He could not see what became of her. In the darkness she sank back against the bed, plucking soundlessly at her face, turning on her side, thrashing and trying to creep away from the bed. He leaned over, located her head, and systematically battered her with his open hand. She snarled, a hoarse grunt of hatred and pain, and clawed viciously up at him.
“Crazy!” she spat saliva and blood. “You’re a crazy beast!” She threw up her hands and shuddered away from him; her voice became aimless, a random jumble of terror. “Beast…” He followed after her.
When he was done he opened the door and stepped out into the frigid, silent night air. The woman on the bed didn’t stir; she lay facedown, convulsively clutching the covers of the bed. The door closed after him, and cut off the sight.
It took five minutes to warm up the frozen motor of the Studebaker. He slammed it into low, turned it around, and drove vigorously out the gate, past the darkened office, onto the road beyond. There were no lights or cars in sight, no motion of any kind as he shifted into high and slammed down the gas pedal. The car roared up the hill and plunged down the far side; with a wrench of the wheel he turned left, passed the dark cluster of buildings, and hurtled onto the freeway. He made a wild, bucking plunge through a gap in the dividing strip, and came out on the far side.
When he reached Cedar Groves he turned off the freeway, into the town. The streets were dark and deserted. He reached his own apartment house without incident, parked his car with the motor still running, and hurried up the steps and down the corridor.
Ellen was asleep when he entered. Soundlessly, he passed through the bedroom to Pete’s bassinet. With a jagged sweep he gathered up the baby along with his blankets: he carried the bundle back out, through the living room, and into the corridor.
A moment later he climbed back into the Studebaker. He carefully wrapped Pete in the wool blankets and placed him on the backseat. The baby stirred fretfully; a few dismal wails bubbled from between his wet lips. Hadley slammed the car door and started it forward. He turned the corner and headed for the downtown section.
At the first bar he pulled to a halt; he parked on a deserted side street, by the rear loading platform of a locked-up grocery store. Cautiously rolling up the windows and locking the doors, he left the car and strode down the sidewalk. His heels clicked loudly in the gloomy night silence; lettuce leaves, bits of boxes, and strewn debris littered the pavement. He turned the corner and plunged into the bar.
Hunched over at the counter, he got out his wallet and examined the contents. He had left a ten-dollar bill on the dresser for Marsha… He wondered if she would grasp the intended irony. Only thirteen dollars remained in the wallet; it was nearing the end of the month and his paycheck was just about due.
“What’ll it be?” asked the bartender, a stubbled gorilla of a man. The only other patrons were two hulking Negro laborers and a demure pimpish-looking youth in a black leather jacket, a bottle of beer before him, a toothpick between his lips.
“Scotch and water,” Hadley said, pushing a dollar bill forward. “No ice.”
Thirteen dollars wouldn’t carry him far. Enough for this evening, perhaps; but it wouldn’t last beyond that. And he could not possibly get his plan into motion tonight; he would have to wait until Saturday night.
Sooner or later he would have to stop at the store. He needed his paycheck… The thought stuck in his mind, lodged there as he accepted his drink and gulped it down, methodically, systematically. The first of a series.
Jim Fergesson was busy sweeping out O’Neill’s place when Jack White phoned to give him the news. It was ten o’clock Saturday morning; the August day was not yet hot. Cool, damp sunlight filtered down over the highway and parked cars and shopping people.
“Call his home,” Fergesson said angrily. An ominous chill settled into his bones; it stayed there. “He probably overslept. He was working until past nine last night.”
White’s calm, almost pleased voice came back in his ears. “I called his home; he isn’t there. He didn’t come home after work last night. His wife’s a mess; she doesn’t know what she’s saying. Something about the kid being gone. Apparently Hadley sneaked in late last night and took the baby with him on his binge.”
Fergesson hung up and dialed Hadley’s number. A moment later he was talking to Ellen.
“Where is he?” Fergesson demanded. “He didn’t come to work, and this is Saturday.”
“He’s not here,” Ellen answered bleakly. Her voice wavered and receded, then returned, disciplined but vacant. “He never came home except to pick up Pete. I was asleep; it must have been in the middle of the night. I woke up and the baby was gone.”
“How do you know it was Stuart?” Fergesson demanded suspiciously.
“His key was still in the door… I found it standing wide open.” Her voice gained momentary strength. “If I had any sense I’d leave him. But I’m not going to. It isn’t his fault; it’s your fault and everybody else’s. He’s only trying to live. He just wants his life.”
“If he doesn’t show up sometime today,” Fergesson said, “he’s finished. I’m not going to have him around the store. Tell him that.”
She flared up wildly. “You and your damn store. And you wonder why he’s the way he is. He’s not a person to you—you never cared about him. Maybe he’s dead; maybe they’re both dead.”
Gripping the phone Fergesson said: “He’s sleeping it off in some jail, more likely. Being manager was a little too much for him. I’ll give him until noon and that’s it.” He slammed down the receiver and stalked away, trembling with rage.
It hadn’t taken long: just a few days. If Hadley could have waited one more day for his binge… Shakily, Fergesson lit a cigar and stood in the entrance of O’Neill Appliance gazing sightlessly out at the flow of traffic moving along the highway. Blind rage hung over him like a cloud. Just a few days. He reached for the phone and called Jack White at Modern.
“If he comes in, call me,” Fergesson instructed. “Better yet, have him call me.”
“All right,” White said; he sounded harassed. In the distance the sound of people and TV sets was audible.
“Can you and Tampini hold it alone?”
“I suppose so.”
“I’ll see you tonight,” Fergesson said. “You’re playing with us, aren’t you?”
“Sure,” White said. “Whatever you say.”
“I’m not calling off our game,” Fergesson said grimly. “Not for anything Stumblebum does. I’ll see you after dinner, at the regular time. I’ve got the chips here; they’ll do.”
“Are we going to play here?” White asked.
“We always do, don’t we? Why should this time be any different?”
“I’ll get the big display room cleaned up, then,” White said. “Say, Tampini probably wants to play.”
“Fine,” Fergesson said. “Let’s see what he’s like; I can tell a lot about a man by the kind of poker he plays.” He hung up the phone and returned to his work.
By noon Hadley had not come in. At two o’clock Jack White showed up at O’Neill’s in the store truck, on his way back from a delivery. He and Fergesson talked briefly out on the sidewalk.
“Maybe the bastard’s dead,” White said, unperturbed. “His wife calls every fifteen minutes. She called the police, the jail, the hospitals, everything she could think of. Friends, relatives, bars—the whole works.”
“Any sign of him?”
“None at all.”
Fergesson kicked a bit of trash from the sidewalk into the gutter. “He’s finished. If he comes in send him around here and I’ll pay him off. I don’t want to have anything more to do with him.”
“You’re being a little rough,” White observed.
“It’s my business. You think a man who’d do this could manage a store?”
White shrugged indifferently. “He’s had a lot on his mind. This whole stuff, the sudden load—” He broke off and started up the truck. “But do what you wan
t; you’re the boss.”
By four o’clock Hadley had not appeared and there was no reason to think he would. Fergesson’s tension mounted; by five thirty he was too upset to work. Ignoring customers, he phoned Modern and got hold of Joe Tampini; White was too busy to come to the phone.
“Any sign of him?” Fergesson demanded.
“No sir,” Tampini said dutifully.
“His wife still calling?”
“Yes sir. All the time.”
“All right,” Fergesson said, stonily resigned. “He’s not coming in. It’s too late.”
He hung up the phone and didn’t call again. There was no point to it; the inevitable had happened.
That evening he gulped down a hurried dinner, grabbed his blue serge coat, waved good-bye to his stricken wife, and drove swiftly down the darkening street to Modern TV Sales and Service. He ignored the people roaming everywhere and concentrated on parking his car. From the car he lugged a heavy card table, four decks of cards, and two huge packages of chips. Balancing everything against his knee he unlocked the front door of the shop and disappeared inside.
It was seven thirty. The store had been shut an hour and a half. The interior was dim and silent as he quickly made his way downstairs to the storeroom where all the immense cardboard cartons of television sets were carefully stacked on each other. He was starting to set up the card table when the first insistent rap sounded on the door and he had to hurry back upstairs.
“Hi,” Ed Johnson puffed. “Who’s here?”
“Just me, so far. Stay up top and let the rest in.”
“Need any help with the chairs?”
Fergesson accepted the case of beer from Johnson and took off with it. “Stay up here and watch; send them down as they come. The key’s in the lock.”
“Who the hell are all those people wandering around out there?” Johnson said. “The streets are full of them.”
“Some kind of nut cultists,” Louis Garfinkel said, pushing into the store. “Los Angeles type. There’s a lecture going on or something.”
“Niggers,” Henry R. Porter said as Johnson admitted him to the store. “A nigger revival cult. I saw the posters; some big buck nigger.”
“What the hell does it?” Garfinkel asked as they clustered leisurely around the door. “Is it the climate down there?”
“My theory,” Johnson said, “is that it’s the smog. The smog is from factories; it’s man-made and it’s full of metallic wastes. The metallic wastes get in their brains by being snuffed up through the nasal passages, and that’s why they’re so nutty.”
“I would say,” Garfinkel disagreed, “that the smog works its way up their ass.”
Jack White arrived, wiping the remains of his hurriedly gulped meal, served across the counter to him at the Golden Bear Cafeteria. A few minutes later Joe Tampini came trailing shyly along; this was the first time he had been permitted to play in the monthly poker game.
At the top of the stairs Fergesson and White met briefly. “Any sign of him?” Fergesson murmured.
“I was going to ask you,” White said. “No, nothing.”
“The damn fool,” Fergesson said bitterly. “He had everything in the world, and he tossed it away.”
Everybody having come, the front door was locked and they all trooped expectantly downstairs into the basement. Fergesson had busily set up things; everything was ready to go. Rubbing his hands together and frowning he paced around until they were all seated. Then he took his own place at the head of the table and grabbed up a deck of cards. He riffled them, shuffled them, passed them around for cutting, then remembered to appoint a banker.
“You’re banker this time,” he said to Jack White. The flat stained notebook was passed to White, who began making entries under the various names. Chips were distributed. The men unfastened their belts, accepted initial beers, belched happily, rubbed their hands and wrists, exchanged insults, grinned, and turned abruptly ruthless as the first hand was dealt.
“Naturally,” Fergesson muttered tensely, “this is draw. Jacks or better to open. Christ, get the antes in. Come on, White. One from you.”
“Anything wild?” Johnson asked, already tightly absorbed in his hand.
“Nothing this time.”
“Give me three,” Garfinkel said.
“We bet first, you horse’s ass. Hold your damn water.”
“Up yours.”
“Cut the farting and bid,” Porter grumbled.
The game took its usual course for half an hour. Down in the cellar of the television shop, below street level, surrounded by solid concrete and steel walls, the six men played tensely and vigorously. Around eight fifteen they paused and passed one by one into the next room to relieve themselves at the filth-stained toilet.
Johnson lit a fresh cigar and leaned back in his chair peacefully. “Good game,” he said to Fergesson, who was gloomily contemplating his dwindling stack of chips. “Right?”
“I’m losing heavy tonight.”
“Christ, you’ll get it back Monday. Sell an extra TV set.”
Fergesson got up and stretched. He took off his tie and crammed it in his pocket. After a moment he removed his vest and unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt.
While he was moving his chair around to make himself more comfortable there was a dull distant thud that vibrated through the room. After a time it came again…louder.
“What’s that?” White demanded, coming out of the lavatory with his trousers still unzipped.
“Those marching morons—heading for that Society hall. That bunch of nuts going to the lecture.” Garfinkel seated himself and swept up a deck of cards. “Hot dog, I’m really greased tonight! Look at those stacks.” He indicated his twin heaps of chips. “Bigger than Marilyn Monroe’s tits.”
“Where’d you get that picture in the crapper?” Porter asked Fergesson. “Boy, I’d like to throw one into that babe.”
“Ever seen her in a movie? She sure as hell can’t act worth a damn.”
“Act, hell. She knows which side of bed she’s buttered on. Guess how that snatch got to the top of the ladder.”
“Man, that’s a barrel of honey waiting to be opened!”
Spirited talk continued, but Fergesson wasn’t listening. He was hearing something else, the continual shuffling tramp of feet above him, the disturbing roll and boom.
“It gets under my skin,” he muttered as he finally picked up the deck and went through the automatic motions of shuffling. “Goddamn it, I can’t play with all of them up there!”
“They’re going inside,” Johnson pointed out. “The meeting’s beginning.”
“How do you happen to know?” Fergesson accused.
Johnson colored. “Well, my wife’s going.”
Calmly counting his pile of chips, Jack V. White said: “I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where Stumblebum is. He went to the last one, I know.”
The deck of cards almost dropped from Fergesson’s hands; he grabbed it and began cutting slowly, wrathfully. “That’s right. I remember. Ellen told me.”
“Sure,” White said easily. “Stumblebum’s one of the faithful. Some dame’s been coming in the store after him, one of the Society’s little ladies.”
“A coon?” Fergesson shouted.
“A tall skinny gal. She left off some literature for him.”
Memory came to Fergesson. “A magazine… I saw it.” He shook his head, dazed and disconcerted. “It’s terrible; I can’t believe it. But I should have known… I saw the goddamn thing myself. He was standing there reading it, on my time.” Convulsively, Fergesson slammed down the deck in front of shy, silent Joe Tampini. “Deal!” he shouted, his voice hoarse. “For God’s sake, let’s get going!”
In the gloomy darkness of the car, Stuart Hadley sat holding a wad of blankets and baby clothing in his lap. Beside him, Pete wailed and twisted; his tiny arms waved futilely as he groped for something, grasped the cold empty air that swirled through the car from the parking lot
outside.
Presently it entered Hadley’s mind that he had been in the process of changing the baby’s clothing. He sorted through the soggy, contaminated heap of garments; everything had been soiled at least once. Puzzled, he smoothed them out and started over again, hoping to find something clean, something he could use. Beside him on the seat, Pete shivered and wailed.
In the end, Hadley opened the luggage compartment of the car and rummaged inside. He found a crumpled, greasy automobile blanket and pulled it up front with him. The blanket came apart easily; soon he had a pile of ragged cloth, not clean but at least usable. He wrapped Pete up in one of the squares, closed the giant safety pin, and then wound the blankets around him. The blankets smelled sourly of urine; Pete gazed up at him wretchedly, sick and hungry and helpless.
Getting from the car, Hadley crossed the dark parking lot to the garbage can of a cheap café. He dropped the bundle of contaminated garments into the can and crunched back to the car. For a time he stood undecided; the baby dozed fitfully, breathing through his mouth, his round face pulled together into a tight frown. He should be fed, obviously. And soon.
Making sure the air vents were open, Hadley rolled up the windows of the car and locked the doors. He left the parking lot and stepped up onto the deserted sidewalk. It was becoming evening; the sun was setting. He began to walk, hands shoved deep in his pockets.
When he came to a little square of park among the hulking warehouses and factories, he stopped and threw himself down on a bench, to rest and ponder.
His plan was firm, clear, and completely final. It had emerged as he drove Marsha along the freeway; into his mind the plan had come full-grown, completely developed, as if it had always existed. It was the only solution; all that remained was to put it into effect.
He could not go back to Beckheim because he was not good enough. For him it was too late. He was worthless; he couldn’t be saved. But it was not too late for his son. The plan was as simple as that. Beckheim would take Pete and raise him and Pete would be saved; he would become what Hadley had not become, he would do and be all the things Hadley had not done and not been, reach the things he had failed to reach. For Hadley, everything was over; for his son the world was just beginning.