by James Grady
The wind drove the raindrops against the windows with wavelike intensity. The panes steamed up slightly, the interaction of the warm humid air inside with the cool rain falling outside. Malcolm reached behind the dainty curtains to draw a circle on the fogged window. The glass squeaked slightly, but the noise wasn't audible above the boisterous conversations and the clatter of crockery inside the truck stop. The rain began shortly before lunch. The clouds had been there since the night before, but the weatherman cautious from years of forecasting the erratic and usually unpredictable Great Plains, offered only 50:50 odds, so Malcolm doubted he could justify not going out on the survey that day. In fact, strictly speaking, a rainy day in which the farmers would be forced inside was the best time to take the survey.
But Malcolm wasn't concerned about the survey. He was more worried about his cover. He and Sheila had finished the third quadrant. Malcolm knew he could prolong his stay by "tabulating" the results of the survey, but his cover would wear thinner each day he spent not visibly working."
The rain caught Malcolm and Sheila seventeen miles from Shelby at nine fifteen, just after their first stop of the day. At first it looked like a brief shower, barely enough to settle the dust on the dirt and gravel road. But thick dark clouds from the north followed, and by nine thirty Malcolm was having difficulty driving through the road's low spots. He-knew he could use the jeep's four-wheel drive to pull out of any mud he would encounter, and he knew that the road's quality improved a few miles farther away. But he also knew he couldn't afford to waste a good excuse, so he and Sheila headed back to Shelby, the survey called off for the day because of inclement weather and poor roads.
Sheila suggested stopping at the truck stop for coffee before returning to the motel. Malcolm thought she made the suggestion to avoid being alone with him. Malcolm welcomed her idea. He felt uncomfortable alone with her too.
They still shared the bed. On one level, tensions between them had eased considerably. The humor and ease of conversation they feigned in public began to carry over in private. Malcolm noticed she even laughed more when they were alone than she had before. Sheila found Malcolm more relaxed, less anxious to put on his false flippant front. These changes were apparent to both of them and just as apparently made both of them nervous on a newer, deeper level. As they lowered their personal guards, they became more and more careful about their professional relationship. Malcolm carefully explained exactly what he was doing and why. Sheila issued her orders even more formally than before.
And, Malcolm noted ruefully, she still carried the gun with her wherever they went.
She had it now, under her nylon windbreaker, tucked high under her left armpit in a shoulder holster. The rig allowed her to wear the jacket almost open. Malcolm professionally noticed that whenever men looked at her upper body they stared at the thrust of her high breasts, not at her armpits or waist, where she mighty carry a gun. Male attention was especially apparent today when she wore a thin, dark blouse. Her bra, highly visible, seemed barely able to contain her breasts, a fascinating effect, for she was not large-busted, even for her size. Malcolm found himself more and more frequently watching her breasts rise and fall under the flimsy material. Every time he caught himself staring, he deliberately shifted his gaze to her armpit where he knew the gun waited.
By this time they were familiar sights at the truck stop. A few faces they recognized nodded a polite greeting when they entered. All the tables were full. It was ten o'clock, the traditional morning break time. A rainy day filled the restaurant with men no longer able to work outdoors. The city maintenance crew occupied the two big tables, and .the maintenance crew from the local gas cooperative filled most of the others. Carpenters, handymen, plumbers lined the counter. Two weary tourists, a married couple returning to Pennsylvania from Oregon, glumly sat in the corner, hoping the rain wouldn't slow them down anymore, but it was largely a boisterous local crowd. The rain was good for the wheat crop, and since agriculture dictated much of the town's economy, a good crop meant a good year for the town.
At first Malcolm thought they 'wouldn't find a place to sit, but a large hand shot up from a group huddled around a table on the -far side of the room to motion them over. It was Stuart. He introduced them to three happy farmers who stood by him, whereupon the farmers left, headed for home before the rains soaked their roads.
Sheila seemed to catch the crowd's boisterous mood. She and Stuart exchanged witticisms and light conversation. Malcolm watched them, feeling almost removed from the scene. Sheila sat across. from him. She would smile whenever he made eye contact with her, then quickly look back to Stuart.- Malcolm felt very old and very tired. He peered out the window at the rain and doodled on the fogged glass.
As Malcolm traced meaningless designs on the steamed window, an unmarked black car pulled up to a warehouse -loading dock in Cicero, Illinois. Three heavyset men, their overcoats unbuttoned against the morning chill, walked confidently to where Fritz Pulaski stood reading directions to his men from a clipboard. The trio waited until the drivers turned to their trucks. Pulaski looked up. A smile tried to twitch across his face, but quickly failed. He. hung his head so no one would see him cry. The three mien silently, easily led him to the car and drove away. Their partners had already taken Pulaski's wife from their home.
"But it has been very interesting and fun," Malcolm heard Sheila say. "I haven't been bored out here at all. Neither of us has, meeting so many interesting people. And it's such a change -from Washington. Don't you agree, Malcolm?"
Her comment pulled Malcolm back from his dreams.
Time to contribute, he thought. "Yes, I do. Why, where else would we get the chance to meet people like'~--Malcolm groped for a good story opener, something he could say which would start Stuart on a long, rambling tale, relieving Malcolm of the obligation to carry on a conversation like the Robinsons. Those must have been quite some days when they homesteaded out here."
Instead of launching into a story about the early days, Stuart gave Malcolm a puzzled look. "Me Robinsons? What Robinsons?"
Stuart's reaction caught Malcolm, unprepared, and he stammered, "Why, ah, the Whitlash Robinsons. You know, Neil, and ._. . and his wife, .,or at least their parents like Grandmother Stowe and Neil's folks."
"They told you about homesteading?" Stuart's voice was incredulous.
"Well, not exactly, but Neil did mention that their family had been here since the homesteading days."
"You sure we're talking about the same ones? The Robinsons in Whitlash?"
Malcolm nodded.
"Hmm..That don't seem right." Stuart frowned for a moment. "As near as I remember . . . ... He leaned back in his chair and yelled to the city maintenance crew table, "Hey, McLaughlin!"
A short stocky man with a salt-and-pepper steel-wool crew cut leaned back in his chair to stare at Stuart in mock reprobation. "And what do you want, old man?"
"Not much from you. When did ol' Neil Robinson and his folks come out here?"
"You mean the Whitlash ones? Hell, must have been oh, somewhere around fifty-two or fifty-three. I know it was after Korea, but before my youngest kid was born, so that puts it right in there somewhere. Why?"
"No reason, just refreshing my memory. Thanks."
"I don't understand," Malcolm said when Stuart shifted his gaze back to him. "He couldn't have had any homesteaders in his family if they came here in the fifties, could he?"
Stuart grinned. "No, he sure couldn't. That used to be the Florence place. Them and the McKees built all them houses back in the Depression. Both the, Robinsons and the Kincaids came long after that, mid-fifties for sure. No homesteading done by them.. Hell, Old Man Gorton is the only one who's been out there as far back a& World War Two. At the rate he's dying, he'll probably still be there when the Robinsons' and Kincaids ~are long gone, although why anyone would want to live in Whitlash is beyond me."
"Why would they lie to me?" Malcolm asked quietly.
"Well, I figure they tho
ught they might pull a little fun on an Easterner, pump him full of stupid stories about the Wild West. That happens a lot out here."
"I suppose it does," said Sheila. She didn't understand the conversation, but she recognized Malcolm's interesti
"How big is the Robinson farm?" asked Malcolm.
"Hard to say right off the top of my head. Not big, though. Just as well, they don't work it much harder than they have W. They do okay. Listen, you want to hear about some real homesteading, none of that crap you see on TV or got from the Whitlash folks, wait till you meet the Boyles. Old man Boyle one day told me about the time. . . ."
Anna Brooks emerged from the subway in downtown Manhattan just as Stuart began his mostly true story of the homesteading days. She took three steps before she noticed the man behind her was walking so close he almost trod on her heels. An experienced New Yorker, she ignored him and quickened her pace. Her first thought was that he might be a mugger. She turned the corner onto Fifth Avenue. The man was still there. Three steps down Fifth Avenue two large men in overcoats blocked her path, forcing her to stop in front of them. As she pulled up short, the man behind her firmly grasped her right elbow. Before she could turn to face him, one of the men in front of her held a set of credentials for her to read. She stared at them blankly for a moment, then flashed her eyes to the holder. He returned her gaze coldly. The man behind her twisted her arm, steering her into the backseat of a black sedan which had pulled up at the curb. The men climbed in the car too, then the vehicle sped away. None of the bustling commuters and shoppers noticed.
Stuart's story lasted well over three minutes. By then Malcolm and Sheila had finished their coffee, and Malcolm thought it would be safe to depart without showing undue urgency. Outside, the rain still beat down mercilessly.
Sheila said nothing as they dashed for the jeep, but as soon as they were inside and the doors were shut, she turned to him and asked, "What's wrong? You acted awfully funny in there when you were talking about the Robinsons.
Why?"
Malcolm looked at her briefly as he concentrated on starting the jeep's damp motor. Rain had soaked part of her blouse, making it even more transparent. He ignored the dark shine of her breasts and said, "They lied to me, the Robinsons lied. And when I talked to the Kincaids, they gave the same general impression that their family had been there since the pioneer days."
"Perhaps Stuart is right. These people like to kid."
"Maybe," said Malcolm. The engine caught. He turned on the wipers, slipped the jeep into reverse and backed out of his parking spot. As the jeep lurched forward into the rain, he said, "But this is the first thing I've come across that doesn't click right. And I think I know how I can check."
Twentieth-century man fuels his civilization with paper. Paper records his society's structure, man's progress through life, his culture and his knowledge. Men build themselves many lives: as others see them, as they see themselves, as they wish themselves. Men also build a paper life, a record of their comings and goings through the civilization's checkpoints. Marriages, births, deaths, illnesses, employment taxes, schooling, property holdings, Social Security, credit ratings, census and other paper recollections build and shape a man's life. To really know a man, you must examine as many of his lives as you can. To know a great deal about him, you often need examine only his paper life.
It took Malcolm and Sheila three hours to find what they were looking for. Malcolm even insisted on bringing their hamburgers back to the courthouse with them as they searched through the dusty county records of land transactions. They amazed the county clerk with their diligence. She watched them with a growing respect for federal employees. If they would take their lunch hour to check over old land records to complete their survey on time, America couldn't be in as bad shape as she thought.
Sheila found it. She barely contained her excitement as she carried the dusty ledger to Malcolm at the next table.
"Look," he whispered to her, carefully controlling his voice even though no one else was in the attic with them, "the transaction from John Florence to Neil Robinson, effective date, February third, 1952. And look at this. On most of the other transactions we've seen through this period, the clerk noted what institution the farmer financed the transaction through. But not here. The sale isn't dated complete for ten years. Probably some payments made each year. But it doesn't show where the money came from."
"And you think that's fishy."
"Yes," replied Malcolm, "I do. Or at least very strange."
They found the records on the Kincaid sale half an hour later. The Kincaids initiated the sale in 1955 and, like the Robinsons, finished paying for their land in ten years.
"So what have we got?" asked Sheila as they walked from the courthouse. The rain had stopped momentarily, but more clouds were moving in from the north. Sheila and Malcolm walked downhill. The courthouse was a block from their motel. Malcolm turned her toward the public library directly across from the motel.
"What we've got, as Chou would say, is it puzzle."
"And you're going to unravel it?"
"As much as I can," Malcolm replied, smiling, "as much as I can."
It was easy to find the announcement of both the Robinsons' and the Kincaids' arrival in the area by checking through the back records of Shelby's weekly newspaper. In a county where almost nothing newsworthy happens, the arrival of a family calls for a feature story.
According to the newspaper's yellowing sheets, the Robinsons-Neil, wife, Fran, and mother-in-law, Clare Stowe -came from Pennsylvania to settle on their new farm in the Whitlash area. Malcolm noticed that the interviewer had not been too skillful either in writing or in asking questions: The story never told exactly where in Pennsylvania the Robinsons came from, although there was an allusion to "their farm in the center of the state." The article also quoted Neil as saying he could not have purchased the farm if he hadn't received help from his family back East. The faded photograph showed a much younger, more somber Robinson family.
The newspaper's story on the Kincaids was even less explicit, since the article had to compete for covering with a large story on the biggest fire in the town's history. The article briefly noted that the Kincaids'came from Illinois. "What now?" asked Sheila as they walked back to the motel.
"I'm not really sure," replied Malcolm. "We actually have nothing to go on but a very small He. I suppose we could find out more about the Robinsons and Kincaids if we asked the local authorities but that would blow our ... my cover."
"Their being close to the missile bothers you, right?’'
"Along with the lie, along with the lie."
"Can your superiors be of any help?"
"Some. They did routine checks on the two queer brothers. I don't know what they'll turn up here."
"There is only one way to find out," Sheila quipped.
The phone stopped ringing just as Malcolm succeeded in opening the motel-room door. He dropped his knapsack as he dived across the room to pick up the receiver and was rewarded with a dull tone signal for his efforts. Sheila entered behind him, closing and locking the door.
"I knew as soon as I heard it ringing when we came down the hall that I would be too late. Why did.1 bother to run for it?"
Sheila smiled at him. "Optimistic, I guess."
"And stupid. I think this merits a call now instead of waiting until the regular checkin time, don't you?"
Sheila shrugged her shoulders. "I should wait until I clear your calling in with Chou, but I'm sure he would say to let you go ahead."
Malcolm meant his sarcasm, but his voice held no malice. "Thank you for letting me, make my call."
Sheila's shrug bore no malice either, and her smile showed genuine humor. As always, she stood next to Malcolm and he held the receiver far enough away from his ear so she could hear.
Malcolm barely identified himself before he was put on hold. He shrugged his shoulders when Sheila glanced at him questioningly. "Perhaps it's a busy day in D.C.," Malco
lm joked lightly.
"Condor? Do you know who this is?"
Malcolm had no trouble identifying Carl's voice. "Yes."
"Things have been happening rather rapidly. I tried to reach you earlier, on the hope that you were not in the field. Might I ask why you are calling in early?"
Malcolm looked at Sheila. He knew he had something the old man should know, but Malcolm didn't like Carl. "It's raining here. I came back early, and I thought I might go to a movie and miss checkin time."
"Indeed. I suggest you do nothing of the kind. I suggest, in fa6t, you stay by your phone or at the very least go out only for emergencies and then only after checking in with us."
"Rose has gone to ground. We lost track of him in central North Dakota. That means he is within a day's travel time of 'you. Things may begin to happen in your area. We want you on the alert."
"How did you lose him? I thought you had him covered so well he couldn't fart without your knowing it."
"So did I, Condor, so did I. The orders," Carl said, using one of his euphemisms for the old man (he never referred directly to the old man), "are for you to stay ready. We've made arrangements to protect the missile site where Parkins died. Powell and other team are flooding the area. If the situation warrants it, you will be given further information and instructions."
"Do you know what this is all about?"
"Malcolm," said Carl softly, "don't you think we will tell you all you need to know?"
Malcolm hated Carl even more when Carl addressed him by his real name. "No, I don't. But I don't suppose that makes any difference."
Carl made no reply for several seconds, then icily asked, "Is there anything else you wish to say?"