He grimaced, washed his face and began to shave. Through the thin partition he could hear the girl moving in the other restroom. He could almost see her, as she fixed herself up, her face still drawn and frightened and preoccupied with imagining him, throughout the night, with the jack handle beside him, weighing the value of the car and the roll of bills in her purse against his conscience and the fact of murder. For the love of Mike, he thought, and why didn’t I put the damn thing away, anyway?
Finished, he put on a gaudy yellow sports shirt and went outside. She came out almost at the same time. She did not see him at once. He saw her, coming around the corner of the building, stop abruptly and stand looking at the vacant space beside the pumps where her car had been, her face shocked and pale.
“It’s on the hoist,” he said.
She whirled and saw him, then saw the car with the boy working under it.
“I thought you could probably use a grease job, considering the way your oil looked,” Emmett said.
“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”
She came towards him slowly, almost reluctantly. He saw that she looked quite transformed, her hair brushed smooth, her face clean and fresh in the early morning sunlight. Below the neatly buttoned jacket the tailored skirt seemed to have thrown off the wrinkles she had slept into it, the fine gabardine showing only minute incipient creases as the light struck it. ,
“How about something to eat while he finishes with the car?” Emmett asked.
“All right.”
He walked beside her toward the restaurant, a little chilly in the sports shirt. Inside the restaurant, as they entered, a stout woman in a print dress and a flowered apron was hoisting a large dripping bag of grounds out of the coffee-maker.
“Be with you in a minute,” she said without turning her head.
They sat down at a table by the window and watched her adjust the gas flame, dispose of the bag and grounds, and wipe off the battered monel drip pan. She came around the brief counter, drying her hands on her apron.
“Take a little while till the hot-plate warms,” she said. “I can give you coffee now, if you want.”
Outside, the cars and trucks went past at irregular intervals. When the woman had left them, Emmett took out his pipe, studied it, and laid it down on the table. He wanted the reassurance of it, but after a wakeful night his mouth did not want the taste of it. He leaned toward the window and squinted at the sun rising at the end of the street.
“It’s going to be hot today,” he said.
“Yes,” Ann Nicholson said absently. “Yes, I guess it is, Mr. Emmett.”
Suddenly they were regarding each other across the table, their glances locked in a curious sexless conflict. Some impulse of cruelty born of sleeplessness made Emmett hold his steady stare until the girl’s eyes broke away. They were, he noticed, grayish blue. She looked down at her hands. There were no rings on her fingers. The subdued nailpolish on her right thumbnail was a little chipped, as if she had marred it opening a purse or compact. She studied it dispassionately.
“Please,” she said at last. “This is a stupid question, Mr. Emmett, and please don’t misunderstand me, but… why did you have that jack handle…? I know it was in the trunk day before yesterday.”
“It was in the trunk last night,” he said. “I took it out.”
He was hungry, he was sleepy, and he was very tired. At the back of his mind were the things he had been told about her, but now, in the morning, they seemed very vague. She was a human being again, a girl of presumably normal intelligence, and if she wanted to have silly ideas about him she could sit and worry about them until he got good and ready to reassure her.
He heard her begin to laugh, and glanced up quickly. It occurred to him that he had not heard her laugh before, spontaneously and naturally, and that she had rather a nice laugh. He felt himself flush a little, nevertheless.
“Mr. Emmett,” she said. “Mr. Emmett, what did they tell you about me?”
He glanced at her again. He picked up his pipe and began to fill it. He knew that his face had turned quite red. “Oh,” he said. “You saw them.”
“Miss Bethke came over to see that I was all right. She woke me. And then I could see you at the window. But surely,” she said, “they didn’t say I was homicidal, did they?”
He grinned, suddenly feeling much better. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t you I was worrying about, Miss Nicholson.”
“Miss Bethke?” she asked. “And Dr. Kaufman?” She giggled, and then she was laughing again. “I’m sorry. But the idea of a man fending off Miss Bethke with a jack handle… I mean, it’s generally the other way around, I should imagine. Not that I know much of her private life…” Ann Nicholson drew a long breath. “Well,” she said, “that’s settled.” She smiled. “When it fell out… I wasn’t quite awake… I’d forgotten… I thought…”
“I know what you thought,” he said a little resentfully.
“But really, Mr. Emmett! Miss Bethke and Dr. Kaufman.”
“Well,” he said defensively, “it was a damn queer experience, you’ll have to admit. I mean, first those headlights following us and then… Well, I figured it would be nice to have something handy, just in case.” After a moment he added, grinning, “Your friend Miss Bethke doesn’t exactly inspire trust in a man. A lot of other things, yes, but hardly trust.”
“I know,” Ann Nicholson said. “Isn’t she wonderful? The first nurse I had was such an old stick I was almost glad when she had an accident and landed in the hospital.”
“Well, nobody would call Miss Bethke a stick,” Emmett said dryly.
“Mother detests her,” Ann Nicholson said. “She only puts up with her because she saved my life. I tried to kill myself, you know.”
Emmett glanced at her quickly. She sounded almost proud of it. It seemed to him that the whole room had suddenly become a little colder, and that the girl had suddenly moved far away from him. She was a case again, no longer a person. The stout woman put their coffee in front of them.
“I think I’ll have two eggs after all,” Ann Nicholson said, looking up to smile as pleasantly at the woman as if she had never heard of suicide. “Sunny side up, please.”
chapter SIX
When they came out they could feel the heat of the sun although the air was still quite cool. The boy at the filling station had finished with the car. Ann Nicholson paid him and got behind the wheel.
“If you want to sleep…” she said to Emmett.
“I think I’ll smoke a pipe first,” he said. He winced as, trying to find reverse, she clashed the gears noisily. Then they were on the highway again.
“I’m going to have to buy some things when the stores open,” Ann Nicholson said. “I had to clean my teeth with my handkerchief.”
Emmett said, “You can probably get a toothbrush but you won’t get much else. It’s Sunday.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
He packed his pipe carefully, lit it and dropped the match into the ashtray above the dashboard. Relaxing on the base of his spine, sunk down as far as possible on the slick leather seat, he watched the girl’s face with a remote sleepy bitterness. She made him uncomfortable. Not only did it make him uncomfortable to wonder how far she was from being normal, and to think of the things she had suffered that set her apart from ordinary people like himself, but also she aroused in him the somewhat resentful envy mixed with respect that he had felt, before, in the presence of the uniforms with the rows of ribbons. He remembered the newspaper clipping and, studying her face, tried to imagine her, in sweater and skirt, perhaps, or disguised as a boy, although it was difficult to see how the fragile face could be made to look like a boy’s face even with the hair cut short, slipping down darkened alleys with, at the end, always a large German sentry silhouetted against the light of the street; or crouching in the bushes in the rain while the lightning flashes showed the patrols searching for her; or standing by the window of a shabby room, her profile clear against the
sunlight outside as she drew back the curtains minutely to look down at the street where a man in a trench coat, obviously a heavy, stood ostentatiously reading a newspaper. Because it always turned out Hollywood when you tried to imagine it. You knew it had not been like that, but you had no idea of how it really had been. When they said “underground” and “Gestapo” it came out Warner Brothers, passed by the state board of censors.
She cranked down the window beside her and the wind pushed at her soft light hair.
“What did they tell you about me, Mr. Emmett?”
He said carefully, “They said you’d had a pretty rugged time of it in France. Undergrounds and Gestapo and stuff. They said that after you came back you’d shown an aversion to society for a while and that you’d apparently forgotten some things the doctor thought you ought to want to remember…”
She said quickly, “Why? Why should I have to remember something like that? I remember quite enough of it to know I don’t want to know the rest!” Then she smiled. “I’m sorry. I’ve got so I go defensive about it quite automatically. Of course I want to remember.”
“They said something about a man named Kissel,” Emmett said.
“Oh,” she said. “Yes. I thought they’d probably guessed.”
“I’m not supposed to be telling you this,” Emmett said. “It’s supposed to be entirely your own idea.”
She laughed. “What did they say about Dr. Kissel?” she asked after a pause.
“That he was teaching at some college near Denver. That you think he knows what happened to you during the time you’ve forgotten about. That you’re afraid of trying to remember until somebody tells you that it isn’t going to hurt. It sounds a little screwy to me.”
She threw him a quick glance. “Oh, it does, Mr. Emmett?” she said, rather stiffly.
“Well,” he said. “I can see you wanting, and I can see you not wanting, but this half-ass business, if you’ll pardon the expression, kind of puzzles me.”
She asked, “And what do you know about amnesia, Mr. Emmett?”
Her tone of voice annoyed him. He was tired and sleepy and the situation embarrassed him, and he did not give a damn what he said.
“That it’s generally faked,” he said.
The car slowed abruptly as her foot released the accelerator; then picked up speed again. After a long time, without looking at him, she asked, her voice almost harsh:
“Did Dr. Kaufman tell you to say that?”
“No,” Emmett said. “No, it’s entirely my own idea and I apologize.”
“Oh, don’t apologize,” she said. “Please go on.”
He was suddenly a little frightened.
“No,” he said. “Really, I’m sorry. I’m always offensive when I’m sleepy.”
She said, “No, please tell me about amnesia, Mr. Emmett. I’m really quite interested.”
He flushed at the sarcasm in her voice. “All right,” he said angrily. “Apart from the kind where the hero gets bopped on the head with a blunt instrument, there are two kinds of amnesia, both discovered by the eminent psychiatroanalyst, Dr. Emmettstein. In the first the wife gets tired of having her husband read Li’l Abner aloud to her over the breakfast table and cuts his throat with the ham slicer and explains to the jury that suddenly everything went black. She can’t remember a thing. We call this, in the profession, legal, or courtroom amnesia. In the second kind, the husband gets tired of his wife’s nagging and cleans out the bank account, picks up a blonde, and goes on a binge. A week or so later he wakes up with a head, alone and broke. Suddenly the wife and kids look kind of good to him, but he’s going to have a hell of a time explaining that blonde. He trots into the nearest police station and says he found himself standing on the corner of Main Street and Elm and can’t for the life of him recall how he got there or where he’s been. This is known as domestic amnesia.”
He pulled at his pipe and felt the vibration of the car against the back of his head where it leaned against the metal of the door. He was afraid to look at the girl. He had let his resentment carry him into depths he knew nothing about. If her mind were really ill his skepticism could easily bring on some reaction he would be quite incapable of coping with, not being a psychiatrist.
“That’s very interesting,” her voice said softly. “You should have a consultation with Dr. Kaufman about my case.” She went on before he could speak, “Then you think there is no such thing as genuine amnesia?”
“Hell, no,” he said. “I know there is. I’m just blowing off steam. Forget it.”
“Don’t be polite,” she said. Her voice held an edge of anger.
He glanced at her and said, his anger answering hers, “Well, damn it, nothing ever went black for me when I wanted it to. And if it did, I wouldn’t expect to come out of it with somebody’s name, address, and telephone number.”
She kicked the car out of gear and braked to a halt at the side of the road. A truck swerved past, its horn blaring. She glanced at it, startled, as it went on to the west, then turned to face Emmett.
“Does it occur to you that you’re being rather cruel, Mr. Emmett?”
He took his pipe from his mouth and looked at it with distaste. He did not say anything.
“Why do you dislike me?” she asked.
He looked up. “I don’t,” he said quickly. “I think you’re probably a fine girl, Miss Nicholson. But God damn it…!” He rubbed his eyes. He had a headache now. “Oh, forget it,” he said. “Please forget the whole thing.”
“What were you going to say?”
He turned to her. “Listen,” he said angrily, “I spent the whole damn war and a couple of years more being respectful and sympathetic to guys who kind of looked down at me because…”
“I see.”
“… So then I think I’m getting away from it,” he said savagely, “and I pick up a girl on the Lincoln Highway, and damn if she doesn’t turn out to be a lousy heroine.”
He knew that his face was quite red, and he could not make himself look at her. He cranked down the window beside him, knocked the hot ashes out of his pipe into his hand, and pitched them out before they could burn him. He heard the girl begin to laugh, looked up, and found himself grinning wryly.
“I think you’d better climb in back and get some sleep,” Ann Nicholson said.
chapter SEVEN
He woke up abruptly as the car lurched and came to a halt, the tires grinding in the gravel at the side of the road. It was hot in the cramped rear seat; he was stiff and his left arm was asleep. He heard the siren whine past, dying.
“My God,” he said, sitting up to rub his numb hand. “Don’t tell me you were speeding!”
Ann Nicholson turned a white frightened face toward him. “I don’t think so. I’m sure I slowed down to twenty-five in the town…”
Emmett sighed. “Well. It’s never any use arguing with them.”
He stopped. A tall man had got out of the black Ford sedan that had come to rest ahead. The man looked as if he had been thin ten years ago, and as if the weight he had put on since had not had time to distribute itself about his body; it was all in the lower chest and belly. He still had a thin man’s long legs and narrow shoulders. He was wearing a dark suit without a vest, a striped white shirt and a bow tie. When his coat swung open you could see the star pinned on the shirt. You could also see the cartridge belt constricting the abdomen, the lower part of the holster showing below the coat; but the holster was empty. The man had his gun in his hand. A lanky, sandy-haired boy in jeans and a blue shirt got out of the Ford on the far side and started walking gingerly around it. He held a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun across his body and looked quite nervous.
A car, approaching from the east, slowed and then, slamming into second and swinging wide into the far lane, screamed past with a whine of tortured gears, accelerating to hell out of there; it swerved crazily to avoid a large trailer truck. The truck rolled past with the hiss of released airbrakes.
The tall man mad
e a motion with his gun. Emmett cleared his throat, pushed the seat forward and, opening the door, climbed out. The tall man jerked the gun again and Emmett raised his hands. The gun was a .44 or .45 Smith and Wesson with a six-inch barrel, he found himself noticing distantly. His brother Dave had had one like it for a while, trading it later to another guy for a .32 hammerless and a radio that did not work. The bluing was worn off the tall man’s gun at both sides of the muzzle, the top of the front sight, and the ribs of the cylinder, from being carried in the holster. The muzzle looked big enough to stick a forefinger into.
“What’s the matter, officer?” Emmett asked. The words sounded silly, in the face of the gun, but his voice was fairly good, he thought, considering the circumstances.
“Who the hell are you?” the tall man demanded.
Emmett told him.
“What are you doing in that car?”
Emmett told him.
“Oh, a hitch-hiker,” the tall man said contemptuously.
The sun was very bright. There was a ditch on either side of the road, and beyond each ditch a barbed wire fence. Emmett had a vision of himself fleeing crazily, hanging up in the barbed wire, feeling the bullets go into him as he struggled to get free.
The boy with the shotgun stood between the cars, his weapon uneasily trained on the convertible.
“Keep those hands up,” the tall man said sharply to Emmett. “Tell the girl to get out here.”
Emmett turned slowly. “You’d better come here, Miss Nicholson.”
“Nicholson, eh?” The tall man spat. “Bud, go around and check that license again.”
He waited unmoving in the sunshine for his order to be obeyed. He had a long face, wide at the cheekbones and narrow at the chin and forehead. There were more freckles on the face than Emmett could remember seeing on a human face before. He had a long, rubbery, thin-lipped mouth, and small, very blue eyes, set close together on each side of a large curved nose.
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