The Man Who Followed Women

by Bert Hitchens

  “Did he say anything about where he was living?”

  “Not that I remember.” The bartender set to work down behind the counter, refilling Farrel’s glass.

  “Anyone come in with him?”

  “Yeah. But I don’t remember anything about the other guy. I remember him calling this dark one Pethro, and then I noticed him because he was bragging about the catfish, and I remembered he’d been in before, but not often. And not lately.”

  “Did they stay long? Get to feeling good?”

  “They didn’t stay long, and come to think of it that other one was nervous, he kept wanting to leave. It was this dark one who wanted to hang around and brag about his fish.”

  Farrel started on the new drink with something more to think about. Fishing—yes, that’s what you might expect them to do with their days. Close to the river, kept away from town, plenty of idle hours.

  He beckoned the bartender over again. “He didn’t say he caught the fish in the river?”

  “Nuh uh. The canal. You know, Toro Canal, it’s about ten miles west. Drains all the irrigation water back into the river. It’s full of catfish. But not that big.”

  “I’ll have to have a look.”

  “Take your fishing gear.”

  Farrel had a third drink and then decided a walk in the night air was indicated. He walked around. The town was small, the stores somewhat countrified, in Farrel’s opinion. Plenty of bars. It figured, the town being a big railroad center, division point for his own road, lots of men working here, a lot of them transients. He strolled by the show. It was getting late, almost time for Kodear and the girl to come out. Farrel had a final bourbon and water and went to wait in his car.

  Kodear came out right on the dot, the girl clinging to his arm. They went into a sweet shop next to the show for a Coke or something. Farrel could see them in there. The place was brightly lit. They sat at a table, and Kodear fooled around with a paper napkin while they waited; he folded it into rabbit’s ears and then clenched his hand and attached the paper ears and gave a remarkable impersonation of a bunny. The girl was enraptured. Kodear seemed to be amusing himself, not having quite as much fun as she was; a little bored, perhaps. She must be almost ten years younger than he, Farrel thought, and perhaps Kodear really liked them a little more sophisticated.

  When they had drunk the concoctions the waitress brought, they went out to Kodear’s little foreign car, and Farrel followed them back to the house. They went in, and after a minute or so the lights came on in Kodear’s upstairs bedroom. He could be going to bed, Farrel thought—but then, the little car hadn’t been put away. It still sat at the curb, in front of the gate.

  Kodear was inside for fifteen minutes. The lights remained on in his bedroom, but he came out again. He got into his car, coasted down the street for a little way before putting on the lights and switching on the motor. He had ditched the youngster.

  Farrel let him get several blocks away, going toward the river, before he started his own motor. He circled a block, came back into the street, picked up Kodear’s low-slung job in the distance. At the river’s edge Kodear turned north. He drove for several miles, passed the last fringes of the town, then turned into a road that dropped down directly to the river’s edge.

  Now, Farrel thought, we’re getting somewhere.

  There was another car parked by the river and Kodear pulled in next to it and doused his lights. Farrel instantly switched off his own lights, coasted to a stop on the shoulder of the road. There was a rippling reflection off the water, and by it he saw Kodear get out of his car and enter the other.

  Farrel waited, and an unexpectedly long time passed.

  He had thought that this might be a quick rendezvous, a pay-off or a passing of information. In such case he would have expected Kodear to make short work of it, and leave.

  In the dark, Farrel began to wear a cynical expression. He had a hunch that this was a different kind of rendezvous; Kodear wasn’t dark and good-looking and lazily amiable for nothing. He was the kind who attracted women as sugar draws flies.

  Finally, in a move dictated by disgust at his own optimistic hopes, Farrel got out of the car and wandered down by the river, walking silently, and finally got close enough to hear the murmuring voices—Kodear’s and a woman’s. He thought about getting the flashlight from the car and tormenting them with a few flicks of light—they’d think it was the cops, or maybe the husband. Farrel had made a bet to himself that she had one. But instead, he went back the way he had come, got into his car, let it ride down the slope a little before putting on the lights and starting the motor. Then he headed for town, the motel, and bed.

  Results so far: nothing.

  Tomorrow was Sunday. Lying in the dark, Farrel made further bets with himself. Grofsky would go to church with his wife. They’d be all dressed up, walking arm in arm, smiling at the neighbors, who had heard last night’s fight and others, and weren’t fooled. Grofsky would put a dollar in the collection plate. And he would pray. He would pray hard to a vague and jittery idea of God for help against the burden of debt and expense. And beside him, Farrel thought, Mrs. Grofsky would be sizing up the other women’s hats.

  Kodear would sleep late, rouse like a lazy cat, and prowl downstairs where both the girl and her mother would fuss over him and feed him. And Kodear, joking back at them, would wear a mysteriously satisfied smile.

  One thing—Farrel’s eyes popped open at the thought—those tires on the train consist were being worked on right now, if the word had been passed.

  And if it had been … where and how?

  Kernehan opened his eyes. The sun was coming up. The sky above him was streaked with gold, there was an almost unbelievable clarity and brilliance to the air, the drip of water from the rim of the well had the plink of a plucked fiddle string. He stretched on the cot, drawing in the smell of morning. He heard Bucklen begin to stir around in his tent.

  This could be the day, he thought.

  Living and sleeping out like this made you feel so wonderful, you grew overly optimistic, he corrected. This could also not be the day, it could be a day like yesterday, plodding and rewardless. He wondered then momentarily how Farrel was getting along in Vermillion.

  He rolled over. Beyond the end of his car he could see Bucklen’s layout, the two tents and the outdoor table and benches, the stone cooking pit and the mortared rim of the well, and the truck. He took a second look at the truck; he would have sworn it hadn’t moved an inch during the past two days. If Bucklen had gone anywhere in his absence, he had parked again with microscopic exactness. And brushed out his tracks.

  Suppose … just suppose … that Bucklen was what he appeared to be, an eccentric old coot who chose to live out here and raise chickens for reasons which had nothing to do with anything crooked. It would mean that Kernehan had ignored a possible ally.

  He heard the squeak of a hinge, a door banging open—Randy letting out the hens. Almost at once there was a lot of cackling and singing, as the birds started the day’s scratching. Then Randy must have thrown out some grain. There was a terrific squawking and fluttering of wings.

  Randy came, carrying his bedding. He waved at Kernehan, who was sitting up. He looked like a kid who didn’t have a care in the world, Kernehan thought. Kernehan pulled on his pants and went over to the bench to wash. Randy was waiting. “Where’re we going today, Mr. Kernehan?”

  Old man Bucklen came out of the tent and gave Kernehan a quick, sharp glance. He knew there was something fishy about the setup, Kernehan figured, and hadn’t quite put his finger on it. He must know by now that Kernehan was no rockhound, not even the most miserable amateur. A dedicated rockhound would have moved on after the first fruitless afternoon.

  Kernehan said, “Oh, we’ll find something. Maybe up around that alkali water hole.”

  “That’s a long way,” Bucklen put in. “Wouldn’t hardly pay you, I never saw anything there like what you’re looking for.” The way he said it made Kernehan pr
ick up his ears.

  “You know, to be truthful, I’m not much of a rockhound,” Kernehan said, telling Bucklen what he obviously already knew. “I just wanted to get out of town and see something new, some part of the country that wasn’t crowded and buzzing with traffic.”

  Bucklen accepted this thoughtfully. “This is about the only part left. Lots of the desert’s getting built up, regular towns. Stop and go signals. Motorcycle cops…. Take Vermillion. Used to be quiet and sleepy. Had the railroad yards, of course. But hardly anybody drove through. Now it’s like the middle of L.A.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Well, it’s getting like the middle of L.A. used to be when I drove through it.”

  Bucklen seemed quiet and reserved while he fixed breakfast, as if he had something to think over. When Randy again mentioned going with Kernehan, Bucklen looked up from his plate.

  “Might be best if you stayed home.”

  Randy seemed surprised, then downcast. But he didn’t put up an argument.

  “He’s a help,” Kernehan said. “I don’t know my way around out there.”

  “I don’t want him making a nuisance of himself,” Bucklen answered. He sounded as if he might mean it, but Kernehan was wary. This wasn’t according to the way he had figured things; Randy was supposed to be along to keep an eye on him. “Besides, there’s chores here.”

  Kernehan couldn’t imagine what needed to be done in this carefree, camping-out existence, but he didn’t argue. “If I don’t show up by suppertime, send out a St. Bernard with a water jug.”

  A faint smile touched Bucklen’s lips, and he nodded. When breakfast was done, he packed Kernehan a couple of sandwiches, reminding him that he’d missed a meal at noontime yesterday and that the five dollars was supposed to cover all three. Kernehan checked the water jugs in the rear of the car, looked into the radiator, and kicked the tires.

  “Are you going to try to find the alkali well?” Randy wondered, standing around with a kind of repressed wistfulness.

  “I don’t know. I might.”

  Bucklen was watching them. Kernehan had a hunch that if the kid had asked again, his grandad would have let him go.

  Kernehan drove through Tarwater’s lizard-inhabited ruins to the main road, turned north, and took the winding bumpy track down between the gray hills. The flat salt sink glittered with white fire under the sun. It was all getting to look familiar, Kernehan noticed; it had lost the harshness, the repellent sense of danger and isolation. Now it seemed just peaceful, and lonely.

  He crossed the flat sink, the five miles seeming more like ten in the blazing light and the sandy road, and the impression of peace persisted until, along the railroad, he found what he had so long been hunting.

  The first thing he noticed was a clump of broken dwarf mesquite. It had been crushed as if by a blow from a giant fist. Then he saw ocotillo and even a young barrel cactus, similarly smashed. He climbed the slight bank; nothing had been hit on the other side of the tracks. He remembered that the car he and Farrel had examined had had one door, one seal opened.

  He looked for car or truck tracks and was a long time finding them. Finally he remembered his idea that morning about Bucklen, that he could have moved the truck, brushed out the marks; and Kernehan began to look for brush marks. He found them, finally. They led away toward a faint track in the brush. Not a road, just a trail where the scant vegetation had been broken by the passing of a vehicle. Here and there the tires had broken the dry crust of earth, left a faint imprint. Kernehan squatted to look. They were big tires. It was a good-sized truck.

  Last night a shipment had been hit, something had been thrown out here, put into a truck, and taken away.

  Taken, as Farrel had surmised, back toward the Arizona line and the Colorado River.

  Chapter 19

  Kernehan guided his car into the faint, crushed track across the rolling desert. For a while the going wasn’t too bad, though some of the crushed growth whipped and ground under his axles. Then there were more and more rocky out-croppings, the tire marks finally mounting to a wide stony ridge. Kernehan braked to a stop. There was no way he could follow without gutting the underside of his car. He realized then that the truck must be high off the ground, modified especially for desert travel or perhaps a converted army vehicle.

  He got out of the car and hiked to the top of the ridge. The shallow valley below was impassable for an ordinary car; flash floods had washed away the sand and left a wilderness of rock. Kernehan even found it hard to pick his way through on foot, and he had a sudden dry-mouthed moment of thinking what it would be like to lie out here with a broken leg.

  The air was hot, clean, the sun brilliant. He opened his shirt collar. He climbed the next ridge, a little higher than the first. Ahead lay a desert waste, a duplicate of the country behind him, with scrawny mesquite and cactus. Nothing moved in it, it lay open and sun-baked. He could see the faint track again, though, heading due east. And then, from far away he caught a watery glimmer—the Colorado.

  It was so far that he couldn’t even be sure; it was more of a hunch than anything else. Fifteen or twenty miles, at least.

  He pushed his hat back on his sweating forehead, chewed his lip. There was no way he could go on. It was too far to walk. His car couldn’t make it.

  He hiked back the way he had come, turned the car, followed the track back through the brush. It was much better marked now, since his lower-slung car had plowed through, pulling and crushing the growth. At the road he swung east, remembering what Randy had said, that there was an old river steamer station at its end.

  The road crossed the railroad tracks perhaps ten miles or so from where he’d last seen them. Kernehan got out here and looked around, but there was nothing suspicious. The road had been built up to cross the embankment, gravel spread on it to keep it from washing away, a crossing sign stuck in the earth, looking curiously unreal and out of place. He found the river station a half hour or so later. There were the melting remains of three old adobe structures, a couple of falling-down corrals, four rusting wheel rims which had collapsed into the ruins of a wagon, and out in the water the crooked piling of an old pier. Just what he would have expected, Kernehan thought. No footprints anywhere but his own, the dust of years blown over everything, the only sound the lapping and curling of the river water in the piling.

  To the south, toward Vermillion, a track led out of town. It was too weed-grown to have been used recently. Off in the sunlit distance a couple of buzzards wheeled, keeping a lonesome vigil for something to die.

  No one had been through here in months. So where was the truck?

  And where was the stuff the truck had carried?

  He felt an impatient anger. It seemed that they were allowed to find the truth bit by bit, and each bit useless and leading nowhere, their progress blocked at the next step.

  He went out to the rim of the riverbank and studied the flowing muddy water, trying to rouse an idea, what to do next. There were mossy weeds growing at the edge. He saw a dark-colored water bird, a mud hen probably, darting here and there amid the weeds. The river, Kernehan thought suddenly, watching the darting bird. It has to be the river. There isn’t any other way. And he wondered why the idea had been so slow in coming.

  As Farrel had said some time past, their quarry weren’t angels, weren’t flying through the air, stealing and transporting stuff on the wing.

  Kernehan thought impatiently, I’ve got to rent a boat. He was in a hurry to get to Vermillion now, and attempted the track running south from the river station, but within half a mile the road vanished under a flooded and fallen bank, and he had to turn back again. There was nothing to do now but to drive all the way around the miles of open country, the salt sink, Tarwater, to the main highway.

  He was in a hurry, but he was hot and thirsty too. He took a bottle of water from the car, slaked his thirst. It was past noon, the morning was gone. It would be three, at least, before he could reach the highway.

&nbs
p; He drove as fast as possible, taking chances, and in the middle of the salt sink he made a mistake. The road fanned into a cross-hatch of tracks across a soft spot, and he forgot which were the safe ones and found his wheels bogged down and spinning. Then he had to work, gathering such scanty weeds as he could find, pebbles, anything to give traction, finally yanking out the rug in the rear of the car, before he could get going again. The sun beat down, and he had to drink again. He had begun to have a high appreciation for his own foresight in bringing those jugs.

  When he got to the turnoff to Tarwater, in spite of his hurry he took time to drive to Bucklen’s camp. He saw at once that the truck was gone. When he pulled to a stop, Randy came out of the sleeping tent.

  Randy hurried to the car, a hint of relief in the way he looked at Kernehan. He leaned in at the open window, saw the brown paper sack on the seat. “Hey, you didn’t eat your lunch!”

  “Too busy,” Kernehan said briefly. “Where’s your grandad?”

  “Gone to town.”

  “What for?”

  “Chicken feed and mail, if there’s any mail. Usually isn’t.”

  “How long has he been gone?”

  “I don’t know.” The friendly, relieved air was changing to one of puzzlement. “About noon, maybe.”

  “Has anyone else been here?”

  “You mean, to the store?”

  “I mean, anybody. Anyone at all.”

  “Nobody’s been here,” Randy said, lifting his elbows from the rim of the window and stepping away. “Is something the matter?”

  The heat, the long struggle to free the car in the middle of the dry lake, the sense of being always too late in this thing, too stupid and ineffectual, tugged at Kernehan’s temper. “What the hell are you and the old man really doing out here?” Kernehan said tightly, and was rewarded by a definite look of fright from the kid. “This thing of raising chickens thirty miles from town, in the middle of the desert, and running a store where you don’t have a customer through in a month of Sundays … it’s nuts,” he insisted. “So why not just come out and say what you’re doing here? Give with the truth? For once?”