Two weeks ago they let me go. I don’t blame them. I’d been doing my job in a listless way. I told Charlotte I was going away for a while. Her tears left me completely untouched. She was just a girl crying, a stranger. I told her I didn’t know where I was going. But I knew I was going to Hillston. The money was there. And somebody named Cindy who would know how to find it.
I had started the long trip with an entirely unrealistic anticipation of success. Now I was not so confident. It seemed that I was searching for more than the sixty thousand dollars. It seemed to me that I was looking for some meaning or significance to my life. I had a thousand dollars in traveler’s checks and everything I owned with me. Everything I owned filled two suitcases.
Charlotte had wept, and it hadn’t touched me. I had accepted being fired without any special interest. Ever since the repatriation, since the hospital, I had felt like half a man. It was as though the other half of me had been buried and I was coming to look for it—here in Hillston, a small city I had never seen. Somehow I had to begin to live again. I had stopped living in a prison camp. And never come completely to life again.
I drank in the motel room until my lips felt numb. There was a pay phone in the motel office. The bird woman looked at me with obvious disapproval but condescended to change three ones into change for the phone.
I had forgotten the time difference. Charlotte was having dinner with her people. Her mother answered the phone. I heard the coldness in her mother’s voice. She called Charlotte.
“Tal? Tal, where are you?”
“A place called Hillston.”
“Are you all right? You sound so strange.”
“I’m okay.”
“What are you doing? Are you looking for a job?”
“Not yet.”
She lowered her voice so I could barely hear her. “Do you want me to come there? I would, you know, if you want me. And no—no strings, Tal darling.”
“No. I just called so you’d know I’m all right.”
“Thank you for calling, darling.”
“Well … good-by.”
“Please write to me.”
I promised and hung up and went back to my room. I wanted things to be the way they had once been between us. I did not want to hurt her. I did not want to hurt myself. But I felt as if a whole area in my mind was dead and numb. The part where she had once been. She had been loyal while I had been gone. She was the one who had the faith I would return. She did not deserve this.
On the following morning, Thursday morning, Hillston lay clean and washed by the night rains, bright and glowing in the April sunshine. Timmy had often talked about the city.
“It’s more town than city. There isn’t much of a transient population. Everybody seems to know everybody. It’s a pretty good place, Tal.”
It lay amid gentle hills, and the town stretched north-south, following the line of Harts River. I drove up the main street, Delaware Street. Traffic had outgrown the narrowness of the street. Standardization had given most of our small cities the same look. Plastic and glass brick store fronts. Woolworth’s and J. C. Penney and Liggett and Timely and the chain grocery. The essential character of Hillston had been watered down by this standardization and yet there was more individuality left than in many other cities. Here was a flavor of leisure, of mild manners and quiet pleasures. No major highway touched the city. It was in an eddy apart from the great current.
Doubtless there were many who complained acidly about the town being dead on its feet, about the young people leaving for greater opportunities. But such human irritants did not change the rather smug complacency of the city. The population was twenty-five thousand and Timmy had told me that it had not changed very much in the past twenty years. There was the pipe mill and a small electronics industry and a plant that made cheap hand tools. But the money in town was the result of its being a shopping center for all the surrounding farmland.
I had crossed the country as fast as I could, taking it out of the car, anxious to get to this place. The car kept stalling as I stopped for the lights on Delaware Street. When I spotted a repair garage I turned in.
A man came up to me as I got out of the car. “I think I need a tune-up. It keeps stalling. And a grease job and oil change.”
He looked at the wall clock. “About three this afternoon be okay?”
“That’ll be all right.”
“California plates. On your way through?”
“Just on a vacation. I stopped here because I used to know a fellow from this town. Timmy Warden.”
He was a gaunt man with prematurely white hair and bad teeth. He picked a cigarette out of the top pocket of his coveralls. “Knew Timmy, did you? The way you say it, I guess you know he’s dead.”
“Yes. I was with him when he died.”
“There in the camp, eh? Guess it was pretty rough.”
“It was rough. He used to talk about this place. And about his brother George. I thought I’d stop and maybe see his brother and tell him about how it was with Timmy.”
The man spat on the garage floor. “I guess George knows how it was.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s another man came here from that camp. Matter of fact he’s still here. Came here a year ago. Name of Fitzmartin. Earl Fitzmartin. He works for George at the lumberyard. Guess you’d know him, wouldn’t you?”
“I know him,” I said.
Everybody who survived the camp we were in would know Fitzmartin. He’d been taken later, had come in a month after we did. He was a lean man with tremendously powerful hands and arms. He had pale colorless hair, eyes the elusive shade of wood smoke. He was a Texan and a Marine.
I knew him. One cold night six of us had solemnly pledged that if we were ever liberated we would one day hunt down Fitzmartin and kill him. We had believed then that we would. I had forgotten all about it. It all came back.
Fitz was not a progressive. Yet he was a disrupting influence. In the camp we felt that if we could maintain a united front it would improve our chances for survival. We organized ourselves, appointed committees, assigned responsibilities. There were two retreads who had been in Jap camps in another war who knew the best organizational procedures.
Fitz, huskier and quicker and craftier than anyone else in camp, refused to take any part in it. He was a loner. He had an animal instinct for survival. He kept himself clean and fit. He ate anything that was organically sound. He prowled by himself and treated us with icy contempt and amusement. He was no closer to us than to his captors. He was one of the twelve quartered in the same hut with Timmy and me.
Perhaps that does not seem to constitute enough cause to swear to kill a man. It wouldn’t, in a normal situation. But in captivity minor resentments become of major importance. Fitz wasn’t with us so he was against us. We needed him and every day he proved he didn’t need us.
At the time of the exchange Fitzmartin was perhaps twenty pounds lighter. But he was in good shape. Many had died but Fitz was in fine shape. I knew him.
“I’d like to see him,” I told the garage man. “Is the lumberyard far from here?”
It was north of town. I had to take a bus that crossed a bridge at the north end of town and walk a half mile on the shoulder of the highway—past junk yards, a cheap drive-in movie, rundown rental cabins. I kept asking myself why Fitz should have come to Hillston. He couldn’t know about the money. But I could remember the slyness of the man, his knack of moving without a sound.
The lumberyard was large. There was an office near the road. There was a long shed open on the front where semi-fabricated pieces were kept in bins in covered storage. I heard the whine of a saw. Beyond the two buildings were tall stacks of lumber. A truck was being loaded back there. In the open shed a clerk was helping a customer select window frames. An office girl with thin face and dark hair looked up from an adding machine and told me I could find Fitzmartin out in the back where they were loading the truck.
I went bac
k and saw him before he saw me. He was heavier but otherwise unchanged. He stood with another man watching two men loading a stake truck. He wore khakis and stood with his fists in his hip pockets. The man said something and Earl Fitzmartin laughed. The sound startled me. I had never heard him laugh in the camp.
He turned as I approached him. His face changed. The smoke eyes looked at me, wary, speculative. “I’ve got the name right, haven’t I? Tal Howard.”
“That’s right.” There was, of course, no move toward shaking hands.
He turned to the other man. “Joe, you go right ahead here. Leave this slip in the office on your way out.”
Fitzmartin started walking back through the lot between the stacked lumber. I hesitated and followed him. He led the way to a shed on the back corner of the lot. An elderly Ford coupé was parked by the shed. He opened the door and gestured and I went into the shed. It was spotlessly clean. There was a bunk, table, chair, shelf with hot plate and dishes. He had a supply of canned goods, clean clothes hanging on hooks, a pile of magazines and paper-bound books near the head of the bunk. There was a large space heater in the corner, and through an open door I could see into a small bathroom with unfinished walls.
There was no invitation to sit down. We faced each other.
“Nice to see any old pal from north of the river,” he said.
“I heard in town you work here.”
“You just happened to be in town and heard I work here.”
“That’s right.”
“Maybe you’re going around looking all the boys up. Maybe you’re writing a book.”
“It’s an idea.”
“My experiences as a prisoner of war. Me and Dean.”
“I’d put you in the book, Fitz. The big ego. Too damn impressed with himself to try to help anybody else.”
“Help those gutless wonders? You types stone me. You wanted to turn it into a boys’ club. I watched a lot of you die because you didn’t have the guts or will or imagination to survive.”
“With your help maybe a couple more would have come back.”
“You sound like you think that would be a good thing.”
There was an amused sneer in his tone that brought it all vividly back. That was what we had sensed about him. He hadn’t cared if we had all been buried there, just so Fitzmartin got out of it with a whole skin. I had thought my anger and outrage had been buried, had thought I was beyond caring. Perhaps he, too, misjudged the extent of the contempt that made me careless of his physical power.
I struck blindly, taking him almost completely by surprise, my right fist hitting his jaw solidly. The impact jarred my arm and shoulder and back. It knocked him back a full step. I wanted him on the floor. I swung again and hit a thick, hard arm. He muffled the third blow and caught my left wrist, then grabbed my right wrist. I tried to snap my wrists free, but he was far too powerful. I was able to resist the grinding twisting force for several seconds. His face was quite impassive. I was slowly forced down onto my knees, tears of anger and humiliation stinging my eyes.
He released my wrists suddenly and gave me a casual open-handed slap across the side of my head that knocked me down onto the bare floor. I scrambled to the chair and tried to pick it up to use it as a weapon. He twisted it out of my hands, put a foot against my chest and shoved me back so that I rolled toward the door. He put the chair back in place, went over and sat on the bunk, and lighted a cigarette. I got up slowly.
He looked at me calmly. “Out of your system?”
“God damn you!”
He looked bored. “Shut up. Sit down. Don’t try to be the boy hero, Howard. I’ll mark you up some if that’s what you want.”
I sat in the chair. My knees were weak and my wrists hurt. He got up quickly, went to the door and opened it and looked out, closed it and went back to the bunk. “We’ll talk about Timmy Warden, Howard.”
“What about Timmy?”
“It’s too damn late for games. Information keeps you alive. I did a lot of listening in that camp. I made a business of it. I know that Timmy stole sixty thousand bucks from his brother and stashed it away in jars. I know Timmy told you that. I heard him tell you. So don’t waste our time trying to play dumb about it. I’m here and you’re here, and that’s the only way it adds up. I got here first. I got here while you were still in the hospital. I haven’t got the money. If I had it, I wouldn’t still be here. That’s obvious. I figured Timmy might have told you where he hid it. I’ve been waiting for you. What kept you?”
“I don’t know any more about it than you do. I know he hid it, but I don’t know where.”
He was silent as he thought it over. “Maybe I won’t buy that. I came here on a long shot. I didn’t have much to go on. I wanted to be here and all set when you came after it. It was a long shot, but one town is the same as another to me. I can’t see you coming here to find the money and not knowing any more than I do. You’re a more conservative type, Howard. You know something I want to know.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I know exactly where it is. I can go and dig it up right now. That’s why I waited a year before I came here. And that’s why I came here to see you instead of going and digging it up.”
“Why come at all?”
I shrugged. “I lost my job. I remembered the money. I thought I’d come here and look around.”
“I’ve spent a year looking around. I know a hell of a lot more about Timmy Warden, the way he lived, the way his mind worked, than you’ll ever know. And I can’t find it.”
“Then I won’t be able to either, will I?”
“Then you better take off, Howard. Go back where you came from.”
“I think I’ll stay around.”
He leaned forward. “Then you do have some little clue that I don’t have. Maybe it isn’t a very good one.”
“I don’t know any more than you do. I just have more confidence in myself than I have in you.”
That made him laugh. The laughter stung my pride. It was a ludicrous thought to him that I could do anything in the world he couldn’t do.
“You’ve wasted better than a year on it. At least I haven’t done that,” I said hotly.
He shrugged. “I have to be somewhere. It might as well be here. What’s wasted about it? I’ve got a good job. Let’s pool everything we know and can remember, and if we can locate it I’ll give you a third.”
“No,” I said, too quickly.
He sat very still and watched me. “You have something to work on.”
“No. I don’t.”
“You can end up with nothing instead of a third.”
“Or all of it instead of a third.”
“Finding it and taking it away from here are two different problems.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
He shrugged. “Well, suit yourself. Go and say hello to George. Give him my regards.”
“And Eloise?”
“You won’t be able to do that. She took off while we were still behind the wire. Took off with a salesman, they say.”
“Maybe she took the money with her.”
“I don’t think so.”
“But she knew Timmy was hiding it, had hidden a big amount. From what he said about her, she wouldn’t leave without it.”
“She did,” he said, smiling. “Take my word. She left without it.”
• TWO •
The lumberyard had looked reasonably prosperous. The retail hardware store was not what I expected. From talks with Timmy I had expected a big place with five or six clerks and a stock that ranged from appliances and cocktail trays to deep-well pumps and pipe wrenches.
It was a narrow, dingy store, poorly lighted. There was an air of dust and defeat about it. It was on a side street off the less prosperous looking end of Delaware Street. A clerk in a soiled shirt came to help me. I said I wanted to see Mr. Warden. The clerk pointed back toward a small office in the rear where through glass I could see a man hunched over a desk.
He
looked up as I walked back to the office. The door was open. I could see the resemblance to Timmy. But Timmy just before and for a short time after we were taken, had a look of bouncing vitality, good spirits. This man looked far older than the six years difference Timmy had told me about. He was a big man, as Timmy had been. The wide, high forehead was the same, and the slightly beaked nose and the strong, square jaw. But George Warden looked as though he had been sick for a long time. His color was bad. The stubble on the unshaven jaw was gray. His eyes were vague and troubled, and there was a raw smell of whisky in the small office.
“Something I can do for you?”
“My name is Tal Howard, Mr. Warden. I was a friend of Timmy’s.”
“You were a friend of Timmy’s.” He repeated it in an odd way. Apathetic and yet somehow cynical.
“I was with him when he died.”
“So was Fitz. Sit down, Mr. Howard. Drink?”
I said I would have a drink. He pushed by my chair and went out to a sink. I heard him rinsing out a glass. He came back and picked a bottle off the floor in the corner and put a generous drink in each glass.
“Here’s to Timmy,” he said.
“To Timmy.”
“Fitz got out of it. You got out of it. But Timmy didn’t make it.”
“I almost didn’t make it.”
“What did he actually die of? Fitz couldn’t say.”
I shrugged. “It’s hard to tell. We didn’t have medical care. He lost a lot of weight and his resistance was down. He had a bad cold. He ran a fever and his legs got swollen. He began to have trouble breathing. It hurt him to breathe. A lot of them went like that. Nothing specific. Just a lot of things. There wasn’t much you could do.”
He turned the dirty glass around and around. “He should have come back. He would have known what to do.”
“About what?”
A Bullet for Cinderella Page 2