Hamilton, Donald - Novel 02 (5 page)

 
          
“Merely
make sure that she reaches
Denver
safely, Mr. Emmett,” the doctor said. “Call me at that address when you
get there and I’ll arrange to have her watched over from there. Try not to let
her get too tired; if you can persuade her to stop at a hotel tomorrow night,
do so. See that she doesn’t try to live entirely on hamburgers and Coca-Cola.
And if she wants to talk, let her.”

 
          
Emmett
frowned.

 
          
The
older man smiled. “I won’t ask you to reveal any confidences, Mr. Emmett. It’s
quite possible that she may be willing to talk to a stranger; we very often
tell strangers things that we would never admit either to our family or our
doctor. But once the dam has broken, so to speak, my task in the future will be
easier. You can consult your conscience as to what you wish to pass on to me.
Of course I will appreciate any clues you feel free to give me.”

 
          
“You’ll
be in
Denver
?”

 
          
“Yes.
By tomorrow night, probably, if I can get plane reservations.”

 
          
Emmett
sat rubbing his mouth thoughtfully. “She isn’t,” he asked, “apt to go into
convulsions or anything like that, is she?”

 
          
Dr.
Kaufman laughed heartily. “Oh, no. The worst that can happen is that she should
suddenly lose her nerve.” He reached for the card and wrote on it again. “Her
parents’ address and telephone number. If she should become panicky at finding
herself, so to speak, alone among strangers, get her a hotel room and call Mr.
Nicholson long distance. He will either get in touch with me or make
arrangements himself for having her brought back.”

 
          
Outside
a big truck double-clutched, shifting into high gear. The roar of its exhaust
died away to the west.

 
          
“It
is, of course, a great deal to ask, Mr. Emmett,” the doctor said carefully. “I
realize that you probably did not plan your trip to include the duties of a
male nurse.”

 
          
Emmett
said without enthusiasm, “It’s all right. I just don’t want to have her start
screaming in the middle of
Omaha
and find myself in jail charged with white slavery.”

 
          
“I
think there’s very little chance of that,” the doctor said, laughing.

 
          
Emmett
did not laugh. “And I didn’t like that part about her trying to kill herself,
either.”

 
          
“I
think I can guarantee that she will not try it again. It was, as I explained,
only a protest against being put into a situation she was not yet ready to
face.”

 
          
Emmett
sighed. “O.K.,” he said. “I’ll deliver her to
Denver
. After all, I didn’t have to pick her up in
the first place, did I?”

 
          
The
counterman, seeing them rise, put away his pencil and came over, collected,
went to the cash register, and returned with the change. They walked to the
door. The girl in the black dress turned and put her hand on Emmett’s wrist.

 
          
“Be
nice to her, Mr. Emmett.” She smiled and patted his wrist lightly. “But not too
nice.”

 
          
He
watched them walk away toward the Chevrolet sedan parked on the gravel. He
could see the white gleam where her snug dress had split behind the shoulder.
He knew that he liked neither of them very well, for no personal reason. But
they had taken the girl named Ann Nicholson apart in front of his eyes. She was
no longer a girl and a human being, she was a case for the medical journals. He
felt a sense of loss. He had begun to like the girl named Ann Nicholson.

 
          
The
man in the lunchwagon looked up irritably as Emmett came back inside.

 
          
“Coffee
to take out,” Emmett said. “Sugar and cream. And a doughnut.”

 
          
The
man filled the order and stood in front of Emmett, fitting the cover to the
cardboard cup. “Must have been kind of a rough party,” he said. “Wouldn’t mind
switching with the little guy.”

 
          
“You
and me both,” Emmett said mechanically.

 
          
“Funny
how the big girls always go for the peewees. Say, do you know a five-letter
word… Never mind, I’ve got it.” He took out his pencil and hurried to the
corner. “Twenty cents,” he said. “Just leave it on the counter, Mac.”

 
          
Emmett
looked at the quarter in his hand, grimaced, put it down, and went out. The
highway was, momentarily, quite deserted. He crossed. The filling station
attendant was asleep in the chair behind the desk, an empty Coca-Cola bottle on
the floor beside him. He roused enough to count up the bill and make change.
Emmett carried the cardboard cup and the oilpaper-wrapped doughnut carefully
across the concrete to the greasepit and looked into the car. The girl was asleep
in the rear, her face turned to the back cushion, one stockinged foot escaping
from the blanket. He stood quite still until he had made sure that she was
breathing evenly. Then he put the cup on the floor, the doughnut on the seat,
and looked down the highway in the direction the Chevrolet had taken. He took
the keys and went around to the trunk, opened it, moved the bags, and found the
jack handle, a bar of iron about a foot long. Not, he thought, that I don’t
trust him, or believe what he told me, but I’ve read too many stories that
started out like this. The girl awoke as he backed off the ramp. He gave her
the coffee and doughnut and drove slowly until she had finished.

 
          
The
headlights of an approaching car looked suddenly pale in the early morning
twilight and abruptly he could see, to the left, in the distance, a dark band
of cottonwoods marking a river. He watched the headlights come towards him
along the endless highway and vanish, leaving the dark approaching mass of the
other car, the driver of which had apparently also realized that daylight had
come. Emmett switched off the lights of the convertible as the car whipped
past. The convertible roared on through the chill morning air. It was an effort
to think of stopping; of getting out, walking, shaving, eating. He glanced at
the mileage indicator and made a rough subtraction. Better than four hundred
fifty, he thought with a certain pride. He divided the miles by the hours in
his head and got an average of fifty-five approximately.

 
          
He
was into the next town before he could make up his mind to stop, and out on the
plain again. There was a haze along the horizon but the sky was clear overhead.
The sun began to get into the eyes of the drivers going east. He could see them
squinting behind their windshields. There was a railroad parallel to the
highway. He saw the tanks and the loading platforms in the far distance and
then the town. The convertible seemed to crawl when he got it down to forty. He
rejected one filling station as being too dirty, another as being too close to
the center of town, and pulled in at the third, beyond a small block of stores
and a restaurant; he sat, unable to move, listening to the motor idling
quietly. He switched it off, rubbed his eyes and his neck and moved his mouth
about in his face.

 
          
“Fill
it,” he said to the youth in army trousers who came up. He groped for the
gas-tank key in the glove compartment, dropped it, picked it up, and held it
out. “Ethyl,” he said. Then he turned his head stiffly to look at the girl.

 
          
“Miss
Nicholson,” he said. She was sound asleep. She had not wakened when he stopped
for gas at three. Her head was jammed against the leather armrest, the blanket
drawn up to her chin exposing both her stockinged feet at the other end of the
seat.

 
          
“Miss
Nicholson,” he said. He turned painfully and hesitated, looking at her. It was
always embarrassing to wake up a stranger from a sound sleep; it was not quite
fair to look at anybody you did not know well before they had got themselves
assembled for the day. He poked gingerly at her shoulder. “Miss Nicholson.”

 
          
She
stirred and her breath caught and she sat up abruptly, staring at him. After a
moment she pushed the tangled hair back from her face with one hand and the
panic went out of her eyes.

 
          
“Oh,”
she said.

 
          
“Morning.”

 
          
“Good
morning,” she said, and rubbed her arm across her eyes and yawned. “Where are
we?”

 
          
“Somewhere
in
Nebraska
.” He had looked at the name of the town but
he could not recall it.

 
          
“What
happened to
Iowa
?”

 
          
“It
wore out,” he said.

 
          
She
laughed and pushed the blanket aside and looked at her wrinkled gabardine skirt
and the rumpled thin satin blouse pulled out at the waist. He turned away and
heard her begin to tidy herself behind him.

 
          
“You
should have waked me,” she said. “You shouldn’t have driven all night.”

 
          
He
did not answer but crawled across the seat and let himself out. She found her
shoes and pushed the folding seat forward and climbed over it. Something slid
down, bounced, and rang on the oil-stained concrete: the jack handle he had put
beside him on the seat. Ann Nicholson stepped down and, her purse and jacket
clutched to her, stood staring down at the short ugly length of metal. Then she
looked up at Emmett, her face shiny and pale beneath the disheveled light hair.

 
          
Emmett
bent down and picked up the iron bar. “Run along and wash your face,” he said,
throwing the handle back into the car.

 
          
He
was aware of her hesitation; then her heels went across the concrete, slowly at
first, then almost running. The attendant came up and spoke to Emmett, who,
after a moment, turned on him sharply.

 
          
“Put
the damn thing on the hoist. Grease. Never mind the oil. And get that crap off
the windshield, will you? There are more damn bugs in this country…!”

 
          
He
jerked his suitcase out of the trunk and carried it over the concrete island
supporting the pumps, across the other drive, and around the station to the
door at the side. Inside, he locked the door and stripped to his underwear, put
his suit away neatly on the patent hanger inside the suitcase after brushing it
off, and his shoes into a blue drawstring bag, changed his socks, pulled on a
pair of flannel slacks, and stuck his feet into a pair of worn brown moccasins
with rubber soles. Then, in his short-sleeved undershirt, he turned to look at
himself in the mirror. The face that stared back at him looked greasy with
sleeplessness, the eyes bloodshot from night driving, and the black hair hung
lankly down onto the bulging forehead. Listen, he asked the mirror, listen, do
I
look
like the kind of guy who would
murder a sleeping girl with a jack handle. The mirror said, yes, he did.

 
          
He
grimaced, washed his face and began to shave. Through the thin partition he
could hear the girl moving in the other restroom. He could almost see her, as
she fixed herself up, her face still drawn and frightened and preoccupied with
imagining him, throughout the night, with the jack handle beside him, weighing
the value of the car and the roll of bills in her purse against his conscience
and the fact of murder. For the love of Mike, he thought, and why didn’t I put
the damn thing away, anyway?

 
          
Finished,
he put on a gaudy yellow sports shirt and went outside. She came out almost at
the same time. She did not see him at once. He saw her, coming around the
corner of the building, stop abruptly and stand looking at the vacant space
beside the pumps where her car had been, her face shocked and pale.

 
          
“It’s
on the hoist,” he said.

 
          
She
whirled and saw him, then saw the car with the boy working under it.

 
          
“I
thought you could probably use a grease job, considering the way your oil
looked,” Emmett said.

 
          
“Yes,”
she said. “Of course.”

 
          
She
came towards him slowly, almost reluctantly. He saw that she looked quite
transformed, her hair brushed smooth, her face clean and fresh in the early
morning sunlight. Below the neatly buttoned jacket the tailored skirt seemed to
have thrown off the wrinkles she had slept into it, the fine gabardine showing
only minute incipient creases as the light struck it.   ,

 
          
“How
about something to eat while he finishes with the car?” Emmett asked.

 
          
“All
right.”

 
          
He
walked beside her toward the restaurant, a little chilly in the sports shirt.
Inside the restaurant, as they entered, a stout woman in a print dress and a
flowered apron was hoisting a large dripping bag of grounds out of the
coffee-maker.

 
          
“Be
with you in a minute,” she said without turning her head.

 
          
They
sat down at a table by the window and watched her adjust the gas flame, dispose
of the bag and grounds, and wipe off the battered monel drip pan. She came
around the brief counter, drying her hands on her apron.

 
          
“Take
a little while till the hot-plate warms,” she said. “I can give you coffee now,
if you want.”

 
          
Outside,
the cars and trucks went past at irregular intervals. When the woman had left
them, Emmett took out his pipe, studied it, and laid it down on the table. He
wanted the reassurance of it, but after a wakeful night his mouth did not want
the taste of it. He leaned toward the window and squinted at the sun rising at
the end of the street.

 
          
“It’s
going to be hot today,” he said.

 
          
“Yes,”
Ann Nicholson said absently. “Yes, I guess it is, Mr. Emmett.”

 
          
Suddenly
they were regarding each other across the table, their glances locked in a
curious sexless conflict. Some impulse of cruelty born of sleeplessness made
Emmett hold his steady stare until the girl’s eyes broke away. They were, he
noticed, grayish blue. She looked down at her hands. There were no rings on her
fingers. The subdued nailpolish on her right thumbnail was a little chipped, as
if she had marred it opening a purse or compact. She studied it
dispassionately.

 
          
“Please,”
she said at last. “This is a stupid question, Mr. Emmett, and please don’t
misunderstand me, but… why did you have that jack handle…? I know it was in the
trunk day before yesterday.”

 
          
“It
was in the trunk last night,” he said. “I took it out.”

 
          
He
was hungry, he was sleepy, and he was very tired. At the back of his mind were
the things he had been told about her, but now, in the morning, they seemed
very vague. She was a human being again, a girl of presumably normal
intelligence, and if she wanted to have silly ideas about him she could sit and
worry about them until he got good and ready to reassure her.

 
          
He
heard her begin to laugh, and glanced up quickly. It occurred to him that he
had not heard her laugh before, spontaneously and naturally, and that she had
rather a nice laugh. He felt himself flush a little, nevertheless.

 
          
“Mr.
Emmett,” she said. “Mr. Emmett, what
did
they tell you about me?”

 
          
He
glanced at her again. He picked up his pipe and began to fill it. He knew that
his face had turned quite red. “Oh,” he said. “You saw them.”

 
          
“Miss
Bethke came over to see that I was all right. She woke me. And then I could see
you at the window. But surely,” she said, “they didn’t say I was homicidal, did
they?”

 
          
He
grinned, suddenly feeling much better. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t you I was
worrying about, Miss Nicholson.”

 
          
“Miss
Bethke?” she asked. “And Dr. Kaufman?” She giggled, and then she was laughing
again. “I’m sorry. But the idea of a man fending off Miss Bethke with a jack
handle… I mean, it’s generally the other way around, I should imagine. Not that
I know much of her private life…” Ann Nicholson drew a long breath. “Well,” she
said, “that’s settled.” She smiled. “When it fell out… I wasn’t quite awake… I’d
forgotten… I thought…”

 
          
“I
know what you thought,” he said a little resentfully.

 
          
“But
really, Mr. Emmett! Miss Bethke and Dr. Kaufman.”

 
          
“Well,”
he said defensively, “it was a damn queer experience, you’ll have to admit. I
mean, first those headlights following us and then… Well, I figured it would be
nice to have something handy, just in case.” After a moment he added, grinning,
“Your friend Miss Bethke doesn’t exactly inspire trust in a man. A lot of other
things, yes, but hardly trust.”

 
          
“I
know,” Ann Nicholson said. “Isn’t she wonderful? The first nurse I had was such
an old stick I was almost glad when she had an accident and landed in the
hospital.”

 
          
“Well,
nobody would call Miss Bethke a stick,” Emmett said dryly.