Night for Day

by Patrick Flanery

  When her thoughts returned to the screen, Kay could make no sense of what she was seeing. The story seemed to be hidden behind the action, all of it baffling. But perhaps that’s life, everything unexplained. There was no telling why Hank should disappear for days, turning up at night without warning or reason, then take off before dawn and only come home weeks later, sometimes with money, sometimes without, one month a farmer, the next one a salesman, sometimes alone, other times with a man she’d never met who would be his business partner for a week or ten days and then disappear leaving Hank to do whatever it was kept him away from her and the boy. She had seen thousands of miles adding up on the truck’s odometer, never any reason given, no excuse made, and she did not dare ask, nor about the matchbooks from Earl Carroll’s and Ciro’s and all those clubs in Los Angeles she was certain only criminals and movie stars frequented.

  Scott’s asking Miss Galt for another horse and though suspicious she gives him one as if she can sense he’s not a bad man. Off he goes with both horses but now he’s holding up the sheriff and the sheriff just moseys into the jail cell and doesn’t even put up a fight. What was this picture trying to say about criminals anyway? Why did they want a person to root for the outlaws? None of it made any sense, it was like good and bad had been turned inside out, as if one was meant to cheer for evil and hope for its triumph. It was almost enough to make Kay get up and walk out of the theater but then she noticed a man and woman sitting downstairs. They were both young, and the fellow had shiny blond hair and the girl curly dark hair, and the man’s arm was snaking around the girl’s shoulder and as Kay leaned forward over the balcony railing she could see how he kept reaching for the girl’s breast. She was shivering and pushing the man’s hand away and then he reached across himself with his other hand and was gripping her arms and she twisting in the dark with the light of the screen on her face and trying to watch the movie. The first time Kay and Hank had been to the pictures he assumed so much and she had been too scared to speak. That had been the beginning of being stuck with him, and stuck with the boy who reminded her of Randolph Scott with his strange skinny ways.

  When Kay turned back to the screen she thought she must have missed something again. Miss Galt’s demanding to know what Scott’s story is, and he admits he can’t say but needs her help and she refuses him. Then he says he’s not keeping the gold, that’s not why he’s working with Tanner, and he shows her something all wrapped up in a piece of cloth, which seems to change her mind.

  The blond fellow downstairs had both hands on the girl’s breasts and she was making a sound like a kitten crushed in a squeezebox. The sound punched Kay’s stomach and lungs together, made her hands shake. She was about to scream for help, but then an usher came along the aisle swinging a flashlight, and the blond man put his hands in his lap, acting as if nothing had happened. The girl could have stood up right then and run after the usher and Kay wanted to shout, tell her to do just that, but she and the girl both sat frozen, caught in the light from the screen. Mr. Galt is asking his daughter who Scott’s character is and Miss Galt says Scott’s good and that means not like you, daddy, and Galt slaps her and she says but Scott’s a federal marshal. So that it explained it at last. All this time Scott was the law, so when the other lawmen didn’t seem to be doing their jobs in the full spirit of the law, well, it was a relief is what.

  When George Macready slapped Dorothy Malone the slap looked real, like Macready really went for it, and enjoyed it too. Kay was certain she could recall every time Hank had slapped her. Each blow stood out in space and time, the events of a given day providing specific texture and force, bringing it into focus so she could pluck a still shot from the blur of impressions that made up most of her memories since the day she had been too afraid to stand up and walk out of the theater when Hank did what he wished. That was back in thirty-six, before they were even married. Fourteen years of images smudged together, an undercranked silent film that caught and froze in moments of pain or repulsion. She remembered the picture, Katharine Hepburn, something about a woman in England having a child out of wedlock and trying to go her own way, as if that was a model for others to follow.

  They’re back in the hills again. Strange how places appear on the screen and it feels as if you were really there, picking a trail through rocks on the other side of the Sierras, no straight line to get there from town, you’d have to drive south to Bakersfield, or maybe there was a lumber road through the mountains, but here were the peaks, burning on the back wall of a room in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley, though she must be facing south, and the mountains were actually east. She tried to work out the directions, herself looking south at a view of mountains to the east of her, an image taken from the east looking west, but the thoughts made her dizzy as if the theater were on a lazy Susan. Hours seemed to pass, as if time had opened up, expanding and contracting, present into past. Tanner and Scott have reached the entrance to a mine, hidden among the potato-shaped boulders of the Alabama Hills, and the bags of gold are in Tanner’s hands, coins running through his fingers. Kay knew what she would do if she found a bag of gold. Get the hell out of California for a start, and forget about Hank and the boy.

  At last, Scott confesses to Tanner he’s a federal agent, but warns him that Galt and his posse are trying to kill them and they better stick together. There’s a shootout with Galt’s men, and finally Miss Galt comes along and it’s five hours later, time still expanding and contracting. She finds her father all alone, shooting at Tanner and Scott, and Miss Galt creeps up behind Mr. Galt and shoots over his shoulder to get his attention, so she’s turned against family because this is a world where you can’t even trust your own blood, forget about what side of right and wrong they might be on. Then Tanner shoots Galt in the back, dead, and it’s horribly, horribly quiet.

  The blood on the screen was nothing like real blood, more orange than red. When someone was shot there would never be just a little ketchup-smatter and no hole in the skin, and if you were shot in the face like one of the men from the posse, wouldn’t you fall down dead right away instead of dropping so slowly? Seeing animals shot, horses and coyotes and deer, and the corpses afterward, there were always holes, but in the pictures when someone got shot, no holes, just the orange ketchup.

  With the shootout over, Scott and Tanner struggle like a man and a woman in bed when the woman doesn’t want it, dust and rocks raining around them so Tanner gets buried in the rubble and Scott has to pull him to safety as the mineshaft closes behind them, covering up the gold even though getting the gold seemed to be the whole point of the picture. Downstairs in the theater the blond man made a noise of disapproval, as if the gold should be everyone’s priority, regardless of life or death, and the curly dark girl shushed him and tried to stand but he grabbed her hand and pulled her back to the seat.

  At the end, Scott takes Tanner away, heading for justice, and Tanner’s not even handcuffed, he’s happy he’s about to be punished. Miss Galt is there, and the little slut doesn’t look at all unhappy her father is dead. She says to the sheriff that Scott will be coming back for his horse but it’s plain as anything she means he’ll be coming back for her, and then they can set up housekeeping, but with that cowpoke who’s sweet on Scott it doesn’t bear thinking about. Who was the ‘Nevadan’ anyway? Scott didn’t seem to be. Tanner? Mr. Galt? Miss Galt? And what about the gold? Was it still buried up in that mine in the Alabama Hills? So many questions. Like life, what seemed to be resolved was actually not, in fact nothing was settled except Tanner, the criminal, not even the worst of the criminals, having to pay, and all of the other ones dead.

  Bomba on Panther Island with Johnny Sheffield was showing next, but it was a picture for children really, and besides, there were groceries to buy, and time had flown so the boy was probably home already, alone in the apartment and getting up to goodness knows what.

  *

  The bag was so heavy Kay had to sit on the curb for a few minutes as a firetruck went
past. Not long before he died Papa sat to rest on the curb walking home from the store and Ruth came along in the car, stopped, and harangued him because of it being an embarrassment to the family him sitting there and frankly quite bad for business to let people think they belonged to the class who sat on the street, the filthiness of it. The siren grew fainter and then stopped like a bird choked mid-song and the strangled mechanical squawk made Kay spring to her feet.

  Turning down Pratt, what with the smoke rising from behind the garage apartment next to the Smiths’ house, she knew it must be the boy. Devil take his squinty head and the pouting lip and the way he’d yes ma’am and no ma’am but go on doing just what you’d told him he’d not to. He was standing in the alley by the empty lot, dead grass still half on fire and two firefighters pointing a hose and another of them talking to the boy and his friends, other boys she didn’t recognize, but not the Japanese one, he was nowhere around. Probably ran at the first sign of trouble. Not that she’d do different. The scene made her want to turn and walk back in the other direction and spend the rest of the afternoon at the soda fountain until she could go to the State Theater and watch Betty Hutton and Victor Mature in Red, Hot, and Blue. But the fireman had seen her and the boy was pointing at her and she knew that turning around and walking away was impossible because of the authorities knowing she was responsible, in the end, as she was the mother and Hank being such a ne’er-do-well.

  What’s he done she said as she approached the men.

  Playing with match guns, said the firefighter. Just about burned the whole block down if Mrs. Smith hadn’t called it in.

  The fireman spoke in a way that told her he was from back east. If not Oklahoma then Texas or Missouri.

  Kay put the bag on the ground and clapped her hand across the boy’s face so his head spun like it wasn’t attached to the rest of him and all the other children, that firefighter, too, sprang back where they stood and the whole lot fell silent, just dogs barking some streets away and the sound of a car horn and a baby crying and a radio across the alley with the Andrews Sisters moaning ‘I Can Dream Can’t I?’. Lord, could they ever. The boy glared like he would kill her and damn him if he didn’t turn that head slowly, lifting his chin, eyes always on her through the full arc of the turn, and present the other cheek.

  You get upstairs now, she said, before I call the police to take you away, and the boy said You wouldn’t call them, and a little girl snickered and then she slapped him again, slapped that other cheek harder than the first and this time drew blood where her fingernails caught his skin and she said You get inside before I blind you, and then the boy ran, skirting the smoldering grass and coughing through the smoke. Kay watched as he slowed and spoke to Mrs. Smith who was standing in her yard shaking her head and then he was up the stairs and inside, the door slamming behind him. They would get evicted for this and where to next? Motor Lodge this time. She had seen that in their future, praying at night, at the foot of the couch while the boy pretended to sleep, the image coming to her when her eyes closed and she wondered which bar or hotel room or flophouse Hank might be holed up in. Devil take him. And the boy.

  What’s a match gun? she asked the firefighter, I don’t let him play with guns, and the man pulled from his pocket a wooden clothespin that had been taken apart and glued together with the pieces of wood back to back and a chamber whittled out of the center and the spring affixed like a trigger so a match pushed inside cocked the spring and all the boy had to do was trip it.

  They light the match and it flies thirty feet in a fair breeze, said the firefighter. Know any of these others? He nodded at the group of boys and the lone girl, the dirty loose thing, all of them squinting in the evening light.

  She shook her head. White trash, all of them, was what she thought but did not say. She picked up the bag of groceries from the ground and followed the path the boy had taken round the lot until she was standing at the fence between the garage and the Smiths’ house and Mrs. Smith standing on her back porch coughed as if to say, I expect you’ll explain this before you go inside the apartment I own on property I own next to a lot I own that your boy has seen fit to burn.

  I’m sorry, Kay said. For what he did. I’ll get him now, to apologize.

  He already did. On his way inside.

  Oh. Well, I’ll make him clean it up.

  Just a vacant lot. Nothing to clean up. Point is that fire could have spread and burnt down my garage and your apartment and my house and the houses of all the other folks on this block and then where would we be, Mrs. Knowlton?

  Kay did not know what to say but, Yes, I see, it won’t happen again.

  And where were you, I’d like to know? Mrs. Smith said, crossing her arms over her bosom and looking down through the horn-rimmed spectacles she wore when she did her crossword puzzles in the shade with a glass full of ice and mint leaves and Kay did not like to think what else.

  I had to go to the market.

  Been gone an awful long while, I should think, said Mrs. Smith, just to buy groceries.

  Yes, Mrs. Smith. I had errands. Thank you.

  You are lucky I don’t phone the police. That boy needs looking after. He needs a man about the house.

  His father – he’s a traveling salesman, you know.

  Phone book says he’s a rancher.

  He lost the lease on the ranch.

  And now you say he’s a salesman.

  That’s to say – yes, I think so, Mrs. Smith.

  Don’t you know?

  My husband’s business is his business.

  A husband’s business is his wife’s business first and last, in my experience, said Mrs. Smith. You would do well to take an interest or his business might just be the end of you, Mrs. Knowlton.

  At that Mrs. Smith turned and picked up her paper from the porch swing and went inside letting the screen door slam behind her and Kay felt the force of the sound shoot through her so she had to clutch the bag of groceries tighter in her arms or else it would have fallen to the ground.

  The boy was on the couch reading a comic book and did not move when the door opened and slammed shut again. Where’d you get that, she asked, and he said nothing so she tried to rip the comic from his hands once she’d put the groceries on the kitchen table but he held tight and tugged it away from her so that some of the pages ripped and when that happened he was on his feet and his face red and him blazing like this was the moment he was finally going to kill her.

  Where’s my money? he shouted, and she said What’s ill-gotten is not yours to keep and he said It was not ill-gotten it was earned and she said That is a very likely story. He screamed It’s true! and his voice was so loud her ears began to ring. That was my money! he screamed, What did you do with it? It is someplace safe, she said, and that is all we will say about it until your father gets home and then you will explain to him how you came to have it.

  The boy ran to the bathroom and slammed the door and since there was no lock on that either she went after him, pushed it open and cornered him between the door and the sink.

  When your father gets home you will explain to him how you came to have every last cent of that money and you will give back anything you stole or took that was not yours.

  I didn’t steal! he shouted, pushing his face towards her so that the place where her fingernails had caught his cheek bracketed her vision.

  You are a liar! she said, grabbing the bar of soap with one hand and with the other pulling the hair at the back of his head and using the soap to lever open his mouth, pushing it between his teeth. When the jaw would not open she took her free hand and pinched either side of the joint and the boy moaned and then she got the soap in and pushed it deeper until he was gagging and the suds came from his mouth like the chops of a rabid cat. In the mirror – that other Kay on the other side with another boy, those other parts of themselves in that other unreachable place – she saw herself drop her hands to her side and the boy spitting the soap into the sink and leaning over t
o heave and then he turned on the water and started drinking from the tap. She hit the back of his head and heard his teeth crack against the faucet and he was screaming now and there was blood running into the water and rushing down the drain.

  One way or another he would have to learn.

  May 30, 1950

  9

  The clock in the middle of the third-floor corridor of the Executive Building struck two as I stepped from the elevator and its chime was still echoing by the time I arrived at the reception area of Leo Krug’s office suite. Krug’s private secretary, Anita Tinges, frowned as I approached her desk.

  You were supposed to be here for lunch, Mr. Frank. Expected an hour ago. Appointment confirmed yesterday by phone. And yes, there will be a record of the call.

  Because Anita knew everything about everyone many of us believed Krug had run a master line through her desk that allowed access to any call coming through the studio switchboard. Comments like this suggested we were not mistaken. When I first began working at the studio John warned me never to assume there was any such thing as a private phone conversation on the lot. If Anita said there was a record, I had to assume she was telling the truth.

  But an hour ago Lucille told me Mr. Krug could only see me at two.

  Anita removed her tortoiseshell glasses. Now, Mr. Frank, did Lucille prevent you from coming upstairs?

  Of course not.

  And did Lucille prevent you from speaking directly to me?

  No, although I didn’t—

  And tell me, Mr. Frank, does Lucille keep Mr. Krug’s diary?