Savage Night (3 page)

“Nnnnuh-NO!” he yelled. “N-NUHNUH—NO!…”

He rolled to his feet. He sprang awkwardly toward the gate, and he tripped and went down again. He picked himself up and shot staggering into the road.

He took off right down the middle of it toward town. Arms flapping, legs weaving and wobbling crazily. Running, because there was nothing to do but run.

I felt pretty sorry for him. He didn’t need to let his house look like it did, and I couldn’t excuse him for it. But I still felt sorry.

“Please don’t let this upset you, Mr. Bigelow.” Kendall touched my arm. “He simply goes a little crazy when he gets too much liquor in him.”

“Sure,” I said. “I understand. My father was a pretty heavy drinker…Let’s get the light off, huh?”

I jerked my head over my shoulder. A bunch a yokels had come out of the bar and were staring across the street at us.

I turned the light off, and we stood on the porch talking a few minutes. He said he hoped Ruthie hadn’t been alarmed. He invited me to the bakery again, and I turned him down.

He stuffed tobacco into his pipe, puffed at it nervously. “I can’t tell you how much I admired your self-possession, Mr. Bigelow. I’m afraid I—I’ve always thought I was pretty cool and collected, but—”

“You are,” I said. “You were swell. It’s just that you’re not used to drunks.”

“You say your—uh—your father—?”

It was strange that I’d mentioned it. I mean, there wasn’t any harm in mentioning it; but it had been so long ago, more than thirty years ago.

“Of course, I don’t remember anything about it,” I said. “That was back in 1930 and I was only a baby at the time; but my mother—” That was one lie I had to pound home. My age.

“Tsk, tsk! Poor woman. How terrible for her!”

“He was a coal miner,” I said. “Over around McAlester, Oklahoma. The union didn’t amount to much in those days, and I don’t need to tell you there was a depression. About the only work a man could get was in the wildcats, working without inspection. Stripping pillars—”

I paused a moment, remembering. Remembering the stooped back, and the glaring fear-maddened eyes. Remembering the choked sounds at night, the sobbing screams.

“He got the idea that we were trying to kill him,” I said. “If we spilled a little meal, or tore our clothes or something like that, he’d beat the tar out of us…Out of the others, I mean. I was only a baby.”

“Yes? But I don’t understand why—”

“It’s simple,” I said. “Anyway, it was simple enough to him. It seemed to him that we were trying to keep him in the mines. Keeping him from getting away. Using up stuff as fast as we could so that he’d have to stay down there under the ground…until he was buried under it.”

Mr. Kendall tsk-tsk’ed again. “Wretched! Poor deluded fellow. As if you could help—”

“We couldn’t help it,” I nodded, “but that didn’t make it any better for him. He had to work in the mines, and when a man has to do something he does it. But that doesn’t make it any easier. You might even say it was twice as hard that way. You’re not brave or noble or unselfish or any of the things a man likes to think he is. You’re just a cornered rat, and you start acting like one.”

“Mmm. You seem to be an unusually introspective young man, Mr. Bigelow. You say your father died of drink?”

“No,” I said. “He died in the mines. There was so much rock on top of him that it took a week to dig him out.”

Mr. Kendall shoved off for the bakery after a few more tsks and how-terribles, and I went back in the house. Then I sauntered on back to the kitchen.

She was bent over the sink, the crutch gripped under her armpit, washing what looked like about a thousand dishes. Apparently, Mrs. Winroy had saved them up for her while she’d been away—them and every other dirty job.

I hung my coat over a chair and rolled up my sleeves. I picked up a big spoon and began scraping the pans out.

I got them all scraped into one pan, and started for the back door with it.

She hadn’t looked at me since I’d come into the room, and she didn’t look at me now. But she did manage to speak. The words came out in a rush like a kid who’s nerved to recite a poem and has to do it fast or not at all.

“The g-garbage can’s at the side of the porch—”

“You mean they don’t have any chickens?” I said. “Why, they ought to have some chickens to feed it to.”

“Y-yes,” she said.

“It’s a shame to waste food this way. With all the hungry people there are in the world.”

“I—I think so, too,” she said, sort of breathless.

That was all she was up to for the moment. She was blushing like a house afire, and her head was ducked so far over the sink I was afraid she would fall in. I took the garbage outside and scraped it out slowly.

I knew how she felt. Why wouldn’t I know how it felt to be a kind of joke, to have people tell you off kind of like it was what you were made for? You never get used to it, but you get to where you don’t expect anything else.

She was still pretty shocked by the idea of having talked to me when I went back inside. But being shocked didn’t keep her from liking it. She said I s-shouldn’t be helping her wipe the dishes—then, pointed out a towel to me. She said h-hadn’t I better put an apron on; she did it for me, her fingers trembling but lingering.

We stood wiping the dishes together, our arms touching now and then. The first few times it happened, she jerked hers away like she’d brushed against a hot stove. Then, pretty soon, she wasn’t jerking away. And, once, when my elbow brushed her breast, it seemed to me that she sort of leaned into it.

Studying her out of the corner of my eyes, I saw that I’d been right about her left hand. The fingers
were
splayed. She didn’t have the full use of it, and she kept trying to hide it from me. Even with that, though, and her leg—whatever was wrong with her leg—she had plenty on the ball.

All that hard work and deep breathing had put breasts on her like daddy-come-to-church. And swinging around on that crutch hadn’t done her rear end any harm. If you saw it by itself, you might have thought it belonged to a Shetland pony. But I don’t mean it was big. It was the way it was put on her: the way it hinged into the flat stomach and the narrow waist. It was as though she’d been given a break there for all the places she’d been shortchanged.

I got her to talking. I got her to laughing. I draped another dishtowel over my head and started prancing around; and she leaned back against the drainboard, giggling and blushing and protesting.

“S-stop, now, Carl—” Her eyes were shining. The sun had come up behind them, and was shining out at me. “Y-you stop, now—”

“Stop what?” I said, pouring it on all the harder. “What do you want me to stop, Ruth? You mean
this
or
this?
”

I kept it up, sizing her up while I did it, and I changed my mind about a couple of things. I decided I wasn’t going to give her any tips on dressing. I wasn’t going to fix her up with a compact and a permanent. Because any dolling up she did need, she’d do for herself, and she didn’t really need any.

Then, suddenly, she wasn’t laughing any more. She stopped and stood staring over my shoulder.

I knew what it must be. I’d had a hunch it was coming. I turned slowly around, and I was damned careful to keep my hands away from my sides.

I can’t say whether he’d rung the doorbell and we hadn’t heard him, or whether he’d just walked in without ringing. But there he was—a tall rawboned guy with sharp but friendly blue eyes, and a graying coffee-stained mustache.

“Havin’ quite a time for yourself, hey, kids?” he said. “Well, that’s fine. Nothing I like better’n to see young folks enjoying themselves.”

Ruth’s mouth opened and closed. I waited, smiling.

“Been meaning to get out and see your folks, Miss Dorne,” he went on. “Hear you got a new baby out there…Don’t believe I’ve ever met you, young fellow. I’m Bill Summers—Sheriff Summers.”

“How do you do, sheriff,” I said, and I shook hands with him. “I’m Carl Bigelow.”

“Hope I didn’t startle you folks just now. Dropped over to see a fellow named—
Bigelow!
You say
you’re
Carl Bigelow?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Is there something wrong, sheriff?”

He looked me over slowly, frowning, taking in the apron and the dishtowel on my head; looking like he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or start cussing.

“I reckon we’ve got some talking to do, Bigelow…Darn that Jake Winroy’s hide, anyway!”

W
e were in my room. Mrs. Winroy had come in a couple of minutes behind him, and she’d blown her lid so high we’d had to come upstairs.

“I just can’t understand it,” I said. “Mr. Winroy’s known I was coming for several weeks. If he didn’t want me here, why in the world didn’t—”

“Well, o’course, he hadn’t seen you then. What with seein’ you and connecting you up with a name that sounds kinda like yours—well, I can see where it might give him a little start. A man that’s in the fix Jake Winroy’s in.”

“If anyone’s got a right to feel upset, it’s me. I can tell you this, sheriff. If I’d known that James C. Winroy was Jake Winroy, I wouldn’t be here now.”

“Uh-huh, sure.” He shook his head sympathetically. “But I was kind of wonderin’ about that, son. Why did you come here, anyway? All the way from Arizona to a place like Peardale.”

“That was it partly,” I shrugged. “Because it was a long way from Arizona. As long as I was making a fresh start, I thought I’d better make a clean break of it. It’s not easy to make something out of yourself around people who remember you when you weren’t anything.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah?”

“That was only part of it, of course,” I said. “This was cheap, and the school would accept me as a special student. There aren’t many colleges that will, you know. If you don’t have a high-school education, you’re out of luck.” I laughed shortly, making it sound pretty grim and dispirited. “It seems pretty crazy to me, now. I’d dreamed about it for years—getting myself a little education and landing a good job and—and—But I guess I should have known better.”

“Aw, now, son”—he cleared his throat, looking troubled—“don’t take it that way. I know there ain’t no sense to this, and I don’t like it a bit better than you do. But I ain’t got no choice, Jake Winroy being what he is. Now you just help me out and we’ll get this settled in no time.”

“I’ll tell you anything I can, Sheriff Summers,” I said.

“Swell. What about kinfolks?”

“My father’s dead. My mother and the rest of the family—I don’t know about them. We started splitting up right after Dad died. It’s been so long ago that I’ve even forgotten what they looked like.”

“Uh-huh?” he said. “Yeah?”

I started talking. Nothing I told him could be checked, but I could see he believed me; and it would have been strange if he hadn’t. The story was pretty much true, you see. It was practically gospel, except for the dates. There was a hell of a depression in the Oklahoma coal fields in the early twenties. There were strikes and the militia was called in, and no one had money enough for grub, let alone doctors and undertakers. And there was plenty to think about besides birth and death certificates.

I told him how we’d drifted over into Arkansas, picking cotton, and then on down into the Rio Grande Valley for the fruit, and then over into the Imperial for the stoop crops…Sticking together, at first, then splitting up for a day or two at a time to follow the work. Splitting up and staying split up.

I’d sold newspapers in Houston. I’d caddied in Dallas. I’d hustled programs and pop in Kansas City. And in Denver, in front of the Brown Palace Hotel, I’d put the bite on a big flashy-looking guy for coffee money. And he’d said, “Jesus, Charlie, you don’t remember me? I’m your brother, Luke—”

But I left that part out, of course.

“Uh-huh”—he cut in on me. I’d given him so much he was getting tired. “When did you go to Arizona?”

“December of ’44. I’ve never been real sure of my birthdate, but I’d just turned sixteen as near as I can figure it. Anyway”—I made a point of being careful about it—“I don’t see how I could have been more than seventeen.”

“Sure,” he nodded, scowling a little. “Anyone’d know that. Don’t see how you could even have been sixteen.”

“Well, the war was still on and any kind of help was hard to get. This Mr. Fields and his wife—awfully nice old couple—gave me a job in their filling station, and it didn’t pay much, because it didn’t make much, but I liked it fine. I lived with them, just like I was their son, and saved everything I did make. And two years ago, when Da—I mean, Mr. Fields died, I bought the place from her…I guess”—I hesitated—“I guess that’s one reason I wanted to get away from Tucson. With Dad Fields dead and Mom moved back to Iowa, it just didn’t seem like home any more.”

The sheriff coughed and blew his nose. “Dang that Jake,” he growled. “So you sold out and came back here, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Would you like to see a copy of the bill of sale?”

I showed it to him. I also showed him some of the letters Mrs. Fields had written me from Iowa before she died. He paid a lot more attention to them than he had to the bill of sale, and when he was through he blew his nose again.

“Goldarn it, Carl, I’m really sorry to ’ve put you through all this, but I reckon I’m not through yet. You won’t mind if I do a little telegraphin’ out there to Tucson? I just about got to, you know. Otherwise Jake’ll keep kickin’ up a fuss like a chicken with its head off.”

“You mean”—I paused—“you want to get in touch with the chief of police in Tucson?”

“You ain’t got no objections, have you?”

“No,” I said. “I just never got to know him as well as I did some of the other folks. Could you send a wire to the sheriff, too, and County Judge McCafferty? I used to take care of their cars for them.”

“Goldang it!” he said, and got to his feet.

I stood up also. “Will this take very long, sheriff? I hardly feel like enrolling at the college until it’s settled.”

“O’course, you don’t,” he nodded sympathetically. “We’ll have it all straightened out, so’s you can start in next Monday.”

“I’d have liked to get into New York first,” I said. “I won’t go, naturally, until you say it’s all right. But I bought a new suit while I was there, and the alterations were supposed to be done by this Saturday.”

I walked to the bedroom door with him, and it seemed to me I heard a faint creak from the door across the hall.

“A man’s kinda got to get along with everyone in a job like mine, so I wouldn’t want you to repeat anything. But these Winroys—well, it ain’t good economy to stay with ’em, no matter how cheap it is. You take my advice, an’—”

“Yes?” I said.

“No”—he sighed, and shook his head—“I guess you can’t very well do that. Jake kicks up a big fuss, and then you move out, an’ no matter what I say or you say it looks bad. Makes it look like you had to move, like maybe there was somethin’ to his crazy carryin’ on.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I surely wish I’d known who he was before I came here.”

I saw him out the door, and closed it again. I stretched out on the bed with a cigarette, lay with my eyes half closed, puffing smoke at the ceiling. I felt all wrung out. No matter how well prepared you are for a deal like that, it takes a lot out of you. I wanted to rest, to be left alone for a while. And the door opened and Mrs. Winroy came in.

“Carl,” she said huskily, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I’m so sorry, darling. I’ll murder that Jake when I get my hands on him!”

“Forget it,” I said. “Where is he, anyway?”

“At his shop, probably. Probably’ll spend the night there. He’d better if he knows what’s good for him!”

I walked my fingers up her thigh, and let them do a little wandering around. After a moment or two, she squeezed them absently and laid my hand back on the bed.

“Carl…You’re not angry?”

“I didn’t like it,” I said, “but I’m not angry. Matter of fact, I feel pretty sorry for Jake.”

“He’s losing his marbles. Why, they wouldn’t dare kill him! It would hurt them twice as much as having him testify.”

“Yeah?” I said. “I guess I don’t know much about those things, Mrs. Winroy.”

“They—Why don’t you call me Fay, honey? When we’re alone like this.”

“Fay honey,” I said.

“They wouldn’t dare to, would they, Carl? Right here in his home town where everyone knows him and he knows everyone? Why—why”—she laughed irritably—“my God! this is the one place in the world where he’s safe. No stranger can get near him—no one he doesn’t know, and—”

“I got near him,” I said.

“Oh, well,” she shrugged. “I’m not counting you. He knows that anyone the college sent here would be all right.”

“Yeah? He didn’t act much like it.”

“Because he’s full of booze! He’s beginning to see things!”

“Well,” I said, “whatever he does, you can’t blame him much.”

“I can’t, huh?”

“I don’t think you should,” I said.

I raised up on one elbow and tamped out my cigarette.

“Here’s the way I might look at it, Fay,” I said, “if I were in Jake’s shoes. Practically all I know about crime is what I read in the papers. But I’m pretty good at putting myself in the other fellow’s place, and here’s the way I’d feel if I were Jake. I’d figure that if they took a notion to kill me, there wouldn’t be any way I could stop them. Nothing I could do, no place I could go. I—”

“But, Carl—”

“If they didn’t get me in one place, they’d do it in another. Some place, somehow, and no matter how tough it was. I’d know they’d get me, Fay.”

“But they won’t! They can’t afford to!”

“Sure,” I said.

“The case won’t ever come to trial. Everyone says it won’t!”

“Well, they probably know,” I said. “I was just talking about how Jake would feel if he thought they
did
want to kill him.”

“Yes, but you said—I mean, when he knows they won’t do it, why—?”

“He knows it, but do they know it? See what I mean? He knows they’ve got plenty of brains and plenty of money. He knows they’d find an angle, if they wanted to get him badly enough.”

“But they—”

“They don’t,” I said. “But if they did? There wouldn’t be anyone Jake could trust. Why, they might even try to get to him through old man Kendall.”

“Oh, Carl! That’s ridiculous!”

“Sure, it is,” I said, “but you get the idea. Some guy who would never be suspected.”

“Carl—”

She was looking narrow-eyed, interested, cautious.

“Yeah, Fay?” I said.

“You…What if—if—”

“What if what?” I said.

She kept on staring at me in that puzzled cautious way. Then, she laughed suddenly and jumped up. “God,” she said. “Talk about Jake losing
his
marbles! Look, Carl. You’re not going to school this week?”

I shook my head. I didn’t bother to rib her about snooping.

“Well, Ruth has a nine o’clock class, so you ought to be downstairs by eight if you want her to fix your breakfast. Or you can just help yourself to coffee and toast or something whenever you get up. That’s what I usually do.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll see how I feel in the morning.”

She left, then. I opened a window and stretched back out on the bed. I needed a bath, but I wasn’t up to it yet. I wasn’t up to such a little thing as undressing and walking a few steps down the hall to the bathroom.

I lay still, forcing myself to lie still when I felt the urge to get up and look in the mirror. You’ve got to take it easy. You can’t run for the big score with sand in your shoes. I closed my eyes, looking at myself in my mind’s eye.

It gave me a start. It was like looking at someone else.

I’d seen myself that way ten thousand times and each time it was a new experience. I’d see what other people seemed to see, and I’d catch myself thinking, “Gosh, what a nice little guy. You don’t need anyone to tell you
he’s
all right—”

I thought that, now, and somehow it sent a shiver through me. I started thinking about the teeth and the other chances, and I knew that they really didn’t matter. But I made myself think about them.

I felt safer, some way, believing it was those things instead of—instead of?

…The teeth and the contact lenses. The tanned, healthy-looking face. The extra weight. The added height…and only part of it was due to the elevator shoes I’d worn since 1943. I’d straightened up when I shook the bug, and—but had I shaken it? Suppose I took sick now, so sick I couldn’t go through with this? The Man would be sore, and—the name?
Charles Bigger—
Carl Bigelow? Well, it was as good as any. It wouldn’t have been any better to call myself Chester Bellows or Chauncey Billingsley; and it would have had to be something like that. A man can’t get too far away from his own name, you know. He may try to but he’s asking for trouble. There’s laundry markings. There’s answering when you’re spoken to. So…

So I hadn’t made any mistakes. I…But The Man had found me. He’d never seen me before either but he’d known right where to send for me. And if The Man could do it…

I lighted a cigarette, jabbed it out immediately, and threw myself back on the pillows.

The Man—you couldn’t count The Man. I hadn’t made any mistakes, and I wouldn’t make any. I’d make the score, and I’d make the afterwards, the hard part. Because no matter how smoothly it was done, there was bound to be some heat. And the surest way of getting cooked was to try to run from it. You’d screw things up for The Man. If they didn’t get you, he would.

So…I felt drowsy.

No mistakes. No letting down for even a second. No getting sick. And use them all, Mrs. Winroy directly, the others indirectly. They’d have to be on my side. They’d have to
know
that I couldn’t do what I had to do. The Man didn’t need to watch me. They would. They were all watching to see that I did it right, and…watching…always watching…and me…

…They crowded the sidewalks of that dark narrow street, that narrow and lonely street. And they were going on about their business, laughing and talking and enjoying life; but still they were watching me. Watching me follow Jake and watching The Man follow me. I was
sweating and all out of breath, because I’d been in the street a long time. And they kept getting in my way, getting between me and Jake, but they never got in The Man’s way. Me, ME, they had to screw up. And…I could taste the black damp in my mouth and I could hear the pillars cracking and crumbling and the lamp on my cap began to flicker and…I grabbed one of the bastards. I grabbed himher, and yanked and rolled and…

I had her on the bed. She was under me, and I had the crutch across her throat, pinned down with my arms.