He ran right into something he hadn’t seen. It shoved him back on the ground, brutally strong, remorselessly hard. Damn it, he thought, gasping—It didn’t hurt, though, not for a moment. And then it did hurt, very much. And then neither it nor anything else ever hurt again…
The private was sobbing: “I did aim for the knees, Lieutenant! He wouldn’t stop! I told him! I thought he was a looter, like you said, and I did aim for the knees…”
The company commander leaned in front of the lights of the weapons carrier and crooked a finger at the lieutenant. He was holding the private’s M-17, pointing to the sights. The leaf was set for a hundred yards; the shot had been not more than twenty-five.
A bullet leaving a rifle goes up before it goes down; the line of sight is straight, the line of trajectory curves in a parabola; an aim that would be dead-on at a hundred yards will strike high at twenty-five. Not very high. About as high as the difference between a man’s knees and the middle of his chest.
The company commander looked significantly at the lieutenant, and snapped the sighting leaf closed. “You did your duty,” he told the private. “All right. Let’s clean up here,” he told the others gathered round.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“The skunk’s never coming back,” Dick McCue said bitterly. His face was hurting again. He wanted to lie down again in his comfortable room at Goudeket’s Green Acres, horror and fatigue far behind.
Mrs. Goudeket didn’t even hear. She had taken her place on the one good chair, near the door, and she was waiting for the moment when Artie Chesbro, the thief of cars, should walk back inside. That, thought Mickey Groff, would be a moment to watch. Chesbro had been asking for it for a long time. It would be a pleasure to see the old lady taking him apart.
He thought wrong.
The old lady sighed and said, “How long now? A day and a half I been away from Goudeket’s Green Acres, and all the time I been worried sick. You know something? Now I’m not worried.’
‘
Mickey Groff said, “That’s right, Mrs. Goudeket. There’s nothing to worry about. Everything’s all right there, you’ll see.”
She looked at him surprised. “All right? Nah.” She shook her head. “All wrong, you mean. Believe me, Mickey, I know what can happen to a place like Goudeket’s Green Acres when it should only rain three days in a row, much less something like this. Goudeket’s Green Acres is finished. What’s the sense trying to kid myself? I should know better.”
Groff looked at her uncomfortably. But she didn’t seem panicky, didn’t seem on the verge of despair. She was calm enough for six. He said, “What are you going to do?”
She leaned forward and patted him. “I’m going to sell, Mickey.” she announced. “You think I’m doing the right thing? No, don’t tell me—I’m going to do it anyhow. My husband, Mr. Goudeket, he was always after me to sell and go to Palestine. ‘Sell, Mrs. Goudeket/ he’d say—always I kept the hotel in my name, you see—‘sell and let’s live a little.’ And every time I’d say next year, next year. Now—it’s next year. I’m sixty-three years old, Mickey. It’s time I took it easy for a while.” She brooded silently. “Why should I lie?” she asked. “Sixty-six.”
Mickey Groff said reassuringly, “I think it’s the right thing to do. You’ll like it in Israel. Nice climate, plenty of things going on, a whole new country rising out of the desert—”
She looked at him incredulously. “Mickey, a nice di-mate? Nice with the Egyptians raining down out the sky like clouds in their jet airplanes? Please, I’m not a child; if I go there I give up nice things in order to be with my people. But it’s what Mr. Goudeket wanted, and I stole it from him, so now I’ll go. I can sell Goudeket’s Green Acres like that” She snapped her fingers proudly. “Only —why didn’t I do it while Mr. Goudeket was still alive?”
A light truck banged past the schoolhouse down toward the river, and almost immediately another followed. Dick McCue said curiously, “Something going on? I thought I heard shooting.”
“There’s plenty going on, Dicky,” Sharon Froman informed him kindly. “Things are very busy around here tonight. But you wouldn’t understand.”
No one paid any attention to her. After a moment she laughed and lit a cigarette. Clods, she thought with gentle contempt. Naturally they were jealous of her and of Artie Chesbro. There were two kinds of people. One kind was the doers—herself, that is; and along with her such other persons as she temporarily dragged along to heights of accomplishment and success. The other kind was everybody else. Not even her worst enemy, she mused, trickling smoke out of her nostrils—not even Hesch, or Paul, or Bert, or any of the others she had temporarily blessed with her help and presence before withdrawing —not any of them could deny that she had moved fast and successfully this day,
Polly Chesbro got up and crossed over to Mickey Groff. “May I have one of your cigarettes?’
’ she asked.
“Sure.” Groff lit it for her.
She said, “What are you going to do now, Mickey? After things clear up a little, I mean.”
He hesitated. The question had not occurred to him for some time. “Go ahead as planned, I guess. Chief Brayer said the Swanscomb place wasn’t damaged, and your husband seems to have given up the idea of making a warehouse out of it.”
She laughed, not maliciously. “I wonder if he remembers that he signed a lease on it,” she said.
“Lease?”
She nodded. “There were a couple of men from Ohio in to see him last week. He drew up a lease on the spot, and they paid him a binder.”
Groff said, “Hell. Well, that was pretty stupid of him, but if it’s a matter of getting—him—in trouble I suppose I could find some other—”
“Get Artie in trouble? Small chance, Mickey. He lands on his feet. And if he doesn’t, he always has the family money to bail him out—my family, that is. What you really mean is you’d back out in order to do me a favor, isn’t it? Don’t answer. It wouldn’t be a favor, Mickey. I decided a long time ago that I couldn’t mother Artie. I had to let him get in his own scrapes and get out by himself, if he could get out. It hasn’t made a man of him yet, but there’s always the chance it may.”
She tipped the ash of her cigarette neatly into a thick china saucer. “Stay around, Mickey,” she said. “All of us need people like you around here. For much more than business.”
A quality in her voice touched him, deeper perhaps than she had intended, deeper than he could remember being touched before. Responsibility. That was the word. Someone had to help. And it was something very different from ego that made him think too: Someone has to lead.
Dick McCue heaved himself to his feet. His whole head was hurting now, and he was feeling savage. “I’m going to hit up the chief for another trip ticket, Mrs. Goudeket,” he announced. “Half an hour’s long enough to wait for the b—for Mr. Chesbro.”
“Why not?” said Mrs. Goudeket. She went with him. Groff could hear the discussion clear from the cloakroom; but they won their point. They came back with another scribbled slip of paper, and the whole party headed for the motor pool—even Sharon, though no one had asked her.
There was somebody down by the motor pool.
As they drew close another little truck came up, making a convoy of three of them, and the driver of one of them hopped out, heading for the motor pool’s Coleman lamp. The driver was a captain, and upset about something; he said to Mr. Cioni, “I understand there’s a temporary morgue somewhere around here.”
“Basement of the Methodist Church,” Cioni said, absently walking over to the open jeep. “That’s at—”
He had leaned over to peer at what was huddled in the back of the jeep. He crossed himself and stared at Mrs. Goudeket. “Here’s the guy that got your car, lady I” he called.
“Artie!” gasped Polly Chesbro. She sped to the jeep and unbelievingly lifted the head on its stiffening neck, staring into the blank face.
The captain, his nerves twanging throug
h his voice, snapped, “Please don’t give us any trouble, lady. This is no business of yours.”
Groff said, “He’s her husband.”
The officer lamely said, “I’m sorry. Very sorry.” And then, defensively, “A warning shot was fired. He didn’t stop. This area is under full martial law and the sound truck announced it to everybody—” He saw that she wasn’t listening, was staring in disbelief. He got out of the jeep and lit a cigarette and waited.
Groff beckoned him to one side. “What happened?” he asked.
“Shot for looting,” the captain said brusquely. “He was in a roped-off prohibited area. He didn’t halt. The kid was absolutely right.”
“Kid?” asked Groff. The captain had told him more than he had intended to, and realized it now. “Somebody panicked?”
“Who are you, mister?” the captain asked.
“Not a reporter. I’ve got a factory in Brooklyn. I knew the man.”
“Close friend?”
“Hated his guts.”
The captain was shocked and reacted with the truth. “As a matter of fact,” he said in a low voice, “maybe it shouldn’t have happened. But we’re legally in the clear. Was he important?”
“Very. But I don’t think you’ll find anybody who’ll press an investigation.”
The captain took a deep, relieved drag on his cigarette and flipped it away. “What about his wife?” he asked. “Is she going to keep this stuff up?”
“I’ll do what I can,” Groff said. He went over to the jeep and the staring woman.
“Polly,” he said.
She turned and told him in a dry, controlled voice: “I’m all right. It’s just so strange to think that it’s—over. Him and his bragging, him and his plans, him and his tramps. It’s over. I suppose you miss a tumor when they cut it out of you. That’s the way I miss him.” She sagged against Groff in a half-faint. He led her to a chair where she sat like a stick. The captain, in a businesslike way, asked Cioni, “Just where’s this church?”
Cioni told him and the jeep rolled away.
“No, no, no,” Sharon Froman was saying faintly.
Then she smiled and said to Groff: “Girl backed the wrong horse, didn’t she? Mickey, how’d you like to meet Congressman Akslund first thing in the morning? Artie’s gone, one with the martyrs, but Akslund’s still going to need expert advice on the reconstruction. I’ve got an in there.’
‘
“Keep it,” said Groff, and put his arm around Polly.
She turned to Dick McCue. Her smile was becoming ghastly. She said, “Got a kind word for an old friend, Dick? We’ve had some fun together. Shall bygones be bygones?”
“No,” said Dick McCue. “If you keep bothering me I’ll take out your upper plate and step on it.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. There was a bark of laughter from Mrs. Goudeket. “You thought nobody knew? You thought you could see through everybody, Miss Sharon Froman, but nobody could see through you? We all know you have an upper plate. We all know you’ll never finish your book or hold a man. We all see through you because we all see through each other, but we know also that we’re seen through. That makes us sometimes kind to each other—we have to be. But you, you have to think you’re perfect and that if anybody sees anything less than perfect in you it’s because they’re fools.”
The ‘47 Dodge rolled slowly into the motor pool. A scared young voice asked: “Is this the place I’m supposed to leave the car?”
“I guess so,” Mr. Cioni said.
The young soldier climbed out wearily. “Boy,” he said, and wiped his brow. “I’m supposed to wait here until they come by on patrol and pick me up.”
Groff moved out of earshot of the women. “Hear about the shooting?” he asked quietly.
The soldier shuddered. “Heck, I’m the guy that did it. Had no choice. A cop shoots if somebody runs and doesn’t stop, doesn’t he? Well, I was supposed to be a cop.” And he added defensively and illogically, “How could I check the sighting leaf in the dark?”
That told the story. Of course he could have checked the sighting leaf in the dark by the clicks if he had known enough about it. Artie Chesbro, struck down in full career by a quarter-trained child who had not meant to kill. Something—God? Chance? Compensation?—had laid a finger briefly on the balances and dressed them. The world was saved from Artie Chesbro—until the next one came along.
“Get in the car,” Mrs. Goudeket grunted, sliding behind the wheel.
“Come on, Polly,” Groff said. She leaned against him on the short walk; a certain excitement—compounded of a feeling for her and of a sense of challenging opportunity —began to tingle through him. She sensed it and smiled; it would be nice, she thought. In the back of the car she dropped her head on his shoulder and was asleep.
Dick McCue got in beside Mrs. Goudeket and slammed the door.
“Mrs. G.?” asked Sharon Froman. “You can’t mean this?”
Mrs. Goudeket snorted, put the car in gear and ground off down the road to Goudeket’s Green Acres.
“Bitch,” said Sharon softly. She walked over to the motor pool man. “You’re Mr. Cioni, aren’t you? Somebody said you were a plumbing engineer.”
“Just a plumber,” said Mr. Cioni modestly, but flattered.
“There’s going to be a lot of work for you before long.”
“Oughtta do pretty well out of it. The shop’s hardly touched. My wife, thank God, hardly knew it was happening. She’s an invalid.”
“How terrible! But shouldn’t somebody be taking care of her? I’m a sort of practical nurse, you know—”
“Well, say, that would be—”
Sharon Froman was very tired. Even while she moved through the pickup ritual for perhaps the twentieth time a crazy, spinning maggot grew in her head that she really ought to throw herself on the ground and scream; it was the only sensible thing to do. With a great deal of effort she resisted and forced out the foolish idea, knowing it would come back.
Mrs. Goudeket twisted the wheel of the car hard, to avoid a fallen telephone pole. “Such a thing, such a thing,” she muttered as she avoided the muddy shoulder.
“Only a telephone pole, Mrs. G.,” said Dick McCue.
“No, I meant that no-good, that Sharon, that there should be a girl like that.” She shook her head.
“And always will be,” said Groff, with Polly’s head pleasantly pressing his shoulder, her nearness making him feel confident and quiet. “But that’s not what’s important. The Sharons and the—the—”—he didn’t utter Chesbro’s name because Polly might not be asleep—“the others, they’re the ones the pessimists and cynics are always thinking about, pointing at, making a thing of. But I’m going to remember something else out of all this. Stark-man. That doctor almost ready to drop on his feet. The kids who did the diving. All the dozens and dozens who were there when they were needed. Fast. With both hands and with everything they had.”
“It’s a fact,” said Dick McCue. “It’s as if when things are okay, everyone just sort of buys and sells and takes care of his own and locks the front door. But when there’s a real jam they, I don’t know, they get bigger. Most of them, anyway.”
“Yep,” said Groff quietly. “That’s why, in spite of the unholy mess, this town isn’t licked. That’s why, even though I could forget Hebertown and locate somewhere else, I don’t think I’m going to. Maybe I ought to have my head examined, but I’m sort of—proud of this place.”
“You going to be welcome,” said Mrs. Goudeket, smiling at the clearing road ahead. “You going to be very welcome.”
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