A Tale from the Hills (28 page)

He was going to concentrate on his plans with Mona. If the events of the last few days had not taken place, he and Mona would have already been together. Either they would be together or he would be working on the docks and she would be dead. Whether one scenario or the other took place depended upon the way that she reacted to his plan. He was quite sure that he could deal with either of the scenarios. If everything happened according to his wishes, he and Mona would be leaving the city for a while. He paid the rent on his room at the boarding house for a month ahead of time, so that he could relocate with Mona and then return for his belongings. He did not want to part with his collection of souvenirs, but he did not want to take them when he left with Mona either. He knew that he would have to be fast on his feet, and his belongings would just slow him down.

He packed only the things that he needed the most, in a small knapsack that he was going to take with him to work the next morning. He tidied up his room before he went to sleep so that he would be able to leave for the cafe’ a little earlier the next morning. He had already made arrangements with his land lady to keep his room padlocked while he was gone. He told her that he was needed back in Virginia, in order to settle his father’s estate. He told her that he would not be gone any longer than two weeks.

He was very excited the next morning when he stepped into the cafe’ hopefully for the last time. He would try not to give himself away when Mona came to take his breakfast order. He was having a hard time trying to contain his enthusiasm, but the surprise was all on him because Mona was not even there. The waitress who took his order said that Mona must have been running late. She could have overslept or one of her children was not feeling well. No one had any reason to believe or suspect that she would not be there later on in the morning. He ate his usual and went to work with only a small snag in his perfect plan.

He was going to fake an illness at about eleveno’clock that same morning and go straight back to the cafe’. Once he reached the cafe’, he was going to tell Mona that her husband had been hurt unloading a cargo ship. Jack had been rushed to the hospital and their supervisor had sent William to escort Mona to be with her husband. Jack was crying out for her while they were loading him into the ambulance, and William seemed to be the only man on the docks who knew Jack’s wife.

Once Mona was alone with him, William was quite sure that it would be easy to convince her to run away with him. She had to know how much he cared for her, and he was practically sure that she loved him too. Of course, if she did not want to go along with his plan, or if she put up any resistance about leaving with him, then he would have no choice but to kill her. His plan was as simple as that, and he would be able to deal with either situation. He had been disappointed many times in his life and one more bad situation was not going to affect him all that much.

He had been working for about an hour when the rumor that was circulating on the docks finally got to him. Jack was gone and he was not coming back to work. He, his wife, and his family had gone back to the mountains to live. He had not bothered to work out a notice or even tell anyone that he was leaving. The rumor also suggested that his wife was the driving force behind their decision to leave the city. She had been telling folks that she was scared to death that the waterfront killer was going to get Jack, and that they were better off with less money than risk losing his life.

“Goddamn!” William said when he heard the news. “If that don’t beat the Hell right out of me!”

A few of the other men thought that he was taking the news a little harder than he should. They could not understand why he even cared one way or the other if Jackand his family were gone. If they only knew.

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Chapter Seven
 

The loss of Mona’s love was harder to deal with than William would even admit to himself. He had to deal with loss and disappointment over and over for it seemed like all of his life. Every time that he was about to give his heart away to someone that he had grown to love, or he had become so attached to that his life revolved around theirs, something catastrophic always happened and he was left alone. He asked himself why he even bothered to get to know anyone, much less love them. He was never going to be happy as long as he derived his happiness from others. He was angry and someone had to pay. He decided that the next weekend coming up was going to be his biggest and best one ever. He was going to make damned sure of it.

His attitude completely changed at work. Everyone tried to steer clear of him on the docks because he obviously had a huge chip on his shoulder. He would lose his temper at the drop of a hat. No one was hired to replace Jack, and William’s fiery temper added to the extra work, had everyone’s nerves on edge. The entire crew was relieved when Friday finally rolled around.

William had not even noticed the extra work that he along with everyone else was doing. The wheels inside of his head were much too busy turning at a record pace. He had decisions to make and plans to set into motion. Thanks mainly to his depressed and deprived childhood, William was very conservative with money. After he counted his savings, he was amazed to discover that he had salted away several hundred dollars since he had been in Wilmington. When he added the money that he had set aside for his exodus with Mona, he was even more impressed with himself. He was truly a legend in his own mind.

Everything that had been happening lately had made him begin to grow tired of Wilmington, a little more each day. The fiasco with Mona had finally tipped the scales in favor of leaving. Not even the ocean which used to hold so much mystery and excitement for him, could entice him to stay. He wanted to get away from the things that reminded him of his loss of Mona. He appreciated the fact that Wilmington had been so welcoming and enlightening to him, but he was going to take his money, his collection of souvenirs, and move on.

He realized that he could never hop a train and still be able to keep his collection and other possessions. They meant much too much to him to ever let them go. He would need to come up with an alternative means of transportation. Although up to that moment he had never felt the need to buy a car, his independence would be greatly enhanced if he was able to travel at will. He had enough money to buy a good car and take all of his treasures with him anywhere that he wanted to go. On Saturday morning he got up bright and early and decided that it would be a good day to buy a car.

After he dressed in his best clothes, he made his bed, straightened up his already extremely tidy room, and prepared to leave the boarding house. When he opened his bedroom door, the landlady was standing there with a puzzled look on her pasty face. He had not seen her all of that week and she presumed that he was in Virginia. He told her that his trip had been postponed because his father’s estate papers were not ready. She said that she knew all about the legal technicalities that were involved with estates, because she went through the same process when her own father died a few years ago. She was sympathetic and compassionate almost to a fault. William felt sticky sweet by the time that he finally managed to get away from her. She had a way of over doing the cheap perfume that she bought at the five and dime downtown. He was sure that in her younger days, she had turned a few sailor’s heads when she walked down the street. The only thing that she turned now was his stomach when he breathed the air where she was standing now, or where she had been standing a while ago.

William knew that if he did not eat something soon, that the landlady’s perfume was going to give him a sick headache. The cafe’ was the closest place to eat, but he would die with a headache before he would ever set foot in that place again. He hated the place so much that he wanted to burn it to the ground. If he did not leave town soon, he might even be forced to torch the place. He quickly decided to try a new place that some of his coworkers had been talking about. It was the typical greasy spoon type restaurant that catered to the local blue collar workers, but the food was good and the prices were even better. He did not have to worry about distractions either, because all of the waitresses resembled his landlady. Thank God they did not smell like her too. They actually smelled more like cooked onions. He could at least deal with that odor while he ate.

He studied over the automobile advertisements in the newspaper while he drank his coffee. He had never really noticed them before when he read the newspaper, mainly because he had never been interested in cars before that weekend. Now he realized that cars were more expensive than he thought that they would be. He quickly decided that he would not be purchasing a new car. A good used model would suit his needs at a fraction of a new car’s price. Most of the cars that he noticed in Wilmington were Fords. A flashy advertisement in the paper showed off a 1939 Ford Coupe for the unheard price of $399.00. He noticed on the same page, but in smaller print, that he could buy a 1936 Ford Coupe with low mileage for $250.00. That price would be well within his means and he could travel in style at the same time. The car dealership was not within walking distance of the restaurant, but the city provided bus service at a very reasonable rate.

The salesman was impressed when William paid for the shiny black 1936 Ford Coupe with cash. William was almost as proud of his practically new car as he was of his gun. At least everyone could see his car. The only people who ever saw his gun were much too dead to talk about it. He flashed a smile from ear to ear when the salesman handed him the keys to his very first car. All that he had todo now was to figure out just how to drive the damned thing.

When cars were passing him on the street, they did not look so big. When he was sitting behind the wheel of his 1936 Ford Coupe, he felt like he was captaining a ship. It seemed to him that it was much too big to be traveling on the road, especially with other cars and trucks on the same pavement. How would he ever keep from hitting everything coming and going? The salesman noticed his discomfort and walked back over to the car.

“Sir, do you know how to drive?” he asked.

“No, not really.” William replied.

“Its not that difficult. We have a practice area behind the shop. Move over and I will drive you down there and give you a few pointers.”

“I appreciate it.” William answered in a low voice.

Driving was one detail that he had forgot to consider. He thought that the salesman made it look so easy. In no time however, he was driving like an experienced roadster too. It was all just a matter of control, and that was something that he mastered a long, long time ago. At leasthe wanted to think that he did.

**********

William stopped at a garage and had the tank filled with gasoline. While he was there he took every courtesy map that ESSO had to offer. His agenda for Sunday was going to be figuring out how to read the maps. He wanted to know the location of his future destination before he packed for the trip.

He parked the car in the safest spot that he could find, but at least two blocks from the boarding house. He did not want anyone to know that he had bought a car or that he was planning on leaving the city. He arrived in Wilmington with giving notice to anyone, and he wanted to leave exactly the same way.

The boarding house was peaceful and quiet when he returned from buying the car. The only reminder that anyone was even in the house at all, was the lingering odor of the landlady’s perfume. He figured that it would permeate in the house for years after she finally died. He eased up the stairs and unlocked his door as quietly as a mouse. He had neighbors in the rooms on either side of him, but he never bothered to get to know either of them . They worked at jobs that were similar to his own, but at a different section of the waterfront. He thought that it would be truly bizarre if one of his neighbors turned out to be one of his victims. Of course he did not want that to happen because the police would come to the boarding house, snooping around. He had always heard the old saying that a dog never shits in his own bed, and that little bit of wisdom applied to his situation as well. None of it would make any difference in a few days because soon he would be gone and no one in Wilmington would ever see him again. Once he looked into the rearview mirror of his 1936 Ford Coupe and saw the landscape of Wilmington disappearing behind him, it would disappear from his mind as well. He had souvenirs to remind him of the things that he wanted to remember, everything else he wanted to forget as soon as possible.

He locked his door and secured the deadbolt as if to lock the rest of the world out of his private sanctuary. He turned the knob on the deadbolt two then three times, to make sure that no one could violate his private space. He was glad that his 1936 Ford Coupe had locks on both doors as well as the trunk. The things that were his, were his, and he was not going to share them with anyone, ever. Mona had taught him a lesson that he would never get over or forget.

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He had decided to sleep late on Sunday morning, but his excitement about buying a car and the anticipation of traveling on his own again, drove him out of his comfortable bed even earlier than usual. He had roadmaps scattered all over his bed five minutes after he had straightened up his room. It took him all of an hour to fully understand the lines that crisscrossed, and intersected, and overlapped, and disappeared, and reappeared, and finally reached the names of towns and cities up and down and over from the star that represented the city of Wilmington in North Carolina. He was completely overwhelmed with all of the information that he was able to obtain from the free materials that an oil company would give away just for buying their petroleum products. He filled up his gas tank for a little less than a dollar and carried away a storehouse of knowledge for absolutely nothing. He was so happy to be, as he heard someone put so well in a bar, ‘free, white, and almost twenty one’.

He had gotten used to living in big cities. He was spoiled by the variety of everything from jobs to nightlife, and all of the things in between. He liked being able to find something going on late at night, or early in the morning, or in the middle of the afternoon on Sunday. He could never find those types of attractions on Jewel Ridge Mountain, or Alleghany County, or even Wilkesboro for that matter. He understood that he would have to be someplace that was at least as large as Wilmington, perhaps even bigger. That technicality greatly lowered his list of options to places that he could count on both hands, if he only looked for places within driving distance from Wilmington. He always wanted to go to New York, but that was just too far right then. He was sure that he would be living there one day, but that would be a goal that he could set for himself maybe in a few more years. He would get a taste of Atlanta, or Charlotte, or Jacksonville, or Charleston, or Savannah, or a combination of two or three of those cities before his big move North.