Some Came Running (114 page)

“Talk about
immoral,”
’Bama said savagely; “that’s the most completely
immoral
thing I ever heard of. Whenever you got a guy who is so scrupulously honest he’ll do a thing like that—then he’s either acting, or else he’s crazy. You can be pretty damned sure he’s
really
cheating some other way, and only tryin to cover it up.”

“That’s a pretty shrewd remark,” Dave said.

“Well, I’m a shrewd guy,” ’Bama said. “Too shrewd for the likes of that oaf, anyway,” he grinned. “Can’t you imagine how horrible it makes him feel to imagine us livin down here and gettin by with something? He’d love to stick us. Only he never will.”

As he climbed out of the Packard, he slammed the car door loudly, behind him, something Dave had never seen him do to the Packard since he had known ’Bama.

He turned toward the house as the others climbed out. “You watch,” he grinned; “in another three quarters of an hour or so, he’ll be cruisin down by here.”

They did watch, after they had all got themselves another drink, and sure enough in less than an hour, the city police car came creeping down Lincoln Street—slowly and quietly—and passed by the house; and then went on around several blocks and came back and passed by again before it went away.

“What did I tell you!” ’Bama hooted. “The bastard.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
Raymond and Dewey were hauled into court and each fined fifty dollars and costs. ’Bama was there with the cash to make up any deficits, and between them he and Dewey paid both his fine and Raymond’s; and shortly thereafter Dewey appeared down at the house, grinning from behind his grotesquely swollen nose, his blue eyes looking relieved of some obscure tension. Both he and Raymond had submitted voluntarily to blood tests and had been judged drunk. The charges against them were drunkenness and disorderly conduct; and the only witness to appear against them was Sherm Ruedy. That night the
Parkman Oregonian & Evening News
carried mention of the event, in amongst other news of the day in court. As for the nose, the doctor had said there was nothing much to do about it, just keep it packed with cotton until the swelling went down. When it did go down two weeks later, what had been a straight boyishly handsome nose had changed into a grotesque, off-center monstrosity with a big knot on it. It changed the whole look of his face and gave him a curiously mean, satanic look. He wasn’t handsome anymore.

Raymond did not come down to the house with him after the fines were paid but, able to at least see somewhat out of his swollen eyes now, picked up his old battered Dodge at Smitty’s and chugged off out of town somewhere, alone—after first promising to repay ’Bama soon for the fine. He never did repay it, of course, but then nobody had ever expected that he would. And, of course, less than a month after that, he was dead.

But the thing that struck Dave so much about the whole affair was the reaction that Doris Fredric had to the whole story. She was at the house later that same afternoon when Dewey came back from the court; and she flew into a veritable fit of fury. Dave had never seen her—not even the night she tried to seduce him—when she was not under that icily sweet, virginal control of hers. But this time, when her distant cousin Chief of Police Sherm Ruedy was mentioned, she threw propriety to the wind. The things she said were not so very different from what ’Bama had said, but the tone and implication were entirely different; and it was obvious this was something she had thought quite a bit about before.

“He’s nothing but a dirty little sadist,” she said with icy fury. “A useless, worthless, nasty little sadist. Ugh! I’ve never seen a human being who was so completely despicable. That son of a bitch! That the likes of that filth should ever be allowed on the police force!”

“Well, it was you Wernzes who put him in there,” ’Bama drawled, no longer upset.

“The Wernzes don’t act as a body,” Doris said furiously. “And what any of them do doesn’t mean that I agree with them. Is it any wonder every kid in town breaks his neck to leave this dump as soon as he can? Who wants to live in their crappy little town? I certainly don’t.”

“Then why don’t you just move out?” ’Bama grinned.

“I may just do that,” Doris said, her blue eyes flashing. She was sitting at the kitchen table with them, holding her drink: a big glass of Jack Daniels Black Label and 7-Up. And as she spoke she threw it, straight down, between her feet, the crash of the broken glass punctuating what she had just said, the liquid wetting her expensive shoes.

They did not any of them see Raymond again very much after that. Only once did he come back into Smitty’s when they were there. It was shortly before Christmas, and he was alone; and on that one time he did not stay, or try to barge into the party. He was drunk, of course—but he did not have a drink while he was there. He came in, walked around, grinned and waved a hello at them with his too-loud, too-hearty voice, refused the drink they offered to buy him, and left. That was the last time any of them saw him until his funeral. Two weeks later, he was found dead in his old Dodge in an out-of-the-way backwoods cornfield down in the river bottoms, frozen to death.

Apparently, he had got down in there, drunk, and had got lost and gone to sleep. The decrepit old Dodge was out of gas when they found him and in neutral gear and with the hand brake set, as if he had left the motor running when he went to sleep. What he had been doing down in that God- and man-forsaken place, nobody could figure out. Almost nobody ever went down in there except the farmers who worked the fields, and they went as seldom as possible, and what Raymond could have been doing down in there, especially in the dead of winter, nobody had the vaguest idea.

All of them, there at the house felt a sort of shocked dismay when they heard the news, a sort of unalleviable sorrow, potent, stomach-wrenching, mingled with a kind of shocked horror that anything like that should happen to Raymond, and a curious guilty feeling, too. Raymond had never really run around with their little clique; but after the fight, there had seemed to be a deeper closeness to him than before. But if all of these feelings were strong in them when they heard the news, and afterwards at his funeral—it would have been a great deal stronger, and a great deal more perplexing, if any of them had been able to be with him in some occult way, right there inside of his own head, that night when he took his last ride.

He left the American Legion early with two fifths of Imperial, Raymond did, and roared his Dodge out of town north on Route 1, heading for the West Lancaster road. But as soon as he was outside the city limits and across the new bypass grade they had had to stop on because of the weather, he stopped long enough to open one of the bottles and had himself a good stiff belly-burning drink and then put the open bottle between his knees. He could do that out here, where Sherm Ruedy had no jurisdiction. The two fifths had been a lucky windfall from running into the Old Man at the Legion and making a loan of a few bucks. The Old Man was a good guy, even if he was a town bum. Raymond had been hanging out at the Legion more, lately, since he had had the fight with Dewey, and had not been going to Smitty’s. He knew he upset them when he came around, especially Dewey, and he didn’t want to do that to them. And, Christ, it would be six months before he was ready for a fight like that again. It was the best fight they would see around Smitty’s for some time, by God. But there wasn’t any use going back around to Smitty’s this soon, when he only bothered them. Raymond knew he bothered them. It was because he was so dumb. But he couldn’t help it if he was just born dumb. Dewey always was the smart one, and he could have made good grades in school if he had only worked at it a little. He took after the Old Man; Raymond, he took after the Old Lady. She always had been dumb. So the best thing was just to stay away from them until they were both healed up. And that was why he had taken to hanging out at the Legion more. Raymond liked the Legion. He liked the old guys from the first war, like the Old Man. Raymond liked to sit around with them and get them to talking about their war and not say anything about his war. They had had a good war, the old guys, just as good as ours. And they never got to talk about it much anymore. They liked to talk about it, but they were shy. So he liked to sit around the outside of the poker game with his drink and get them started and then just listen to them. The old guys enjoyed it, and they knew he could appreciate the combat stories because he had seen a lot of combat himself. Hell, yes! Guadalcanal, New Georgia, Bougainville, the Bismarcks. But then some of the new guys had come in and spoiled it. They just wouldn’t talk around any of the new guys but him. So he had just got his two fifths and left quietly.

Raymond drove on up Route 1, drinking and singing some of the old Army songs to himself as he went, and turned off at the West Lancaster road. But he did not go on into West Lancaster to any of the neon-lighted joints. He could see their lights, all happy looking, but just before you got to the buildings was a road right, back south, and Raymond turned off on it. This road led to the river bottoms, and this was Raymond’s secret. He laughed as he slowed down and took another drink.

They always wondered where he went when he went roaring out of town in his old Dodge. They thought he was going to Terre Haute to the whorehouses. So he just let them think it. But he didn’t go to the whorehouses; he went to the river bottoms. And not a soul knew it! Raymond laughed to himself and had another drink.

So he just fooled them all. The river bottoms was his secret. Every man ought to have one secret. And the river bottoms and the river, they did something to a man. They opened you all up. Maybe a smart man couldn’t do it; he’d get to thinking too much. But a dumb man like him could. He could sit and look at that river hours and hours. It just flowed on and on, so smooth. Old branches and cans and bottles and once in a while a piece of an old boat. They just came floating along and then out of sight. You could almost think there was something down underneath pulling them along so fast. And you just sat and watched. Until you couldn’t see them anymore. It was wonderful.

Raymond laughed happily and looked out at the white snow-covered fields. He decided he would go down to the old Rivertown ferry tonight; he hadn’t been there for a long time. She’d be iced up tonight. Ahead of him the road from West Lancaster deadended into another gravel road and he turned back east again toward the river.

Hell, he knew this country like the back of his hand, Raymond thought. He had been coming over here in the bottoms ever since he learned to drive and to sneak the Old Man’s car out. In just about a mile now he would hit the shelf, the ledge between the high bottoms and the low bottoms. It stretched off to the south and to the north as far as you could see and right on its lip the road forked, and below it the low bottoms ran on down to the river; and above it the high bottoms ran on back to the higher ground of the prairies. When he reached it, Raymond stopped the car and had another good drink and sat for a while, looking in the moonlight out across the uneven little fields of the low bottoms to the heavy tree line of the river. It never failed to astonish him how far you could see, clear over into Indiana, from the shelf. When he reached for the bottle, he was surprised to find it was almost empty, so he killed it and opened up the other one. Then he started down the incline, on the left fork, toward the old Rivertown ferry.

Almost at once, the gravel petered out from under him and Raymond laughed to himself softly. He was really getting down in here now. The other fork, the one that ran south along the lip of the shelf, was the main used one. It would take you all the way to Israel if you follered it, and along this road—up there at the top of the shelf—was where all the farmhouses were, where they were safe when the river overflowed the bottoms. But this fork; this fork was dirt, almost as soon as you got down the sloping shelf. Nobody ever come down here, except the farmers when they come to plow their low bottoms fields. Raymond laughed and took another drink out of the new bottle and guided the Dodge along the frozen ruts. Sure as hell was cold out. Yes, sir, he was really getting down in here now. There was a place along here where you had to ford a little creek on the shale rock, then you had to bear left right after that at a dirt fork.

When he reached the riverbank, he slowed the car almost to a crawl. The road, little more than a sandy track now, curved around behind some trees; it had used to go right down the bank then to the ferry, but now the river had washed away the road, and there was a ten-foot bank straight down to the water. You could drive right off of it if you didn’t know about it or weren’t careful. Down in around here, a fellow had to be
real
careful.

Taking the bottle with him, Raymond climbed out and stood on the sandy frozen ground looking out over the bank at the river. It was frozen clear over all right, or at least it was as far as he could see it. He took another big drink and stood and looked at it some more, but finally the cold drove him back to the car. Clutching the open bottle between his knees, he turned the car around, and a sense of awe and wonder gripped him at the thought of all those hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people who had crossed the old-time river on that old Rivertown ferry, as he drove off back the way he had come. But instead of going on back west to the shelf, he turned off left—south—again on another little track through the fields. If he followed this track, it would bring him back to the shelf road further down about five miles in a big circle.

Yes, sir. All those people. Hell, he knew this country like the back of his hand, he thought, and Raymond laughed. He listened to him, listened to Raymond laughing. That Raymond. He was a bum. And dumb. But he liked him. He liked Raymond. Him and Raymond had been coming over here together ever since Raymond was a kid. He bet there wasn’t a man in the country knew the river bottoms between Israel and West Lancaster as well as Raymond did. And he had shown him all of it.