“The boss can’t smell this on me,” he explained. “I have a coke afterward, and I’m pure as the driven snow.” He laughed flatly.
We each had a couple of pulls from the bottle and then sat around in the chilly living room talking.
“Did McKlearey get that business with the gun straightened out with Sloane before he took off?”
“Yeah,” Jack said, “he and Sloane dummied up the paper work and got it all squared away with the police department.”
“Did you see him before he took off?”
“Naw, I got a gutful of that motherfucker up in the woods.”
“The silly bastard had blood poisoning in that hand,” I said. “He claims he was out of his head with the fever and the damned infection.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that. I think he just plain flipped out.”
“It’s possible,” I said. “He was carrying that .38 when I saw him. Had it tucked under his belt.”
“That silly bastard! He’s just stupid enough to try to use it, too. He’ll get about half in the bag some night and try to knock over a liquor store or a tavern. I hope somebody shoots him.”
“At least he’s out of our hair,” I said.
“Yeah.”
Somehow Jack and I didn’t really seem to have much to talk about. I guess we never had really. I got the feeling that splitting up with Marg had hit him a lot harder than he was willing to admit to me.
“Hey,” he said suddenly, “you wanna do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“When I moved the trailer, I found a bunch of stuff that belongs to the kids. I got it all in a box in the trunk of my car. You think you could run it on over to Marg’s place for me? I think it’s better if I stay away from there for a while.”
“Sure, Jack.”
“I’ll give her a call and let her know you’re comin’.”
We went over to his car and transferred the box from his trunk to mine.
“Hey, Dan, look at this.” He popped open his glove compartment. That stupid .45 automatic was in there.
“Shit, Jack,” I said, “you’ll get your ass in a sling if they catch you carrying that thing in your car that way without a permit.”
He shrugged. “I got kinda stuck on it up in the brush, you know? Shit, a man oughta own himself a pistol—home protection and all that bullshit.”
“Maybe so,” I said, “but you sure as hell shouldn’t be carting it around in your glove box.”
“Maybe,” I said. We went back in the office and he called Marg.
“She’ll be there,” he said after he hung up. He gave me the address and I took off again.
It took me a while to find the place. It was one of those older houses that had had the second floor remodeled into a self-contained apartment that you reached by way of an outside staircase. I went on up and knocked.
“Hi, Dan,” she said, smiling blearily at me. She smelled pretty strongly of whiskey. “Come on in.”
“I can only stay a minute,” I said, carting in the box.
“Just set that down,” she told me. “The girls are asleep. How about a drink?” She didn’t wait for any answer but whipped me up a whiskey and Seven-Up almost before I got the box put down. “Come on in the living room,” she said.
I pulled off my wet jacket, and we went on in and I sat on the couch. She sat in the armchair just opposite me and crossed her legs, flashing an unnecessary amount of thigh at me. “How’s school?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Takes a while to get back into it,” I said. “I think I’m doing OK.”
“That’s swell.”
“I wish I’d gotten here sooner,” I said. “I’d have liked to get a chance to see the kids.”
“They’ll be up in an hour or so,” she said, leaning back to stretch her arms. She was wearing a sleeveless blouse, cotton, I think, and when she pulled it tight like that, her nipples stood out pretty obviously. Margaret was too big a girl to run around without a bra.
“Sure has been lonesome around here lately,” she said.
“You have any plans—I mean for after—” I left it up there. Under the circumstances it was kind of a touchy subject really.
“Oh,” she said, polishing off her drink in two gulps, “nothing definite yet. I’m not worried.” She got up, went into the kitchen and came out with a fresh drink.
“You got any special plans for the rest of the day?” she asked, sitting on the couch beside me.
“I’ve got to get back across town before too long,” I lied, ostentatiously checking my watch.
She didn’t even bother with subtlety. Maybe she was too drunk or maybe the years with my brother had eroded any subtlety out of her. She simply reached out, grabbed my head and kissed me. Her tongue started probing immediately. I felt her hand fumbling at the front of her blouse and then the warm mashing of her bare breasts against me.
“You wouldn’t run off and leave a girl all alone like this, would you?” she murmured in my ear.
“Margaret,” I said, trying to untangle her arms from around my neck, “this is no good.”
“Oh, come on, Danny,” she coaxed. “What difference does it make?”
“I’m sorry, Margaret,” I said.
She sat back, not bothering to cover herself. Her nipples were very large and darkly pigmented and not very pretty. “What’s the matter?” she demanded. “Has Jack been telling you stories about me?”
“No,” I said, “that’s not it at all. I just don’t think that under the circumstances it would be a good idea.” I stood up quickly and gulped down the drink. “I’ve really got to run anyway.”
“Boy,” she said bitterly, “you’re just not with it at all, are you?”
“I’ve got to run, Marg,” I said. “Tell the kids I said hello.”
“I sure never figured you for a square,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Margaret,” I said. I went out very quickly. Hell let’s be honest, I ran like a scared rabbit.
I stopped at the Patio and had a beer to give myself a chance to calm down.
Clydine’s folks had left when I got back to her place, and she tore into me for being nice to them.
All in all, I got the feeling that I’d have been away to hell and gone out in front to have just spent the whole day in bed.
37
DEAR CAP AND CLINT,
I’ve been so busy I kind of got behind in my letter writing. I guess I’m doing OK in school—at least they haven’t kicked me out yet.
I was down to Tacoma a couple weeks ago and saw most of the others. Sloane has gone off his diet a little, but he hasn’t started putting any weight back on yet. At least he’ll have a beer with the rest of us once in a while, if we all get together and twist his arm. His doctor is sure now that there wasn’t any permanent damage, so you can quit worrying about that.
My brother’s divorce should be final about the end of Feb., and I think he’ll be making himself kind of scarce around here for a while after that. He’ll probably want to go someplace else for a while to get himself straightened out.
Nobody has had any word about McKlearey. We don’t even know where he went. It’s probably just as well, I suppose. He wasn’t just the most popular guy around here anyway. I can’t really say that any of us miss him.
I haven’t seen Stan Larkin for a couple months now, but the last time he was still playing that same silly game I told you about before. It’s kind of sad, really, because it’s all so unnatural for him.
I guess we were a pretty odd bunch, weren’t we? I’m glad you changed your mind about giving up guiding. You just happened to get a bunch of screwballs the first time out.
My girlfriend and I made up again. I think that’s about the fourth or fifth time since school started. She’s a 24-karat nut, but I think you’d like her.
Well, you fellows have a merry Christmas now, and don’t let the snow pile up so deep that it won’t melt off in time for me to get through when fishing season starts.
/> Well, Merry Christmas again.
So long for now,
DAN
I write a lousy letter. I always have. I knew that if I read it over, I’d tear it up and then write another one just damn near like it, so I stuck it in an envelope and sealed it up in a hurry.
It was Wednesday night, and my seminar paper on Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury was due on Friday, but I just couldn’t seem to get it to all fit together. I went back and tried to plow my way through the Benjy section again. I knew that what I needed was buried in there someplace, but I was damned if I could dig it out.
I kept losing track of the time sequence and finally wound up heaving the book across the room in frustration.
I wondered what the hell Clydine was up to. Lately I’d taken to listening to the news and buying newspapers to check on any demonstrations or the like in Tacoma. I think my most recurrent nightmare was of some big cop belting her in the head with a nightstick—not that she might not have deserved it now and then.
Maybe that was why I couldn’t really concentrate. I was spending about half my time worrying about her. God damn it, as harebrained as she was about some things, she needed a fulltime keeper just to keep her out of trouble.
I leaned back and thought about that for a while. I thought about some of the creeps she hung around with and decided that most of them needed keepers a whole lot worse than she did.
I guess it really took me quite a while to come to the realization that I really didn’t want just anybody looking out for her. As a matter of fact, I didn’t want it to be anybody but me, when I got right down to it. I knew finally what that meant. Of all the stupid, inappropriate, completely out of the question things to get involved in at this particular time! I was still running down the long list of reasons why the whole idea was crazy as I reached for the telephone.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Joan. Is Rosebud there?”
“Yeah, Danny. Just a minute—Clydine!” I wished to hell she wouldn’t yell across the open mouthpiece like that.
“Hello.” Damn, it was good to hear her voice.
“I want you to listen to me very carefully, Flower Child. I don’t want to have to repeat myself.”
“My, aren’t we authoritarian tonight.”
“Don’t get smart. This is serious.”
“OK. Shoot.”
“I want you to transfer up here next quarter.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No, I’m stone sober.”
“Why the hell would I want to do a dumb thing like that? This isn’t much of a school, I’ll admit, but it’s sure a lot better than that processing plant up there.”
“Education is what you make of it,” I said inanely. “I want you up here.”
“All my friends are down here.”
“Not all of them, Clydine.”
“Well, it’s terribly sweet, but it’s just completely out of the question.”
“Dear,” I said pointedly, “I didn’t ask you.”
“Oh, now we’re giving orders, huh?”
“Goddammit! I can’t get any work done. I’m spending every damn minute worrying about you.”
“I can take care of myself very nicely, thank you,” she said hotly.
“Bullshit! You haven’t got sense enough to come in out of the rain.”
“Now you look here, Danny Alders. I’m getting just damned sick and tired of everybody just automatically assuming that I’m a child just because I’m not eight feet tall.”
“That has nothing to do with it.”
“I’m going to hang up,” she said.
“Good,” I said. “I’m going to be down there in an hour anyway.”
“Don’t bother. I won’t let you in.”
“Don’t be funny. I’ll kick your goddamn door down if you try that.”
“I’ll call the police if you do,” she yelled at me.
“The fuzz? You? Oh, get serious! I’ll be there in an hour.” I slammed down the receiver.
As a matter of fact, I made it in less than an hour. I saw Joan scuttling down the steps as I climbed out of my car.
“Good luck,” she called. “I’m heading for the nearest bomb shelter.”
“She pretty steamed?” I asked.
“Don’t forget to duck.”
“Thanks a lot, Joan. You’re all heart.”
I went on up the stairs. She didn’t have the door locked, but she did try to hold it shut against me. I pushed my way on through and we got down to business.
It was a glorious fight—the whole bit. We yelled and screamed at each other, and she slammed doors and threw books at me. I insulted her intelligence and her maturity, and she screamed like a fishwife.
Then she tried to hit me, and I held her arms so she couldn’t, so she kicked my shins for a while—barefoot of course.
I’m sure we both knew we were behaving like a couple of twelve-year-olds, but we were having such a good time with the whole thing that we just went ahead and let it all hang out.
Finally she ran crying into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. I went right on in after her. She was lying across the bed, sobbing as if her heart were about to break.
“Come on, Blossom,” I said soothingly, sitting down beside her.
“You—you said such aw—awful things,” she sobbed.
“Come on, now. You know damn well I didn’t mean any of it.”
“No, I don’t,” she wailed. “First that awful phone call and now you come down here yelling, and calling me names, and ordering me around, and grabbing me, and—oh, Danny, why?”
“Because I’m in love with you, you little knothead,” I said. I hadn’t really meant to say it, but it was pretty damned obvious by then.
She rolled over very quickly and looked up at me, her face shocked. “What?” she demanded.
“You heard me.”
“Say it again.”
I did, and then she was all over me like a fur coat. She tasted pretty salty from all the crying, but I didn’t mind. I kissed her soundly about the head and shoulders for ten minutes or so—as I said before, it was a glorious kind of fight.
“You’re going to transfer up to the U next quarter,” I said firmly.
“All right, Danny,” she said meekly. “I know it’s stupid, but I can’t fight you and me both.”
“You knew damn well you were going to do it anyway,” I said kissing her again. “Why did we have to go through all of this?”
“I just wanted you to say it, that’s all,” she said, nestling down in my arms.
“You knew that was what it was all about, for God’s sake. You’re not dense.”
“A girl likes to be told,” she said stubbornly.
Women!
38
AND so, after the holidays, Clydine Stewart, the terror of Pacific Avenue, transferred to the University of Washington. I’m not exactly sure what she’d threatened her parents with to get them to go along with a switch like that in the middle of her junior year, when the loss of credits probably set her back almost two full semesters, but somehow she managed to pull it off.
She rented a sleeping room down the block from my shack—primarily for the sake of appearances and to have a place to store her spare clothes and her empty luggage. She slept there on an average of about once a month.
I suppose that if a man lives with a woman long enough, he gets used to the damp hand-laundry hanging in the bathroom and the bristly hair-curler that he steps on barefoot in the middle of the night, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
“You don’t put your hair up,” I said one morning, as calmly as I could, “so why in the name of God do I keep stepping on these damned things?” I held out a well-mashed curler.
“A girl never knows when she might want to,” she said, as if explaining to a child.
We were horribly crowded, and our books and records got hopelessly jumbled, and we were always stumbling over each other. We argued continually about who was going to use th
e desk and who got firsties on the bathroom in the morning. All in all, it was a pretty normal sort of arrangement. We even wound up sharing the same toothbrush after she lost hers and always kept forgetting to buy a new one.
She even read my mail, which bugged me a little at first, but I couldn’t see much point in making an issue out of it since we read all our letters to each other anyway.
“Hey,” she said one afternoon as I came in, “you got a letter from Cap Miller.”
“Where are you?”
“In the bathtub.”
I went on in. She’d gotten over that little hang-up.
“Where is it?”
“On the desk.”
I bent over and kissed her and then dabbled foam on the end of her nose.
“Rat,” she said.
“Are we going to have to go to the store this afternoon?” I asked her, going on back out to the living room-bedroom-study-reception hall-gymnasium.
“We’d better, if you want any supper tonight. Why?”
“Just wondering, that’s all.”
“Did you get any word on that fellowship yet?”
I picked up Cap’s letter.
“Yeah,” I said. “I got it.” I tried to sound casual about it.
She squealed and came charging, suds and all, out of the bathroom. I got very wetly kissed, and then she saw that the shades were up and scampered back to the tub. What a nut!
I unfolded the letter. It was in pencil.
DEAR DAN,
I have been meaning to write a letter to you ever since we got your fine letter just before X-mas. I was real glad to hear about the big man. I have been awful worried about him ever since the trip last fall.
I was awful sorry to hear that your brother and his Mrs. broke up. That’s always a real shame.
The snow here is pretty deep this time of year, but you don’t need to worry about being able to get through come spring. Clint says he’ll carry you piggyback from Twisp if need be. Ha-ha.
We are all wintering pretty well considering our ages. Clint has a little trouble with his legs that he broke so many times when the weather turns cold. And I have a little trouble getting started out of a morning myself, but otherwise we don’t have no complaints to speak of.