Tears Are for Angels (10 page)

    "You were hungry," she said, when I had finished.

    "You did all right, too."

    "I love waffles. Listen, I'll make you a bargain."

    "About what?"

    "About Stewart. I think you're lying. I've seen a lot of worse lies told better. But I'll make you a bargain, if you really mean that about killing him."

    "Shoot."

    "Hold off one day. Just till tonight."

    "So you can get into town and hunt up the Sheriff and try to get me put away?"

    "That's my part of the bargain. I'll hold off a day, too."

    "What good will it do?"

    "I might get to believing you."

    "And you might not call the cops at all?"

    "I might not."

    I thought it over, but I couldn't find her angle. It can't do any harm, I thought.

    "Done," I said.

    We got up to go then. She had to pay and the boy looked us over again. He couldn't get over the beard and the eye. He gave her the change and she started to turn away and then stopped.

    "You got a girl, sonny?"

    He blinked. "Yeah… yes'm. I got a girl."

    "You grow a beard," she said. "A black one, down to here. Then you sock her one in the eye and then both of you go look in a mirror. Maybe you'll get enough of it then." Then she tossed him a dime.

    He didn't like that. But he didn't know anything to do about it and we went on out to her car.

    "I can walk back," I said.

    She didn't put up any argument, just got in and started the engine.

    "How will I know?"

    "I'll be out sometime tonight."

    She let in the clutch and the car pulled away and went on down the highway toward town.

    You damn fool, I thought. You damn fool. You're going to have cops on your neck in an hour. You don't even know she has any letters, or that she'll keep the bargain, or even why she made it. You damn fool.

    I could go on into town now and do it. I wouldn't even need the rifle. I could do it today.

    I turned around and started walking back to the shack again. I walked fast and I went right on by the farmhouse where I got my liquor, not even looking at it.

    

    

    It was dark when she came back. By then, I knew she had kept the bargain. But I didn't know whether she would come back or not, because if she had decided not to believe me. then she wouldn't have to come. She could just wait until tomorrow and go on to them, knowing that I would already be on my way into town.

    Then the lights came over the dune, and pretty soon the old car, the two beams converged on me there in the door of the shack. The car came closer, then stopped, and the lights died away. She got out and came across the sand toward me.

    She had on a skirt now, falling straight from her hips, and a white blouse, with a collar standing up high against her neck, and she carried a pocketbook beneath her arm and she might have been any girl, anywhere, paying a social call, instead of the girl she was coming to where she was.

    "Well, Miss Cummings," I said, and waited for her to notice.

    "Let's go in," she said shortly, and she brushed by me and on into the lamplit shack and I followed and again I waited for her to notice. But she sat down in the rough chair and crossed her legs and took a packet of letters out of her bag. She held them in one hand and tapped them into the palm of the other and she didn't have to tell me what they were.

    I went over and sat down on the bunk.

    "So you decided to come back?"

    "Yes!"

    "That means you believe me."

    Her eyes, turning to mine, were almost blank, and her face wore a slight frown. Almost idly, as if she were thinking of something else, she said, "I saw him. I don't think Lucy would have given him a tumble."

    I didn't say anything.

    She went on tap-tap-tapping the letters in her hand, not looking at me, and I lay back on the bunk and put my hand behind my head. It was her play now and I had all night. I had all the time in the world.

    She might at least have noticed, I thought. Not that I did it for her. But she could say something about it.

    Maybe then, while I was thinking that, she noticed.

    "You shaved," she said.

    I nodded.

    "And washed."

    "All over, no less. Don't drink out of the spring for a day or two. I sat in it."

    "Your face is too lean and you're too thin. Taller than I would have thought. But I can see why Lucy went for you. I couldn't from the pictures."

    "Cut it out. There weren't any pictures."

    "I mean the ones she sent me. In these." She looked at the letters. "All right. I believe you."

    I sat up and looked at her.

    "Because of two things. When I told you Lucy was afraid you'd find out something she didn't want you to know, you were genuinely surprised. And then in that cafe. You meant what you said about killing him. I knew it then. I could feel it. That's why I believe you."

    "I still mean it."

    "And you're going to do it?"

    "Tomorrow."

    "And you're going to the chair for it."

    "Probably."

    "And you say you're not carrying a torch for her."

    I swung my legs off the bed.

    "Maybe I am," I said. "God, how would I know? I gave her even thing. I loved that woman. I would have moved to Alaska if that's where she wanted to go. It was only when she was dead that I knew how she must have hated that farm. But she could have told me. We could have fixed it up. She didn't have to- Not with Stewart. God, how would I know?"

    "So it's not the torch."

    "It's not the torch. If there is one."

    "It's because you're a man and your pride's hurt, isn't it?"

    "Yes," I said. "It's that. And it's because he shouldn't have done it, because nobody should do that to anybody. And it's because of something else, too. It's because Lucy's dead on account of him."

    "Yes. It's that, too. That's what it is with me."

    I didn't get it at first, because it was so deadpan. I thought she was speaking in general terms and I said:

    "When did you know her?"

    "In New York. Before you married her."

    "You must have been close to her, the way you talk."

    "I know this: I know there was some reason why she -went to bed with him. I know she loved you more than anything in the world. I don't know what it was. But something made her do it. Something we don't know about."

    "It was the farm," I said. "She hated living there. That must have been it. She must have got to hating me too."

    She got up and walked to the door and looked out.

    "You poor fool," she said. "You never even knew her. You didn't know a thing about her." She turned around and leaned back against the doorjamb and looked at me. I could see the faint purple of her eye under the powder. I was waiting for her to tell me and beginning to pull in my belly against the hurt of it.

    

    

    "She was just a kid waitress in a little joint where a bunch of us used to eat. Just a painted little blonde with big eyes and no more sense than a rabbit.

    "But there was something about her, something the other painted little rabbits didn't have. Maybe it was the way she talked, not harsh and full of Bronx. Maybe the way she smiled all over her face, sort of eager to please, like a puppy clog.

    "Anyway, I liked her. I was working in a show then- that was just a line I was giving you about writing-and I was doing O.K. and I always managed a bigger tip than usual for her. I could figure she needed it, working in a place like that.

    "So one day I went in at the regular time and the kid wasn't there. I keep calling her a kid. I guess actually she wasn't but maybe a year or two younger than I was." Jean's face grew suddenly harsh. "But I was a lot older than she was in other ways. Even then.

    "I didn't think much about it, but when for three days I didn't see her, I went to the manager and asked him what happened to the little blonde, the one they called Lucy."

    "He looked at me sort of sour. 'I had to give her the boot.' he said. 'She got herself in trouble.' "

    I didn't say anything. I just sat and listened to her. Each one of the words was a blow from a hammer, each one hit me separately, but I kept on pulling in my belly and sucking at the air. I didn't say anything or even move. She was still leaning against the doorjamb, her hands behind her, when she began to speak again.

    "I don't know. It happens to thousands of decent kids every year. It wasn't anything to blow my stack over. But I don't know. It got to me somehow, thinking about that eager, what-comes-next little face. Anyway, he gave me her name and address and I went around to the dump where she lived.

    "It was a furnished room on about the fourth or fifth floor of an old house in a slum neighborhood. Like the one I grew up in. I felt right at home going up all those stairs. I think I could have gone up them blindfolded.

    "I found the right door and knocked on it, but there wasn't any answer. I stood there, all decked out in a new outfit I was wearing for the first time, clean and smart and pretty, and looked around me at that dark hall and smelled the fried meat and the old dust and the unwashed people, and I thought, This is what you got away from, sister. This is what you worked and lied and cheated and sweated to get away from. You better clear out of here now before you get the smell of it all over you again and never get it off.

    "But I knocked again. There wasn't any answer this time, either. So I opened the door and walked in. She hadn't even locked it.

    "She was crouched in the window, with her back to me. I don't think she even heard the knocking or the door opening or me coming in. She just crouched there on the sill, like a bag of old clothes stuffed into the window to keep the rain out.

    "Something told me not to scream or speak or do anything to frighten her. I stepped out of my shoes and tiptoed across the room. I noticed that the bed was made up and everything was very neat. It was funny, almost, the room so neat and clean and her there in the window like that.

    "I was right up behind her then and I reached out and put both my arms around her waist and I sort of whispered, Don't be afraid. Just come in here and tell me about it, now.

    "I thought she'd try to jump then, when I got my arms around her, and I was all braced to hang on and stop her if she put up a battle. But there wasn't any battle. There wasn't anything. She didn't even move. She just kept on crouching there as stiff as a statue. Well, I started pulling at her and still she didn't fight or anything, and pretty soon I got her out of the window and over on the bed.

    "She was in some kind of shock, I guess. She just lay there, hardly even breathing. There was a glass of water by the bed. I wet my handkerchief and kept bathing her face, talking easy and gentle to her. Pretty soon she began to come around.

    "Her eyes got real scared, her face screwed all up. and then she began to cry. I've seen the time I needed to cry myself, so I just sat there and let her get it all out of her. It was pretty terrible.

    "I sat there and pretty soon the crying started to the down. Then it stopped and she turned her head and looked at me. Her eyes were wide and scared and sort of unbelieving.

    " 'The fence,' she whispered. 'The fence.'

    "I didn't get it at first. But she kept whispering it, over and over, like it was something she had to make me understand. And finally I understood. I got up and went to the window and leaned out and there it was. The fence, four stories below. It was one of those old fences with iron palings, sharp and pointed, and it was right under her window.

    "There was a piece of paper fluttering on top of it but not blowing away. Right through the middle of it was one of those palings, sharp and black and waiting, and all the rest of the fence there too, waiting, like a row of teeth sharpened with a file.

    "I heard her whisper behind me, 'I was going to jump. And then the fence was there looking at me. I couldn't move all of a sudden. I couldn't even think. I could just see those spikes, waiting for me. And I couldn't move.'

    " 'Don't talk about it,' I said. 'It's all right now.'

    "Well, that was a long time ago, and she's dead now. But maybe you understand why, that day in Belleview, when I read about her committing suicide in the papers, I knew it wasn't so. Why, if there was a bullet hole in her head, I knew somebody else had put it there.

    "Because bullets are spikes, too. Aren't they, Harry?"

    She still had not moved away from the door. I felt my fingernails biting into my palms.

    "Yes," I said. "Bullets are spikes, too."

    "You're beginning to see, aren't you? Beginning to see how much there was about her you never even dreamed of."

    "Go on," I said. "I want to hear it all."

    "There's not much more. I took her in with me and took care of her. Her folks were dead and she'd come to New York to get on the stage. They all come to get on the stage."

    "Like you?"

    "No. I grew up there. But I guess I wanted the stage as bad as she did. As they all do."

    "I thought she was born there, too."

    "I know. We gave her a new background. We gave her a second start-not just another effort, but a whole new life. We planned it together during those months we waited for the baby. I figured it was too late for me-I'd seen too much, done too much to start over. But with her -well, the trouble she was in was just one of those things. She got caught the first time. With some zoot-suit Broadway cowboy. Because he told her he could get her a spot in a night club. She never even saw him again to tell him he was a papa. And it was the first time for her."