by Peter Rabe
Cripp turned his head once to see whether Fell were asleep. Fell was looking back at him, and when their eyes met he smiled. Cripp turned front again and kept driving. There was a lot he had to tell. He should be briefing Fell, but after his talk with Emilson, Cripp wasn't so sure any more. Even if none of it were really true—if Emilson had been exaggerating— But Cripp had no way of knowing. And Fell was no help. He sat in the back, showing nothing. If Fell would only talk, perhaps something he'd say might give some meaning.
There were more turns in the road now, and fir trees showed black along the side. Suddenly it started to rain. It was a short rain, the kind that sometimes gets caught along the sides of the Sierras and is over in a short while.
Cripp stopped the car and pressed the button which raised the top.
“Leave it open,” said Fell.
Cripp drove on again.
Fell turned his head so the moist air pressed his face, a warm push that felt as if it meant to breathe for him. He hadn't seen any rain in over a month, nothing but the dry cleanliness of desert air. He liked the feel of the rain.
He was sorry when the rain suddenly stopped. He was sure something was wrong. He had seen the signs earlier, before he had left, but it hadn't been bad then. Pander, probably—only Pander wasn't alone in this. Perhaps they were just trying Pander out, the front office sending him a problem just for the hell of it. But they didn't do a thing just for the hell of it, always for a reason. To see if Fell was losing his grip. Ever since Janice—anyway, ever since he had married her, they hadn't been happy in the front office.
“Close the top, Cripp.”
The car stopped and the top went up. Cripp snapped it down in front and drove again. Perhaps he should talk to him now. Fell ought to know.
“How's Janice?” said Fell.
How's Janice! The whole setup coming apart at the seams, and he asked about Janice.
“She's fine. She's been anxious about you, but fine otherwise. We've all been kind of anxious about—”
“She's a fine woman,” said Fell. He sat in the dark under the closed roof and thought about Janice.
“She'll be surprised to see you,” said Cripp.
“I'm sure Emilson has called her by now.”
Cripp hadn't thought of that.
“Has it been hot back home?”
Cripp answered, “Plenty hot.”
“That's good,” said Fell. “Nothing like a lot of early heat for a good track when the season starts.”
He was talking about the weather. And about the track season opening, as if there were nothing to do but wait for the opening, buy a ticket, and sit down to watch. It wasn't going to be easy breaking it all to Fell, all the bad news and the storm warnings. There sat Boss Fell thinking about Janice and the weather....
“Any word from the syndicate?” Fell said suddenly.
“What?”
“They're coaching Pander. Do they think he's panning Cripp had to shift right then because a road barrier led him around a rock slide that had splattered the highway.
“I'll tell you,” he said, trying to catch up. “The fact is, I'd never been sure of it.”
“I'm sure,” said Fell. “They might want to give him a piece of this area. Perhaps all of it.”
“You mean—you knew all this?”
“Sure.” Then Fell laughed, a short, dry sound. “I'm not worried, if that's what you mean.”
Cripp took a breath and let it go slowly, he had no idea what would come next. It had happened once that one of Fell's men got ideas and started to use muscle. Fell sent him to Mexico on a job and the man never showed up again. No mess, no stink, just a clean sweep, and whatever had happened had happened across the border. But then there had been time to plan. Maybe he had been planning, back in the desert with nothing to do.
“Ever hear of shock treatments?” Fell said.
Cripp didn't know what Fell meant. Perhaps he meant to rough Pander up, only Fell had never liked strong-arming. As a matter of policy, he used to say, you don't fix a guy by giving him a nosebleed. And what's worse, if he bleeds enough everybody wants to know why.
“They lay you out and put wires on your head,” Fell said. “Then they feed you the juice.”
“Juice?” said Cripp.
“Electricity. Electroshock. They gave me a series of them. Man,” he said, and Cripp could hear Fell breathe in the back, “did I used to wake up confused.”
Cripp just drove.
“I had that,” said Fell, “and then those talks with Emilson.” Fell laughed. “Man, did I used to come out ofthose confused.”
“Did it help?”
“How can you tell? It's like living in a hothouse up there, that Desert Farm place. They farm you in the middle of the desert. You can't tell till you leave the farm and get out of that desert,” said Fell.
“I meant the shock treatment,” said Cripp. He could hear Fell moving in the back, patting himself and grunting.
“Give me a cigarette,” he said.
Cripp did, and Fell lit it. Cripp could hear his deep exhaling.
“It's like with this cigarette,” said Fell. “That first drag tearing down your throat used to be really something. A real pleasure.” There was the sound of inhaling again and then the wind rushing in when Fell wheeled down the window. He threw the cigarette out. When the window was up again it shut out the noise.
“It's like they took the edge off of things,” said Fell, “and everything's toned down.”
“That's a cure?”
“You saw me throw out that cigarette. That's the cure, you don't care one way or the other.”
They didn't talk for a while and the car started winding down again. When the terrain smoothed out Cripp went faster. The car seemed to flatten out and the road in the headlights lost all texture. Cripp thought the faster they went the sooner he'd be able to start giving Fell the news. As if the speed of driving— “Go faster,” said Fell.
Cripp touched the floor board and watched the needle creep up. It made slight little trembles like a blade of grass. Outside the wind roared. “Can you talk?” said Fell.
“Sure.” Cripp held the wheel so hard his big arms felt tense with effort. “Let's have all you know. Pander, and so forth.” Fell sounded like there hadn't been any four or five weeks in the desert and as if he hadn't said a thing since they left there.
“About Pander, it's hard to say. He's always been snotty,” laid Cripp. “But since you left...”
“That's nothing. That's his type.”
“Yeah. But he's been hard on the guys. Some of them left and some of them he sent packing.”
“Any rough stuff?”
“No. Just 'or else.' You know Pander.”
“Go on.”
“So at first I thought we'd be losing money, the way he cut down on bookmaking that way; but I kept check on the weekly totals and nothing showed.”
“Any replacements? Did he get any new bookies in?”
“He did, some. That's another thing. He's got a lot of new faces in town, but most of those guys just hang around.”
“That figures,” said Fell. “His own hoods.”
“You think he's got something planned, something big? I've kept pretty close, you know, but nothing seems to be shaping up. He—”
“He's not ready. Perhaps he's waiting for the word, but he'd have his buddies hang around anyway. Makes him feel better.”
“Yeah. Here's the next thing. We had some raids.”
This time Cripp could hear Fell sit up and when he talked there was more life in his voice.
“Sutterfield must be nuts. That creep must be absolutely nuts.”
“That's what I figured, until I found out why. He hasn't been getting his protection money.”
Fell kept still for a moment and then he said, “Son of a bitch.” He said it as if he meant everybody and Cripp would have turned to look at Fell's face if the car hadn't been going so fast. Cripp slowed the car.
“W
hat's the matter?” said Fell. “What's the matter? Come on, come on.”
“Just—nothing, Tom.” Cripp speeded up again. “I just never heard you swear before.”
“What—son of a bitch?” The sound in back could have been Fell starting a laugh, or perhaps he was just grunting. Cripp heard the wheezing sound of the leather seat, then Fell's breathing. Fell had stretched out in back with his feet braced against the window. He was talking normally when he said, “That's nothing, Cripp. You should have heard what I was thinking.” He gave a short laugh.
Cripp laughed too. “I didn't hear a thing.” he said. Then he stopped laughing and lit himself a cigarette.
“That's good,” said Fell. “I thought you might have. It was loud enough.”
Fell didn't say anything else after that, which made it sound worse. Cripp had a crazy urge to turn the car back and see Dr. Emilson, but then it occurred to him that nothing Fell had said would have sounded wrong if it hadn't been for Emilson and his talk in the first place. Cripp relaxed a little. The way the breathing sounded from the back he didn't think Fell would talk any more.
“How's Buttonhead doing?” Fell said suddenly.
It took Cripp a minute to get it straight. Fell had to say, “Where's she running now?” before Cripp remembered she was one of Fell's horses.
“I think Riverdowns,” Cripp said, and then added, “no. She was in Cincinnati two weeks ago. She's at Ak-Sar-Ben this week.”
“That's good,” said Fell. “That's closer. She been in the money lately?”
“No. Except for show once.”
“Only once this year?”
Cripp read it off the way his memory showed it to him. “Fourth twice and sixth once at Riverdowns. Fifth every time in Scarborough. She made show at Fairmount Park and fourth the rest of the time. I haven't heard yet how she's been running in Omaha.”
“How's the weather been in Omaha?”
“Rain for a week,” said Cripp.
“She does better on a dry track,” said Fell.
“You couldn't prove it by me,” said Cripp. He knew how Buttonhead had been running for two years. He didn't know what made Fell hold on to the horse, or why he had thought of the nag now. Fell kept switching topics. He made sense with what he said, but he kept switching topics. Had Emilson mentioned anything like that....
“Watch the fork, Cripp.”
Cripp made the turn and drove, waiting for Fell to say something else. But Fell never did. He had turned on the domelight and was scribbling on a small pad of paper. Then he turned off the light and went to sleep.
Chapter Six
They went through San Pietro at two in the morning, when the town looked more alive than at noontime.
The plants were running twenty-four hours a day, so it made sense to run the town around the clock. And besides, it was cooler at night. They passed open supermarkets, drove down a day-bright street lined with secondhand car lots, and it didn't really turn nighttime again till the car swung into the section of town where a residence cost forty thousand and over. Fell didn't wake up till the car stopped on the drive, but then he was as if sleep hadn't interrupted a thing.
“Where's Janice?” he said.
Cripp moved up against the steering wheel because Fell was pushing the left back rest forward in order to get out that way. When he was through he slammed the door shut and looked up at the house. One light was on. Then the hall light went on, too.
“Thanks,” said Fell and nodded at Cripp. “See you tomorrow.”
He watched the car make the circle going out the other gate, and then he looked at the lawn. It had a dark, juicy look in the low light, and it smelled moist. Like Desert Farm, he thought, like the hothouse lawn in the desert out there. I'm going to let this one go natural. I'm going to shut off the damn sprinkling system and let this one go just the way it wants.... A shaft of light fell across the lawn and made Fell's face show sudden lines and hard creases. He turned and looked at the open door, at Janice.
She saw him stand for a moment, and then saw how his face became softer. It was without sharpness now, showing only strength.
“Turn around,” he said and watched how she did it, with the light shining in back of her. She was laughing, and then she waited for him while he came up to the door.
They kissed and closed the door. The light shaft on the lawn shrank away, and then the hall light went out.
Janice dropped off the negligee and sat on the bed in her nightgown. Fell stayed as he was, except for the tie. He pulled the tie off and threw it toward a chair.
“Always the same spot,” said Janice. They both laughed and looked at the tie lying next to the chair legs.
“And remember,” he said, “no practice for over a month.” He sat down next to her and put his arm around her waist. “A whole month! No ties at the sanatorium. Suicide risk.”
Talking about it didn't seem to bother him, but it sobered Janice. She pushed his hand away and got up. She unbuttoned his shirt.
“Did they give you hot chocolate at night? Get into bed and I'll bring you hot chocolate.”
“Let Rita make it. You—”
“I don't want to wake her, Tom.”
“Okay. Don't be long.” He watched her leave.
He looked around the large bedroom, his hands hanging between his knees, and thought how he liked the room and how Janice left things in it that reminded him of her. The whole room reminded him of her. The room of the past month had reminded him of nothing. Perhaps that had been part of the, cure too, to be reminded of nothing; but what it made him remember most was this room and Janice. It was one feeling that hadn't changed, the warmth for Janice. It hadn't gone flat and indifferent like some things, like—It was hard to remember, but it didn't matter.
He took off his clothes, washed, went back to the bed. Janice had put his pajamas out, and he put on only the pants. He sat in bed and looked at his arm, a strong, short arm with good color. He twisted it, watching the muscles.
Janice came in, put the hot chocolate on the night table next to him, and pulled up a chair. For a while they didn't talk. Then he said, “It's good, Jan.” She smiled at him, seeing how he was suddenly tired again.
“Doctor Emilson called you,” he said.
“Yes, in the afternoon. So I would know you were coming.
“And what else?”
“He said he wished you hadn't left, Tom.”
Fell nodded and looked at his arm again. He thought about moving it, like before, but then he didn't and just watched it lie still.
“He said more, Tom.”
“I know.”
“He said you're making a mistake.”
Fell looked up. He was rubbing his arm now. When he became aware of it he stopped.
“Sometimes, Jan, I feel the same way.”
She hadn't expected it, so for the moment she could think of nothing to say. But she didn't have to think, or talk. Her feeling was open, making her do the simple, direct thing. She got up and came to the bed where Fell sat and she took him around his bare shoulders, holding him close, with his head against her warm skin.
“Are you tired, Tom?” she asked. I don't know. It's like waiting.”
“Rest, Tom.”
“It's like—like before deciding, Jan.”
“There's nothing to decide, Tom. We'll leave. You don't have to stay here, you don't have to keep at it. We—”
“If I only knew what I have to do—”
He put his hands on her back, held them there. Right then the warmth under his hands was the only real thing and he pressed it to make it more real.
“You always have me,” said Janice. “You can always hold me.”
Then he let go. He leaned back into the pillow and took a deep breath. Strength had come back to him and it felt like nothing that he had felt since the time he had left. But it was familiar, the kind of urge which was all pressure but without an object; as if Janice weren't enough, as if nobody were enough. There was only an
aimless pressure.
Emilson had been interested in that Emilson had said it was the thing he would have to learn to control; that it could carry him far, meaningtoo far. It was familiar: it had been behind his whole brazen history, starting with the time he had run away from home for no good reason, for the reason of running, for the joy of running, starting with the hobo jungles, and then his first winter in big, cold Chicago. And then the break. The police picked him up for breaking and entering, which he hadn't done. He took the rap. He had never been in jail before. He was regular, the cons said. He didn't take any gaff but he didn't have a chip on his shoulder, and when he got out on parole somebody was waiting for him. “—because the boss thinks you're regular. You don't talk, you got spunk, you didn't squeal on the guy what done the job.” Tom Fell hadn't seen the guy who had done the job, but Tom Fell didn't talk. And because he had never been a hood before, he went along.
He stuck. For the first time he saw a clear line showing him where to go. From driving an alki truck to owning one, to running a fleet, to making the boss himself take orders. But it didn't work that way. It meant the boss had to go. Tom Fell got his way.
When Fell got older he thought everything was under control because there were no more loose ends and no more running around. Almost everything had a system. Join the combine, run your section, move west because the combine was spreading and they needed a good man with experience, stick to your racket and grow big.
Fell had run San Pietro for fifteen years before anything started to bother him again. Pander? Pushy kids never bothered him before. His age? He felt good. Was San Pietro too small? For a while it had grown faster than Fell and he had worked as he hadn't worked since Chicago. That's when it started. When he had the town in the palm of his hand he still had pressure left and nowhere to put it.
He had forgotten about that feeling, and it didn't make sense. Janice was with him by then, but it had nothing to do with Janice. They even got married because that's how he wanted it. He wanted Janice because she was the closest thing to finding an end for his aimlessness that he had ever known. But he must have been wrong—partly wrong, anyway. Why else the long hours working for no good reason, expanding his setup where there was no profit to show for it, sharpening the organization as if it had to run a whole country?