Nothing In Her Way

I massaged my hand and felt it for broken bones, then got down and rolled him between the rails. I crawled over the coupling and dragged him out on the other side. We were between the trains now, in deep shadow. Remembering the brakie, I squatted down on the ballast and looked for the lantern. It was far up near the front end.

  I left him lying there and moved along the cars, looking for an empty. The third boxcar had a door open. I walked back and got him, letting his feet drag. The floor of the car was chest high, and I was getting tired now. I finally got him high enough and rolled him in. I took a long breath and leaned against the door for a moment, completely winded.

  It took only a minute to slide the door in place, but I had to tug and push to get it positioned correctly so I could fasten the latch. Then I thought about the other one. It had been closed, but it might not be fastened. I ran to the end of the car and climbed through, across the coupling. The lantern was still far up at the other end of the train. I fastened the door and came back again.

  Next stop, California, I thought, and then went back under the work train.

  I ditched the car beside the highway near the dirt road, left the keys in it, and walked back to where she was. She was sitting in the Cadillac smoking a cigarette, and when she saw me coming she got out.

  “Darling, is everything all right?”

  “He’s on his way to Los Angeles in his private car,” I said. I walked over and picked up the gun and broke it to take out the two shells. Before I threw the unfired one into the brush, I looked at it, and it made me a little sick. It was a ten-gauge Magnum, with Number 2 shot. Anything hit at close range with that would look like a dish of raw hamburger. I buried the gun in the sand.

  I walked back and stood looking at her. “Start giving,” I said. “I want to know about Donnelly.”

  “Darling,” she said innocently, “I’ve already told you. He’s just a stupid thug who thinks he can scare money out of me.”

  I caught the fur coat with both hands and pulled her toward me. “Don’t try any innocent double talk on me, you redheaded little hellcat. Maybe he can’t scare you, but he can scare me. I want to know who he is and why he’s following you, so we can do something about it. I saw him swinging that shotgun on you, and I don’t intend to go through that again. Not twice in one lifetime.”

  “Mike,” she said softly, “you do still like me, don’t you?”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “I’ve missed you so terribly.”

  I shook her. “Who is Donnelly?”

  “Mike, darling, it isn’t anything, really. He just claims Jeff owed him some money before he was killed, when those men held him up. He hasn’t got any proof of it, and I won’t pay it.”

  It sounded fishy, and still it didn’t. At least one part of it rang true—that about not paying it. Anybody who tried to fast-talk her out of a buck was odds-on to kill himself before he got through if he really took it seriously. And then, somewhere in all the anger and the fear for her going around in my mind, I was conscious of that same old crazy question: How could you be this much in love with a girl you fought with all the time and who kept the world in perpetual uproar? But I was. God help me.

  It must have made me angrier. “All right,” I said. “But how in hell does he manage to find you everywhere you go? He located you in New Orleans, and now out here in the middle of nowhere in this sand pile. How does he do it? Do you write to him or something?”

  She gestured impatiently. “Who cares, Mike? I tell you, he’s just a cheap chiseler. Quit worrying about him. As for his finding me here, he probably just followed me from San Antonio.”

  “Well, you’ve got to get out of San Antonio before he can get back there.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mike,” she flared up, “quit being such an old woman. We’ve got a job to do.” Here we go, I thought.

  “Look, Cathy,” I said. “For the love of Pete, let’s quit knocking ourselves out, just for an hour or two, shall we? God knows why, but I’ve looked forward all week to seeing you. Maybe I’m just stupid that way. And in five minutes we’re going at each other like a couple of punch-drunk pugs. I’m sorry I lost my temper. It just scared me. Donnelly, I mean. Let’s try to forget the whole damn thing for a little while.”

  “All right, Mike,” she said contritely. “I’m sorry too.”

  We got back in the car and drove on down the road about a mile until we were out of sight of the highway and lost in the rolling white immensity of the sand. I saw the dry remains of an old mesquite, and broke off enough limbs to build a fire behind one of the dunes. There was a robe in the back of the car, and I spread it on the sand, up against the slope before the fire. It was beautiful and incredibly still in the wintry moonlight. It was wonderful. She had a bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses in the car. I opened it and we drank some of it, watching the fire and talking. Firelight was shining in her eyes, and she was still the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. It occurred to me that this was corny, that girls were always having firelight shine in their eyes while they turned beautiful, but when I tried to look at it objectively, nothing changed. She was still beautiful, and I was in love with her.

  “How did we ever manage to make such a mess of things, Cathy?” I asked after a while. “Let’s go to El Paso for the weekend. Look, we could be married again.”

  “That would be wonderful, Mike,” she said. “But not until after we get through here. You can’t leave now. This is too important to take any chances.”

  That about sums it up, I thought, trying to suppress the anger and not start another battle. Trifling incidentals like being blasted at with a ten-gauge shotgun, or brushing off a package-deal proposition and proposal, are entirely beside the point and can’t be allowed to interfere with the main objective. Nothing mattered except sandbagging Goodwin and then ganging up on Lachlan.

  No, that wasn’t quite fair, I reminded myself. The thought of the two of them getting away with what they had done haunted me too, and if it didn’t ride me all the time the way it did her, it was probably because I was lazy and inclined to take the easy way. Maybe if I’d quit trying to pick her to pieces and take a good look at myself…Maybe I was the one who wasn’t so hot. I always let things slide.

  “You see, don’t you, Mike?” she said. “I mean, that we’ve got to do this first?”

  “All right,” I said wearily. “I just forgot for the moment that you’re the girl of destiny. I’ll take it up through channels.”

  “You’re a lamb,” she said, making a face at me. “And I do love you. Why do you think I’m staying in San Antonio so I can be near you?”

  “Well, don’t crowd me out of my side of the bed,” I said.

  “Stop grumbling, darling. Now, tell me about Goodwin. I mean, could you detect any curiosity at all when you met him out there at the rifle range? And don’t forget, never hurry him. You have to play it hard to get all the way.”

  Progress report and pep talk in the moonlight, I thought bitterly as I lay in bed in the bleak cabin afterward. Vice-president making a swing through the territory to keep the district managers on their toes. Damn her. But what about San Antonio that night? She could relax and be human when she wanted to.

  I cursed myself. That was nice. So I was finding out all over again all the things I’d learned in two years of being married to her and a lifetime of knowing her, and now they were big revelations. We were just going around again. She was a whirlpool I was trapped in. I ground the cigarette savagely against the ash tray and tried to get back to Goodwin.

  * * *

  It began to break faster than I had expected. Little things tip you off. You turn your head suddenly while walking along the street and find the two people you have just passed are staring after you and talking. You come in the door and a sudden hush falls over a group of three or four men enjoying some joke along the counter in the restaurant. You get a lot of innocent-sounding and thinly disguised questions along with simple transactions like buying a p
ack of cigarettes or picking up your laundry. Are you going to work here? How do you like our town? Good, healthy climate, isn’t it?

  People were beginning to wonder what I was doing here.

  And what in the name of God was in those boxes I mailed every day?

  On Tuesday I mailed four of them. The clerk at the window smiled. “You’re our best customer,” he said, with a lame attempt at joking. “We ought to give you a rate.”

  “Oh?” I said coldly.

  During the week I dropped into the bank a couple of times to cash small checks, and both times Goodwin looked up from his paper work to nod and smile. And then, on Saturday, I got another break. Taking a chance he’d be out at the rifle range, I put two of the larger boxes in my coat pocket before I took off on my daily walk east of town. Filled with sand, they weighed over five pounds each.

  Late in the afternoon I circled around to the rifle range. I was in luck. Goodwin was there, with two other men. I leaned my .22 against a mesquite and sat down to watch them. After a while Goodwin asked me if I’d like to try the gun again. Before I shot, I took off the coat with its bulging pockets and left it by the .22.

  When the session broke up he offered me a lift back to town, as I had hoped. I put the rifle and coat on the back seat and got in up front with him.

  “Well, how do you like our town?” he asked, as we wound through the mesquite on the little dirt road.

  “Just fine,” I said. “It’s just what I was looking for.”

  He didn’t ask me what it was I was looking for. I didn’t think he would. He was by nature rather reserved himself, apparently well educated, and had better manners than the town loafers and most of the other natives. He might be curious, but he wouldn’t pry.

  “We’re trying to build up our rifle club,” he said. “How’d you like to join?”

  I hesitated a little. “Thanks,” I said. “It sounds fine, but I’ll be frank with you. Those guns are a little steep for me right now.”

  He nodded. “Yes, they are pretty expensive. But it’s a fine hobby, and keeps you out in the open.” He stopped suddenly, as if he’d said more than he intended.

  I knew then it was beginning to work. He’d thought about me. And he’d decided it was health that brought me here, or rather the lack of it. The next thing, of course, was to make him wonder if that was it.

  “Well anyway,” he said, “come on out on Saturday afternoons and take a few shots with this gun of mine.”

  We were in town now, but he ran on out to the end of the street and dropped me off in front of the motel. I thanked him and got out, purposely not looking toward the back seat where I’d left the rifle and coat.

  He started to drive off. “Oh,” I called out, waving my arm and running toward the car. “I forgot my stuff.”

  “Sure thing,” he said. He turned around in the seat and reached for the coat, to pass it out the front window.

  “No, that’s all right, I’ll get it,” I said hurriedly. I reached for the handle of the rear door, but let him beat me to it. He picked up the coat, and I saw his arm sag at the unexpected weight of it. Almost involuntarily his eyes swept down toward it, but there was nothing to see except the square outlines of the boxes in the pockets.

  Six

  In a couple of days he invited me out to the house. For dinner, he said, and he’d show me his workshop, where he did his reloading.

  He had a nice place, a big two-story house out on the edge of town about three blocks off the main drag. I met his wife. She was a young blonde who wasn’t as young or as blonde as she had been, but she was nice, and a wonderful cook. She did water colors, and she was a bullfight fan. I admired the landscapes she had done, and we had a good session with the corridas. I told her I’d lived in Mexico a couple of years, working for some company I never quite mentioned.

  They had swallowed the idea by this time that I had come out here because my health had gone back on me, though we very pointedly never talked about it. I think they felt sorry for me. I knew, of course, that he’d also heard about the strange boxes I was always mailing, because everybody knows everything in a town of that size, but he didn’t mention them.

  I let it ride along about a week, going out in the dunes every day with the little gun, and continuing to mail the boxes. They had me out to the house again on Saturday night for dinner, and to return the compliment I took them to the restaurant and to the movies. We were getting quite chummy. They liked me, and, oddly enough, I liked them when I wasn’t thinking about the thing he had done.

  Cathy met me twice that week, but it was just the same old pep talk. She was wild to know how it was coming along, and full of suggestions as to what to do next.

  It was near the end of the following week that I knew the time had come to let him have the stinger. I’d walked into the restaurant late one evening, and two men who were playing the pin-ball machine near the door didn’t see me come in. I passed close behind them and as I went past I heard one of them say, “It’s rabbit feet, I tell you. Don’t he spend all his time huntin’ jack rabbits? He’s got a friend in New York sells ‘em for him.” I heard them laugh as I went over and sat down at the counter.

  All right, boys, I thought, I’ll clear it up for you. After I’d eaten I went back to the motel and started getting it ready. I got out the bottle of sulphuric acid I’d brought from New Orleans and mixed a little with some water in a glass jar to the approximate strength of battery solution. Then, taking out a cardboard box—one of the larger ones—I wet it along the corners and seams with the solution and let it dry. Filling it with sand I’d brought in during the afternoon, I wrapped it with paper, tied the parcel with white string, and addressed it, just as I had done with all the others. To finish it off, I put a drop of the acid solution on the string in three or four different places, let it set for a minute or two, and wiped it off. It was ready.

  In the morning I waited until after eleven before I started downtown with it, to be sure he’d be in the bank. I had to handle it carefully. He was at his desk, and he looked up and waved as I walked in. I set it down on the edge of the glass-topped stand, got out my checkbook, and started to write a check, keeping my left elbow near the parcel and taking a long time to make it out. It’d be a lot more effective if he came over, though it would work whether he did or not I was in luck. He did.

  I heard the gate in the railing open and close, and then his footsteps coming up behind me. I tore the check out, paying no attention.

  “Say, Reichert, Mrs. Goodwin told me to ask you out tonight for some frijoles and cabrito,” he said behind me as he came up.

  I swung around. “Thanks. That sounds—” I began, just as my elbow hit the box and knocked it off. “Damn!” I said explosively, and lunged for it. It was too late. It hit the tile floor, and the acid-weakened box came apart across one side like a dropped squash. Sand spilled out onto the floor.

  He looked down, and wasn’t able to control the amazement on his face. Then he looked at me. I flushed and stammered something, and then bent down hurriedly and began trying to scoop the sand back into the box, as if trying to cover up while I thought of something.

  “I’m sorry about the mess,” I said uncomfortably, when I stood up. “It’s—well, you see, my niece, back in New York, she’s bedridden. I was sending her this box of sand to—well, she colors it, you see, and uses it in a sort of Navajo sand-painting idea.”

  “Oh, I see,” he said in a tone that meant he didn’t see at all. “Well, don’t bother with it. The janitor’ll clean it up. It’s too bad it broke, though.” He paused, then tried an embarrassed joke. “One thing about it, you can find plenty more around here.”

  I managed a hollow grin. “Yes, that’s right, isn’t it?”

  I went back to the motel with the remains of the box. It had gone off beautifully. He knew I was lying, of course. That was the most obvious part of it. And then, after an hour or so, he’d probably decide I wasn’t crazy, in spite of the way it looked. It would
really begin to get him about that time.

  Try it, pal, I thought. It’s not as direct as diluting a concrete mix, but it’s interesting when you work on it—and tricky.

  * * *

  I called up and begged off on the dinner date. I said I had a bad headache.

  The next day was Friday. I didn’t go out to the dunes at all, or mail anything at the post office. Saturday was the same. I sat around the drugstore most of the time, reading all the new magazines. I didn’t even go out to the rifle range.

  Sunday morning I decided I’d let him wait long enough, and I could try it. This time, instead of taking any boxes, I stuffed my pocket with about a dozen little cloth bags like tobacco sacks, a bunch of string, and some tags. I took the gun and walked east on the highway, the way I always did, left it before I hit the sand dunes, and circled to get into them some distance from the road.

  This was a phase of it now that I didn’t have much control over. If I’d played it right up to this point, I should have him now. He should be ready to go along with me. I was doing something crazy, something he couldn’t figure out, and I was doing it on his land. The fact that it was his land and that I not only hadn’t told him about it but had actually lied about it should be enough to overcome his natural reluctance toward spying on anybody. If I’d guessed it right, it would be Frankie or Johnnie who’d let him know when I went out there again.

  As I wandered around I kept watching the highway. Time went by and I didn’t see anything of him. After a while I began to worry. Had I bungled the whole thing? Hadn’t I made him curious as to what I was up to? If he wasn’t interested now, the whole thing was a fizzle.

  In another quarter hour I was sure it had gone sour. And then I saw a car that could have been his coming down the highway. I watched it out of the corner of my eye. It went behind some scraggly mesquites growing along the fence, and it didn’t come out. I felt a tingle of excitement. We were getting him.

  In a moment I saw the glint of sunlight on something near the end of the mesquites. I knew what that was. He had the spotting scope with him. It was a twenty-power job, and with it he could see what I was doing as well as if he were sitting in my lap. I began pacing, taking long steps like a man measuring something. At the end of twenty strides I squatted down, scooped up some sand, put it in one of the bags, and tied it. Then I fastened on a tag and made a show of writing something on it. Of course, he couldn’t see the tag, but it’d take him only a few minutes to figure it out.