompted.
“I don’t rightly recall.”
“Something good or something bad?”
He stared at me with eyes suddenly clear and piercing and steady.
“I don’t rightly recall,” he repeated.
6
I OPENED MY EYES Friday morning, bewildered for an instant before I recalled where I was. I rose, did a few halfhearted stretching exercises. I looked in vain for soap, washcloth, towel. I made do by sponging myself with a handkerchief dipped in water from my corner sink. As promised, it was running water. Cold. But invigorating.
I then dressed. My suit, of course, was badly wrinkled, but that seemed a minor consideration.
The owner-clerk was still in his wire mesh cage, drinking coffee from a cardboard container and reading a copy of Architectural Digest.
“When is checkout time, please?” I asked.
“Every hour on the hour,” he said. “Oh, it’s you. Checkout time for you will be around eight or nine tonight.”
I stepped outside to find the rain had ceased, but the sun was hidden behind an oysterish sky. It put a dull tarnish on the world. I walked a few blocks. It took all my optimism to keep my spirits from drooping: block after block of mean row houses, a few scrubby trees.
I finally found a luncheonette that seemed to be doing a thriving business, went in, and had a reasonably edible breakfast. When I paid my bill, I got directions to Sherman Street.
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