A Bullet for Cinderella (6 page)

I began to sense where it had started. It had started in the camp. Boredom was the enemy. And all my traditional defenses against boredom had withered too rapidly. The improvised game of checkers was but another form of boredom. I was used to being with a certain type of man. He had amused and entertained me and I him. But in the camp he became empty. He with his talk of sexual exploits, boyhood victories, and Gargantuan drunks, he had made me weary just to listen.

The flight from boredom had stretched my mind. I spent more and more time in the company of the off-beat characters, the ones who before capture would have made me feel queer and uncomfortable, the ones I would have made fun of behind their backs. There was a frail headquarters type with a mind stuffed full of things I had never heard of. They seemed like nonsense at first and soon became magical. There was a corporal, muscled like a Tarzan, who argued with a mighty ferocity with a young, intense, mustachioed Marine private about the philosophy and ethics of art, while I sat and listened and felt unknown doors open in my mind.

Ruth’s quiet question gave me the first valid clue to my own discontent. Could I shrink myself back to my previous dimensions, I could once again fit into the world of job and Charlotte and blue draperies and a yellow kitchen and the Saturday night mixed poker game with our crowd.

If I could not shrink myself, I would never fit there again. And I did not wish to shrink. I wished to stay what I had become, because many odd things had become meaningful to me.

“Are you, Tal?” she asked again.

“Maybe not as much as I thought I was.”

“You’re hunting for something,” she said. The strange truth of that statement jolted me. “You’re trying to do a book. That’s just an indication of restlessness. You’re hunting for what you should be, or for what you really are.” She grinned suddenly, a wide grin and I saw that one white tooth was entrancingly crooked. “Dad says I try to be a world mother. Pay no attention to me. I’m always diagnosing and prescribing and meddling.” She looked at her watch. “Wow! He’ll be stomping and thundering. I’ve got to go right now.”

I paid the check and we went out to the car. On the way back I steered the conversation to the point where I could say, “And I remember him talking about a girl named Cindy. Who was she?”

Ruth frowned. “Cindy? I can remember some—No there wasn’t any girl named Cindy in this town, not that Timmy would go out with. I’m sure he never knew a pretty one. And for Timmy a girl had to be pretty. Are you certain that’s the right name?”

“I’m positive of it.”

“But what did he say about her?”

“He just mentioned her casually a few times, but in a way that sounded as though he knew her pretty well. I can’t remember exactly what he said, but I got the impression he knew her quite well.”

“It defeats me,” Ruth said. I turned into the driveway and stopped in front of the animal hospital and got out as she did. We had been at ease and now we were awkward again. I wanted to find some way of seeing her again, and I didn’t know exactly how to go about it. I hoped her air of restraint was because she was hoping I would find a way. There had been too many little signs and hints of a surprising and unexpected closeness between us. She could not help but be aware of it.

“I want to thank you, Ruth,” I said and put my hand out. She put her hand in mine, warm and firm, and her eyes met mine and slid away and I thought she flushed a bit. I could not be certain.

“I’m glad to help you, Tal. You could—let me know if you think of more questions.”

The opening was there, but it was too easy. I felt a compulsion to let her know how I felt. “I’d like to be with you again even if it’s not about the book.”

She pulled her band away gently and faced me squarely, chin up. “I think I’d like that, too.” She grinned again. “See? A complete lack of traditional female technique.”

“I like that. I like it that way.”

“We better not start sounding too intense, Tal.”

“Intense? I don’t know. I carried your picture a long time. It meant something. Now there’s a transition. You mean something.”

“Do you say things like that just so you can listen to yourself saying them?”

“Not this time.”

“Call me,” she said. She whirled and was gone. Just before she went in the door I remembered what I meant to ask her. I called to her and she stopped and I went up to her.

“Who should I talk to next about Timmy?”

She looked slightly disappointed. “Oh, try Mr. Leach. Head of the math department at the high school. He took quite an interest in Timmy. And he’s a nice guy. Very sweet.”

I drove back into town, full of the look of her, full of the impact of her. It was an impact that made the day, the trees, the city, all look more vivid. Her face was special and clear in my mind—the wide mouth, the one crooked tooth, the gray slant of her eyes. Her figure was good, shoulders just a bit too wide, hips just a shade too narrow to be classic. Her legs were long, with clean lines. Her flat back and the inswept lines of her waist were lovely. Her breasts were high and wide spaced, with a flavor of impertinence, almost arrogance. It was the coloring of her though that pleased me most. Dark red of the hair, gray of the eyes, golden skin tones.

It was nearly three when I left her place. I tried to put
her out of my mind and think of the interview with Leach. Leach might be the link with Cindy.

I must have been a half mile from the Stamm place when I began to wonder if the Ford coupé behind me was the one I had seen beside Fitz’s shed. I made two turns at random and it stayed behind me. There was no attempt at the traditional nuances of shadowing someone. He tagged along, a hundred feet behind me. I pulled over onto the shoulder and got out. I saw that it was Fitz in the car. He pulled beyond me and got out, too.

I marched up to him and said, “What the hell was the idea of going through my room.”

He leaned on his car. “You have a nice gentle snore, Howard. Soothing.”

“I could tell the police.”

“Sure. Tell them all.” He squinted in the afternoon sunlight. He looked lazy and amused.

“What good does it do you to follow me?”

“I don’t know yet. Have a nice lunch with Ruthie? She’s a nice little item. All the proper equipment. She didn’t go for me at all. Maybe she likes the more helpless type. Maybe if you work it right you’ll get a chance to take her to—”

He stopped abruptly, and his face changed. He looked beyond me. I turned just in time to see a dark blue sedan approaching at a high rate of speed. It sped by us and I caught a glimpse of a heavy balding man with a hard face behind the wheel, alone in the car. The car had out-of-state plates but it was gone before I could read the state.

I turned back to Fitz. “There’s no point in following me around. I told you I don’t know any more—” I stopped because there was no point in going on. He looked as though I had become invisible and inaudible. He brushed by me and got into his car and drove on. I watched it recede down the road. I got into my own car. The episode made no sense to me.

I shrugged it off my mind and began to think about Leach again.

T
hough the high-school kids had gone, the doors were unlocked and a janitor, sweeping green compound down the dark-red tiles of the corridor, told me I could probably find Mr. Leach in his office on the ground floor of the old building. The two buildings, new and old, were connected. Fire doors separated the frame building from the steel and concrete one. My steps echoed in the empty corridor with a metallic ring. A demure little girl came out of a classroom and closed the door behind her. She had a heavy armload of books. She looked as shy and gentle and timid as a puppy in a strange yard. She looked at me quickly and hurried on down the corridor ahead of me, moccasin soles slapping, meager horsetail bobbing, shoulders hunched.

I found the right door and tapped on it. A tired voice told me to come in. Leach was a smallish man with a harsh face, jet eyebrows, a gray brushcut. He sat at a table marking papers. His desk, behind him, was stacked with books and more papers.

“Something I can do for you?”

“My name is Tal Howard. I want to talk to you about a student you used to have.”

He shook hands without enthusiasm. “An ex-student who is in trouble?”

“No. It’s—”

“I’m refreshed. Not in trouble? Fancy that. The faculty has many callers. Federal narcotics people. Parole people. Prison officials. County police. Lawyers. Sometimes it seems that we turn out nothing but criminals of all dimensions. I interrupted you.”

“I don’t want to impose on you. I can see how busy you are. I’m gathering material about Timmy Warden. Ruth Stamm suggested I talk to you.”

He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. “Timmy Warden. Gathering material. That has the sound of a book. Was he allowed to live long enough to give you enough material?”

“Timmy and some others. They all died there in the camp. I was there, too. I almost died, but not quite.”

“Sit down. I’m perfectly willing to talk about him. I take it you’re not a professional.”

“No, sir.”

“Then this, as a labor of love, should be treated with all respect. Ruth knows as much about Timmy as any person alive, I should say.”

“She told me a lot. And I got a lot from Timmy. But I need more. She said you were interested in him.”

“I was. Mr. Howard, you have probably heard of cretins who can multiply two five digit numbers mentally and give the answer almost instantaneously.”

“Yes, but—”

“I know. I know. Timmy was no cretin. He was a very normal young man. Almost abnormally normal if you sense what I mean. Yet he had a spark. Creative mathematics. He could sense the—the rhythm behind numbers. He devised unique short cuts in the solution of traditional class problems. He had that rare talent, the ability to grasp intricate relationships and see them in pure simple form. But there was no drive, no dedication. Without dedication, Mr. Howard, such ability is merely facility, an empty cleverness. I hoped to be a mathematician. I teach mathematics in a high school. Merely because I did not have enough of what Timmy Warden was born with. I hoped that one day he would acquire the dedication. But he never had time.”

“I guess he didn’t.”

“Even if he had the time I doubt if he would have gone any further. He was a very good, decent young man. Everything was too easy for him.”

“It wasn’t easy at the end.”

“I don’t imagine it was. Nor easy for hundreds of millions of his contemporaries anywhere in the world.
This is a bad century, Mr. Howard. Bad for the young. Bad for most of us.”

“What do you think would have become of him if he’d lived, Mr. Leach?”

The man shrugged. “Nothing exceptional. Marriage, work, children. And death. No contribution. His name gone as if it never existed. One of the faceless ones. Like us, Mr. Howard.” He rubbed his eyes again, then smiled wanly. “I’m not usually so depressing, Mr. Howard. This has been a bad week. This is one of the weeks that add to my conviction that something is eating our young. This week the children have seemed more sullen, dangerous, dispirited, inane, vicious, foolish, and impossible than usual. This week a young sophomore in one of my classes went into the hospital with septicemia as the result of a self-inflicted abortion. And a rather pleasant boy was slashed. And last Monday two seniors died in a head-on collision while on their way back from Redding, full of liquor. The man in the other car is not expected to recover. When Timmy was here in school I was crying doom. But it was not like it is now. By comparison, those were the good old days, recent as they are.”

“Was Timmy a disciplinary problem?”

“No. He was lazy. Sometimes he created disturbances. On the whole he was co-operative. I used to hope Ruth would be the one to wake him up. She’s a solid person. Too good for him, perhaps.”

“I guess he was pretty popular with the girls.”

“Very. As with nearly everything else, things were too easy for him.”

“He mentioned some of them in camp. Judy, Ruth, Cindy.”

“I couldn’t be expected to identify them. If I remember correctly, I once had eight Judys in one class. Now that name, thank God, is beginning to die out a little. There have never been too many Cindys. Yet there has been a small, constant supply.”

“I want to have a chance to talk to the girls he mentioned. I’ve talked to Ruth. Judy has moved away. I can’t remember Cindy’s last name. I wonder if there is any way
I could get a look at the list of students in hopes of identifying her.”

“I guess you could,” he said. “The administration office will be empty by now. You could ask them Monday. Let me see. Timmy graduated in forty-six. I keep old yearbooks here. They’re over there on that bottom shelf. You could take the ones for that year and the next two years and look them over, there by the window if you like. I have to get on with these papers. And I really can’t tell you much more about Timmy. I liked him and had hopes for him. But he lacked motivation. That seems to be the trouble with too many of the children lately. No motivation. They see no goal worth working for. They no longer have any dreams. They are content with the manufactured dreams of N.B.C. and Columbia.”

I sat by the windows and went through the yearbooks. There was no Cindy in the yearbook for ’46. There was one in the ’47 yearbook. I knew when I saw her picture that she could not be the one. She was a great fat girl with small, pinched, discontented features, sullen, rebellious little eyes. There was a Cindy in the ’48 yearbook. She had a narrow face, protruding teeth, weak eyes behind heavy lenses, an expression of overwhelming stupidity. Yet I marked down their names. It would be worth a try, I thought.

I went back to the ’46 yearbook and went through page after page of graduates more thoroughly. I came to a girl named Cynthia Cooper. She was a reasonably attractive snub-nosed blonde. I wondered if Timmy could possibly have said Cynthy. It would be an awkward nickname for Cynthia. And even though his voice by that time had been weak and blurred, I was certain he had said Cindy. He had repeated the name. But I wrote her down, too.