by Peter Rabe
“That’s my old hitchhiking buddy there,” said the wheelman and slapped me on the back. “My!” and he tore his eyes open at the cuffs on my wrists, “I never seen that type thing before.”
“They’re handcuffs,” I said. “They mean business and no more fooling around.”
“Naw, Mister Thorpe, now don’t you take it like that He shouldn’t take it like that, should he now, dad?” And this time he slapped the deputy on the back.
“Well. I don’t know,” said the deputy. “I’m just …”
“… doing your duty,” I finished for him. “And me, I’ve been as patient as I’m going to be,” I was going to say when the wheelman interrupted again.
“I can sense his feelings. Can’t you sense his feelings, dad? And patient! Why you got to tote him with cuffs and gun, dad, I don’t know. You know what shows his innocence, deputy?”
“No. What?” said the old man.
“Him standing there peacefully and with you pointing that gun at your toes.”
The gun, of course, came up immediately. And I hadn’t been holding still out of innocence, but because I hadn’t heard Micky talk that much before. I felt that he might have something to say.
“And what are you doing here?” the deputy asked the wheelman. “You got checked out while I was still here.”
“I know. The truth is, I got interested in your station. All about it How it looks, how it works, never having been in one before.”
“Oh.” said the old man. “We do run a fine station.” Then he sighed and nodded at me. “No use waiting around in the snow — ”
“That’s right, dad. You got maybe two hours before the State man can show up, least that’s what he told your buddy inside on the phone.”
“Well,” said the old man. “Might as well — ” and he nodded at me again.
“And me,” said the wheelman, “I got to get North before then. I’m late as it is. Good-by, Mister Thorpe, and sit tight.”
“Couldn’t you wait for me?” I asked him. “When I get out I won’t have any transportation.”
“Naw, sorry. And nothing against you, Mister Thorpe, but plain business. Good business buddy of mine has been waiting for me further North, you know him, the one we was talking about. He’ll wait where he said, but I got to make time.”
“Yuh. Make time,” I said.
“I will, and be seeing you.” He grinned, winked, and went to his car.
The grin didn’t mean a thing to me. I had seen him put that on and off in a hundred situations, and all different But I put a lot of stock in that wink.
No new move with the law for two hours, he had said. And I should wait that length of time and not pull anything crude. He was getting Rand now, he had said, not very far up the line where it had been arranged for the two cars to meet. And Rand would wait there.
The car took off in a cloud of snow.
And I would be hooked with Rand again.
“Whaddaya say, Mister Thorpe. We go in, huh?”
But the new thing was, I would rather be hooked with Rand, still an unknown factor, than with the law, about which I was certain. I could bust out of this situation — an old man and a country station — but what did I know about slipping a dragnet? But Rand knew how.
CHAPTER 7
There was another cop in the station but he had a bum foot and was turnkey. He looked up from his table where he was shuffling cards and when we shook the snow off just inside the door he looked unfriendly. Besides turnkey, I figured, he was janitor.
“Where?” said the deputy.
“George is drunk in the back one,” said the turnkey, “and there’s that bum in the first.”
“What smells?” said the deputy.
“George. He been throwing up in the slop pail.”
“I’ll stay with the bum,” I said.
The deputy felt that all this reflected badly on his station and told the turnkey to get a move on and change slop buckets right this minute and he told me I shouldn’t mind the two hours with a bum in the cell, because that was the nicer one, actually, where a body could see more than the opposite wall.
“You can see the desk and the windows behind the desk,” he explained, “and let me tell you something, Mister Thorpe, that makes a difference.”
We stood by the first cell while the turnkey put his cards down and came over.
“The reason I say that, Mister Thorpe, one time last year I was painting that cell here I’m talking about and paying no mind to nothing else, when the door swung shut on me.”
“You want me to change that slop bucket afore morning,” said the turnkey, “that means I’ll be tramping in and out …”
“Just open this cell here,” said the old man, and then, “I was saying. Me painting that cell here and the door swinging shut — notice them locks, Mister Thorpe? New. They close automatic.”
“Yes.”
“And me in there all alone for two hours. Uh, would you mind stepping in there, Mister Thorpe?”
“Two hours,” I said and went in.
“Like I said, two hours. The key on the desk there and me all alone in the station.”
“Felt like a common criminal, huh?”
“Mister Thorpe, it felt bad. Would you mind, just a little — thank you,” and he slammed the door shut.
“George says — ” the turnkey called from the other cell.
“Just do that slop bucket!” Then the old man closed his eyes on the other side of the cell and said, “Where was I?”
“You felt rotten.”
“Yes. And you know what it was helped me, those two hours? Looking out at that window there. Looking out at the little bit you can see through that window there.”
“Yes. I can understand that.”
“So that’s why I said maybe you’d like this cell better.”
He smiled at me from the other side of the bars, waiting for me to say thank you. I said, “Thank you.” Then he turned, to walk away.
“You forgot to take off the cuffs,” I told him.
He turned back, thought about it a moment, and then he decided it would be all right He took the cuffs off, reaching through the bars.
The bum in the cell with me was like an animal, like a cat, and all to his advantage. He lay curled on the sixteen-inch plank and woke up just by opening his eyes when I came into the cell. He looked at the deputy and then at the far window and when he saw that it was still night he closed his eyes again and was asleep. There was no room on the bench for me so I stood by the bars.
An hour later I crouched down on the floor, next to the bars. Five minutes after that I stretched out my legs because I was too nervous to crouch and right after that I got up again.
“Time drags, don’t it?” said the deputy.
It wasn’t just dragging. It was killing me.
“I don’t want to make you sore, Mister Thorpe, but I hardly think that State man is going to make it come two hours. You been watching that snow come down?”
“I can’t see it from here.”
“Haven’t you been looking out that window? You remember I told you about …”
“It doesn’t work at night,” I told him. “The glass just shows black.”
“Well, there’s been a lot of snow. Colder too. You want me to call up once and ask them to …”
“No. Never mind that.”
On second thought I felt maybe he should, but I didn’t have the courage to face it What if they said the man was gone from there maybe two hours and should be here any minute? Maybe they would say, instead, he wouldn’t come at all that night, on account of the weather, and then I could relax, with more time to spare for waiting, for stewing, or for figuring something. But I didn’t want to face it, if the message was different.
Figuring chances can make a gutless chance calculator out of a man.
The old man was putting a pot on the stove.
I said, “Are you making coffee?”
“Yes. This time of night, wh
en I’m on nights, I always …”
“That’s nice. You know, it’s the cozyness of it, isn’t it? Snow coming down outside, blowing cold, but here, in this nice room you fixed up — and I bet you were the one who hung that wreath up outside, huh?”
“Yes, for the Christmas spirit, you know?”
“I know what you mean. I love the Christmas spirit.”
“Would you like a cup of coffee, Mister Thorpe?”
“I wouldn’t dare ask, but if there’s enough — How are you making that coffee?”
“How? I brew it, I guess.”
“Ah, just as I thought.”
“You got different ways, Mister Thorpe?”
I asked him if he ever used a pinch of salt and he said, no, he used sugar himself. I explained that one didn’t have anything to do with the other, but once the time came that all this mess was straightened out again I’d be proud to have him over to my house and show him how we did it, using salt Yes, he said, he too hoped all this would be over soon. Such an embarrassment, all of this.
“None of this is your fault,” I said, and when he looked at me I started to smile. “No hard feelings.”
“Why, of course not,” he said.
“I tell you what!” It stopped him for a moment, on the way to the stove. “I’ll show you that trick with the coffee, the one I was talking about I don’t often show this to anyone, but …”
Then I stopped. I let it sink in just how much I had forgotten myself, talking as if I could now step out of this cell and show him how to do that trick with the salt.
“Maybe,” I said, “you could lock the door? The outside door?”
He looked doubtful, but now I was the one who seemed hurt And such a nice gentleman, that Mister Thorpe, and patient all the time.
He cleared his throat, he frowned at the turnkey and smiled at me. Then he went to the front door and locked it with the key which was in the door. He put the key in his pocket after that, but that didn’t worry me. Next, the cell. He was going to open it After that —
He came towards the cell and I didn’t even watch him.
I looked at the outside door with the two long windows in it which were partly frosted and had old-fashioned designs etched into the glass. On the other side hung the Christmas wreath.
At that point the wreath gave a jump.
There was the sound, too, but that didn’t register as much as the movement The door rattled and the wreath jumped around.
The old man stopped without having opened the cell and grinned at me to make clear we should now both be happy. “There he is! And in less than two hours!”
Easy, I kept saying to myself, easy now. Don’t jump, Gallivan.
He didn’t come any closer. He didn’t open the cell but went to the door.
“It’ll look better,” he said, “when he comes in.”
I grabbed the bars and wanted to shake them. The deputy got the front door open and stepped back. Then I heard a man’s voice saying. “Glad to see you’re this careful.” He was a State highway patrolman.
CHAPTER 8
He had a parka on over his uniform and looked wide as a barn. He opened his parka which showed his black belt, and all the cop equipment hanging there. His neck was thick and red.
“Where is he?”
The deputy pointed at me and held the door.
“Fine,” said the patrolman.
Then he stepped aside and called down to the steps, “He’s still here, Misses Thorpe.”
Then she came in, running. She looked small and pretty next to the cop and there was a bright, happy expression on her face.
“Jimmy!” she called, “Oh, Jimmy, you’re here!”
She came to the cell and put her hands on mine. I was holding the bars very hard. She moved her fingers over my knuckles.
“Easy, Gallivan,” I heard her say.
“The man he was hitchhiking with called her,” said the patrolman. The old man closed the door.
As soon as the door was closed and the cold air didn’t blow in any more it seemed very static and quiet in the room. The deputy stood by his desk, the patrolman stood by the stove, and Jessie was beaming at me. I don’t remember what she said, it was all for the others, but the wide-eyed smile with hope and adoration was looking at me. I had never seen her except still-faced or cold. It was a fine act.
“… haven’t called in yet?” the patrolman was asking, and after the deputy said, “No, not since we’ve been back,” the patrolman said something else at the stove while the deputy was pouring him coffee.
“But not now,” Jessie was saying. It was very low, and buried between the loud things, the fake nonsense she was gabbling.
The gun was a flat, small automatic.
“Only if nothing else works,” I heard.
It wouldn’t be an easy gun for a target across the room, but plenty good from close up.
When I put it in my pocket I looked back at the bum. He looked at me, then turned over.
“I don’t rightly see how I can do a thing on her say-so,” the deputy was explaining.
Jessie stepped away from the cell, so that I could listen.
“Of course not,” said the patrolman. “I didn’t say that.”
“I thought you said, seeing that Misses Thorpe is here …”
“I said seeing there is a Misses Thorpe makes the whole thing a little different, is what I said.”
“How different?” the deputy wanted to know.
“Just — Well, like a man who’s got a wife is not the same type of thing like a man who’s single, is what I mean.”
“You mean he’s got more of a chance being Mister Thorpe now than before.”
What they were trying to say came out all junk, and furthermore, the point about Jessie being here and helping my chances for getting out was junk, too. The deputy had no intention of letting me out now and the patrolman didn’t want any such thing either, both of them getting more and more legal as they kept talking along.
Only the gun would make a difference.
“I could call them up,” said the deputy.
“That’s a fine idea,” said the patrolman. “That way, Misses Thorpe won’t have to wait so long, maybe.”
The sonofabitch gave Jessie a look which made me feel like a husband. About my having to wait, in the cell, he said nothing.
“That’s awfully sweet,” said Jessie. “I am grateful to you for wanting to get my husband out of this horrible spot.”
She was out of her mind — she was going to soft talk them into the worst mistake that could happen. They would make that call and would hear: “Hold him under heavy guard; our man is on his way and should be there now; checking your description there is no doubt the man in your cell is James Gallivan; shackle the bastard to the bars because he’s insane; he made a break three weeks before release and does not think rationally; also, he hasn’t got a wife — not anymore.”
“You know the number?” asked the deputy.
“That’s awfully sweet of you,” Jessie said again.
She stood with her back to the cell, but I could tell by her voice and by the tilt of her head that she was smiling at the patrolman.
I said, “Darling,” with my voice very steady.
“You know the number?” asked the deputy again.
The patrolman put his coffee cup on the stove and looked at the ceiling.
“Let me think,” he said.
“Darling. Jessie.”
She looked back at me and smiled. Then she looked the other way again.
The patrolman had spilled his cup a little and it hissed on the stove.
“No,” he said. “But I can ask at the station.”
“I know the number,” said Jessie.
“Darling. Come here a minute. Please?”
“One moment,” she said to the men, turned my way, and came to the cell.
Of course, the others were quiet now, watching us. There was just the hiss on the stove.
�
�Yes, Jimmy?” she said, and put her hands on mine again.
“If you’re going to ask them — if you’re going to ask those gentlemen to make that call, darling, I think it best if they also get in touch with my lawyer.”
“Lawyer?”
“Micky. I think he should know …”
“No need for that,” said the patrolman from the stove.
“Naw,” said the old man. “No need of that.”
“I don’t think so either, darling.” She gave a pat to my hand, turned away. “Now let me think what that number was,” she said to the others.
I could almost reach her, through the bars, but they were so close together that my upper arm got caught in the space.
What could I have done, pull her back? Scream at her she was roping me in?
“He said when I spoke to him on the phone that there shouldn’t be any delay in clearing this up,” she was saying, “and I remember all that and what he said about driving right down but I can’t remember the number.”
“Your lawyer said that?” asked the deputy.
“Yes. Just for the formality, he’d come down.”
“And in this weather, too — ” The deputy shook his head. He felt admiration.
She was railroading me! The plan was to get me stuck here while the rest blew. But why the gun in my pocket?
I felt in my pocket and ran my finger along the base of the stock. There was a clip, anyway. Empty? It had to be empty or her whole performance made no sense. I had the gun in my pocket so I’d keep still, feeling safe with it, while she pulled her spiel! And once I lost my temper and pulled it, full or empty, no matter, that would fix me good!
“What was that number now — ” she was saying.
“Darling — ”
I have no idea how my voice sounded. It felt like steam under pressure and the lid still on.
“Why don’t you look in the book,” she said. “Under State Penal Commission, I think.”
“That’s a good idea,” said the patrolman, and he and the old man went to the desk to work with the telephone book.
“Jessie. Come here a moment.”