Cornered!

by James McKimmey

  So he’d run off from that and gone barreling back to his old home town.

  Why? To find something he’d left back there? His parents had been dead for years.

  What the hell was he looking for anyway, going back to Bannerton? Return to the womb, Gloria had called it. Maybe she was right. Because when you were forty-seven and in real trouble with your career, maybe it looked better back in that direction.

  Once again Sam Dickens glanced at Gloria. She was still sitting with her feet under her, still gazing stubbornly out the window.

  Sam’s mind, no matter how he fought it, kept going back to Marge. How long had they been together? Thirteen years? That dull ache hit him again. He thought of how she’d looked that last time he’d seen her alive, when she was dying in that hospital bed with a stinking disease nobody could do anything about.

  But it was no good thinking about Marge. It was no good thinking about Morla either. He should have known it was no more than a horrible loneliness for Marge that caused him to marry Morla. Now it was Gloria. And Gloria was really bitched off.

  “Look, honey,” he said, “why don’t you turn the radio on again? Find some music. Music always cheers you up.”

  “Not the kind of music they play around here. Ring dang doody, ring dang do. It’s got as much class as an old cow’s—”

  “Knock it off, Glory.”

  “Lullaby in turd land.”

  “Damn it, Glory—”

  It wasn’t any use. She was right. Walk away from everything that smacked of reality. Including the reality of Gloria’s foul mouth. How could anyone look as beautiful as Gloria did when she was on stage and still come up with the dirtiest talk this side of Brooklyn?

  But that was the way she was. It didn’t change anything else about her, certainly…

  Light was growing dim, the storm seemed to increase. Now Sam was able to drive no faster than forty-five miles an hour. They were coming into a little place. Bostwick. He remembered that. There was a motel up ahead. They couldn’t drive all night. They wouldn’t even come close to hitting Cheyenne until late tomorrow.

  Moreover, he was feeling a warm desire. He’d never quite got over that, ever since he and Gloria had been together. Now it was all the more intense.

  “What do you say we stop for the night, honey? Get some rest and a fresh start tomorrow. How about it? We’re both a little on edge, I think.”

  Gloria shrugged.

  He parked and registered. Others had been slowed by the storm. The motel was almost filled. There was one unit left, a double cabin.

  Sam unloaded their bags into the cabin, while Gloria took off her coat in the second section. A blast of snow-filled wind hit Sam’s back as he closed the door. The sudden warmth felt good and comforting. He took off his coat and hat and tossed them over the bed in the first section. He looked in the second section as Gloria was pulling the blue striped sweater over her head, then slipping off the matador pants.

  She stood, touching her hair, looking at herself in a mirror, wearing only the expensive and brief lingerie Sam had bought her. She was built, Sam thought; she was a lot of things, but one thing she certainly was was built.

  “This is nice, isn’t it?” he said, smiling.

  “Yeah,” she said shortly, and disappeared into the bath. He listened to the shower running, then got out the leather flask of Scotch from his bag. He walked into the second section and arranged two glasses on the bureau. When she came out, he said, “We can have a nightcap together.”

  She had on a short pink nightgown. “All right,” she said, the edge less in her voice.

  “Do you want ice?” he asked. “I can walk up to the office and get some.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s all right.”

  He suddenly felt better; when she looked at him like that and talked to him like that, something got a little tight in his throat. He came out of the bath in pajamas, poured two drinks and carried them over to the bed where she was sitting, legs pulled up under her.

  “Cheers, baby,” he said softly.

  “Blood in your eye.” She suddenly gave him that smile of hers. He could not help laughing.

  “Baby, baby,” he said, putting an arm around her, burying his face against her neck. He put his drink down. He moved his face up and kissed her. He looked into her eyes. All of a sudden he wanted to explain to her about that Carwell kid, so that she would understand perfectly, so that it wouldn’t be in their way.

  “Glory, listen,” he said, whispering, “about that Carwell kid—”

  She suddenly stiffened.

  “See, Glory—”

  “Why couldn’t you have done something, Sam?”

  “Honey, listen—”

  She moved away from him now, enough to make him free her entirely. “I’m tired, Sam.”

  “Glory.”

  “You just didn’t do anything.”

  In a moment, he knew, it was going to be just like it had been in the car. Why did she have this juvenile notion so deep-rooted? He felt himself angering. “Damn it, Glory—”

  She looked at him, anger flaring in her eyes. “I’d like to get some sleep.”

  He stood up, putting her glass down hard on the bureau, carrying his own into the next section. He closed the door behind him. He sat down and finished his drink. He shook his head, sighing, as the anger evaporated.

  He wasn’t thinking about Billy Quirter at that moment, because he’d paid no real attention to that news broadcast. He wasn’t thinking about Ann Burley or Dr. Hugh Stewart or Ted Burley or Bob Saywell, because he didn’t know them.

  He was only thinking about Gloria, realizing with a kind of surprise that, despite everything, he really, honestly, was in love with that kid.

  chapter five

  Reverend John Andrews was driving in the direction of Arrow Junction from the opposite end of the S formed by Route 7. He was not thinking of Billy Quirter any more than Sam Dickens was, because, not having a radio in his ageing Ford, he had not yet heard of Billy Quirter at all. But he was thinking, in a vaguely general way, about Ann Burley, Dr. Hugh Stewart, Ted Burley and Bob Saywell, because all of them were actively or inactively a part of his congregation.

  Specifically Reverend Andrews was thinking desperately about what he was going to say to his flock that next Sunday morning. The trouble was that although Reverend Andrews felt his faith so strongly that the intensity of it often gave him actual physical pain, he could seldom communicate that faith to his flock.

  In the three years that Reverend Andrews had been the minister for the Lutheran community of Arrow Junction, there had been numerous times when his wife Lottie had gotten up in the middle of the night and found the good reverend on his knees making an impassioned appeal to the heavens to give him more adequacy of communication.

  But that did not mean he wished to be exactly like Reverend Maynard Styles. Now as he and Lottie were driving home from the Babcock Ministers’ Conference, Reverend Andrews was even more certain that he did not want to be exactly like Maynard Styles.

  “It was a nice conference, wasn’t it?” Lottie asked. When Lottie and Reverend Andrews had been married, Lottie’s daddy, Horace Tellwinder, had described his daughter as, “Just a big little girl.” That was twenty-three years ago. Lottie was an even bigger little girl now. But she had retained that tiny voice, and nobody, including Reverend Andrews, thought of her as anything but a little girl. She adored her husband. Though the Reverend was smaller-boned, an inch shorter and a good deal leaner, nobody ever thought of large Lottie as anything but Reverend Andrews’s little girl.

  “Yes,” Reverend Andrews said, “it was a nice conference, Lottie.”

  “The food was so good.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Dear, you seem so blue.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m feeling very thankful that the Good Lord allowed us to make this journey with so much enjoyment.”

  “I know that, dear. But even if you’re grateful to the Good Lord
, that doesn’t mean you can’t be blue, does it? I wish you’d tell me. You always keep things to yourself.”

  Reverend Andrews shook his head. “I don’t know, Lottie. We should always think well of our brothers, particularly our brothers who have rallied to the call of the Lord and taken up the yoke of duty. But—”

  “You’re thinking about Maynard Styles, aren’t you? I know what usually makes you upset. You think Maynard is—well—”

  “Don’t say it, Lottie. Let’s leave judgments up to the Good Lord.”

  “Well, I can’t help but feel that Maynard isn’t always thinking about the Good Lord.”

  “Now, Lottie.”

  “It’s true. He didn’t seem to be thinking so much about the Good Lord when he kept going on about how much the church in Babcock was paying him. And then about that extension to his house.”

  “Jealousy is the Devil beckoning, Lottie.”

  “I do wish we could have a little more money. But I’m not jealous, John. It’s just that Maynard seems to be more concerned with worldly things than a good minister ought to be.”

  “He’s doing very fine work, Lottie. You know that.”

  “I know that. And he talks an awful lot about it too. Just because we all grew up in Arrow Junction, I sometimes think he tries to make us jealous. Talking on and on about his programs over KWTC. I don’t think that’s the way the Good Lord likes things to be done.”

  “Now, Lottie,” Reverend Andrews repeated, but Lottie had opened the tap that allowed the whole disturbment of being around Maynard Styles wash through his mind. Even as he prayed for an unembittered attitude, the Devil kept beckoning.

  Maynard Styles was a tall broad-shouldered man with a handsome and strong profile. There was the strength of Samson in his looks. Reverend Andrews, when he examined his own insignificant features in the morning mirror, often wondered at the Good Lord’s oversight in this unequal distribution.

  Moreover Maynard Styles owned the voice of thunder, a voice that caused Reverend Andrews something very close to shame when he compared it to his own slightly rasping sound that always seemed to fog in the middle of particularly emotional utterances.

  Yes, Maynard Styles certainly owned all the physical assets that a good minister would want to own. But for a good number of young years Maynard Styles had been quite deaf to the clarion trumpet of the Lord. Reverend Andrews well remembered one evening in 1932 when Maynard Styles had been discovered drunkenly passed out in the middle of the main street of Arrow Junction.

  But of course Maynard did change his ways after he’d gone off to agricultural school at the University.

  He’d come back loudly proclaiming his new dedication to becoming a worker for the Lord. Reverend Andrews had never heard a more enthusiastic vocal pledge to reform than Maynard Styles had made.

  And the truth was that Reverend Andrews had never been sure that the switch from farming to preaching had been done entirely for spiritual reasons.

  Reverend Andrews’s career had produced one long siege of austere existence as he and Lottie moved from one tiny community to another, finally winding up back in Arrow Junction. But a minister’s life could produce something else, as Maynard Styles had proved.

  Maynard Styles had been able to settle comfortably, if not grandly, in Babcock. He had his three-times-a-week broadcast over KWTC, which brought his voice to so many that it would be no time at all before he went on to Omaha or even Chicago. He had his large house with its fine study and fireplace. He had his good gabardine suits, his Stetson hats, and that new De Soto. Reverend Andrews was not at all sure that Maynard Styles could have done so well materially at farming as he had done at ministering. Certainly there would not have been so much ego satisfaction in plowing the land.

  Reverend Andrews tried to shake free from that kind of thinking. Judgments, as he’d told Lottie, should be left up to the Lord. And if sometimes distributions seemed unequal, well, the Lord often saw to balances in His own way.

  “Storm seems to be getting worse,” Lottie said. “It’s a good thing they’ve been through here with the snow plow. I wonder if they’ve been through between Graintown and Arrow Junction?”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “Are you hungry, dear?”

  “I am a little, yes.”

  Lottie lifted from the back seat one of several cardboard boxes left over from the conference. It was filled with cold fried chicken.

  “I think maybe I’ll just keep driving through tonight, dear.”

  Reverend Andrews settled himself more firmly behind the wheel. In truth he had to keep driving because he didn’t have enough money to stop at a motel for the night. But Reverend Andrews nonetheless sent up his prayers of gratitude. The windshield wipers were working fine. The heater was giving out good heat. The time spent driving might very well solve his problem of what to say on Sunday. Reverend Andrews was suddenly more content.

  They had plenty to eat, after all. There was a gigantic quantity of fried chicken in the back seat. Despite the fact that Reverend and Lottie Andrews had consumed enough fried chicken over the past twenty-three years never to want to hear a chicken cackle, you couldn’t deny that it was always good chicken. The Good Lord was just, Reverend Andrews reminded himself.

  “Here, dear,” said Lottie. “You can have the wishbone this time.”

  chapter six

  Earlier that day, Dr. Hugh Stewart had watched Ann Burley open her eyes in Bob Saywell’s store and known the feeling about her he’d been trying so hard to avoid could no longer be avoided.

  That had been at late morning. He’d driven her home. He’d taken her into her house. He’d been with her alone.

  Now, as the wind increased and darkness moved in late that afternoon, Hugh Stewart paced his small office on the second floor of a building facing the main street of Arrow Junction.

  A quiet man, Arrow Junction had labeled Hugh Stewart. They had even developed a form of distrust for it, neatly prodded along by Bob Saywell. But the quiet was but an outward control for Hugh Stewart to cover the inner fires.

  Hugh Stewart walked across the office and stared at the turbulence outside. This storm—it was like the storm that had begun in him early and continued to reappear, seasonally, with the same inclemency that storms built and raged over these Midwest fields.

  Hugh Stewart stood silently, a tall man who did not look tall because of the slim well-proportioned body. The slimness, like the quiet, was deceptive. He was a little over six feet. But he weighed one hundred and eighty-one pounds. Nobody in Arrow Junction would have guessed that. There were a lot of things about Hugh Stewart that nobody in Arrow Junction would have guessed.

  He turned, looking at the simple neatness of his office. It was clean, normal, economically equipped. He was now a small-town doctor. And he was not even successful at that. Hugh Stewart lifted his hands and looked at them.

  They were large hands with long, strong fingers. He had not used those hands with the true skill they owned since he’d gotten here. He smiled bitterly. He wondered what Dr. Emil Ludgaard would think about that. Perhaps, he thought, Emil Ludgaard would understand. Perhaps Emil Ludgaard had understood a lot about him.

  Hugh Stewart had never talked anything but medicine and surgery with Emil Ludgaard. In those terse working days the walls of that New York clinic formed a barrier against anything else.

  “You could be a great surgeon, Hugh,” Emil Ludgaard had said in his softly clipped, European-accented words.

  Emil Ludgaard was a great surgeon himself. He did not make mistakes in judgment. He never lied. It was an occasion when he offered the faintest compliment.

  “You could be a great surgeon, Hugh…”

  Yes, Hugh Stewart breathed to himself, a great surgeon…

  His mind raced back through the tunnel of time; those childhood parentless years. He’d been just seven months old in 1926 when that Atlantic boat had sunk and killed both parents. But he’d been saved, handed ashore to an aunt who was too
busy, too pretty, to want an orphaned infant seven months old.

  Later he’d learned something about his parents through this sister of his mother’s. He’d learned about their gaiety, their money, their whirlwind life of excitement. But he’d really understood nothing. Not even later when the Crash had disintegrated the family money and sent the aunt to sudden poverty and too much alcohol, when she’d finally drawn a razor across her wrists.

  He’d been found in that small apartment with her. Hungry. Dirty. Screaming his lungs out. He had not understood then. But later he did, through the lean and lonely years of being shunted from family to family. The same fire blazed inside himself, he’d discovered, that must have blazed inside his parents and his aunt. But the elements around him were different. He learned to case the fire in armor.

  But he had not been entirely unlucky. There had finally been Uncle Ben, clear on the opposite coast in California.

  Uncle Ben had given him understanding and love. It was a quietly good time with Uncle Ben, who was not really his uncle but the uncle of his father. There was a neat picket-fenced cottage. There was a room of his own. If he’d felt any insecurity before, he lost it with Uncle Ben.

  Uncle Ben had worked with him and been proud of the results. It was high school by that time. It was study and athletics. He’d accomplished both. Honor student. Star halfback.

  He’d achieved his accomplishments quietly, trying to hide the fire. But the fire exploded now and then. Twice with girls which only gave him a reputation that was not uninviting to other girls. They were a little afraid of him. The bolder and better-looking of them searched him out. When, almost invariably, he continued with his quiet and his armor, they went away puzzled.