The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  I told him that I had had nothing particular in mind, but that I was escorting Margaret up to her room. Then I began at the beginning and told him exactly what had happened. He listened attentively—I had the feeling that his mind was taking down meticulous notes. When I finished he began nodding his head.

  “Now,” I said, “perhaps you can explain to me why it was necessary for you to delegate two or three of your patrolmen to hunt for her. Is she on parole or something?”

  “Well, Nub,” Dall said, smacking ruminatively on the stem of his pipe, “I’ll tell you how it come about that I got mixed up in this thing, and then maybe me and you can string along together on this business.” He leaned back in his chair again, closed his eyes for a brief moment, and passed his hands a few times up over his brow and hair.

  “It was back in March,” he began. “Early March. I was settin out on my front porch—I got a little place out on West Fourth—and I was settin out on the porch late one Friday night, after midnight, just settin there because Friday is my night off, and it was the first real good night of spring, with the weather purt near warm and all. Well, anyway, I’m just settin there in the dark, see, and I’m kind of down in the dumps, frettin about them little boys of mine that their feisty no-good momma took off with her, and I happen to look up, when here comes this girl walkin down the street, all by herself pretty as you please, like it was broad daylight and she was aimin to grocery-shop or somethin. Well sir, she stops at the corner and looks up the street and down the street, and then she heads on across, but halfway to the other curb she stops and turns around and goes back to the corner and turns down the other street but she don’t go very far that way neither before she turns around once more and comes back to the corner and then she just stands there like she’s bad lost. She aint even totin a purse or a pocket-book, so right off I figger she left it behind at a party, or she’s drunk maybe, or she run off from some itchy-fingered boy friend that was tryin to mess around with her or somethin. Anyway, she looks like she could use some help or leastways some advice on street directions, so I get up out of my chair and walk down to the sidewalk and I says, ‘Pardon me, lady, but could I do anything for you?’

  “And she turns around all wild-eyed and lookin like she was fixin to holler, and right off I recognize her, but she’s so skeered she don’t know me, or maybe cause she aint seen me for ten years she’s forgot who I am, and she tells me not to touch her or she will scream for the police, and I caint say as how I blame her, me bein so ugly and skeery-lookin, you know, but I tell her not to worry about that none, cause I’m the police myself, but I don’t have on no uniform so I reckon she don’t believe me, but I says to her, ‘Margaret, I’m old Dall Hawkins, don’tcha member me?’ but that don’t cut no ice with her neither, cause she never knew me very well back in high school and maybe figgered that I was just as likely to molest her as the next feller. ‘Honest to God,’ I says to her, ‘I’m a sure-enough policeman, only this is my night off so I aint wearin my uniform.’ She calms down a little, and I says, ‘Honey, it’s nigh on to one o’clock. What’re you doin out so late all by yourself?’ But she don’t answer. I says, ‘You look like you’re kind of lost. If you’d just tell me where you was aimin to head for, maybe I could tell you how to get there.’ Still she don’t say nuthin. ‘Is somebody after you?’ I ask her. She shakes her head. ‘Where’s your pocketbook?’ I ask her, and she looks down at her hand like she was lookin for it. Did somebody rob you?’ I ask her. She shakes her head. ‘You been in a fight with your boy friend?’ I ask her. She keeps on shakin her head. I don’t know what to make of her. I’ve seen ever damn whore and streetwalker in Little Rock at one time or another, so I know for sure she aint one of them, she’s way too pretty for one thing, and I knew old Marge wasn’t that type noway. So I don’t know what to make of her.

  “Then I think she begins to recognize me at last, cause she kind of loosens up and says, ‘Weren’t you a good friend of Clifford Stone’s?’ and I smile real big and says ‘That’s right, Marge. That’s me all right. Me and Nub was thick as thieves.’ And by God, we just stand there for five or ten minutes talkin about you, like we just met at a party or somewheres and was just makin chit-chat about old friends, just as pleasant and all. I tell her what all I know about you, which aint much, how you live in Boston now and married to some society girl and—”

  I interrupted: “You told her I was married?”

  “Yeah, but also I mentioned how you’d wrote me a couple of letters once sayin what a raw deal you got with that wife of yours, and how you kept gittin lonesome for Arkansas and all. Remember? Well, anyway, me and Margaret are just standin there beside that light-pole passin the time and I near bout forget what it was I came out to ask her or do for her. After a while she says, ‘Well, it was good to see you again, Doyle,’ and I says, ‘Yeah, take care of yourself, Marge,’ and she goes on down the street. But she aint gone thirty feet when it suddenly hits me again what in tarnation she is doin and where in tarnation she thinks she’s goin, so I holler after her, ‘Hey, wait just a dadburn minute!’ and I catch up with her and I says, You still aint told me what you’re doin out this time of night.’

  “Now I reckon if she’d said it wasn’t none of my business, I’d of just had to let her go, but she starts to give me some cock-and-bull story about how she has to go out to Allsopp Park to try and catch some goddamn luna moth to add to her bug collection, and I know right off the bat that the only bug collection she’s got is up in her head, so I get right suspicious, and I says to her, ‘Allsopp Park is a long ways off from here, and looks to me like you’re so lost already you aint never gonna get there.’ Then she just looks at me and says, ‘Show me the way.’ I tell her I caint even draw her a map, it’s so far off and out of the way, but if she really has to go out there and get her a goddamn luna moth I’ll put her in my goddamn car and drive her out there, for godsakes, but for her not to try and set out on foot.

  Then she commences walkin on down the street, like she’s afeared I might really put her in my car. Well, I just walk along with her, and we just keep on walkin, and she turns at the corner and I see she aint even headin in the direction of Allsopp Park, but anyway we just keep on walkin, and when she turns at another corner, I turn with her. ‘Nice night, aint it?’ I says and she says yes it is, and we just keep on keepin on walkin, she don’t say I can but she don’t say I caint, and I don’t mind a little exercise now and then. Well, by and by we come to the state capitol grounds, I guess she’s just walkin with no particular place in mind, and we finally wind up out back of the Game and Fish Department building, where there’s this big old pond out there, you know the one, where the kids and niggers fish at, and we set down on the grass at the edge of the water and we just stare at the water and talk a little bit. It’s a awful dark night, but a few light-poles over on West Third kind of light up the water some, so I can just barely make out her face. I talk to her a little bit about the old high school days, cause I figger she’d like to do a little talkin, it would be good for her and all, you know. So we talk about this, that, and th’other. I even get her to laugh a little bit, but finally she says, ‘I don’t want to talk about those things. I hated high school and I don’t even like to remember it.’ So I quit.

  “Right along about now we hear a noise and turn to look behind us and here comes one of the squad cars at full blast down the hill to the pond. It screeches to a stop and a cop jumps out and runs up to us and says, ‘All right now, no screwin on the capitol grounds. This here’s state property and no screwin around here or I’ll run you in.’ By his voice I know it’s old Curly, but he don’t recognize me in the dark. Now it just so happens that Curly is one of them hard-shell Baptists and except for a game of poker now and then he don’t tolerate no sin of any kind. I can tell Margaret’s pretty embarrassed about all this, and old Curly’s just standin there like he was waitin for us to try to screw or somethin right in front of him, and then he says to me, Buster, what d’you think y
ou’re doin out here at three o’clock in the mornin with this here girl anyway?’ and I don’t say nuthin, so he says, ‘Better let me have a look at your i.d. card,’ and he holds out his hand, so I fish out my wallet and take out my police card and give it to him and he takes it over to hold it under the headlight of the squad car, and he studies it for a while, and then he near bout drops dead, and he comes back over and says in this squeaky little voice, ‘Is that you, Sarge?’ All I says is: ‘Yeah.’ He says, ‘Well, gee, Sarge, I didn’t know it was you, honest. I sure didn’t mean to butt in on you or nuthin. God. I wouldn’t never of butted in if I knowed it was you.’ Pore Curly’s so mortified he just keeps on runnin off at the mouth. ‘Sarge,’ he says, ‘you just go and screw if you want to, I don’t keer. Aint none of my business.’ I caint help it, I bust out laughin, and Margaret she starts laughin too. Then old Curly gives me a salute and jumps back into the squad car and tears off out of there. After he’s gone me and Margaret just keep on laughin, and we set back down on the grass again and look at the water again and she just keeps on laughin, like she had it stored up for years and aint had a good chance yet to let some of it out. After a while she quits laughin, and she says, “You’re a sergeant,’ and then she laughs some more. By God, for some reason or other I aint felt so good in a long time, and I caint hardly wait to get back to the stationhouse to tell the boys what old Curly said.

  “Then it gets real quiet. Me and her both aint laughin no more. We just look at the pond. A long time we just set like that and not say nuthin. I sort of almost forget about her and start in to frettin about my own problems again, and I reckon she’s got her hands full frettin about her problems, whatever they are. Anyway, we just set there, and then a good bit later she ups and speaks in this sad little voice: ‘Why have we come here to this water?’ And I say it after her, like it was what I was wonderin too: ‘Why have we come here to this water?’ and I guess in that moment she figgers she’s given herself away, let the cat out of the bag, because in that moment I suddenly get a pretty good notion of what she’d been aimin to do that night, of what she was lookin for: and that maybe what it was was a piece of water somewhere deep enough for her to drown herself in, and that she hadn’t come out here to the Game and Fish Department pond completely by accident. So when she realizes that maybe I know what she’s been up to, she makes this kind of sound in her throat, and I knew what the sound is: like a cry tryin to get out but caint, like a bawl caught in her throat and barkin to be let out—so I says to her, real quick, ‘You led the way, Margaret, I was just afollerin you,’ and then real quick I get out my handkerchief and poke it at her and she takes it and looks at it like she was studyin what to do with it, and then she knows, and she breaks down and commences weepin. And after a while I put my arm around her and she puts her face up against my chest and goes on weepin, and gets my shirt all wet, and I hold her. And she cries a long time, longer even than she had laughed, and then she gives it up, I guess she runs out of teardrops, and then she goes to sleep. For a long time we just set like that, with her sound asleep up against my chest. I reckon she aint slept so good for years. Of course my back gets to hurtin some, but I don’t mind. No sir, I don’t really mind at all.

  “By and by it comes up dayspring, the sky lightin up in the east and that old pond turnin almost white. It looks like glass. Ever so often some old fish leaps up breakin the glass to get him a gnat or some other bug. My back don’t give out, but I get kind of hungry. She don’t show no sign of wakin up. I let her sleep for another hour or so, and then I whisper, ‘Marge,’ and I give her shoulder a little shake. She don’t wake up. I see her now, how pretty and all she is, whereas I couldn’t much tell in the dark. Even though I’m hungry and kind of sleepy myself, it makes me feel good settin there like that with a pretty girl sleepin with her head up against my chest, and my arm around her. ‘Marge,’ I says. ‘Marge.’

  “Far’s I’m concerned she can sleep till three-thirty that afternoon if she wants to, which is when I have to be back on duty. But soon she wakes up. She just moves away from my chest and stretches a bit and looks out at the pond for a while. Then all of a sudden she turns around and looks at me, like she just now knows where she is at. Then she smiles real big, but in a sleepy sort of way, and pats me on the side of my face. Then she stands up, and I stand up, and I walk her home.

  “On the front porch of that old beat-up house of hers she says to me, You’re a very conscientious policeman,’ and I tell her I am glad to be of any assistance. Then I ask her if I could come over sometime and talk to her. The reason I ask her this is that I aim to do somethin for her, I mean, I aim to find out what her trouble is and see if I caint be of some real help. But before she has time to answer, that big fat momma of hers comes stormin out the front door mad as a wet hen and she grabs me and starts in to slappin me and sayin she’s gonna call the police and have me electrocuted. And Margaret is standin there tryin to tell her mother that I’m the police myself and I aint done nuthin to her, and me, I’m just tryin to protect myself from gettin the shit slapped out of me by that crazy old woman. And Margaret is shoutin in her ear, ‘He’s Sergeant Hawkins of the Little Rock Police!’ Then her mother stops bangin on me and says, ‘Sergeant?’ Then she says, ‘Then where’s your uniform?’ I tell her I’m off duty, but I don’t think she believes me. She takes Margaret into the house and slams the door on me.

  “I go on home, and take a nap for a couple of hours, and then I put on my uniform and my gun and all and go on back over there. But Mrs. Austin won’t let Margaret come out again. I stand there and ask her a bunch of questions, like what all does she think seems to be botherin Margaret, but she says there’s nothing wrong at all, for me not to worry about it, thank you very much, good day.”

  Dall stood up and stretched, his hands on the small of his back. “That woman,” he said. “I swear…she…sometimes…it just—” He couldn’t find the words.

  “I know,” I said. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  “Well,” he said. “Anyway, I kept on goin back to that house ever day or so, and finally it got to where her mother would let her come out and talk to me, and first thing I asked her was how come she still stayed at home, but she just said somethin about it was ‘force of habit’ and she’d been doin it for so long, she’d been doin what her mother told her to do for so long that she didn’t even think about it any more. Well, I guess you know the rest. One day we was just readin the paper together on her front porch, and she showed me this item about how those Little Rock Playmakers were lookin for people to work with em, and I told her she ought to join up, it would give her somethin to do, workin on costumes or scenery or stuff, and maybe she would make some friends and all, you know. Well, I had to argue with her a long time about it, because she was too bashful to try anything like that, but finally she said she’d do it just as a favor for me, so I even took her over there in the squad car one afternoon, and then about a week later she told me how Mr. Slater had asked her if she would care to read for this part in this play of his, and how when she read for it he was so pleased with her that he gave her the part. Seems there wasn’t nobody else that was cut out for it. I was right proud of her and I told her I knew she could do it well.”

  I inquired if his interest in her was purely professional, that is, if he was only doing his duty as a policeman or whether he might have some personal interest in her.

  He scowled, sat down again, and said that as far as romance was concerned he was plum fed up with women.

  Then he asked me if my interest in her was pure too, or whether I might have some romantic interest in her.

  I shrugged, and reminded him that I was a married man.

  He guffawed at that.

  Then I asked him if he thought she might be mentally unbalanced.

  He said he didn’t think so.

  I asked him if he thought she was suicidal.

  He said that he thought she had been, but that she didn’t seem to be any more—althoug
h he had been worried last night when her mother reported her missing.

  I asked him if he would have any objection if I continued to see Margaret and have dates with her.

  None at all, he said. He said that if I could think of any way to get her permanently away from her mother, I would be rendering a great help and service. But, he added, as far as dates were concerned, he didn’t know if I would have much luck, because Mr. Slater the playwright was taking up most of her social time.

  “Mr. Slater?” I said. “You mean he’s been courting her?”

  Dall nodded.

  “But he’s old enough to be her father, isn’t he?”

  “Forty-nine, goin on fifty,” Dall said, deadpan. “And that aint all. He’s a married man too.”

  I was stricken. Tell me more,” I beseeched him.

  But we were interrupted again by Curly, who stuck his head inside the door and said, “Sarge, we finally caught that Howard nigger for you. Caught him doin seventy on Roosevelt Road. We got him out here now.”

  “Well, well,” Dall said, and his face was transformed: he sneered in an evil cat-after-mouse expression of gloating. Then he glanced at me, saw that I was watching his face, and said to Curly, “Just a second.” Then he turned to me. “Looks like I got to get back to work. But listen, Nub, Friday’s my night off, why don’t you come over and have supper with me and we can talk some more about Margaret or take in a ball game or somethin, okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, but disappointed that I would have to wait that long—two more days—to find out more about Margaret and James Royal Slater.