Memories of Another Day

by Harold Robbins

  “Don’t move, Jeb!” I snapped. I looked at the sheriff. “Now, suppose you tell us why you came up here.”

  He gulped. “Jeb’s wife has a warrant out fer him an’ Betty May fer unlawful fornication.”

  “Not good enough to make you jump county lines,” I said. “Try again.”

  He was silent.

  “Couldn’t be three acres of corn,” I said. “A green patch in the middle of wasted land that you saw from over the highway. Could it?”

  He was still silent.

  “And maybe there would be black people you could roust. Three acres of corn could be worth a lot of money. You’re the sheriff. You know the people who could handle it.”

  A grudging respect came into the sheriff’s face. “You’re right,” he admitted. “’Tain’t none o’ my business what goes on up here.”

  I took the gun from the table and put it back against the wall. “That’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “You and Jeb have important business to talk about.” I rose to my feet. “Anne and I will go outside and leave you gentlemen to talk it.”

  The sheriff looked up at me. “F’om what I heered about yer daddy, you got to be the spit an’ image of him.”

  “I’m nothing like him at all,” I said, and went outside.

  Anne followed me, and I leaned against the pickup and lit a cigarette, passed it to her and lit one for myself. “We’ll be leaving tomorrow,” I said. “After we get the flower seeds planted.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  I closed my eyes and stared through time. “Farther south.”

  She was silent for a long moment. “Will you be coming back here again?”

  “Yes. On my way back home.”

  “I’m going home tomorrow,” she said.

  Time dropped out. I opened my eyes and saw the helicopter. The pilot had gotten out and was talking to the deputy, and they were staring at us. I turned to look at her.

  “I’d like to come back here with you someday. May I?” There were tears in her eyes.

  “You know you can,” I said.

  Her hand reached for mine and held it tightly. “The sheriff. He was right. You are your father.”

  “That’s not what the sheriff said.”

  “It’s what I said.”

  I did not tell her that it was what my father had said also.

  “I’ve seen so much of him just since we came here. That’s why I want to go home. I don’t want to see any more. I’m frightened. I think it would blow my mind.”

  I raised her hand to my lips and kissed it.

  “You’re not angry with me?” she asked.

  “No.” I looked at her. “It’s okay.”

  The door behind us opened, and Jeb and the sheriff came out. They walked around the pickup to where we were standing. Jeb was smiling. “The sher’f ’n’ me come to ’n agreement.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “There’ll be no trouble now,” he said.

  I turned to the sheriff. He spoke quickly. “No way could Jeb do it alone. The nigguhs and the Eyties already had him pegged. They was jes’ waitin’ fer him to do the work afore they moved in.”

  I nodded.

  “Goin’ to stay around, son?” the sheriff asked.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  He squinted up at the sky. The sun was beginning to fall into the west. “Better be gittin’ back. Still don’ trust them things in the night.” He turned to Jeb. “Y’ll kin come on into town on Satiddy. I’ll have that warrant quashed fer you.”

  “Thank you, Sher’f.”

  The sheriff looked at me again. “How old are you, son?”

  “Seventeen.”

  He nodded. “That’s what I kep’ thinkin’ all the time you had that shotgun in my belly. Seventeen. That an’ the expression on yer face. That’s the way yer daddy must of looked when he blew Old Man Fitch in half in the back of the general store close on to fifty yeahs ago. He was seventeen then. They sent him up to reform school until he was eighteen. But he didn’ stay. They was a war, an’ he enlisted in the army an’ went to Europe. He never come back to Fitchville until twenty years atter the war. Then, one day, he showed up at the railroad station in a wheelchair. He was all broke up. Couldn’t walk. There was a woman with him. ’Twarn’t ’is wife. They heered somewhere out West he had a baby son. The woman bought a car from the Dodge dealer fer cash an’ they drove up yere into the hills. After that, nobody saw ’im, on’y the woman when she come into town to do the shoppin’. Then ’bout six months atter that, he shows up at the railroad station, kisses the woman goodbye, gits on the New York train an’ that was the las’ time anyone in town ever seen him theah.”

  “And the woman?” I asked.

  “She waited till the train pulled out of the station; then she drove off an’ nobody ever seen her again either.”

  “Did you ever see my father?” I asked.

  “No. But I heered the story f’om my father. He was the sher’f’s depitty in ’17 an’ the sher’f in ’37. An’ I must of heered the story myse’f a thousand times, ’cause ever’ time yer father’s name came up, my father used to tell the story.” He looked at me. “He used to be very proud o’ yer father. One of our boys becomin’ one o’ the most important men in the country.” He squinted up at the sky again, stuck out his hand. “If you wanna read about it, the library in town has all the back issues of the Fitchville Journal back to the War between the States.” We shook hands. “If you need anythin’, jes’ call me.”

  “Thank you, Sheriff,” I said.

  We watched the helicopter lift off and race into the setting sun. When its noise stopped bouncing around in the hills, we went back into the shack.

  I picked up my sleeping bag and Anne’s. “It’s been a long day,” I said. “I think we’ll let you two get to bed early.”

  The sky was still gold when we sat down in the cornfield. “I didn’t know they weren’t married,” Anne said.

  “Neither did I.”

  Silently she rolled a joint, lit it, then handed it to me. I took a couple of tokes and leaned back on one elbow. I could feel its tranquility moving through me. I gave the joint back to her.

  “Jonathan,” she said, the smoke curling from her nostrils.

  “Yes?”

  “Come home with me.”

  I looked at her. “I can’t. Not just yet.”

  “Why?”

  “You keep asking me that and I keep giving you the same answer. I don’t know why.”

  She passed me the joint. I took a few more tokes, then lay back and watch the dark cover the sky like a blanket. She finished the joint and pinched it out carefully, burying it in the ground. She moved over and put her head on my shoulder. “I’ll miss you.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “You know where to find me. I’ll be sitting on the back porch, looking over at your house.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Don’t be too long,” she said. “I’d like to be young with you just a little while longer. We all grow up too fast.”

  ***

  I stood in front of the shack and watched the pickup make its way down the dirt road. I saw Anne’s face in the rear window, looking back at me. She held up her hand in a gesture of farewell. I held up mine. Then they were gone, and I picked up my backpack and slipped it over my shoulders. It was almost eleven o’clock, and the sun was already hot. The twelve thirty bus would put her in New York at five; if she could catch the five-fifty out of Grand Central, she could be home by seven.

  I started up the hill. The path to the highway led me past the cemetery knoll. I paused there for a moment, looking down at the freshly turned earth, the neat rows of seeds planted around the graves.

  “Don’ you worry, Jonathan,” Betty May promised. “I’ll see to it they git water ever’ day. There’ll be flowers there almost afore you kin turn aroun’.”

  I looked down at the shack and wondered if I ever really would come back. Maybe
I would be somewhere else.

  ***

  “Don’t wonder, my son. You will come back.”

  “Are you sure, Father? You never came back.”

  “I did once, Jonathan. The sheriff told you about that.”

  “But you didn’t stay.”

  “Neither will you.”

  “Then what is the purpose? I might as well not come back.”

  “You’ll have to. For the same reason that I came back. To make yourself whole again.”

  “I don’t understand, Father.”

  “You will, Jonathan. When the time comes. You will come back for your child.”

  “My child, Father?”

  “Yes, my son. The child you never made.”

  Book Two

  Another Day

  Chapter 1

  It was two o’clock in the morning, and the last spring snow had melted in the warmth of the day, then turned the highway into a sheet of glazed ice with the night wind. Clouds scudded across the face of the moon, obscuring even the edges of the road, and there was no light to keep him from slipping and sliding on the precarious footing. Silently he swore to himself, clutching his thin jacket against him as he walked along.

  Ten miles west of St. Louis. Highway 66. Walk far enough and he would wind up in California. He grinned bitterly to himself. That is, if he didn’t freeze to death along the way. He peered through the dark in front of him. He had been walking almost an hour. There should be a truck stop up there somewhere. At least, that was what they had told him when they had thrown him out of the car. Two miles west along the road. A truck stop.

  He paused suddenly. What if they had been lying to him and there was nothing? He was beginning to freeze through. Five hours like this and there would be nothing to worry about. He would be dead, stiff as cardboard in the ditch at the side of the road. Then everybody would be happy. John L. at UMW, Big Bill at the Carpenters, Murray and Green at AFL headquarters. Even Hillman and Dubinsky, who hated each other, would be just as happy if he did not exist.

  “You go out to K.C.,” they had said. “If anyone could get the meat packers together, you’re the man to do it.”

  Like going to Siberia. Of the last four organizers they’d sent out there, according to his count, he was the only one still alive. And for how long was a matter of conjecture. No truck stop, four out of four. They could just as well have hung him on a meat hook in a freezer locker the way they had poor Sam Masters.

  Three days in a car with the Eyeties. Three of them with accents as big as the guns and knives they packed. Three days eating garlic-sausage sandwiches until the stink could have run the car better than the gas they put in it. Three days shitting at the side of the road with your ass freezing in the wind, wondering whether they were going to come up behind you and put a bullet through your head or up your ass. Three days of waiting outside phone booths while they telephoned back for instructions. Then, last night, when they got back into the car, he had known the waiting was over. They suddenly stopped talking. Even to each other. The car began to go west along 66. At midnight they slipped through St. Louis. Twenty minutes later they stopped the car on an empty stretch of highway.

  The door opened, a heavy shoe kicked him in the side and he went flying out onto the icy road. He landed on his back, flat on the ground, his hands outstretched. He saw the man lean out the door over him, the pistol looming like a cannon in his hand. Reflexively he curled himself into a ball, trying to become as small a target as possible. He heard the roar of the gun as the automatic emptied. He could almost feel the bullets tearing through him. Then the gun was silent. Nothing. He couldn’t believe it. He turned, staring up at the gunman.

  The Italian was grinning broadly. “You shit in your pants. I can smell it.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “You lucky,” the gunman said. “Don’t come back to Kansas City or the next-a time you won’t smell your own shit. You’ll be dead.”

  The car door slammed, the motor roared and the car made a U-turn and sped back on the road toward Kansas City. Suddenly it stopped, reversed abruptly and backed up toward him. By now, he was standing up.

  The driver stopped opposite him. He reached out, pointing his hand in the opposite direction from the one in which the car was going. “You go that-a way. Two miles. There’s a truck stop.” Then the car took off again and its rear lights vanished down the highway.

  He moved off the side of the road and cleaned himself as best as he could with snow he melted in his hand, dried himself on pieces of cold, brittle newspaper the wind had blown there, then began to walk. Two hours. Then he saw the lights. It took him another half-hour of running and walking to get there.

  The white and red bulbs shone like the sign over the gateway to heaven. TRUCK STOP. GAS. EATS. BUNKS. BATHS. Six big trucks were parked on the far side of the station, their tarpaulins tied down in gray-shrouded silence against the elements. Carefully he walked around behind the trucks before he entered the building. There were no cars parked. No point in taking any chances in case the Eyeties changed their minds and doubled back on him. Then again, it might have been a setup. Someone could be waiting there for him.

  Quietly he went to a side window and peered in. The restaurant was empty except for one waitress, busy setting up the tables for breakfast, and a counterman, leaning his heavy belly against the cash register while reading the newspaper. After a last glance around to reassure himself, he went to the front door and opened it.

  He did not go inside. Stood in the open doorway. The wind blew into the restaurant, and they looked up at him.

  “Shut the fuckin’ door,” the counterman said. “It’s freezin’.”

  “Come in,” called the waitress.

  “I need a bath first,” he said. In spite of himself, his teeth began to chatter.

  The waitress looked at him. “You need something hot inside you more. I’ll get a cup of coffee.”

  “Where’s the bath?” he asked. “Bring the coffee there.” He looked at the counterman. “Got an extra pair of pants to sell me?”

  The counterman stared at him. “You all right?”

  “Some Wops beat the shit out of me and dumped me up the road a piece,” he said. “And I’m toting a couple of lumps of ice around with me.”

  The counterman was silent for a moment. “I got a pair of work pants that might do you. It’ll cost you two dollars, though. They’re almost new.”

  The man stuck his hand in his jacket pocket and came up with a bill. He held it out toward the waitress. “There’s five dollars. Bring the coffee and the pants over to the bath. And a razor too, if you can spare it.”

  The waitress took the bill from his hand. “The bath is over in the building on your left, next to the bunkhouse.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said politely.

  The door closed behind him, and they saw him walk past the windows around the side of the building. The waitress took the five-dollar bill over to the register and gave it to the counterman.

  “Those pants ain’t wu’th more’n a dollar an’ you know it,” she said reproachfully.”

  “Mebbe to you an’ mebbe to me. But to him, it’s wu’th two dollars.” The counterman rang up twenty-five cents on the register, took out the change, pocketed two dollars and gave her the rest. “I took out fer the bath and razor.”

  “Okay.”

  “The pants are hangin’ in the locker behind the door.”

  “I know where they are,” she said, walking around him into the kitchen.

  He slapped her full buttocks as she passed. “If’n yer smart,” he laughed, “you kin make it so he gits no change at all.”

  She shot him a baleful look. “He’s not you, stupid,” she said sarcastically. “He kin have it for free.”

  ***

  He was soaking in the hot tub when she came into the bathhouse, his head leaning against the back, his eyes closed. The first thing she noticed was the black-and-blue bruises on his body. Then she remarke
d the puffed, swollen eye, cheekbone and jaw.

  “They really worked you over,” she said in a hushed voice.

  He opened his eyes. “I’m lucky they didn’t kill me,” he said matter-of-factly. He gestured to the floor near the tub. His pants lay there crumpled up. His jacket and shirt were hung neatly across the back of a chair in front of the heater, drying out. “Throw the pants into the garbage. I already washed the shirt.”

  “Okay,” she said, bending to pick them up.

  “Better get some newspaper first,” he said. “I wasn’t kidding.”

  She went into the other room and came back with paper. Carefully she picked up the pants without touching them and wrapped the paper around them. She put the razor and his change on the chair where his jacket was hanging. “I’ll git rid of this. Then I’ll come back and he’p you.”

  “Thank you, ma’am, but I think I can manage.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” she said sharply. “I been brought up with five brothers an’ I been married twice an’ I know when a man needs help an’ when he don’t.”

  He turned to look at her. Despite the swollen eye and cheek, she felt the strength in his face. “And you think I need help?”

  “I know,” she said.

  He nodded. “Then I thank you kindly, ma’am, and I’m grateful to accept your offer.”

  When she came back, she pulled a chair over to the tub and with a small towel soaked in water and soaped began to wash him gently. There were bruises all over his body, and despite himself he winced whenever she touched him. She changed the water in the tub twice, finally washing his face and his hair, then carefully shaving him. Blood had begun to flow from a cut over his heavy eyebrow. “That’s a bad ’un,” she said. “We better git the doctor in the mornin’ to come an’ stitch it up. Otherwise there’ll be a big scar.” She tore a strip from a clean cloth and pressed it to the cut. “You hol’ that while I git some adhesive to keep it together.”

  She was back in a moment with a wide roll of Johnson & Johnson. Expertly she tore it down the middle and made a neat cross patch over his eye. “Okay, you kin git up now an’ dry yourse’f.”