by Sloan Wilson
“I see,” the person at the other end of the wire said.
“It’s a terrible hour to call, I know, but could you tell Miss Carter I’m here, and get her to telephone me when she gets out of chapel? My name is John Hunter, and I’m calling from the bus terminal.” He gave her the number.
“I’ll give Miss Carter the message,” the voice said, and there was a click.
John sat down on a wooden bench near the telephone booth. It was five minutes after nine. He imagined Molly sitting in chapel, her face white and serious in prayer. As she filed out with the other girls, maybe, a teacher would tap her on the arm and give her his message. She would be glad. The thought of this strengthened John, and he didn’t feel so tired. Quarter after nine, but still the telephone didn’t ring. How long does chapel last up there, anyway, he thought.
A fat woman carrying many bundles approached the telephone booth and wedged herself in, balancing the bundles on her lap. Leaving the door open, she placed a call and in a loud voice said, “Well, sweetie, I’m here. Ain’t you going to come and get me?”
A pause. Then she said, “O.K. I’ll take a cab.”
Almost as soon as the fat woman left the booth, the telephone rang and John jumped to answer. “Hello,” he said.
“Johnny! You’re here!”
“Are you all right?”
“Now I am.”
“Listen. I told the girl at the school that I’m a friend of the family, and that my father and I are driving through on the way south. I said I was supposed to pick up a package of clothes or something.”
“I know,” Molly said. “She told me.”
“Did you give us away?”
“No.”
“Good. I don’t want the school to call your mother yet. When can I see you?”
“You can meet me in the common room right away. It’s in the center building—the biggest one. I’ll bring a box of clothes.”
“Do you have any money?”
“Not much.”
“We’re going to need money,” he said.
“I have my fur coat. Maybe we could sell it. A girl at school said it must have cost five thousand dollars.”
“Bring the coat,” he said.
It took him fifteen minutes to walk to the school, which proved to be a collection of imposing brick buildings a rich man had given in memory of his wife. John found the common room easily, a lounge elaborately furnished with reproductions of Early American antiques. At the near end of it was a reception desk with a telephone switchboard at which a plain girl, a scholarship student, sat studying a book on plane geometry. No one else was in the room.
“My name is John Hunter,” he said. “I believe Miss Molly Carter is to meet me here.”
“I’ll tell her you’ve come,” the girl replied, glancing up and revealing a painfully bad complexion. “Won’t you sit down?”
John sat down in the farthest corner of the room. The girl did something with the switchboard and said, “Molly. Your caller’s here.” Her voice carried easily to the place where John sat, and he thought. We’ll have to whisper.
Three minutes passed. A tall, elderly woman in black, probably a widow, John thought, came in and paused at the switchboard. “I’m Alice Cunningham’s mother,” she said in a sad voice. “Will you tell her I’m here?”
“Yes, Mrs. Cunningham,” the receptionist said. “Won’t you sit down?”
The woman sat down only a short distance from John. “Isn’t it a lovely day out?” she said. “Yes,” John replied.
“I just got off the train from New York,” the woman said. “It’s such a tiring trip.”
“Yes,” John repeated. On the pretext of getting a magazine, he took another chair farther away, and she looked at him curiously. Another minute passed. The woman in black stared at him.
Molly suddenly came into the room, holding herself erect, but looking pale. Over her left arm she carried her fur coat and under her right arm she carried an empty dress box. She walked across the floor with quiet dignity. “Hello, John,” she said in a perfectly normal voice. “It’s good to see you.”
The woman in black continued to stare. Molly sat as close to John as she could without appearing odd, and they leaned toward each other.
“Molly,” John whispered. “This is very simple. We’re going to get married.”
“I’m afraid of what Dad will do,” Molly said.
“He won’t be able to do anything after we’re married. And I think my father will help us. I’m going to see him.”
“Couldn’t we just run away?”
“That would be silly. We’ve got to be practical, Molly. I want to get married and live on the island, at least until we can figure things out. I think we can count on my father.”
“I wish we could on mine,” she said.
“Don’t think too far ahead. Right now, I’ll sell the coat, and I’ll go up and see Dad. Then I’ll come back here for you, and we’ll figure out what to do next.”
“Good,” she said, and added in a low voice, as she had on the telephone, “Thank God, Johnny.”
Chapter Thirty-One
AT THE BUS TERMINAL in Briarwood, John bought a ticket for Richmond, the nearest big city on the way north. It was only about an hour’s ride, and it was not yet noon when he got there. With the fur coat over one arm and holding his suitcase with the other, he walked the busy streets looking for a pawnshop. At last he found one, with three big gold balls suspended overhead. The window had iron grill-work on it to prevent burglaries. For a moment John stood looking in. Lying in the pawnshop were a row of ugly-looking revolvers, three cameras, dozens of gold wrist watches, and a silver trumpet.
The owner of the pawnshop was a thin man with rimless spectacles and very little hair. “Good morning,” he said to John in a mild Southern accent.
“I would like to sell this,” John said and handed the coat across the white marble counter.
The man studied the fur closely. He looked at the label inside. Then he spread the coat out on the counter and looked it over minutely. “I’ll give you twenty dollars,” he said quietly.
“Twenty dollars!” John said. “That coat cost five thousand dollars.”
“I know,” the man said.
“Give it back and I’ll take it somewhere else,” John replied indignantly.
“No,” the man said quietly. “Take your twenty dollars and leave.”
“What do you mean?”
“Or I’ll call the police,” the man said. “Would you like to explain to them where you got that coat?”
“You son-of-a-bitch!” John said.
The man shrugged wearily, and rang open his cash drawer.
If he did tell the police, I’d have to call Molly to get her to explain, John thought, and the school might find out, and would tell her mother, and that is not the way for her to be informed. The owner of the pawnshop shoved two ten-dollar bills across the counter. John picked up the money.
“Now get out of here and don’t come back,” the pawnbroker said.
“Give me my ticket,” John replied. The man handed it to him.
Walking out of the pawnshop, John clenched his fists so tightly that his fingernails bit into the palms of his hands, and he felt suddenly weak. Slowly he walked around the corner. I’m hungry, he thought—that’s why I feel like this. He went to a diner and ordered a hot dog. While it was being cooked, he took out his money and counted it: twenty-four dollars and eighty-five cents. If I can’t get money from Dad, he thought, I’ll need this to take Molly to Buffalo or Connecticut or wherever we go next. I’ll also have to buy a bus ticket from Boston to Harvesport, because there won’t be much traffic for hitchhiking this early in the year, and I’ll have to pay Captain Andrews to take me out to the island. So I better hitchhike from here to Boston, and save as much as I can.
After eating his hot dog, John walked until he came to a filling station. There he got a road map
, and a tall Negro with a scar across his nose pointed the way to the state highway. “You wait here a while, and maybe somebody will give you a lift there,” the Negro said. “Cops might pick you up if you thumb yourself a ride here in the city.”
A stocky man in a pickup truck drove up for gas. John walked up to him. “You bound north out of town?” he asked.
The man looked at him suspiciously. “Maybe,” he said.
“I’d like a ride,” John said quietly.
“Where are you going, boy?”
“To Boston. My father is sick.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” the man said. “Toss your suitcase in back. I’ll take you out to where you can get a ride.”
They drove to a truck terminal. “Wait here,” the stocky man said. “I know some of these guys. Let me see what I can do for you.” He left. Huge trailer trucks were parked in rows all around John, some loaded with oranges and grapefruit, some with refrigerator engines whirring over their cabs. John sat staring at the many license plates each of them carried: Florida, Virginia, New York, Massachusetts.
“Hello there!” a jovial, white-haired man in a blue shirt said. “Hear you want to go to Boston.”
“Yes, sir.”
“See that ten-ton job over there with the grapefruit? Hop in. You’ll be there in nine hours,” the man said.
John slept the entire way to Boston. There he spent seven dollars and thirty-two cents for a bus ticket to Harvesport, Maine.
When the bus left Boston it was crowded with trout fishermen carrying creels and rods in canvas cases. One man had a battered felt hat covered by brightly feathered dry flies, with the tiny barbed hooks embedded in the hatband. The fishermen talked a great deal, laughing and swapping information about different rivers. John slept.
“Hey, boy!” the bus driver said hours later. “Ain’t you going to Harvesport?”
“Yes,” John said, coming suddenly awake.
“We’re here.”
It was dark. John got out of the bus and was surprised to find it was unusually cold for May. A bitter wind was blowing from the north. He turned up his coat collar and walked down to the wharf where Herb Andrews moored his vessel, the Mary Anne. The old Gloucester schooner was there, but no light showed on deck or below. John banged the flat of his hand three times on the hatch. Almost immediately Herb’s voice answered from below. “Who’s there?”
“Me, John Hunter.”
“What the hell do you want?”
“I want to go out to the island.”
“For God’s sake, boy. Do you know what time it is?”
“No,” John said in confusion. “I just got off the bus.”
“It’s midnight,” Herb said. “I’ll take you in the morning.”
“I’ll make it worth your while if you’ll take me tonight,” John said.
“Go to sleep. Don’t waste your money. Want a bunk?”
“I want to go tonight,” John replied.
“It’s a rotten night out. Blowing a gale.”
“I’m in a hurry.”
“Don’t stand there and shout,” Herb said. “Come below.”
John shoved the hatch open and descended the companionway. Herb Andrews, dressed only in long woolen underwear, climbed from his bunk and lit an oil lamp. “Now what’s the matter, boy?”
“I got word that my father is ill, and I have to go out and see him,” John said. “If it’s blowing too hard, I guess I could get the Coast Guard to take me out.”
“I’ll take you. I didn’t know it was an emergency.”
“Thanks,” John said. “I’ll pay what I can.”
“Just the usual rate,” Herb replied gruffly. “But you’ll have to help out on deck. My brother’s ashore.”
The big Diesel engine coughed, and then chortled quietly to itself.
“Now stand by the spring line,” Herb said. “I’ll take care of the stern line.”
The stern line splashed as Herb let it go. He shoved the clumsy gearshift ahead, and spun the schooner’s big wheel. Slowly she nudged her bow into the wharf, with her stern out. “Now,” Herb said, hauling the gearshift lever into reverse, “let go your spring line.”
John let it go with a splash, and the big schooner backed majestically into the harbor. The wind was already whining in her rigging.
The bay was black, with only two lights showing ashore. Herb’s face glowed in the light from the binnacle, and the running lights made a blur of green to starboard and red to port, reflected on the wet decks.
“How can you see?” John asked, peering into the murk ahead.
“This old tub knows the way to the island without me,” Herb replied, “but you’re going to have to hang on.”
When they cleared the breakwater the wind hit them hard. The Mary Anne heeled over with her lee rail awash, as though she were under full sail. Spray arched across her decks, and she started to buck, to drop with dizzying speed, to crash into the waves, and suddenly rear up again.
“Hi Yeeeeee!” Herb called at the top of his lungs. “You show ‘em, old girl!”
“Can she take this?” John asked, appalled as the bow slammed into a sea with the impact of a truck hitting a brick wall.
“She’s built for it, boy!” Herb said. “A good vessel can take anything she has to take.”
The timbers shuddered and groaned, but the Mary Anne held steady to her course, and when Herb tested the pumps, he found no leak.
It took almost two hours to get to the island, bucking the north wind, but finally they entered the harbor, and there was a sudden stillness which was abruptly broken by Todd Hasper’s dog. The current Satan was a huge black beast which looked like a panther. As the ship approached, he came charging out on the wharf and raged back and forth, baring his teeth and barking in a frenzy. Herb Andrews trained a searchlight on him. “What do you want me to do?” he asked. “I can’t put you ashore there.”
“I don’t know,” John said, suddenly bewildered. Why would the dog be loose if Bart were on the island? The fear that his father had died, that the lie he had told Caulfield about his father was turning out to be all too true, possessed John, but there didn’t seem to be any way to go ashore to investigate without being torn to ribbons.
“I’ve got a shotgun below,” Herb said, letting the schooner circle near the wharf while the dog continued to growl out his fury. “Why don’t you blow his goddamn head off?”
“Wait,” John said. High up on the shore he saw a lantern weaving down the path. When it reached the wharf, Herb Andrews turned his searchlight in that direction. Todd Hasper, dressed in a tattered overcoat, stood caught in the beam, an old man with a deeply lined face, a hooked nose, and a malignant stare. He stood glaring into the searchlight without a word.
“It’s me, John Hunter!” John called. “Hold your dog!”
The old man did not appear to have heard. Andrews cut off the vessel’s engine to reduce the noise, and handed John a megaphone. “It’s me, John Hunter!” he called again at the top of his lungs. “Hold your dog!”
Without a word, the old man turned and started back up the path, leaving the dog raging at the end of the wharf. “Listen!” John called in anger. “Hold your dog or I’ll shoot him!” Hasper hesitated. To Herb, John said, “Get me that gun, will you?”
Herb ducked below and produced a double-barreled shotgun. “It’s loaded,” he said. “Let me do it. This is something I’ve wanted to do for years.”
“Give him a warning shot first,” John said.
Herb fired into the water. At the sound of the report Hasper ran to the end of the wharf, and above the growls of the dog, they could hear him shouting, “No! No!”
“Hold him then,” John said grimly.
Hasper attached a chain leash to the brute’s collar and stood with both feet braced. As the schooner came alongside, the dog appeared to go insane, and Hasper needed all his strength to restrain him. Herb Andrews handed John the
shotgun. “Here,” he said. “You better take this with you. The crazy bastard is liable to let go.”
With the gun under his arm, John started to step ashore.
“Wait,” Herb shouted. “You better take a lantern too. The wharf is full of holes.”
Carrying a lantern in one hand and the gun in the other, John stepped onto the wharf. Herb left his searchlight upon Hasper and the maddened dog. “Is Dad here?” John shouted to Hasper, but either the old man didn’t want to answer, or he couldn’t hear anything above the protests of his beast. In disgust, John turned, and picking his way around holes and sagging timbers, walked ashore. When he got to the path he started to run. The shriek of the wind in the branches overhead was shrill.
It is not strange to find no lights showing, he told himself as he approached the garage behind the high old house on the hill. It’s two-thirty in the morning, and of course the lights are out. But something else was strange. There were no footprints but the dog’s in the mud anywhere around the front door of the garage apartment. Stronger than ever John had the premonition that his father was sick, if not dead.
No, he thought, that is absurd. If he were sick, Todd Hasper would take care of him and I would have been told if he were dead.
Why weren’t Hasper’s tracks in the mud?
Maybe no one is here, John thought. Maybe Dad got sick and moved in with Hasper.
Full of terror, John walked up the dark front steps, almost slipping on dog droppings, and banged on the door. There was no answer. The image of a dead man inside loomed clearly in his mind, a man dead, perhaps, for several weeks. He leaned the gun against the side of the house and set the lantern down. “Dad!” he called at the top of his lungs. “Dad! Dad! Let me in!” And he rained blows upon the door, slugging it with the flat of both hands, until the whole building shook.
“Yes?” Bart’s thin voice answered suddenly from inside. “Yes? Yes? Who’s there?”
“It’s me! Your son! It’s John!”
The door opened and Bart, wearing a soiled and rumpled lieutenant commander’s uniform, stood there holding a candle in a shaking hand. He had not shaved for weeks, and from his chin hung a thin, almost Oriental-looking beard. “John!” he said in astonishment. “John! What are you doing here?”