by Devon, Gary;
They left the hotel at seven-thirty, riding down in the elevator and walking out across the expansive lobby. Carrying the briefcase, Leona held Mamie’s hand and walked slowly so she could keep up. A different clerk was behind the desk now, and though there was no way he could have realized she had registered falsely, Leona avoided him. She went directly to the bellman, presented her room key, and asked for her car and for her bags to be brought down. He spoke into his archaic intercom.
She felt hemmed in by the gloom of the lobby. Picking Mamie up, she went through the revolving doors to wait for her car under the hotel canopy. The morning air was cool, mild but blustery, the sky overcast with slabs of clouds. While they waited, it began to snow.
When the attendant delivered her car, she noticed that he looked at her strangely. He opened the trunk for the bellboy who was bringing her suitcases and hurried back to the driver’s door as she approached it. She thought for a moment he was waiting for his tip, but then she saw what he saw: the cracked side glass, the scratches in the blue paint below the cracked window, deep scratches down to bare metal, and, mixed in the crust of slobber, fragments of dried blood.
In the raw morning light, the dreadful episode of the night before flashed through her mind. That dog wanted to kill me, she thought. Or worse … it wanted Mamie. The slamming of the trunk lid jarred her back to the here and now. She was tempted to explain with a lie what had caused the damage to her car, but instead she gave the attendant and the bellboy a dollar each.
It was snowing but now the sun was shining, and the snow melted as it touched the ground. Drops beaded on the long blue snout of the Buick. As soon as they’d left the industrial outskirts of Scranton, Leona pulled the car off the road. She took a handkerchief from her purse and dampened it with melted snow from the hood, then scrubbed desperately at the dried slobber on the paint. She had to dampen the cloth several times before she had most of the mucuslike crust removed. It ruined her handkerchief and she tossed it away.
She waited for a truck to pass before she pulled back onto the highway and drove away, still headed south along the Susquehanna River, through Pittston and Cromwell, Kingston and Plymouth.
When Scranton was well behind them, Leona turned on the car radio. She found a station that played Benny Goodman records, and numbers, as they called them, from Show Boat and Oklahoma! When she knew the words, she sang, too, but when the news came on, every thirty minutes, she turned the radio off and sang alone.
Most of the sycamores and elms along the river had shed their foliage; great swarms and drifts of leaves blew around the Buick’s windows as they drove through the bright open spaces. It was becoming a glorious day, but the cracked side window split the landscape in half, distorting Leona’s view. As she drove, she wondered again who it had been in the hospital room hiding behind the curtains. Watching the landscape roll by her window on the passenger side, Mamie sat on two pillows, her hands in her coat pockets, her legs swaying with the motion of the car.
When they stopped at a Shell filling station some time later, to buy gas and go to the ladies’ room, Leona did not see the small hand come from the pocket; nor did she see Mamie place the florist’s envelope on the chair where the station attendant had been sitting, reading his newspaper. Her back was turned.
7
Only the sound of his footsteps and the soft padding of the Chinaman’s paws broke the night silence. Sherman did not hesitate or look back, striking deftly through the dark countryside. “Goddam her,” he muttered under his breath; “goddam her to hell,” the words like a chant, marking his stride. The pills held his pain to a low humming at the back of his brain.
They kept to the high ground parallel to the Scranton road. When the dog wandered down too close to the ditches, Sherman called him and made him come back. Otherwise he let the Chinaman roam. Very little traffic moved on the highway this late at night; for long periods it stood completely empty. Yet he wanted to be sure that their departure wasn’t noticed by anyone. He spoke to the dog sparingly and used his pencil flashlight only when he had to—when the darkness of wild bushes blocked his path or the dog slipped into a gully that opened in the ground like a trap.
Moving quickly, they crossed pastures and fences and woods. As soon as the sun came up, Sherman opened his shirt and removed the papers and pictures he’d taken from the Mattingly house. The snapshots, blown up to frame size, had faded to a bronzy orange. The two women, the one he’d just hit and the one who’d taken Mamie, were in both the photographs. He immediately folded them, scored them with his thumbnail, and tore them in two. Then he tore the two halves showing the Mattingly woman into little chunks and threw them to the wind like confetti. In the two half-photos he kept, the woman looked younger than she did in real life. His teeth began to ache from the angry set of his jaw. From his billfold, he removed the print of Mamie’s school picture that he’d torn from a newspaper, folded it with the two pictures of the woman, and returned all three, in his billfold, to his pocket.
Methodically he flipped through the sheaf of papers—most of it yesterday’s mail, he guessed. All the envelopes had been opened. He separated them quickly, sorting out the circulars and bills and holding the two envelopes addressed to Leona Hillenbrandt in his teeth. The stack of useless material he tore into small pieces and let them dribble and flutter from his hands as he walked. Of the two remaining pieces, one was a letter on good-smelling paper from Cornelia Dunham, Ridgefarm Road, Brandenburg Station, Kentucky. But the other letter, from the Citizens National Bank of Scranton, held his attention and he placed the Kentucky letter inside his shirt.
Sherman tore the bank envelope apart. He paid little attention to the actual writing as he repeatedly formed the woman’s name with his lips: Leona Hillenbrandt. Scranton. That had to be where she was taking Mamie. Nothing else made sense. He folded the letter with the envelope and tore them to pieces. The little wad of money he’d found wedged under the Mattingly woman’s vase—the three thousand-dollar bills wrapped in a five-dollar bill—remained untouched in his jeans pocket.
It was still very early in the morning when he saw a country gas station far below and wondered if it was safe yet to hitchhike, if he was far enough away from Graylie. He was crossing an area of hills, and had wandered higher from the road than he meant to. While he looked down, two cars moved like minnows onto the asphalt drive, headed in opposite directions. He wanted to be riding in a car. He called the dog and started down the steep embankment.
He counted four cars parked on the grounds, none of them police cars—nothing that looked suspicious. As he and the dog crossed the highway through the morning fog, he saw a clump of road signs. In black letters, one said: SCRANTON 72 MI. The idea of seventy-two miles stretched deep in his imagination and, with it, the minutes ticking away and Mamie slipping farther out of his reach. He pulled a piece of clothesline rope from his hip pocket, tied it to the Chinaman’s collar, and they jogged through a display of chalk figures strung out on the ground—reindeer and donkeys pulling carts, and birdbaths—and slipped between the parked cars.
Fog hung in scraps over the road, but the traffic was fairly brisk. As they moved into the shadow of the gas station, a car came in headed north toward Graylie. The attendant ambled from the garage, pumped the gas, and went back to work, frowning at Sherman and the Chinaman as he passed. A lull settled over the station. For several minutes nothing moved on the road.
Come on, Sherman thought, his anxiety mounting. He sat down on the concrete curbing, then stood up and scuffed back and forth.
Two cars came in and stopped on either side of the gas pumps. While the attendant handled the car pointed north, Sherman tapped the passenger window of the one going south, a maroon car. The driver leaned across the seat and rolled the window down a few inches. Sherman asked for a ride to Scranton. The man seemed to consider it, lowered his head as if to decide. “I need a lift for him, too,” Sherman said. “He’s with me,” and nodded toward the Chinaman. Without answering, the
man cranked the window up and turned to stare at the road.
Before the attendant had finished with the maroon car, an old blue coupe had pulled in behind it. Sherman tapped the window glass, and again he thought he might be getting somewhere until he pointed to the big grisly dog; then the driver said, “Sorry,” and went on studying the map spread on the steering wheel. The car radio was turned low, but the emphatic voice could still be heard: “Graylie police continue to investigate last night’s assault and battery of a local woman, Emma Mattingly, of 210 Columbia Avenue. Mrs. Mattingly has been listed in critical condition.…”
Sherman heard only that much as he withdrew from the side of the car, concentrating on the man reading the map. Fright ran through him like quicksilver. She’s still alive, he thought. If she could describe him, it would only be a matter of time before the cops figured out who he was and what he had done—not only what he’d done last night, but all the other nights and other things, the paperboy who’d taken his place, the fire. I should of finished her, he thought; I should of.
Even after the coupe had left, he went on glancing about, alert and cautious. He saw no immediate threat, except the attendant was coming toward them in his blackened coveralls, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. “You can’t hang out here,” the man said. “You’d better just run along.” The Chinaman clambered to his feet and started to growl, his hackles rising.
“We’re tryin’ to catch a ride,” Sherman said, pulling the dog’s collar, telling the Chinaman to shut up.
“You better catch it someplace else. I want you to clear out of here.” He went inside the garage.
Sherman slowly brushed the seat of his pants. Another car came in headed the wrong way, and the frowning attendant glared at them as he adjusted the pump handle. He had the hood up when a white pickup rolled in, going in the right direction. The driver’s window was down, his elbow resting out in the chill November air. Sherman started talking to the man in earnest, telling him he had to get to Scranton because his sister was there and he had to take the dog, and could they ride in the back of the pickup, when the attendant came around the front of the truck. “If you don’t head down that road right now and stop bothering my customers, I’m going to go inside and call the county sheriff.”
Sherman opened his mouth to speak.
“No buts,” the attendant said. “Either you go down that road right now or I call the cops. Take your pick.”
Tugging at the dog’s rope, Sherman tore from the pickup window and marched past the attendant. Angry tears stood in his eyes. He knew when the cards were stacked against him, knew when to keep his mouth shut. He jerked the dog to him, moved down the drive, crossed the highway, and slipped into the ditch so he could let the Chinaman loose. His good hand was curled tight on the blackjack in his pocket. He wanted to take it and beat that sonofabitch to death. He hadn’t gone very far when he heard a horn honk and saw the white pickup truck swerve to the side of the road above the ditch. It’s about god-dammed time, he thought.
He squatted down in a corner of the truck bed, pulling the dog in beside him, and the irregular houses and foothills and pockets of trees wheeled alongside the truck and sank away in an ever-deepening V.
By the time Sherman hopped down from the bed of the truck, uneasiness was nagging at him. He held the Chinaman’s collar with his bandaged hand, waved thanks to the driver, and watched the pickup rattle out into the steady flow of Wednesday-afternoon traffic. They were alone in a strange place, but what he felt was more like panic than loneliness. From the truck bed, he had seen three patrolling police cars and now the air seemed charged with hostility. This is not a good place, he thought.
The highway crooked down into the basin of the city and narrowed to a street. There, as far as the eye could see, loomed the city of Scranton. At his feet, the sidewalk thrummed as if from some deep pounding. Under the vast network of poles and wires, between what seemed like stacks of buildings, rivers of cars darted and blared. The air stank of electricity and sulphur. Backfire, gunfire, blowout. The sky glimmered of itself like the green-gold wings of flies. Factory whistles blew, church bells struck, and sirens shrieked in the air with sudden death. Like evil tidings, all his worst expectations had come home to roost in his mind. If Mamie had been brought here, how would he ever find her?
He stood there transfixed for several seconds, feeling himself shrink smaller and smaller. Trembling with hate, he muttered, “We gotta get outa here. You stick with me, now. We gotta get through with this,” and in a burst of furious urgency, he led the dog through the traffic to the nearest gas station.
He waited on the cement drive until the mechanic would talk to him; then Sherman asked if he’d seen a dark blue car come through here last night.
“There’s lots of blue cars,” the mechanic said, clicking his ballpoint with his grease-black thumb. “What kinda car was it?”
Sherman described the car with his hands. It had two doors, the trunk sloped down, it had bubble fenders in front and a snout for a hood.
The man said, “It sounds like a Chevy or Buick, ’48 or ’49.” He turned the pages of a calendar showing naked girls posed in and around different makes of cars, and kept saying, “Does this look like it?” Sherman shook his head and shook his head, until finally he said, “That’s a lot like it, only this one I’m asking about was blue.” And the man said, “Now, that’s a ’48 Buick Roadmaster.” But he hadn’t seen one.
Another mechanic, in a garage, changed spark plugs while Sherman spoke to him. “Did you see a dark blue ’48 Buick come through here last night about eleven o’clock?” The man studied the mean-looking dog and shook his head. Sherman had walked out into the daylight when the man said, “Who’s drivin’ that Buick?”
“A woman was drivin’ it,” Sherman said, coming back. He took the larger photograph from his billfold and held it up, but out of reach. “Here’s what she looks like,” he said, “and there’s this little girl with her.”
The mechanic squinted his eyes and reset his cap. “Naw,” he said.
Bit by bit, treading down the sides of the highway strewn with bottle caps like an idiot’s spilled treasure, zigzagging back and forth through traffic from one gas station to another, he put his question together in a cohesive whole. Had any of them seen a blue ’48 Buick drive through here around eleven o’clock last night? He described the car again when it was called for, showed the woman’s picture, and eventually showed the picture of Mamie, although it worried him that Mamie’s picture would probably appear in the newspaper soon enough and somebody might put two and two together. But nobody remembered seeing a blue Buick driven by a woman. And the afternoon passed slowly away.
Eventually he came to a gas station with an empty driveway. When the man acted friendly, Sherman said, “I was wonderin’ if you could break this up for me?” He slipped one of the thousand-dollar bills from the other two and opened it with his fingers.
The man held out his hand. “Let me see that a minute.”
Reluctantly, Sherman laid the bill on the calloused hand. He took a deep breath and exhaled it a little at a time.
“Where’d you get this?” the man said.
“Just found it.” Under his arms, his shirt felt sticky. “You gonna break it or not?”
The man eyed him. “I don’t carry that kind of money around here.” He folded the bill lengthwise between his blunt fingers. “This’s an awful lot of money for a kid to have in his pocket—practically brand new. S’never touched the ground.” Keeping his face lowered, folding and creasing the money, the man glanced up at Sherman. “This money don’t belong to you, does it? Where’d you get it?”
Sherman lunged forward and snatched the bill. “Give me back my goddammed money!” Hurtling at his side, the Chinaman’s claws dug the glass countertop, his barking muzzle diving at the man, who had quickly stepped back. The potato-chip rack clattered to the floor. Sherman caught the rope and pulled the dog away. “There’s nothing wrong with my money!” he
shouted. And backed away, backed slowly away, not once taking his eyes from the man.
At five-thirty that evening, Sherman and the Chinaman stood pressed together in the doorway of a church not far from downtown Scranton. He had discovered nothing about Mamie—a whole day shot. Now he had to get some money he could spend. Soon it would be night and his head was beginning to hurt. He knew he should take another pill, shouldn’t try to save them, but the pressure of the impending night weighed on his thoughts. He needed to get one of these large bills cashed before everything closed. As he struggled to piece together a scheme to break the money, a yellow taxicab rolled to the curb in front of a brick house across the street. The driver got out of the cab, cocked his cap at an angle, opened the back door, and lifted out a bag of groceries. He went to the front door of the house, rang the doorbell.
Squatting beside the Chinaman for warmth, Sherman studied the cabdriver. He was a young guy and he moved with a jaunty efficiency. A woman opened the door, they spoke, and the driver followed her into the house. Minutes later, the cabdriver reappeared, returned to the taxi, took out a big box of groceries, and went back inside the house. Sherman came to his feet. He understood what was taking place. The woman had called in an order at the grocery store and the cabbie was delivering it. His mother had done the same thing when the children had been sick with scarlet fever and she couldn’t leave the house.
The cabbie came out talking to the lady, who was paying him. Sherman went down the church steps and into the street. Walking very fast, the cabdriver came through the gate and stepped out around the front of his cab.
“Hey,” Sherman said, crossing the street.
The cabbie hardly glanced up. “How you doin’?” He sat down under the dome light of the cab, one leg dangling on the pavement. He spoke into a small black microphone, wrote something in a book, lit a cigarette. Sherman stood at the edge of the open car door.