Savage Night (8 page)

S
he came out of the bathroom feeling a lot better than when she went in, and with a fresh half pint of whiskey in me I wasn’t feeling so bad myself. We ate all the breakfast, with her helping out quite a bit on my share. I lighted cigarettes for us, and she lay back on the pillows.

“Well?” she crinkled her eyes at me.

“Well, what?” I said.

“How was it?”

“Best coffee I ever drank,” I said.

“Stinker!” She let out with that guffaw again. I was getting to where I waited for that, too, like I’d waited for her snoring. “Mmm?” she said. “I do if you do. Want to come back to bed with mama?”

“Look, baby,” I said. “I’m sorry as hell, but—well, you’ll have to be starting back.”

“Huh!” She sat up. “Aw, now, honey! You said—”

“I said we’d stay overnight. We’ve done it. It doesn’t make any difference whether—”

“It does too make a difference! You haven’t been stuck in that God-forsaken hole as long as I have! I…Why don’t we do it like we planned, honey? I can go back tonight, and you can come tomorrow…that’ll give us a whole day together. Or I can stay—I’ll go over and stay with sis tonight—and come tomorrow, and you can—”

“Look, baby; look, Fay,” I said. “I guess I hadn’t thought the thing through. I’ve had plenty of things to think about, and I couldn’t see that it mattered much whether—”

“Of course, it matters! Why wouldn’t it matter?”

“You’ve got to go back,” I said. “Now. Or I’ll start back and you can come later on in the day. I can’t stay at the house overnight unless you’re there. I’ve got to have you there to yes me, in case something pops with Jake. If he should get out of line like he did the first night—”

“Pooh! For all we know he may not even come home.”

“That’s another thing. He’s got to start staying there. All the time. You’ll have to see that he does. He can’t just be there on the one night that something happens to him.”

“Hell!” She stamped out her cigarette angrily, and reached for the bottle. “Just when I think I’m going to…Well, gosh, honey. You could go back tomorrow, and I could go back tonight. Why wouldn’t that be all right?”

“I’m afraid of it. I’m not supposed to have much dough. It doesn’t look right for me to take damned near three days to pick up a suit.”

She slammed the whiskey bottle down angrily.

“I’m sorry as hell, Fay,” I said.

She didn’t say anything.

“We just can’t take chances now. We’ve got too much to lose—” I went on talking and explaining and apologizing; and I knew she’d better snap out of it fast or she wouldn’t be able to get back to Peardale.

Finally, she turned back around; maybe she noticed the tightening of my voice. “All right, honey,” she sighed, half pouting. “If that’s the way it is, why that’s the way it is.”

“Fine. That’s my baby,” I said. “We’ll have our good times. Just you and me and thirty grand; maybe five or ten more if it’s an A-1 job.”

“Oh, I know, Carl,” her smile was back. “It’ll be wonderful. And I’m awfully sorry if I—I was just kind of disappointed and—”

“That’s okay,” I said.

She wanted me to go back to Peardale first. She wanted to laze around a while, and take her time about dressing. I said it would be all right. Just so she showed before night.

We chewed the fat a while longer; just talking without saying much. After a while, she said, “Mmmmm, honey?” and held out her arms to me; and I knew I couldn’t do it. Not so soon, not now. God, Jesus, I knew I couldn’t do it.

But I did!

I struggled and strained, aching clear down to my toenails; and I kept my eyes closed, afraid to let her see what she might see in them, and…
and I was in that drab desert where the sun shed neither heat nor light, and…

…What about that afterwards, anyway? If there was an afterwards. What about her?

I stared out the dirty window of the Long Island train, half dozing, my mind wandering around and around and drifting back to her. What about her?

She was stacked. She was pretty. She was just about everything you could want in a woman—as long as you were on top or you looked like you might be on top.

But I couldn’t see it, the one big long party which was what it would be like with her. I couldn’t see it, and couldn’t take it. What I wanted was…well, I wasn’t sure but it wasn’t that. Just to be by myself. Maybe with someone like—well, like Ruthie—someone I could be myself around.

Ruth. Fay. Fay, Ruth. Or what? I didn’t know what I wanted. I wasn’t even real sure about what I didn’t want. I hadn’t wanted to be dragged in on this mess, but I had to admit I’d been getting pretty fed up out there in Arizona. I’d kept quiet about it, but I’d had more than one babe in my shack. Hell, the last month, I’d had two or three a week, a different one each time. And they were all okay, I guess, they all had plenty on the ball. But somehow none of them seemed to be it—whatever it was I wanted.

Whatever it was I wanted.

My eyes drifted shut, and stayed shut. The Man would probably have something to say about Fay. He might see a spot where he could use her again, or he might decide that she was a bad risk. He’d talk to me about it, of course. And if I wanted her, and was responsible for her…

I didn’t know. I didn’t want her now, her or anyone else. But that was natural enough. Tomorrow, the next day…afterwards? I didn’t know.

My head fell over against the window, and I went to sleep.

It was hours later when I woke up.

I was way the hell out to the end of the line, and the conductor was shaking me.

Somehow I managed to keep from punching the stupid bastard in the face. I paid the extra fare, plus the fare back to Peardale. It was still early afternoon. I could still get back to Peardale well ahead of her.

I went to the john and washed my face. I came back to my seat, studying the minute hand on my watch, wondering what the hell was holding us up. And then I glanced out the window, and started cursing.

Mr. Stupid, the conductor, who should have picked up my seat check and put me off at Peardale—he and all the other trainmen were sauntering up the street together. Taking their own sweet time about it. Shoving and grab-assing with each other, and braying like a bunch of mules.

They turned in at a restaurant.

They stayed in there, doing what God only knows, because they couldn’t have been eating that long. They must have stayed in the place two hours.

Finally, when I was just about ready to go up into the locomotive and drive off by myself, they got through doing whatever they were doing and sauntered back to the station again. They got there, eventually, back to the station. But, of course, they didn’t climb on the damned train and get going.

They had to stand around on the station platform, gabbing and picking their teeth.

I cursed them to myself, calling them every dirty name I could think of. They were trying to screw me up.

They broke it up at last, and began climbing on the train.

It was dark when we got into Peardale. A train from the city was just pulling out. I looked through the station door and saw a taxi on the other side—the only taxi there.

He swung the door open, and I climbed in. And—but I guess I don’t need to tell you. I’d tried to be so damned careful, yet here she was, here we were, riding home together.

She gave me a startled, half-scared look. I said, “Why, hello, Mrs. Winroy. Just come out from New York?”

“Y-yes.” She bobbed her head. “Did—did you?”

I laughed. It sounded as hollow as that conductor’s head. “Not exactly. I left the city this morning but I fell asleep on the train. They carried me out to the end of the line, and I’m just now getting back.”

“Well,” she said. Just well. But the way she said it, she was saying a whole lot more.

“I was all worn out,” I said. “A friend I stayed with in New York snored all night, and I didn’t get much sleep.”

She turned her head sharply, glaring at me. Then she bit her lip, and I heard a sound that was halfway between a snicker and a snort.

We reached the house. She went on inside, and I paid off the driver and went across the street to the bar.

I drank two double shots. Then I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich and a bottle of ale, and sat down in one of the booths. I was easing down a little. It was a stupid mixup, but it was just one, and it would be hard for anyone to make anything out of it. Anyway, it was done, and there wasn’t any use worrying.

I ordered another ale, easing my nerves down, arguing away the worry. I almost convinced myself that it had been a good break. It could be, if you looked at it in the right way. Because any damned fool ought to know that we wouldn’t be goofy enough to lay up in town, and then ride home together.

I finished the ale, started to order a third one, and decided against it. I’d had enough. More than enough. Or I never would have. You take just so much from the bottle, and then you stop taking. From then on you’re putting.

I picked up my suit box and crossed the street to the house. Half hoping that Jake was on hand.

He was.

He and Fay and Kendall were all in the living room together, and she was laughing and talking a mile a minute.

I went in, giving them a nod and a hello as I headed for the stairs. Fay turned and called to me.

“Come in, Mr. Bigelow. I was just telling about your train ride—how you went to sleep and rode to the end of the line. What did you think when you woke up?”

“I thought I’d better start carrying an alarm clock,” I said.

Kendall chuckled. “That reminds me of an occasion several years ago when—”

“Excuse me”—Fay cut in on him—“Jake—”

He was bent forward in his chair, staring at the floor, his big bony hands folded across each other.

“Jake…Just a moment, Mr. Bigelow. My husband wants to apologize to you.”

“That’s not necessary,” I said. “I—”

“I know. But he wants to…don’t you, Jake? He knows he made a very foolish mistake, and he wants to apologize for it.”

“That’s right,” Kendall nodded primly. “I’m sure Mr. Winroy is anxious to rectify any misunderstandings which—uh—can be rectified.”

Jake’s head came up suddenly, “Oh, yeah?” he snarled. “Who pulled your chain, grandpa?”

Kendall looked down into the bowl of his pipe. “Your grandparent?” he said, musingly. “I believe that is just about the foulest name anyone ever called me.”

Jake blinked stupidly. Then it registered on him, and he dragged the back of his hand across his mouth like he’d been slapped. All the fight in him, the little he had left, went away again. He looked from Kendall to Fay and then, finally, at me. And I guess mine was about the friendliest face there.

He got up and sagged toward me, a big drained-empty sack of guts. He came toward me, holding out his hand, trying to work up a smile, the sly, sick look of a beaten dog on his face.

And I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, but the flesh crawled on the back of my neck. He’d had too much. He was too beaten. When they get that far gone, you’d better get in the final licks fast.

“S-sorry, lad. Musta had one too many. No hard feelings?” I said it was okay, but he didn’t hear me. He clung to my hand, turning to look at Fay. He stared, frowned puzzledly, then turned back to me again. “Glad to have you here. Anything I can do I—I—I—”

That was as much of his speech as he could remember. He dropped my hand, and looked at her again. She nodded briskly, took him by the arm, and led him out of the room.

They went out to the porch, and the door didn’t quite close; and I heard her say, “Now, you’d better not disappoint me, Jake. I’ve had just about—”

Kendall pushed himself up out of his chair. “Well, Mr. Bigelow. You look rather tired if I may say so.”

“I am,” I said. “I think I’ll turn in.”

“Excellent. I was just about to suggest it. Can’t have you getting sick at a time like this, can we?”

“At a time like this,” I said. “How do you mean?”

“Why”—his eyebrows went up a trifle—“just when you’re on the threshold of a new life. Your schooling and all. I feel that great things are in store for you here if you can just keep your original objective in mind, keep forging ahead toward it despite divertissements of the moment.”

“That’s the secret of your success, huh?” I said.

And he colored a little but he smiled, eyes twinkling. “That, I believe, is what might be called leaving one’s self wide open. The obvious retort—if I cared to stoop to it—would be an inquiry as to the secret of
your
success.”

We said good night, and he went back to the bakery. I started up the stairs.

Fay had seen Jake off for town or wherever he was going, and was out in the kitchen with Ruth. I stood at the foot of the stairs a moment, listening to her lay down the law in that husky, what-are-you-waiting-on voice. Then I cleared my throat loudly, and went on up to my room.

About five minutes later, Fay came in.

She said there wasn’t a thing to worry about. Kendall and Jake had swallowed the story whole.

“And I’d know if they hadn’t, honey. I was watching, believe you me. They didn’t suspect a thing.”

She was feeling pretty proud of herself. I told her she’d done swell. “Where’s Jake gone?”

“To the liquor store. He’s going to get a fifth of wine, and he’ll probably pick up a couple of drinks in a bar. He damned sure won’t get any more than that. I got all his money away from him but two dollars.”

“Swell,” I said. “That’s my baby.”

“Mmmmm? Even if I do snore?”

“Ahhh, I was kidding. I was sore about that goddamned train ride.”

“We-el, just so you’re sorry—” She leaned against me.

I gave her a poke and a kiss, and pushed her away. “Better beat it, now, baby.”

“I know. I’m just as anxious to be careful as you are, honey.” She reached for the doorknob, then she clapped her hand over her mouth suddenly, stifling a giggle. “Oh, Carl! There’s something I just have to tell you.”

“Yeah?” I said. “Don’t take too long about it.”

“You’ll die laughing. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before, but she’s just not the kind of person you pay much attention to and—And of course it may have just happened. I—You just won’t believe it, honey! It’s just so—”