Mark the Sparrow

by Clark Howard

  Cloud nodded. “Why don’t you call it ‘Save Whitman’?” he suggested.

  “That’s an excellent idea!” Genevieve said, beaming. “It has much more of a dramatic ring to it, much more urgency.”

  She ate the last of Cloud’s French fries. They lingered over their third cups of coffee for a while, and then Genevieve decided she had better return to her room.

  “I haven’t even started packing, and I do want to get an early start tomorrow. I’m going to try to be on the road by six.”

  Cloud paid the check and walked to her room with her.

  “It’s nice that we were able to get acquainted,” Genevieve said. They walked down a long, lighted sidewalk in front of an evenly spaced row of room doors. “Let’s agree to keep in touch.”

  “Okay. Good idea,” said Cloud.

  “Let’s write each other once a month. I’ll tell you how the ‘Save Whitman’ club is doing, and you tell me how the book is coming along.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  At her room, Genevieve unlocked the door and turned to say goodbye. “I’m awfully glad you’re Weldon’s other friend;” she said quietly. She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “Goodbye, Robert.”

  “Goodbye, Genevieve.”

  When she was safely inside, he started back up the long, lighted sidewalk.

  Cloud was halfway back to the front of the motel when one of the room doors opened in front of him and Laurel stepped out. She was followed immediately by a tall, well-groomed man of about forty. The man pulled the door closed behind him. He slipped his arm around Laurel’s waist and they turned toward a late-model Cadillac parked facing the room. As they turned, Laurel saw Cloud standing there staring at them.

  “Rob—”

  She spoke only the one word, then her breath seemed to catch. Her eyes, which had widened, filled with a bewildered hurt. Cloud continued to stare at her, saying nothing. After a moment, Laurel swallowed and forced an awkward introduction.

  “Uh, Rob, this is Ralph Blevins, a friend of mine. Ralph, this is Robert Cloud, a—a friend of mine too—”

  Blevins, who had noted the incredulous expression on Cloud’s face, as well as Laurel’s discomposure, nodded, but had the good sense not to offer his hand.

  “We were—just leaving, Rob,” she said nervously. “Can we—can we drop you somewhere?”

  Cloud forced words past his lips. “No. No, thank you.”

  “Well, we’ll be running along then—” She pulled on Blevins’s hand.

  “Nice meeting you, Cloud,” said Blevins, his manner strained.

  “Goodnight,” Cloud managed to say. He resumed walking past the row of doors. When he heard the Cadillac’s engine turn over, he stopped and looked back to watch them drive off. He stood there for several minutes after they were gone, his expression blank. His mind quickly consumed the disbelief of the incredible seconds that have just passed, and he accepted the fact that what had happened was real. In its wake, he was stunned.

  He started walking again, out to the street and down to the cornor bus stop. The bus came and he got on. It was a late-night bus: starkly lighted, nearly empty. He sat near the middle by a window that was open.

  The lies, he thought: all the lies. School counseling on Monday and Thursday nights. Because she needed the extra money. And the part about being a virgin—

  Why, he wondered, had she done it? Not why had she gone to a motel with Nevins or whatever his name was; but why had she bothered with him, Cloud? He obviously was not what she was looking for in a man: he was not stable enough for her, did not have enough ambition to suit her, did not dress exactly right, never seemed to have his hair properly trimmed, chewed his fingernails—he was biting them now, as a matter of fact—and on top of everything else he was now mixed up in this Weldon Whitman matter. Why in the hell did she take up with him in the first place? Why, when someone like Nevins was interested in her? He certainly looked like the kind of man Laurel would like; he looked successful, tailored, poised.

  He sighed heavily and looked out the open window at the quiet night passing by. Fuck this town, he thought. He had had it with Los Angeles. Had it with the Ledger. Had it with Hoskins. Had it even with Lew Lach and his sick thing about young dead girls.

  And now he had had it with Laurel too.

  Time to hang it up and hit the road. Again.

  When the bus came to his stop, Cloud got off and walked the three blocks to his apartment building. In the foyer, he picked up his mail: a couple of advertisements and an envelope from Whitman. Fairly thick: about five or six sheets of paper, he guessed. More pages for Room 22, Hotel Death.

  Cloud went up to his apartment, let himself in, and tossed the Whitman envelope onto his coffee table. That was where he had his typewriter set up, where he worked on the book. The typewriter was in the center of the long table. To the left of the typewriter were two neat stacks of paper: the handwritten sheets of lined prison tablet on which Whitman was writing his story and Cloud’s blue-lined yellow sheets. To the right, on the arm of the couch, were an ashtray, his cigarettes, and a small box containing typewriter erasers, black and red ballpoints, typewriter correction paper, and a scratchpad.

  It was an ideal work area for him, and as he stood looking at it now, it became the only part of the little apartment that suddenly did not take on a depressing quality. Everything else was too quickly and easily associated with Laurel: the kitchenette where they had often cooked together; the bedroom where they lounged on the bed to watch Sunday-afternoon movies; the big recliner in the living room where he would lie naked while she ministered to him in whatever way she decided to—

  Cloud shook his head. The apartment, like the job and the girl and everything else, had gone stale. He decided to pull the pin, right then and there. He rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter and typed a quick note to his landlady: he was moving out of town; she could dispose of the groceries he was leaving behind. He folded the note and put it in his inside coat pocket.

  In the bedroom, he took his two-suiter from the closet and packed his meager wardrobe into one side of it. In the bathroom, he put all his shaving gear and accessories in a zippered case and tossed it into the suitcase too. Then he took the bag into the living room and laid it open on the couch. He locked his typewriter in its case and neatly boxed up the various stacks of paper; everything fit neatly into three single-ream boxes. He packed them into the other side of the suitcase. He was about to close it when his apartment buzzer sounded.

  Cloud frowned and looked at his watch. Twenty past midnight. He walked over and opened the door.

  “Rob, can I come in, please?” Laurel’s voice sounded hoarse; her eyes were red and slightly swollen.

  Cloud let her in and closed the door behind her. He followed her into the living room. She saw his suitcase and typewriter. She turned to him, anguish etched in her face.

  “That isn’t necessary, Rob.”

  “I think it is.” His voice was quiet, without rancor.

  Laurel bit her lip. “Let me tell you about Ralph—”

  “I am not interested in Ralph.” He really was not.

  “Well then let me tell you about me,” she pleaded. “Let me at least explain how I got caught up in the damned situation—”

  “Laurel, it won’t do either of us any good for you to go into a long involved explanation of your personal life—” “It might,” she said. “It might make you reconsider this …”

  “It wouldn’t,” he assured her. “I’ve made up my mind to go.”

  “Rob, listen,” she said, but then her hoarse voice broke. She turned away, biting her knuckle. “Damn, damn, damn! I knew it would be like this!” She snatched a crumpled tissue from her coat pocket and dabbed at her nose. “Would you mind if I made some coffee? My throat feels like sandpaper.”

  “Go ahead.”

  She left the room. Cloud straightened the things in his suitcase, then sat down in the space remaining on the couch and lighted a cigar
ette. Laurel returned in several minutes with two mugs of instant coffee.

  “I didn’t know if you wanted any or not—”

  “I do,” he said, taking one of the mugs. “Thanks.”

  Laurel sat in a chair opposite him. She took several brief, steaming sips of her coffee. “God, that feels good.” Looking over at Cloud, she found him staring at her. “Do you feel that I’ve cheated you, Rob?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “I know I’m depressed because you lied to me.”

  “About being a virgin?”

  Cloud nodded. “That, and the lies about your doing counseling work on Monday and Thursday nights.”

  “Rob, I don’t know why I told you that lie about me being a virgin. It was just crazy, it was—I don’t know—dumb. I did it because I liked you and I didn’t want you to think I was just ordinary. I wanted you to think I was special in some way, and that was the first thing that came to mind. Can you understand that?”

  “Sure,” Cloud said. “I can understand anyone telling a lie. What I can’t understand is a person living a lie.”

  “I didn’t intend to, Rob, believe me I didn’t.” She sat forward in the chair, as if putting herself a few inches closer to him would make her story more credible. “I wanted to tell you so many times; God, Rob, you’ll never know how many migraines I gave myself worrying about it. But the longer I put it off, well, finally I reached the point where I just couldn’t.” She was looking at him with frank, wide eyes. “I couldn’t make myself tell you, even when I wanted you to fuck me so badly that I actually ached for it.”

  “I did a little aching myself,” Cloud reminded her.

  “I know. I know.” She put her coffee aside and knelt in front of him, tears starting down her cheeks. “Rob, I’m so mixed up, I can’t even think straight. I’ve never had anything; my life, the people I came from, everything I can remember, was always drab and dull. We were on welfare half the time, moving from one place to the next the other half. You wouldn’t believe what I was like at fifteen, Rob—” She shuddered involuntarily. “It wasn’t until I left, until I was able to work my way through college and get my teaching certificate, that I finally got to see a little sunlight in all that goddamn gloom. Later, when I met Ralph, I was just so taken with him that he literally overwhelmed me. For the first time I was being paid attention to by a man who was clean. I mean clean all over: fingernails, breath, no dandruff, no body odor, just clean. He wasn’t dirt poor, he wasn’t a little kid college boy, he wasn’t an insecure young teacher just starting out; he was somebody, he had substance, he had—had—”

  “Money,” Cloud said. “That’s what it all comes down to, isn’t it? Money. Success. The ability to buy.”

  “Maybe it is, Rob—”

  “Sure it is. That’s the reason you let him ball you, because he had it all: the money, the clothes, the big car. I didn’t have those things, so I got played with a little; but you couldn’t quite bring yourself to let me have it all, because I didn’t meet your standards.”

  She shook her head, tears streaming. “If I didn’t care for you, do you think I would have bothered at all?”

  “You cared for me, sure. Enough to try and make me over. But not enough to give me the same thing you were giving Ralph.”

  “Only because I didn’t know how, Rob,” she pled tearfully. “After telling you I was a virgin, I didn’t know how to tell you I wasn’t.” She gripped his knees desperately. “Rob, do you believe that I care for you?”

  Cloud stared at her anguished face for a moment. He wanted to say no, but he could not. “Yes,” he answered simply.

  She quickly got up and took his hands. “Prove you believe me. Come to bed with me now.”

  “After he’s just been in you? You can go to hell, Laurel.”

  She looked away from him. “He wasn’t,” she told him. “I blew him tonight.”

  Cloud stood up. His jaw clenched. He slapped her hard across the face, knocking her six feet away from him. For an instant it appeared that she was going to fall, but she did not. She raised her hand and touched her cheek; it was fiery red from his blow. She did not utter a sound; and, oddly, her tears suddenly stopped. Looking directly into his eyes, locking them with hers, she calmly began taking off her clothes.

  Cloud did not take his eyes from hers, but in his peripheral vision he watched her gradually become naked. The sweater was discarded first. The skirt, shoes, pantyhose, satin panties, all fell away, leaving her nude except for the low-cut bra that barely covered her nipples.

  “He hasn’t been in me tonight, Rob.” She turned and walked into the bedroom.

  Cloud followed her. He stood at the foot of the bed looking down at her as he took off his clothes. She spread her legs for him to see, and folded her arms under her breasts, making them nearly burst from their bra.

  “I want it in me so bad, Rob. I’ve wanted it in me for so long—”

  “I know,” he said. He climbed onto the bed between her legs. “I want to put it in you just as bad—” He pulled her bra straps down on each arm and uncovered her breasts. They were tight and hard-nippled. Bending over her, he sucked first the left nipple, then the right, as he began working himself into her.

  Cloud started his intercourse with her with his arms braced stiffly on each side of her, holding his upper body above her so that he could look down at her beautiful, oddly unmoving tits, or lower his head and see down between their bodies where they joined; then he let himself down on top of her, turning his lips to her neck while he changed from a thrusting motion to a back-and-forth countermotion that caused him to rub around inside her; and finally when he was ready to come, he pulled her legs up and slid back and up, spreading his knees on each side and just under her buttocks to raise her just enough to allow him maximum leverage into her body. He worked slowly, very slowly, toward the end, and when he came, he came slowly and deliciously and for what seemed like a long time.

  They rested side by side when it was over, Cloud on his back looking up at the ceiling, Laurel on her side facing him, one cheek against his shoulder, one breast against his elbow.

  “Was it good, Rob?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s yours from now on, Rob. You can have it any time you want it.”

  Cloud said nothing.

  “Can we start over, Rob?” she asked after a moment. Her eyes were closed and she was beginning to sound sleepy.

  “I don’t know, Laurel,” he answered. “I don’t know if we can or not.”

  She said nothing more for a little while. Then she said, very sleepily, “I hope we can, Rob. I hope we can start over.”

  Cloud waited. When he was sure she was asleep, he carefully slipped his arm away from her cheek and breast and got out of bed. He spread the covers over her, gathered up his clothes, and went back into the living room. It was nearly three o’clock. He smoked a cigarette while he sat naked and thought about what Laurel had asked him. By the time he finished the cigarette, he had made up his mind.

  When he was dressed, he left the note for his landlady, picked up his suitcase and the portable typewriter, and quietly left the apartment.

  Three hours later, when Genevieve Neller came out of her motel room, Cloud was leaning up against her car with his luggage at his feet.

  Chapter Nine

  Less than a week after he arrived in Sacramento, Cloud borrowed Genevieve Neller’s car and drove up to San Quentin to see Weldon Whitman again. In the visiting room, he sat in the same middle chair. When Whitman stepped out of the elevator, he looked paler to Cloud, though he did not appear unhealthy.

  Whitman smiled his familiar smile and sat down. “Hello, Rob. I got a letter from Genevieve Saturday-saying you were living up in Sacramento now. What’d you do, quit the paper down in L.A.?”

  Cloud nodded. “I had some differences with the management.”

  Whitman smiled, amused. “Tried to buck the establishment, huh?” He lighted a cigarette. “What are you going to
do now? Work for one of the papers at the capital?”

  “What would you think about me working for you full time?”

  Whitman grunted. “Are you independently wealthy? Or did you want me to teach you how to stick up liquor stores?”

  “I’m serious,” Cloud said. “What I want to do, Whit, is write about you.” He leaned forward. “Look, Hotel Death is at least six months away from being ready to show to a publisher. The rewriting takes a couple of hours’ work a day. With my surplus time, I though I’d start a series of magazine articles on you. If I get a magazine—maybe even several magazines—interested in your case, it might go a long way toward helping you. The articles would get you in the public eye outside of California, and that would build up some interest in the book—and give me some money to finish the book.”

  Whitman nodded. “What do you need from me?”

  “Permission to do the articles, and cooperation in obtaining formation about your case.”

  “You’ve got it,” Whitman said without hesitation. “The permission and the cooperation.”

  “Great.” Cloud nodded and sat back. “The first thing I want to do is decide on the approach. Do we take the approach that you may be guilty, but even if you are you don’t deserve the death penalty? Or do we go strictly on the basis that you’re innocent?”

  “Which way would do me the most good?” Whitman asked.

  “In the long run, Whit, the way that’s going to work best for you is telling the truth. You can’t sell a lie indefinitely; the public always catches up with somebody who tries to hustle them. If you want the public to come onto your side and help you, you’re going to have to level with them.”

  “So you want me to tell you whether I’m guilty or not, right?”

  “That’s about what it comes down to.”

  The condemned man stared long and hard at Cloud, weighing his total evaluation of him back to the day they first met. Whitman’s expression never changed, but his pupils dilated slightly as he seemed to try to decide what, and just how much, to tell Cloud. Cloud did not squirm under Whitman’s cold appraisal; he merely sat and watched the condemned man’s eyes unblinkingly. But all the time he was silently imploring: Come on, Whit. Trust somebody. Just once.