“Thank you, Mr. President.”
“It was a magnificent reaffirmation of all the basic truths that have made America great. A restatement of the ideals with which we all grew up, ideals that far exceed the boundaries of labor but reach out and touch the core of all Americans who love their country and their fellow man. I want you to know that in that speech you not only spoke for all Americans, you spoke for me as well. It is a speech I would have been proud to make myself.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.”
“Congratulations again, Mr. Huggins. Goodbye.”
The telephone clicked off in Daniel’s hand. He looked up and saw Moses and D.J. in the doorway. “The President liked it,” he said in a wondering voice.
Then, suddenly it seemed, all the phones in the suite began to ring at the same time and people began pouring into the room.
***
The pains began somewhere in the middle of his speech. They were sitting in the living room watching him on the television screen. A moment after Daniel had begun to speak, Jack looked at her in surprise.
“That’s not the speech we had worked on. Did he tell you he was going to change it?”
She shook her head. “He never told me about any speech. I wouldn’t know whether it’s the same thing or not.”
A few minutes later the first pain came. A spasm cutting through her like a knife. She tried to control it. She felt oddly embarrassed at letting Jack see it. She took a deep breath and it went away.
Two minutes later, it hit again. Stronger this time. Involuntarily, she gasped, bending forward in her chair.
Jack turned to her. “Are you all right?”
She felt the perspiration on her face. “The baby. I think it’s coming. Call the doctor. His number is next to the telephone.”
Jack got to his feet. “Mamie,” he called. The black woman appeared in the doorway. “I think Mrs. Huggins’ baby is coming. You stay with her while I phone the doctor and find out what he wants us to do.”
***
The suite in the hotel was now a madhouse. Where all the men had come from, he didn’t know. But they were there and they were exuberant. At the last count there was over a million dollars’ worth of purchase contracts signed, and they were still being counted.
“You foxy bastard,” the speaker who had introduced Daniel to the audience said to him. “You had us all thinkin’ you were crazy, but you knew all the time what you were doin’.”
Moses came toward him clutching a handful of telegrams. “The calls and telegrams are pouring in. From all over the country. Everybody wants you. From Dave Dubinsky in New York, who wants to take Madison Square Garden for you to talk to the I.L.G.W.U. and places the services of their bank, the Amalgamated, at your disposal, to Harry Bridges, who wants you to speak to the longshoremen in San Francisco. Even George Meany sent a telegram of congratulations and pledges his support in the achievement of all our common goals and ideals.”
Suddenly Daniel was tired. He began pushing his way through the crowded living room to his bedroom. He passed one man, already enthusiastically drunk, who clapped him on the shoulder. “Big Dan!” the man said. “You kin be the next President of the United States if’n you want to.”
He slipped into his room and closed the door. He walked to the bed and sat down. He needed a few minutes’ rest. Too much had happened. The highs and the lows had drained him. The door opened and D.J. came into the room.
“Are you all right, Father?”
“Just tired, son.”
“It was a brilliant idea, Father,” D.J. said. “You knew instinctively just the way to sell them. I don’t think any of us even came close to understanding what you were doing.”
Daniel looked at his son. And they still didn’t. Even D.J. believed that it had been a clever plan to sell subscriptions. He didn’t speak. The telephone at the side of the bed began to ring. He gestured for D.J. to get it.
D.J. picked it up. “It’s for you, Father. Jack Haney.”
Daniel took the telephone. “Yes, Jack?”
“Margaret’s having the baby. I just took her to County. She’s up in the labor room right now.”
“Is she all right?”
“Her doctor says she’s just fine. Everything’s normal. She should have the baby any minute.” There was a sound over the phone on Jack’s end of the line. “Hold on a minute.” Daniel could hear the voices. Then Jack came back on the line. “It’s a boy, Daniel.” His voice was excited. “Six pounds four ounces. Congratulations.”
Daniel took a deep breath. “I’ll leave right away. Tell Margaret that I’ll see her this evening.” He put down the telephone and looked up at D.J. “You have a brother,” he said.
D.J.’s face broke into a smile. “Congratulations.” He grabbed his father’s hand and held it. “I’m really happy for you. Really.”
“Get Moses,” Daniel said. “I want to tell him I’m going back right now. The two of you stay here and wrap up.”
Moses and D.J. came back into the room just as Daniel was closing his valise. “I’ll slip out through the bedroom door,” Daniel said. “Nobody’ll even miss me.”
Moses nodded, grinning. “Congratulations, Daniel.” He gestured at the valise. “You don’t have to take that. We’ll bring it back tomorrow.”
“Good idea,” Daniel said. He went to the hall door. “I’ll get a cab to take me to the airport,” he said, opening the door and stepping out into the hall. They stepped out after him.
There were about ten or twelve men outside the main entrance to the suite. “They’re still coming in,” Moses said. “You better go down to the elevators on the other side.”
Daniel glanced at the crowd and nodded, beginning to turn away. A picture clicked in his mind. He whirled suddenly, one hand reaching inside his coat for his gun; with the other he pushed Moses hard back into the open doorway. Moses crashed into D.J., and they both stumbled back into the room just as the first shot rang out.
Daniel felt the blow in his solar plexus, the picture of the blond man still bright in his mind. He struggled to raise his gun. The second shot brought him to his knees. He had the gun up now, holding it in two hands. It took all his strength to squeeze the trigger. Then the picture of the blond man’s face exploded into a mass of blood and bone and disappeared as still another shot tore into him, tumbling him backward, unconscious, to the floor.
***
“I am dying, my son. And you are being born. I will never see you. We will never know each other.”
“You will not die this time, Father. I have just come from the future and you are still there.”
“I will leave you my dreams, my son.”
“I will wait for them, Father. But you will have to show me the way.”
***
He struggled up through the maze of pain. He could feel the hands lifting him onto a stretcher. He opened his eyes just as they picked up the stretcher and saw D.J. and Moses bending anxiously over him. He managed a wan smile. “I feel stupid. I should have expected something like this.”
“Take it easy, Father,” D.J. said. “You’ll be okay. The doctor said none of the wounds are serious.”
“I know.” Daniel nodded weakly. “Your baby brother has told me that already.”
Now
The crisp October air felt good as it went deep into my lungs. All around us the West Virginia hills were covered with the red and gold and burnt orange of the early falling leaves, and those that were left danced nervously on the branches of the trees. We crested the hill. “Here,” I said.
Christina moved the white Rolls off the highway onto the shoulder of the road. She looked at me. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes. I promised myself I would come back before I went home.” I reached into the back seat and picked up my sleeping bag. “I planted flowers,” I said, getting out of the car.
“Eight o’clock tomorrow morning,” she said. “I’ll be here to pick you up. Don’t be late. You p
romised your mother you would be home in time for the wedding.”
Mother and Jack were to be married at our house tomorrow evening. Judge Paul Gitlin, to whom Jack had once been law clerk, was coming up from the city to perform the ceremony. “I won’t be late,” I said, slinging the sleeping bag’s straps over my shoulders.
“Do you have everything you need?” she asked.
I smiled. “I’ve got my toothbrush. It’s only overnight, Christina.”
I waited until the white Rolls disappeared over the crest of the hill, then crossed the highway and went over the fence and down the embankment on the other side. She had a reservation for the night in a motel the other side of Fitchville. This time I didn’t have to search for the path. I knew the way.
It took me less than an hour to reach the small cemetery at the top of the knoll. Betty May had been as good as her word. The flowers were planted neatly around its borders and between the graves, their bright reds, yellows, blues and purples smiling at the sky. I stood there for a long moment. Somehow it didn’t seem lonely and forgotten anymore.
I looked down the hill. The naked stalks of the cornfield were dancing in the afternoon breeze. A faint wisp of smoke came from the small chimney of the house, and the pickup truck was still dusty in front of the door.
While I was watching, Jeb Stuart came out of the house and stood on the front steps, looking around. He looked up at the knoll and saw me, his eyes squinting against the sun. I waved to him. His face broke into a grin as he recognized me, and he waved back. I started down the knoll, and he opened the door.
His voice floated back to me on the wind. “Betty May! Jonathan’s back!”
She came into the doorway behind him and stood there, waving and smiling. Something about her looked different, but it wasn’t until I drew close that I knew what it was. She was slimmer than when I had left; the big belly was gone.
Jeb Stuart came down the steps and pumped my hand enthusiastically. “Howdy, Jonathan, howdy.”
I smiled at him. “It’s real good to see you, Jeb Stuart.”
“We been expectin’ you like any day,” he said. “I thought you might have forgot us.”
“No way,” I said. I looked past him at Betty May. “Congratulations. Do I get a chance to kiss the pretty mother?”
“You shore do,” he said.
I went up the steps and kissed Betty May on the cheeks. “You look beautiful. Is she as pretty as you are?”
Betty May blushed. “How’d you know it was a girl?”
“I knew,” I said. “But you didn’t answer my question.”
“She shore is,” Jeb said. “She’s the spit an’ image of her maw. Come an’ see for yourself.”
I followed them into the cabin. It was more like a small home now. There were chintz curtains on the windows, the wooden furniture had been cleaned and painted, there was a large ceiling-to-floor drape that screened off the sleeping area from the rest of the house and new hurricane oil lamps were on the table and on the tops of the wooden chests.
Betty May pulled back the drape. “There she is,” she said proudly.
The baby was lying in an old-fashioned homemade crib cut from half of a whiskey barrel. It had been painted white and was supported on either end by two-by-fours. I bent over the crib. Her little red face was screwed up monkeylike in sleep, her hands gripped into tiny fists, her almost white hair made it seem as if she were bald. “She sure is pretty,” I said. “How old is she?”
“Six weeks now,” Betty May said. “She came the day we finished harvestin’.”
“It was almost like she knowed not to come until Betty May had finished helpin’ with the work,” Jeb Stuart said.
“Have you named her yet?” I asked.
“We been thinkin’. But we ain’t decided yet. We want to take her down to Fitchville an’ get her rightly baptized,” Betty May said. “We jes’ call her Baby.”
I smiled. “That’s good enough. I brought a present for her.” I went back to the door and unrolled my sleeping bag. Inside it was the box Christina had bought for me in a shop on Worth Avenue. I gave the box to Betty May.
“You hadn’t oughter done it,” Betty May said.
“Open it,” I said.
Carefully she took the paper from the box. “This paper’s so pretty I’m goin’ to save it,” she said shyly as she lifted the cover. Inside was a complete layette—dress, hat, socks, booties, sheets, blanket and pillow, all in pink. Betty May looked at me, then back at the layette. “It’s so beautiful. I never seen nothin’ like it.”
“It’s for her to wear at her baptism,” I said.
Jeb Stuart had been standing there silently. He touched my arm and I turned to him. “Betty May an’ me ain’t too good with words, but we want you to know that we’re moughty grateful to you, Jonathan.”
“That’s right, Jonathan,” Betty May said. Just then a cry came from the crib. Betty May turned quickly. “It’s her feeding time. She’s like an alarm clock.”
I followed Jeb outside as she went to the crib. We sat down on the steps. “Everything go all right?” I asked.
“Jes’ fine,” he said. “The crop was real good. I jes’ drew the bead off the mash an’ barreled it. There’s thirty barrels of top corn up there right now agin’ natural style in wood. I kin sell it right now fer a hundred a barrel. If’n I hold it until next spring I kin git maybe double that or more.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I been thinkin’ maybe I’ll sell off ten barrels. That should take us through the winter, an’ next spring sell off the rest.”
“That makes sense,” I said. I took out a package of cigarettes, offered him one, then held a match for the two of us. “Hear anything more from the sheriff?”
He shook his head. “Not a word. I thought maybe he’d be comin’ on by, but he never did.”
“Did he quash that warrant in town like he said?”
“I guess so,” he answered. “But it don’t matter none now. My ol’ wife got herself a divorce up at the county seat an’ married up with some storekeeper. So I figger when we go into Fitchville to git the baby baptized, me an’ Betty May kin git hitched proper.”
“It’s all working out, isn’t it?” I said smiling.
“Yep,” he said. “But none of it would have if it weren’t for you bein’ here when the sheriff showed up.”
“That’s over now,” I said.
“Plannin’ on stayin’ awhile?” he asked.
“Only overnight. I’m leaving early in the morning. I have to be home tomorrow night.”
“Maybe you kin come back for the baptizin’. Me an’ Betty May would be right proud if you would be Baby’s godfather.”
There was a sudden tightness in my throat. “I’d be honored. You just give me the date and I’ll be here.”
Betty May came out of the door behind us. “I’ll have supper ready in a half-hour.”
“That’s jes’ fine.” Jeb Stuart got to his feet. “Want to take a quick look at the still?”
I nodded. We followed the almost invisible path through the small forest. It was just as I remembered it. Only one thing was different. The small wooden barrels were stacked neatly against the cords of wood. Carefully Jeb Stuart drew a long tarpaulin over the barrels.
“Don’t want the wood to get damp,” he explained.
I walked over to the small stream and scooped a handful of water from it and ran it over my face. The water was cool and sweet.
“Next year when I git the money I’m goin’ to pipe that water down to the cabin,” Jeb said.
“That’s a good idea.” I walked back to the still. The daylight was beginning to fade. I saw the shelves built against the wall of the small open shed behind the still. “My grandfather used to keep a gun up there on the top shelf.”
Jeb Stuart stared at me. “How do you know that?”
I shrugged. “I just know.”
He walked over to the shelves and reached up to the top shel
f. “So do I,” he said. “But he never had a gun like this.”
I stared at the automatic rifle, the clip already locked in place. “Where’d you get a gun like that?”
“A friend of mine was in Vietnam. I bought it fer ten dollars with four clips of ammunition. They’s thirty rounds in each of these clips.” He held the rifle down and turned swiftly. “Brrrr-p! One quick squeeze kin cut a man in half.”
I didn’t speak.
“Ain’t no hijackers goin’ to git this whiskey,” he said.
I felt a chill. “Let’s go back.”
“Okay.” He returned the gun to the shelf and we started down the hill.
Supper was boiled smoked cally, greens and beans. Hot corn muffins and steaming black coffee finished it off. Betty May apologized. “I’m rightfully sorry we didn’t have somethin’ better fer supper fer you, but we ain’t been down to Fitchville since the baby was born.”
“There was nothing the matter with this supper,” I said. “It was real good.” I picked up my sleeping bag. “I think I’ll get some sleep now. I have to be back on the highway early.”
“You don’t have to go out in the cornfield,” Jeb Stuart said. “You kin sleep right here on the floor now that we got the curtain up.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“No, it ain’t,” Betty May said firmly. “It ain’t summer no more an’ the groun’ is too cold and damp. You’ll catch your death.”
“You heard the lady.” Jeb Stuart smiled. “You spread your bag out there on the floor near the stove where it’s warm.”
I didn’t realize how tired I was until I crawled into the sleeping bag and the warmth from the stove hit me. I closed my eyes and was asleep before I knew it.
***
I felt the hand on my shoulder and opened my eyes. Jeb was kneeling over me. I could barely see him in the gray tinge of light just before dawn. He put a finger on his lips so that I should remain silent. I sat up suddenly wide awake.
“There’s about five men and a pickup truck about a mile down the road,” he whispered.
Memories of Another Day Page 45