Graves' Retreat (18 page)

    Mrs. Pike said, “This is foolish of me, Les, but you did give me my safety deposit key back, too, didn’t you?”

    “Yes, yes I did, Mrs. Pike,” Les said, an edge of irritation moving into his voice. Then he looked down at the farm woman and flushed. He liked Mrs. Pike. “I appreciate your prayers for us.”

    She smiled, pleased. “Well, you can bet I’m going to keep right on saying a lot more.”

    “Thank you, Mrs. Pike.”

    The widow nodded, looked at her deposit stub once more, as if it might have walked away from her since the last time she’d peeked, and then moved away from the teller window.

    Les was left without a customer.

    May stood watching him.

    A businessman who had been filling out his stub started toward Les’s window and Les felt instant disappointment.

    But then May surprised him by moving quickly and reaching Les’s window before the businessman did.

    “Hello, Les.”

    “Hello, May.”

    Then neither of them said anything at all.

    “I-I was glad to see you last night,” Les said.

    She set her violet eyes at an angle that did not quite meet his. “I was glad to see you, too.” Then, almost in a whisper, she said, “Are you going to see the train on your lunch hour?”

    “The Sterling team?”

    “Yes.”

    He laughed. “A part of me’s afraid to. They’re supposed to be pretty scary to look at. Big.”

    Softly, she said, “I thought I might.”

    “Go see the train?”

    She nodded.

    He swallowed. “I could walk by your shop in a half hour or so and we could go over to the depot together.”

    This time her eyes did meet his. “I’d like that, Les.”

    “Me, too.”

    She clutched her tiny white purse to her breast once more. “In a half hour, then?”

    He smiled. “I’ll probably even be there a little early.”

    He was about to add something about maybe buying her some yellow roses, a display of which he’d seen down the street this morning, when he saw Byron Fuller come through the front door.

    Les had been so concerned with his own problems this morning that he hadn’t realized that Byron hadn’t come into work until just now.

    But that wasn’t the only remarkable fact about Byron this humid July morning.

    No, even more noteworthy was the fact that he wore a jacket and an open shirt with no tie at all, and in his hand rode a large hand-carved pipe. Clinton Edmonds had strict orders about bank employees smoking anywhere on bank property.

    There was one other thing-Byron’s eyes. Les couldn’t tell if the man looked just plain happy or even a little bit crazy-or both. May followed his eyes. “Is everything all right?”

    Les shrugged. “I don’t know.”

    “He’s a nice man, isn’t he?”

    “Yes,” Les said, “yes, he is.”

    Something about Byron’s demeanor disturbed Les, only adding to the tightness he felt in his chest.

    “Half hour,” May said.

    He brought his eyes back to hers. “I just realized a few minutes ago how much I’ve missed you.”

    The sadness was back in her gaze. “I guess my trouble was I haven’t been able to forget how much I’ve missed you.” Her knuckles were white against her white purse. “I’m afraid, Les.”

    “I’ve learned some things, May. I really have.”

    The door slamming behind him might have been the blast from a shotgun.

    Everybody in the bank turned to stare.

    “I’d better get back,” May said.

    Les nodded and smiled good-bye.

    He watched May leave the bank, recalling so many good times they’d shared, and then his attention went back to the door that had just slammed.

    Clinton Edmonds’ door.

    Only Edmonds hadn’t been the one to slam it.

    Byron Fuller had.

    

    

    “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Clinton Edmonds demanded when Byron Fuller burst into his office and literally hurled the door back against its frame. Two sepia-tinted photographs, one of President Arthur, the other of Clinton Edmonds himself, tilted to the side from the force of Byron’s entrance.

    Clinton held a fountain pen poised above the ledger he was working on.

    Clinton said, “And just what the hell do you mean coming in here three hours late without a tie and smoking a pipe?”

    Byron said, “Put your fountain pen down.”

    “What?” Nobody had spoken in such a tone to Clinton Edmonds in longer than thirty years.

    “I said, put your fountain pen down. I want you to hear every damn word I'm going to say to you.”

    “Have you gone crazy?”

    "No, sir,” Byron said, swelling his chest and exhaling pipe smoke like a dragon, “I’ve gone sane.”

    And with that he ripped the fountain pen from Clinton Edmonds’ hand and proceeded to tell the man what he thought of him.

    

    

    Neely stank by the time he reached town.

    He found a small wooden shack where you could have a bath for 15 cents and a shave and haircut for the same amount.

    Finished with that, he went over to a store named E. P. Van Valkenburg’s and bought himself a new shirt for $1.10 and new trousers for $3.20. He changed right there and threw his old clothes away. He was in a celebratory mood.

    Then he went looking for a place where he could set up the meeting tonight between Black Jake Early and T.Z.

    A visitor to the city could easily tell that tomorrow was the Fourth of July. Flags flew from what seemed every possible angle and red-white-and-blue bunting seemed to envelop the entire town. In Greene Square, in the center of the business district, workmen were setting up a big bandstand and speaker’s platform for tomorrow’s ceremonies.

    Neely had to go three blocks north of the business district, up by where water poured over a dam and smelled of fish. From here you could see an ice refrigeration plant where slabs of ice were swathed in straw and sawdust and blankets so they would not melt during the summer heal. Even though this was right in town, there was an open area where anything could happen and not necessarily be seen. Neely had found his place.

    He decided to go have a beer before he hunted up Les Graves and got the combination. He had three beers instead.

    

    

    “Have you ever seen Susan’s hands twitch?”

    “Just what the hell are you driving at?”

    “I am,” Byron Fuller said, “telling you that you’ve ruined the lives of your wife, your two sons and that you’re doing your best to ruin the life of your daughter. And that I damn well won’t let you ruin her life, Clinton! I won’t!”

    By now, Byron punctuated several of his points by slamming his fist on Edmonds’ desk.

    “Her hands twitch, Clinton-you know what I’m talking about.”

    “She has a nervous condition."

    “Yes, and you’re the cause of that condition.”

    Edmonds came up from his chair suddenly and just as suddenly his hand arced through the air and caught Byron on the cheek.

    The slap sounded worse than it felt.

    “I don’t take this kind of insolence from any man,” Edmonds said. Touching his cheek, Byron said, “It’s time you face the truth, Clinton. You’re a miserable bastard who can’t quit feeling sorry for himself that he was born poor-and you’ve spent your whole life taking that out on everybody around you.”

    “I’d say being born poor is better than being raised a pampered mama’s boy, wouldn’t you, Byron?”

    Edmonds’ slap had not raised color on Byron’s face but his words did.

    “I’m well aware that I’ve got some growing up to do,” Byron said. “But I’m not the issue here. You are.”

    “My family is my own business.”

    “Not when Susan is involved.”

    Edmonds looked at him sharply. “Do you think I don’t know what’s going on? That I don’t know what happened between you and Susan? She’s going to Omaha next week. And she’s called off her plans to marry you.”

    But Byron was getting angry again. “Do you know that a part of her really hates you, Clinton?”

    For a shocked moment, Edmonds’ face registered pain. “You’re a damn liar. My children know that I occasionally have fits of temper, but they certainly don’t hate me.”

    “Don’t they, Clinton?”

    “You’ll get the hell out of here. Permanently.”

    “I need to clear out my desk.”

    Edmonds’ face was red with fury and mottled with age. He looked ancient and forlorn. “You do that some other time, Byron. Right now I want to see you walk out that front door.”

    The ecstatic mood of his high, pure anger was gone now. Byron supposed he appeared just as depleted as Clinton. “I just want to say one more thing.”

    “I don’t want to hear it.”

    “You don’t have to be miserable, Clinton. Nobody gives a damn about your upbringing.”

    “Just get out of here, Byron.”

    Byron stood by the door a moment and then he said, “I still love Susan. I’m going to try to talk her out of leaving.”

    But Edmonds seemed lost now in his own torments. He wasn't listening. He had turned inward and sadness had replaced his bluster. Seeing Edmonds-the blustering, swaggering Edmonds-melancholy was almost frightening.

    For all the anger he’d brought in here, Byron now felt at least subtly ashamed of himself. Perhaps there had been other ways to handle this- To tell a man that his own family hated him-

    “Clinton,” Byron said, “I shouldn’t have said-”

    Then Edmonds’ temper returned. “Don’t be a pansy, Byron. If you came in here to call me a sonofabitch, then call me a sonofabitch and don’t apologize.” He flung a hand toward the door. “Now get out of here.”

    Byron started to say something more-but what more was there to say-and then he left.

    Quickly.

    

    

    You could hear the train carrying the Sterling baseball team coming half a mile away and it wasn’t just the usual sounds of the train engine, either.

    There was a band on board that train and it played as festively as if it were New Year’s Eve.

    More than four hundred people encircled the small frame structure of the Cedar Rapids depot, looking down the long shining stretch of tracks.

    There were a lot of questions these spectators wanted answered. Was the average size of the Sterling player really six foot three and one hundred and eighty pounds? Did their pitcher, Fitzsimmons, really possess the operatic voice Sterling sportswriters always wrote of as “charming the birds from their nests in pure ecstasy?” Did the Sterling manager, Mike (“Mad Mike”) McGee, really keep a small firearm tucked inside his belt in case an umpire made an exceptionally bad call?

    You could not help but want to know the answers and that was why so many had turned out today.

    To see a team that had come to possess, in the common mind, the glow of legend.

    The train pulled into the station with the band playing “Camptown Races” in so boisterous a fashion your toes could not help tapping in time.

    On the way over to the depot, May had slipped her arm through Les’s.

    They stood now, still arm in arm, toward the back of the crowd, where most of the Cedar Rapids baseball team could be found.

    “They’ve got a pretty good band,” J. J. Deamer, the center fielder, said. He said it with a certain note of suspicion in his voice, as if the music revealed something about Sterling’s baseball prowess.

    Elmer Novak, the second baseman, clapped Les on the back and said, “Yes, but they don’t have our Les.”

    “You really think Mad Mike McGee actually carries a gun?” asked young Moray Uridel, the shortstop.

    Novak laughed. “Don’t worry, Moray. Harding’s going to let us carry knives.”

    Then the train arrived.

    The noise from the band, coupled with the squeaking metal brakes, was deafening.

    The Cedar Rapids people got their first glimpse of the Sterling team through the clouds of steam rising from the train. The effect only enhanced the air of legend, as if the team were descending through the very clouds of heaven itself.

    The first thing you had to notice was that the team wore uniforms. You’d think that on a hot, one-hundred-and-twenty-five-mile trip the team would want to wear their summer clothing instead of the woolen uniforms.

    But they stepped down from the train in white uniforms with red trim and red caps with white trim (as if they had no life other than being a legendary baseball team), most of them with handlebar mustaches, all of them brushing at least six foot one or six foot two, and at least a fourth of them with noses that looked as if their off-hours were spent in fisticuffs.

    They fanned out along the wooden platform in the way an army might have, just before assaulting an opponent.

    The mayor of Cedar Rapids, a man with white hair and the manner of a tremulous minister, went up to the man everybody recognized as Mad Mike McGee and put out his hand.

    A photographer, who had been nervously waiting for this moment, began waving them closer together for a picture.

    Mad Mike McGee aimed a brown stream of tobacco juice about a quarter inch away from the photographer’s foot.

    Mad Mike, the only squat member of the Sterling team, looked as if he ate railroad spikes for breakfast. He had scars and he had tattoos and he had a prominent chipped tooth. Probably from eating railroad spikes.