Wild Pitch

by A. B. Guthrie Jr.

  Still He comforts mourning hearts,

  Life and joy and peace imparts.

  She was to sing that couplet, off and on, until we pulled up for the night. When pauses came, Mrs. Conner would say, “Yes, dear. That’s sweet, dear.”

  After a couple of hours the sun went into business. It invaded the car like a torch, piercing the metal top, blowing in through the air vents and then lying still inside our enclosure like the spent breath of fever. To open a window was to receive a blast.

  I thought about the miles to Central State Hospital, which was called central because it was so far off center. My mind went to Geet Hawthorne, standing slim, cool and golden in her shaded retreat. Were her eyes, was her face, on low beam or high? And then—such are the wide swings of thought—I figured I’d better watch for a gasoline station. Old people had bladder trouble, and, come to think of it, I could use a short leak myself. But when I slowed at sight of a wayside truck stop, Mrs. Jenqins said, “You’re poking, Jase. I’ll never get back.” So I drove on, knowing I could hold it as long as the next man and rating Mrs. Jenkins as a good traveler.

  An hour later I did stop, at a station in a burning burg called Titus. Mrs. Conner saw her charge to the ladies’ room. After I had relieved myself, I bought three cans of pop, courtesy of the sheriff’s office, and waited for my passengers. It wasn’t much help, in that heat, to remind myself that women always took an awful time in the powder room. Was it because they didn’t have flexible spouts?

  Mrs. Jenkins didn’t look refreshed when she and Mrs. Conner came out. She looked worn and removed, as if the present had been washed out of her mind and only the dim shores of remembrance remained.

  I opened the pop cans and passed them around and got the car under way. To my surprise Mrs. Conner reached into her oversized bag and lifted out sandwiches. They were fresh and well-flavored, made of homebaked bread, and it struck me that old Jimmy had a pretty good thing in his wife.

  After two hundred miles Mrs. Conner said, “I think we’ve had enough for today, Jase. Don’t you, Mrs. Jenkins?” She had to repeat her question.

  Mrs. Jenkins answered, “Oh. What’s that? Do we get out? Where’s my purse?”

  “It’s in your hand, Mrs. Jenkins.”

  Mrs. Jenkins looked at her hand to make sure, said, “Oh,” and asked, “What are we doing here?”

  “Now don’t you worry.”

  We were on the edge of Munroe, a fair-sized town, and here was a motel and a sign that read EATS. I pulled up and made arrangements for the night.

  Mrs. Conner told me, “I think Mrs. Jenkins ought to rest for a while. Then we’ll have supper.”

  “This isn’t home,” Mrs. Jenkins said as her faded eyes looked around. “Where are we? Oh, yes”—her gaze had come to her hand—“I’ve found my purse.”

  Mrs. Conner told her again not to worry.

  I carried a couple of bags to their double room, saw the ladies inside and went back into the lobby, wondering how to pass the time. That question was solved for me. On TV was a baseball game, Giants versus Dodgers with Perry and Osteen pitching. I wished I had brought my baseball along.

  The ladies showed up along about half-past five, and we went into the cafe. The special was pot roast, which was special because the menu said so. I washed it down with a chocolate shake, thinking good riddance. Before we started eating, Mrs. Jenkins fixed her misty eyes on me and said, “Ask the blessing.”

  I felt like a fool, there among strangers, but I muttered the bobtailed grace that my father used when under pressure.

  Through with the meal, the ladies went at once to their room. I did, too, after tarrying long enough to buy a two-day-old Spokane paper for the sports news.

  Just before we parted, Mrs. Conner had asked, “What time in the morning, Jase?”

  “Six o’clock, I’d say. A hundred miles to go. With a good start we can make the return run tomorrow.”

  Mrs. Jenkins said, “Now. Please. I want to go back. You see—”

  “You need a good night’s rest,” Mrs. Conner told her. “Don’t you worry, dear.”

  They left me then, the early start being agreed on.

  We arrived at the hospital about 9:30 the next morning. The drive was made without incident or much conversation except that Mrs. Jenkins had turned over the record, which nevertheless stuck again. She kept singing, sometimes low, sometimes high-quavering,

  God will take care of you,

  O’er all the way,

  Through every day.

  I hoped to God He would though He hadn’t.

  The hospital consisted of a bunch of buildings, all old, some trees and ragged lawns on which a few people were lazing. They were the ones, I supposed, who had the run of the grounds because they didn’t know where else to run.

  I pulled up in front of a building marked ADMISSIONS and let the ladies out. I took Mrs. Jenkins’ bags to a desk and headed for the door we had come in, not wanting to witness this final act of commitment, not with Mrs. Jenkins looking so old and so lost. Even her voice had failed her. She just stood, someone waiting, someone not waiting, for nothing.

  On the wall near the entrance was posted a roster of the hospital’s medical men. M.D.’s followed the names that I noticed, but what took my attention was an item at the bottom of the list that read:

  ULYSSES PIERPONT, M.D.

  Consultant in Psychiatry

  A man stood outside the door, looking official while his eyes roamed over the privileged prisoners. I took him to be a guard and asked, just to make talk, “Doctor Pierpont here today?”

  “Once a week. He flies in, usually on Wednesday,” he answered, sizing me up to see whether I was a candidate for his jurisdiction. “You a friend of his?”

  “I know him.”

  “A good man,” he went on, having passed on my sanity. Then he added, as if glad to have someone of sound mind to talk to, “These other doctors, they’re high muckymucks, too high for the likes of us poor personnel unless we got a chugged gut, but Doctor Pierpont now, don’t think he’s not all business but he’s always got a friendly howdy for us and more’n that if the looney load ain’t too heavy. He’s a brain man, you know, what some call a head-shrinker or a skull-tinker. No matter of that, by God, he’s good. More, like I say, not like his brother snot noses, he’s always friendly to us. Treats us like humans.”

  “I would think so.”

  “Which makes him not too goddam popular with what you would call his colleagues. But he don’t care. I guess the sons of bitches don’t rate too high with him.”

  He stepped away. “That’s my opinion. Take it or leave it. Mum it or gab it. So long. Time for my coffee break.”

  I moseyed around after he left, trying to fight shy of the inmates, but perhaps five minutes later a man in a full suit, plus tie, tugged at my arm. He might have been one of the doctors. “Good morning,” I said.

  He answered, “Good morning,” and his eyes studied me. Then, abruptly, he whipped out and open the right side of his suit coat and announced, “Hart, Schaffner and Marx.”

  “I see,” I said and beat it away from him. I could talk to old people in a way but to nuts, no way. I made for ADMISSIONS and the comfort of sanity mixed with senility.

  Mrs. Conner was about to take leave of her charge. “Now, Mrs. Jenkins,” she was saying, “here’s your purse, and there are your bags, and you’ll be all right. I have to leave you for a while.”

  “I have to be back before dark.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  A woman in whites stood near them, ready to take Mrs. Jenkins away, into the dark she had to avoid before it came on.

  The lady in whites said, with professional, pin-prick sincerity, “You’ll be very happy here, Mrs. Jenkins. We’re so happy to have you.”

  Mrs. Jenkins turned her gentle, beseeching, confused gaze on me. “Please tell Mr. Jenkins I’ve been delayed.”

  I managed to answer, “Sure, Mrs. Jenkins,” and in weak inspiration added,
“And I’ll feed and water your chickens.”

  Mrs. Conner said, “Here’s your purse.”

  I drove safely enough, going home, but still wheeled. I wanted to see the mountains, to get out of this flatland that dipped just for a couple of drying-up streams and then leveled off into forever. I wanted to put distance between Mrs. Jenkins and me. And in my mind all along had been the murders which, damn it, might have been solved, might be solved any minute, with me unaware and unrecognized. That was what death did to you: it let things go on without your knowledge, assistance or credit. Mrs. Conner, beside me, didn’t make talk.

  We were five or six miles short of that scorched town of Titus, and then it happened.

  I was driving at about 70 mph, plenty fast for the chuck-holed, single-lane road, when a car as long as a Detroit dream squeezed by me, blatting, and cut in too soon after overhauling the Chev. Braking, I saw my front fender crumple. The Detroit dream, rubber screeching, wavered and swerved to the right toward the ditch. I hit its right fender with my right front. It slewed around, reversed in direction, and hung on the road’s shoulder. At a standstill, looking back, I saw it tottering. Then, like a half-wakened horse that decides it can snooze some more, it turned on its side in the borrow pit.

  It did have, if not a driver, someone who had been at the wheel. He got a free door cocked open, climbed up and out and, feet scratching for footholds, mounted the shoulder. He looked big.

  After one shout Mrs. Conner had gone quiet. I opened my door, slid out and stepped toward the man. He was marching on me.

  “By God,” he said and kept marching. He was big all right, and he had a face like an open-faced pie, slightly scorched. Close up, he spoke again, his breath smelling like a crowded saloon. “Fine fix you got me in, punk.”

  Blood was in my head, and, for an answer, I belted him in the belly. The wind went out of him, and he bent over. Bent over, he limped to the side of the road and threw up.

  He came back, unbent, said, “Good punch, kid,” and caught my chin with a lick so sharp I went down. I scrambled up, still full of fight, but he took a backward step and stayed me with a lifted hand, open palm toward me. “That makes us even,” he said. “Now we can negotiate.”

  “Negotiate, hell!”

  From behind me Mrs. Conner said, “I’m a witness. Remember that. A witness to drunken driving.”

  “Now. Now. Easy,” the man answered. “I’m not drunk.”

  He didn’t look it or act it, aside from that crazy driving, though his breath still came out of a bottle.

  His eyes lifted from mine and fixed themselves on something behind me. I didn’t fall for that old trick. “Kid,” he said, “trust me, will you? My fault and all, I own up. Leave it to me, please.”

  I turned to look then. A state-patrol car had parked behind us, and a patrolman was striding our way.

  “Officer,” the big man said, “I’m in the wrong, I admit. I’m the offender.”

  The patrolman’s eyes examined the wreckage and returned to the big man. “Let me see your driver’s license.” The big man fumbled out a fat wallet, opened it and held it out at arm’s length, obviously so the patrolman wouldn’t get a sniff of his breath.

  To me the patrolman said, “Yours.”

  Mrs. Conner edged in and interrupted. “It’s a wonder you don’t ask if anyone’s hurt.”

  The patrolman’s gaze was calm. “Is there? Doesn’t appear so.”

  “No,” Mrs. Conner answered, “but there would have been if it wasn’t for this boy here, the way he drove when that fool—”

  “I’ve said I’m guilty, ma’am. I say it to all of you. No hard feelings, I hope. You see, officer, I bought this Cadillac just yesterday, and I haven’t got used to its length. After passing this young man, I cut in too quick, not realizing how long was my tail. Stupid but understandable.”

  The patrolman was examining my credentials. “Sheriff Charleston,” he said. “Give him hello from Tom Stevenson.”

  I said I would.

  “Reckless driving,” the patrolman told the big man, “and not the minimum bond, not with so much property damage. It’s a county car to boot.”

  “I’ll pay, of course.” The fat wallet made a wave.

  The patrolman and I stepped out for a look at the Chev. The bumper had a leer to it, and both fenders were bashed in, but that seemed the extent of the damage.

  “Try the starter,” the law said.

  I did. The car started.

  Quietly the patrolman advised me, “We’ll make it enough. Two hundred dollars.”

  The big man didn’t object when the patrolman named the sum. He seemed glad. “I’ll pay it to this young fellow right now,” he answered, and two hundred dollars in bills came to my hand.

  “Does that suit you?” the patrolman asked me.

  “I guess so.”

  “I’ll make the bond the minimum then. Twenty-five dollars.”

  The big man seemed happy to pay that, too.

  “If you wish to appear in court—” the patrolman began.

  “Nevermind. Nevermind. I won’t.”

  “I can have a wrecker sent out,” the patrolman said as he handed the big man his receipt. “Titus is just down the line.”

  “My car will run, I think, once I get the fenders pulled up off the tires,” I said.

  All of us, except Mrs. Conner, attended to that chore. The big man, on account of his breath, was careful not to heave side by side with the law.

  The big man gave us a smile then, a good smile, a smile that would have charmed a dyspeptic. “If this young man will just give me a ride into Titus, I can attend to the wrecker. It appears he’s not crowded.”

  The patrolman asked me, “What about it? It happens to be convenient to me.”

  “I guess so.”

  While the patrolman and I watched, the big man went confidently to his overturned car, gophered into it, and came out with a bag and a briefcase. I opened the trunk for them.

  The patrolman tucked his book under his arm, strode to the state car and drove around us. As he passed, he slowed to tell the big man, “No funny business.”

  There wouldn’t be any anyhow, I felt sure, but all the same it reassured me, when the big man ushered Mrs. Conner into the back seat, to see that she had a fist-sized rock in her hand. He got in with me, smiling.

  “Do I get it,” he said as we started to roll, “that you have something to do with the law?”

  “Something.”

  “Good, but there’s no future in it. I always say get into sales.”

  I thought of Dippy Ferguson and answered, “Some don’t do so hot.”

  “Chicken-coop stuff. Door to door. Big deals I’m talking about. I’ve made fortunes for many a man and haven’t done so bad for myself.” Easy money seemed to drip from his mouth. “But that’s not here or there. Where you bound, son?” I had graduated from punk.

  “Midbury.”

  “Now that’s a coincidence. Same here. Don’t want to put you out, but how about taking me all the way?”

  Because we had entered Titus and a garage just ahead advertised a wrecking service, I didn’t ask, not then, what was his hurry. I just answered, “I guess so.”

  The big man went into the garage and talked for a couple of minutes. Mrs. Conner was cradling her rock, ready to reduce him to a patient. He came out and said, “All set,” and resumed the seat beside me. “These hick nut-and-bolt boys know more than the big-time Jesse Jameses.”

  On the road again I did ask him, “What’s your hurry?”

  “Hurry,” he said. “Yep. Hurry. That was the cause of our accident.”

  “You were damn slow to admit it.”

  He laughed what seemed an honest laugh. “My boy, a position, clearly stated and boldly maintained—that’s the secret of success in law, politics, salesmanship and whatever.”

  “It wasn’t working so well with me.”

  “Ah, but it might have. The patrolman messed me up.” He chuckled
, remembering. “I’m insured to the limit.”

  “You haven’t told me yet what was your hurry and still is.”

  “Long story,” he answered, breathing a boozy sigh. “You happen to know one Ben Day?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “So I heard yesterday. My name’s Michael, Mike for short, Day. He’s my brother.”

  “Sorry.”

  “My brother, and he owes me money to boot. I set him up in business, made the down payment on that ranch of his.”

  “Him?”

  “Age of innocence,” he answered as if his innocence was long gone. “Eight years ago, and, God rest his deadbeat soul, never a payment made and the note not renewed.”

  “Too late now, so what’s the hurry?”

  He was silent for a minute, perhaps debating how much to tell. “Big mix-up,” he answered then. “That damn note—I got it in my pocket—the statute of limitations ran out the very day he got croaked. You get the picture?”

  “Part of it, anyhow.”

  “I’m putting in my claim quick. If only my damn brother had signed a renewal!”

  “Maybe his will takes care of that.”

  “Will! Ben make a will? Nuts. There’ll be an administrator appointed by court.”

  “That would be his wife, his widow, wouldn’t it?”

  “Ha,” he said. “Sweet Marcy Belle.” He leaned over and whispered in my ear, his breath still pretty rank, “She couldn’t read ‘shit’ if it was spelled out in cow dabs.”

  “So?”

  “That’s it. So?”

  He fell silent then, as if for his part the subject was ended. That suited me.

  I wheeled the quiet miles, thinking of one thing and another, including crumpled fenders, a brother interested in money to the exclusion of murder and my report to the sheriff. Foxy was the name for the Days, foxy tough for the dead one, plain foxy for Mike. I thought about Mrs. Jenkins, murder, the Hawthornes, the ball game I’d missed and Mrs. Jenkins’ chickens.

  The sun had started its slant to the west, and the heat of it burned in the car. I blinked against the shine, driving steady except for a sandwich-and-drink stop. I could begin to see the mountains, shapes of blue mist straight ahead. We would be home, I figured, somewhere around nine o’clock.