Memory (Hard Case Crime) (45 page)

“Not in Deerville, Mister. There ain’t any tannery here and there never has been.”

Cole stared at the man, but he was only the proprietor of a small grocery store, he had no reason to lie. He had to be telling the truth.

“Did I make it up?”

“You better get on out of here now.”

“I
couldn’t
have made it up.”

“I’m not telling you again.”

Cole went outside. Something was terribly wrong, terribly wrong, and he didn’t know what to do, where to go, who to ask for help.

That man had mentioned the police. Could the police help him? He didn’t like the idea of going to the police, but what else was there to try?

He stuck his head in the door, cautiously, and called, “Excuse me.”

“Now, I
told
you—”

“I just want directions, that’s all. How do I get to the police station?”

“The police station?” That seemed to shock him. He blinked, and looked helpless for a second, and then he waved an arm vaguely and said, “Downtown. You go on downtown and ask again there.”

“Downtown is that way?”

“That’s right. You go on downtown.”

Cole retraced his steps, headed back in the direction of the bus depot again. When he came to the street with the stores on it, he stopped a man coming toward him and asked again where the police station was.

“Two blocks down, turn right. You can’t miss it.”

“Thank you.”

Cole walked the two blocks, turned right, and there it was in front of him, a blunt brick building with green globes flanking the entrance. He went inside, and put his suitcase down, and walked over to the high desk behind which the uniformed policeman sat.

The policeman looked at him. “Can I help you?”

Cole opened his mouth to tell him everything, ask him everything, but it couldn’t be done. He said, “Could you tell me where the bus depot is?”

“Bus depot?” The policeman pointed with a pencil, giving Cole the directions. Cole thanked him, and picked up his suitcase, and left.

There was no place for him to go, so he went to the bus depot. Walking toward it, trying to think, he struggled with the problem of his memory and this town. He remembered almost nothing in the world but this town, and that memory turned out to be totally false.

Was there no Edna at all? Were there no Malloys, was there no tannery? Had he dreamed it all?

But he couldn’t have, no, it was impossible. Edna was real, everything else was real.

He was in the wrong town, that’s all. Somehow or other he’d gotten to the wrong town.

Helen must have told him wrong, must have looked at the wrong list or some such thing.

He reached the depot as he came to his decision, and went inside to ask the old woman behind the counter where he could find the Western Union office. He’s send Helen a telegram, ask her to check again, she’d given him the wrong town to come to.

He stopped in front of the ticket window. “Excuse me.”

The old woman looked at him. “Ticket?”

“No, thank you. I’d like to know—”

“Say! Aren’t you that fellow—?”

He stopped, saw her frowning at him, said, “What?”

“That fellow the detective made leave town,” she said. “Back last fall.”

“Me?”

“You look like him,” she said doubtfully. “Actor, he was.”

“Yes!” Suddenly, there was light; this was the right town after all, for where he’d had the accident, but he hadn’t
stayed
here! He said, “That’s me, I’m an actor.”

“Well, if you’re the same fellow, you shouldn’t have come back here.”

“I shouldn’t? Why not?”

“Well, you know why not just as well as I do.” She was beginning to get indignant, apparently believing he was making fun of her.

He said, “No, wait. I had an accident, I don’t remember things too well. You say a detective made me leave town?”

“Well, of course he did! Told you if you stuck your face back around here he’d put you in jail. The two of you sat right over there, waited for the bus.”

“The bus. The bus to where?”

“The bus to where? How should
I
know? I give out a lot of tickets here, young man, you can’t expect me to remember every last one of them.”

“Well, you remember
me
.”

“Of course I remember you! First time I ever saw anybody get run out of town, naturally I remember you.”

“Then why,” Cole asked desperately, “don’t you remember where I went?”

“A ticket,” she said, “is a ticket.” Then her expression got more kindly. “I don’t know what sort of trouble you’re in, young fellow,” she said, “but I do believe that was a very mean detective. I think you
ought
to clear out of town again.”

“But where to? Where to?”

“I really don’t know, just so you keep out of
that
man’s way.”

“Would
he
know?” Cole asked. “He threw me out, maybe he knows where I went.”

“Why should he know? All he wanted was you out of town on the next bus, it didn’t matter to
him
where that bus went.”

Cole sagged against the counter. “Oh, God,” he said. “Please.”

“Are you going to faint, young fellow? You’d best sit down over there. Go on, you go over there and sit down.”

He went over to the bench along the wall and sat down. He and the old woman were alone in the depot. He sat there, the canvas bag between his feet, and stared at the opposite wall.

He was so close, so close. He’d been here, in this room, and he’d bought a ticket—somewhere. Some other town. With a tannery, and people named Malloy at 542 Charter Street, and a girl named Edna. But where? He didn’t even know which direction. If the detective had put him on the first bus through, it could have been in any direction at all. It could be fifty miles from here, or ten miles from here, or a hundred miles from here.

A tannery. People named Malloy at 542 Charter Street. A girl named Edna.

What was the name of that town?

He wasn’t going to find it. He knew that as he sat there, knew it even as he fought his brain for the name of the town. How many towns would there be in a hundred mile radius around Deerville? And how did he know he hadn’t traveled more than a hundred miles?

A name, that’s all he needed. The name of the town. Or the name of the tannery. If only the Malloys had had a less common name, that might help. No, it wouldn’t. How could it help, if he didn’t know where to look? A million people there might be, or more, in a hundred towns or more in the area where he might have gone from here.

Damn
this memory! If only it would give him this one name, just this one name, he’d never ask it for anything again, he could forget everything else, everything, just this one lousy stinking rotten name, one name!

The old woman came over and sat down on the bench beside him. “You’re making awful noises, young fellow,” she said. “You know that?”

He looked at her concerned face, and said, “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t know it. I won’t do it anymore.”

“Should I call you a doctor?

“No. I don’t need a doctor. Listen—do you know—is there someplace around here—some town—”

“Oh, easy! Easy!” She rested a hand on his trembling forearm. “Be calm,” she told him. “Just say it out calm and easy.”

He inhaled deeply; it hurt his chest. “A tannery,” he said. “I want a town with a tannery.”

“Well,” she said, “I suppose there’s lots of those in this part of the country.”

“Just one,” he said. “Near here, that buses go to.”

“There’s Hammunk,” she said. “That isn’t very far.”

“Hammunk.” He touched the name, prodded it, but it gave off no echo of memory. Still, that wasn’t any proof one way or the other. He said, “How much would a ticket cost me?”

“Three dollars and twenty-two cents.”

“Then it isn’t very far at all.” Meaning it
might
be the place, it
could
be the place. If he’d been thrown out of town, and didn’t have much money, he wouldn’t have gone very far on the bus. He said, “Are there any other stops before Hammunk?”

“No, that’s the first stop on that route.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll buy a ticket to Hammunk.” It was a long chance, he had no real belief this town called Hammunk would turn out to be the right place, but anything was better than staying here. Besides, what the woman had told him about the detective had frightened him; maybe he was the policeman with the square of shiny metal, and if so Cole had no desire to meet him.

The old woman sold him a ticket to Hammunk, and told him the next bus for that town would be coming through in an hour and twenty minutes. Cole went to the lunch counter next door for something to eat while waiting.

Hammunk. No, it wouldn’t be the right place. But he couldn’t stop himself from wishing.

There was only an hour on the bus, crossing flat white land, and then the road curved into a low scattered town covered by a black smudge of smoke. Along the way, Cole had continued to grate his mind with the foolish fantasy in which it would turn out that this town of Hammunk was the right place after all, the place to which the detective had sent him last time and in which he would find Edna and the life he had stupidly abandoned, but when the town began to appear in the bus windows Cole knew at last it was the wrong place.

The bus sighed to a stop in front of the storefront depot that was the one standard inevitable similarity among all these towns. Cole stepped down onto the snow-packed sidewalk, carrying his canvas bag, and the bus went off again. He’d been the only passenger to alight, and no one had boarded here.

What now? In his pockets he had nine dollars and eight cents, and a dead man’s identification, and a list of meaningless names, and half a pack of cigarettes, and half a pack of matches. He was in a place called Hammunk, a wrinkled town forming a little smudge on the flat table of the Plains States. In his canvas bag was some clothing. What now?

Next to the depot door was an iron newspaper rack, half filled with dogeared newspapers. In looking at it, Cole’s eye was caught by a secondary headline over on the left:

STAR DEATH SUICIDE?

“No,” he said. He said it aloud, and immediately was embarrassed and looked around, but he was alone on the sidewalk.

Someone had mentioned suicide, not too long ago. The doctor? Yes, the doctor, warning him against thinking of it for himself. But it would be silly for him to commit suicide, or think of it, particularly silly for him, sillier for him than for anyone else alive. Why should he kill himself? His problems could never be anything but temporary. Already, so much of that town had faded that he couldn’t even remember its name. In a month or two the name Malloy would have lost its meaning. Sooner or later he would even forget Edna. It probably wouldn’t even take a year. Maybe, now that there was no hope at all of ever finding her again, she would begin to fade right away. He’d forget her completely, name and face and place and person and meaning. Everything would be forgotten, everything smoothed out and silent and dark, in only a little while. What did he, of all people, what did he need with self-destruction?

He would continue to live. There was no particular reason to go on living, but on the other hand there was no particular reason to stop living, and of the two it was living that would take the least energy. So he was back to the question: What now?

A place to live, of course, that was number one. And a job. Some sort of life would gradually build up around him, inevitably, the way barnacles gradually build up on a keel. There was no point in going back to New York, no more point than there was in staying here in Hammunk. The two were the same, all in all; it just happened that Hammunk was where he was.

He went into the storefront bus depot, to ask about a hotel. There were always elderly people on duty in these places; in this instance, an old man, hunched over a copy of the newspaper Cole had seen outside. Cole asked him about an inexpensive hotel, and was told to try the Kent, three blocks down to the left. Cole thanked him and went outside again.

It was four-thirty in the afternoon, just beginning to get dark. There were practically no pedestrians on the sidewalks, and only an occasional Chevrolet or Plymouth passing with rattling chains on the street. Cole walked along, and in the middle of the second block he passed a building with green lights flanking the doorway, and police station in gold letters on the glass of the doors. Cole glanced at it, and went on a few paces, and then stopped, remembering again the square of shiny metal. Something to do with police.

Not that it meant anything. He no longer believed that learning about the square of shiny metal would help him in any way—it wouldn’t help him find Edna—but still it was nagging at him, unresolved, so after a moment of indecision he went back and climbed the police station steps and went inside.

There was a small room with a high counter across near the front, and a man in a gray uniform with blue chevrons on the sleeves sitting on a high stool behind the counter. He looked at Cole without interest and said, “Can I help you?”

“I don’t know. I want to ask you about something.” But then he didn’t know how to go on, and he stopped, trying to arrange his thoughts.

The policeman waited, with disinterested patience.

Cole said, “I’ve got a memory problem. I was in a, in an accident one time, and now my memory’s bad, and there’s something I can’t exactly remember, except it had something to do with the police.”

The policeman was watching him with flat eyes. He said, “What’s that?”

“A square of shiny metal. I guess it was about a foot square, and polished, so you could see yourself in it.”

“A square of shiny metal? You mean a badge?” He pointed at his own.

“No, a thin square of metal, flat. No design on it or anything.”

The policeman shook his head. “I wouldn’t know what that might be,” he said. “Not in connection with the police. Maybe something used in construction work somewhere, that’s what it sounds like. You ever in construction work?”

“No. I don’t think so.”