by Gil Brewer
“I’m going now, Eric.”
“Yes.”
“I’m staying at a hotel. I left the Seven Pines.”
“Would you tell Redfern I want to see him?”
“All right. I’ll be back sometime this afternoon.”
“I’ll try and wait that long.”
“Eric, do as they say!” Her voice was strained. For an instant she came against me and we kissed. The smooth, fresh roundness of her body was new and at the same time known and good. I had asked for none of this—neither of us deserved it. I knew Leda must be feeling rotten inside. Our plans were not only delayed, but the edge was dulled. It was like returning to the hellish, waiting months of not so long ago. Only this time patience had little skin.
Leda was being kind now, trying to help me feel all right.
“Don’t feel bad,” she said.
“Sure.”
She squeezed my shoulder. Then she was gone down the hall. I heard someone talking out there, heard her laugh. Then it was quiet.
Pretty soon the nurse, Miss Winney, came into the room.
“Come on, now, Mr. Garth. Take your clothes off.”
“To hell with it.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that.”
I looked over at her, went over and lay down on the bed. “This’ll have to do.”
Miss Winney pursed her lips. Then she came over, took my pulse and blood pressure. I felt like a damned fool, and knew I was just that. I didn’t know what I was here for. I didn’t know anything.
The doctor, Ralph Barton, wore steel-rimmed glasses and a brush cut. He sat in a chair across from the bed and said nothing.
“What’s the story, Doc?” I knew better than to press him too far, or get mad. It wouldn’t help. I knew these men.
He spread his hands, half smiled.
I thought it over. I really had nothing to fear. I couldn’t go home because of the law. I had to stay in Sordell.
Dr. Barton grunted. He stood up, short and brisk in a short-sleeved tan shirt and gray trousers. He smiled blandly. “See you,” he said. He nodded twice and left the room.
I went over and sat in the chair. Miss Winney came back, clung to the doorjamb and said, “We eat at eleven-thirty. Be ready.” She fumbled her upper lips with a pale-lower one. “You’ll do better if you cooperate,” she said. “Your brother said to tell you not to lose your head and walk out of here.”
“Thanks.”
She smiled and went away. A little later I went out into the hall, but Miss Winney appeared as if by magic. “You’re to stay in your room, Mr. Garth.”
I sat on the bed for three-quarter of an hour, hoping Redfern would show up. Finally I decided to try something.
At eleven-thirty a colored girl in a red dress and white plastic apron brought in my lunch tray and set it on the table. The lunch was meager.
“When does the staff eat?” I said.
The girl was in a hurry. “They’s eatin’ right now,” she said, and went on down the hall.
I waited a bit, then went on down the hall into the sitting room. It was empty and nobody was at the desk. I took my time, went out the front door and started down the walk. The river was pale in the sunlight, flowing narrow and slow and peaceful.
The guy was as big as myself, which is pretty big. He was in good condition, dressed in white. He had large ears and needed a haircut.
“Where are you going?”
“Taking a walk.”
“Oh. Well, let’s get back to your room, eh?”
“Who’re you?”
“I’m Jim.”
“Why can’t I take a walk?”
“Now, look.” His face reddened a bit. A heavy bunch of keys jangled at this belt, and his eyes were mean in the sunlight, squinting just a little with not much nose between them. “Come on, let’s not be difficult.”
“Suppose I won’t go back?”
He reached for my arm. I pulled away. He reached again and this time his fingers sank in hard and sure and his eyes grinned but his mouth didn’t.
“I’m not going back to my room. I’m through with my room.”
We stood very quietly, looking into each other’s eyes.
“That so?” he said. He smiled with his mouth this time. It was a hell of a fine smile, like a laughing dog. It was a grand smile. “Let’s cut this out, Mr. Garth. Let’s just go back to your room.”
“I told you.”
He sighed. His shoulders slumped. He drew them back up with a strong gesture.
“They won’t like this.”
“To hell with them.”
“Your attitude’s all wrong, Mr. Garth.”
“Hell with that, too.” I looked at the river. “Hell with you for that matter.” I whipped away from him, started down the walk.
He came after me like a bull. Breathing like one, too. But as soon as he reached me he was quiet again. He was perfect. I’d had this kind of handling plenty. It got me. I was a little mad now. I’d asked Leda to send for Redfern. Three hours had passed since she’d gone.
“Look, Mr. Garth,” the man called Jim said rapidly. “I’m asking you once more. Go back to your room.”
“No.” I felt bull-headed. It was a good feeling because I hadn’t been feeling any way at all for some time. “So your name’s Jim?” I said. “That’s a fine name.”
He took my arm, tried to force it around behind my back. I went along with it and came up with my face close to his. “A good strong American name,” I said. “Jim.” I brought my left hand up and shoved it into his throat. Then I squeezed his Adam’s apple. I felt it buckle in there and bright pain danced in his eyes. It sent him into action as I’d known it would.
He brought his right hand up, grabbed my forearm, came down with his left, and twisted. I went with him again.
“Jim,” I said. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
He did, breathing good and loud now. I was out of condition. He cursed and said, “You guys!” Then he came at me with his head. I brought my knee up gently against his nose. He caught my leg and we landed on the sidewalk.
“That’s it, Herbert,” he said.
Something happened against the side of my head. Then it happened again and the lawn in front of the Riverview Sanitarium tipped up with the buildings way up there above me and I started sliding toward the river.
Chapter 7
The steel legs of the cot were bolted to the floor. The floor was cement. There was a smell in the room. Lysol, maybe. The smell was damp, cool, vinegarish. But the room wasn’t cool. It was hot and an arm of sunshine elbowed me in the face. It was yellow and it was barred. There were two windows, barred. The door was thick wood, with a small barred opening. It was whitewashed as were the cement walls. I rolled over on the cot, touched the wall nearest me. It was damp and flakes of warm-wet pain and whitewash came away, dusting onto the mattress I lay on.
Somewhere a woman sang in a hoarse, laughing voice, “. . . right in the corner, where you are.”
My head didn’t ache, but I felt lethargic. I felt like more sleep. I knew I’d been given a hypo, a sedative of some kind. As I lay there, my mind came more awake.
Somebody walked by the door, stopped. More footsteps.
“He’s come around.”
I recognized Jim’s voice. The man I’d fought with out on the front sidewalk. I swung myself to a sitting position on the cot. A face moved away from the small barred opening at the door.
“Think he’ll eat?” somebody else said. It was a woman.
“God knows,” Jim said.
“He should eat. It’s been three hours. He didn’t eat lunch. You going in there?”
“I dunno. He hadn’t messed the place up any.”
I sat there, listening. I stared at the floor, not the door, and let them talk.
“You better check the commode,” the woman said.
“Yeah. Later,” Jim said.
“He don’t look—that way. He looks sane as you.”
> “Ever seen any of ’em didn’t?”
“Well, Isaac. He scared me plenty.”
“Hell, I could scare the pants off you, Janie.”
Giggles. Sounds of a stiff cloth rustling and fast breathing, then a sharp, lingering, feminine, meaningless, “No!”
“Ah-h-h,” Jim said. There was a loud smack of hand against flesh, then an elastic snap. More rustling and fast breathing. “So you do today,” Jim said. “Afraid you’ll catch a cold?”
“Shut up. Don’t! He might—”
“Nobody’d believe him,” Jim said. “C’mon over here.”
“Not now!”
“Why not now?”
The other woman with the hoarse voice sang again, “Nearer my God to the-e-e-e-e-e-e!”
“Oh, Jim, you made me lose a button.”
“You’re in good company. C’mon, Janie.”
“Tonight.”’
Jim grumbled. “That’s right. We both work tonight,” he said more lightheartedly.
“Yes, and I’m dead already.”
“You’ll be dead, you rascal, you!” the woman with the hoarse voice sang.
“A lot she knows,” Janie said.
“She knows,” Jim said. “She told me. She tried to get me yesterday. Said she’d fallen in love with me.”
“Oh, hell. I can’t find that button.”
“Let it hang open.”
“Are you going to give him that tray? I’ll be darned if I’ll give him this needle. You’ll have to. Watkins said you’d have to if he looked queer.”
“I gave him a helluva shot before.”
“What’s the matter with him, really?” She gasped. “Stop it, Jim. Can’t you wait till tonight?” She whispered, “My God, they’ll tell Watkins.”
“He’s tough, is all,” Jim said. “Thinks he wants to kill somebody, or something.” They both laughed. There was a beating on the door.
“He looks all right,” Janie whispered. “Just tired.”
“Hey, Eric,” Jim said. He was using my first name now. That was nice.
“Hurry up,” Jamie whispered. “I want to get home. Two hours and we have to come back here. Damn Lucy. Why’d she take sick?”
“You hungry, Eric?” Jim said.
I looked at him. “Come on in,” I said.
His face went away from the small barred window.
“Better put it through the slot,” Jamie said. “He looked at you awful funny.”
“Hey, Eric,” Jim said. “You scheming?”
There was a small square opening, closed with a hinged door just below the barred opening of the window. This must be the slot they’d referred to. It would be for passing things through in case a patient was violent.
It was a fine thing, all right. Everything was so messed up that I didn’t really feel any way at all. That would come later.
“Why don’t you come on in?” I said. “Jim.”
“You want to kill me?” Jim said. Jamie gave a short laugh and said, “Stop it. You always tease them.”
God, I thought. I’m insane, now. A hit-and-run driver who has gone insane.
“They always say that,” Jim said. “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!”
“Stop it, Jim.”
“Eric, d’you feel that way?”
“Have you seen my wife?” I said. “Has she been here?”
“Yes, she’s been here. Your brother was here, too.”
I didn’t say anything. There was a small white bureau bolted to the wall and a commode in the corner of the room. Leda had been.
“Where is she?” I said.
“She had to go,” Jim said. “But she’ll be back, Eric. She said to tell you she’d be back tonight sometime. After you felt better. After you eat something. Hungry?”
“What time tonight?”
“Go ahead,” Janie whispered.
A lock scraped and the door swung open. Jim was carrying a tray with some tin dishes on it and he still needed a haircut.
“Why don’t you see a barber?” I said.
He ignored that. “Time to eat,” he said. He put the tray down beside me on the cot. I glanced toward the open door. A girl, Janie, stood there, with half of her showing through the opening. She had jet-black hair and a build that crowded her white dress to the bursting point. Her red lips were formed into an inquisitive, expectant O. Her dark eyes matched her mouth. Her breasts showed through the material of brassiere and dress, and at the end of her torso a button was missing from the dress, which gaped open. Her right hand passed diffidently back and forth over this bit of temptation. Her belly heaved and she carried a cotton-wrapped hypodermic needle in her left hand.
“Hello, Janie,” I said. She was certainly prepared. For anything.
She smiled and held it, trying to avoid my eyes.
“You hungry?” Jim said. “You still want to fight?”
“Why am I in here?”
“You wouldn’t go back to your room. Remember?”
“Yeah, but why here?” I stood up, faced him. He backed away one step and his gaze flicked toward Janie. She didn’t move.
“You’ve got to cooperate, Eric,” Jim said. “You want to feel right, don’t you?”
“I feel right.”
“Sure. Well, you’ll feel better. You’ll just be here a little while, like that.”
We looked at each other. His eyes were trying to smile but they were mean and there was nothing intelligent about them. He was still a big guy and in better condition than myself.
“I asked to see a Detective Redfern. He been around?”
Jim shook his head. “No. You won’t be able to see anybody but maybe your wife, that’s all. For now, anyway.” He cleared his throat. “Why don’t you eat something?”
Two days later, when Leda came to see me, I was still in the locked room. It had been plenty bad and was getting worse, what with Doc Barton’s silence and this locked room. I’d seen or heard nothing of Leda until she came to the door that day.
Jim let her in and closed the door on us. I hadn’t caused any trouble and they were growing lax.
Leda looked hot and tired. “I’m sorry, Eric. There’ve been so many things I had to do.”
“Sure.” I was mad all the way, now. The dream rode me and I wondered incessantly what people knew that I didn’t.
Leda’s eyes were smoky, like they always got when she wanted me. She was wearing shorts again. Yellow shorts, as tight a fit as possible, and a thin fuzzy white sweater, which stretched like rubber over her breasts. She wasn’t wearing a brassiere. Her coppery hair was thick and I was mad, so when she squeezed in close I grabbed her tightly.
She breathed out hard and I smelled whisky. Her lips sought mine, searching almost frantically. She pressed against me, leaning on me, pulling me toward the cot in the bare room.
“What the hell’s up?” I said, holding her off.
“Don’t,” she said. “I haven’t seen you for two days.”
“That’s your fault.”
“Tell me later. There’s nobody outside, darling.”
It had been lonely. It wasn’t lonely now. There’d been a lot of things I’d wanted to tell her. I had wanted to give her hell.
Now it was different, because Leda affected me that way. I still wanted to give her hell. But that would be different, too.
“Why haven’t you been around?”
“I’m here, Eric. For God’s sake, bawl me out later.”
We were on the cot, sitting, and she pulled me down. We lay on the cot pressed tight together and she was breathing like nothing I’d ever heard.
“What gets you this way?” I said.
“Anticipation. I told that man to leave us alone. There’s nobody around. Quit making me anticipate.” She found my lips and kissed me with her whole body and the shorts were so tight they felt like skin.
She arched her body and screamed way down in her throat; and almost silent screeching.
I heard somebody whistling in the dist
ance. Then I didn’t hear anything but the thunder of blood.
Leda wasn’t a bit tired.
“What got into you?” We were lying on the cot. Leda sat up, looked at herself and laughed.
It was over now. She had been wonderful, but I was alone again. Somehow even with her here, I was alone. The whistling came by outside the building, nearing.
“Get out of sight. Over there,” I said, motioning her beside the door. A moment later Jim’s face appeared at the small barred panel in the door.
“Everything all right?” He couldn’t see Leda and his eyes weren’t smiling. They were a little harried.
“Fine,” Leda said.
He tried to see her, but couldn’t. She was a picture, with the white sweater rolled up half over her breasts.
“Would you send that nurse I was talking to in the office down here?” Leda said to Jim. “Right away?”
Jim frowned. “Okay. That’s Janie, Mrs. Garth.”
I wondered if Janie’d found her button. I hadn’t inquired. Jim went away and I looked at Leda standing there, lurking sultry and warm with her still smoky eyes and her belly moving softly as she breathed.
“I—I couldn’t get her any sooner,” she said.
“For God’s sake, put something on,” I told her. She managed to wriggle into what was left of the shorts. They made her look like something highly delectable out of Dogpatch. With one hand she held the tears together. Moving slowly, she came over and sat on the cot beside me.
“Where’s Frank?”
“He’s gone home,” she told me. “He couldn’t stay on.”
“But I stay on just fine.”
“There’s a mix-up, Eric. You shouldn’t have fought with the nurse, like that. What with your background and everything.”
She was thinking of something else. It was pretty obvious. “I suppose you know I’ve been drinking,” she said. “I had to. I couldn’t bear thinking of you in here.”
I didn’t say anything. It was all cockeyed. Her coming here today as she had. It was as if she’d come to repair her watch, or something. And now that everything was in running order, she wanted to go. It was in the way she acted and talked.