“Of course you want me!” she said hollowly. “Between your other violences. You’d love me violently, wouldn’t you? Because you know I want you — and because we’re all mixed up in some kind of passion that has nothing to do with love at all.”
“I love you,” I said simply.
“Enough to give up this horrible, inhuman thing you’ve set your heart on? Would you give it up? Would you put it out of your mind for me?”
I stood up. “I couldn’t, Dorothy. You wouldn’t want me if I could.”
She stood, too and faced me. “Well, I don’t want you as you are. A killer! You’re a murderer I You’ve nothing but murder in your heart! Murder and violence. And what will come of it? What will be proved?”
“What did they prove when they killed my brother?”
“Nothing,” she whispered tensely. “Nothing. And must they now kill you? They will, Dan. It may take them time. Your brother fought with his mind, and his heart and his ideals. He was no match for them at all. He didn’t even know how to fight them. But you do know! You know every trick of violence and cruelty, don’t you? You know just how much you must be hurt in order to inflict hurt, don’t you?”
“My brother was trying to do something decent.” I said. “And they killed him without even thinking about it. They shot him because he wanted to make his town a decent place to live in.”
“Do you think he’d want you to fight them as you are fighting them? With violence? Do you think it will make him feel better to know that now you’re going to be killed?”
“It isn’t his thoughts I have to live with,” I said coldly. “It’s my own. I don’t pretend that I offer you happiness — ”
“Of course you don’t. Like a fool I fall in love with you, and you won’t be content until you kill that, will you?”
“I only know I want you,” I said. “Maybe you’re the first person I ever really wanted. That’s all I know. Tomorrow morning you’ll leave this ship. I’ll never see you again. The fact that I want you and love you, seems enough for right now.”
“I don’t live for this minute. Dan. I can’t. I’m sorry. I’ve been hurt enough. Too much for me. I want dull and solid things. I want a marriage — maybe with a man like you could be, if you’d put this murder out of your heart.”
“You’ve been a schoolteacher too long,” I said sharply. “You were made for love. Go on like this, and you’ll turn to vinegar inside.”
She stepped back away from me.
“Dan, don’t. Please.”
“Sorry,” I said. My voice was bitter. “I can’t let you go away like this.” I caught her to me, and pulled her right arm up between her shoulder blades. Her head went back, her blonde hair fell loosely about her shoulders.
Her eyes dilated and closed. Her lips parted as I kissed her. Her mouth was soft and hot and fresh as she buried her mouth against mine, pulling into me passionately.
I let her arm go then and her hands crawled up my back, straining to pull me closer. Her hands met at the nape of my neck and she pulled my head down with unbelievable strength. I felt my teeth sinking into her lip, but she didn’t even notice.
My own hands on her went gentle, although gentle was the last thing I wanted to be.
My back was to the door. I didn’t even hear it open. When I heard Rafferty’s voice, it seemed to come from a long way off.
“All right, Henderson,” he said. “She walked in on us. Now I’ve changed the order of things.”
Dorothy wrenched herself away from me. She stumbled back against a bulkhead, and stared in stark terror at Rafferty. I didn’t turn to look at Rafferty yet. For in that moment, staring at Dorothy, I saw in what horror she held Rafferty and the others I’d told her about — people from a world she didn’t even understand. I could see in her rigid, paled face that to her Rafferty was some monster with no relation to the human race at all.
“Turn around,” Rafferty said.
I wanted to say something to Dorothy, something that would reassure her. At that moment Patsy began to cry.
“Dorothy,” I said as calmly as I could, “would you take Patsy out of here? Take her to your stateroom, will you?”
She nodded numbly, but didn’t speak. At first she was unable to move, she only stood rooted there staring at Rafferty.
“Go ahead,” I said.
She nodded again.
Rafferty’s voice cut in sharply.
“Stay where you are, sister. This ain’t going to take long. And anyway, I wouldn’t want you running out there in the corridor telling people that Mike Rafferty was exterminating a rat in here. I don’t want to be stopped this time until it’s over.”
She paid no attention to him. I wanted to laugh. It was as though she didn’t even hear him.
She went woodenly over to Patsy and picked her up.
“I said let the kid alone!” Rafferty snarled.
She looked up from where she knelt beside the crying baby. “I’ve got to get her out of here.” she said numbly.
Rafferty snarled and brushed by me. Before I could move, he had brought up his fist and hit Dorothy as squarely as he could.
I suppose he hit her just at the base of her throat. I heard her gasp as she slammed over backwards against the wall.
I didn’t stop to look at her. Rafferty was standing beside me as he hit Dorothy. And as he swung, I brought my fist, with third finger knuckled out, across Rafferty’s wrist. I put everything I had into it.
And it paid off. For the space of a second, Rafferty’s gun hand was completely paralyzed. The fingers loosed and as I hit again, the gun clattered to the floor.
As Rafferty howled with rage and turned toward me, I sent my left as far as I could sink it into the big man’s belly. He doubled toward me and I crossed my right into his face.
I crossed another left as he stood there dazedly, a big man gone soft with too many years of bossing, and drinking and heavy eating. He tried to hang on and I cut his face as hard as I could with my right. When he didn’t fall, but only hung there, I kept punching him, short hard drives into his face.
Dorothy had pulled herself up against the wall. She was inching toward the door, her face pulled down in horror.
Big Mike sagged to his knees, and mercilessly I hit him side handed across the back of his neck until he sprawled out on the floor.
When I looked at Dorothy across Rafferty’s sprawled body, it was I who now inspired the look of terror in her face.
She was looking at me as though I were some snake that crawled out of the weeds to terrorize her.
She just kept shaking her head from side to side. Her left hand was tight against the base of her throat where Rafferty had slugged her. But she seemed to have forgotten that. Her eyes, filled with horror and loathing, were fixed on me as she slid toward the door.
I stood there, with my hands at my sides and let her go. Rafferty had locked the door after him, and she began to sob as she fought with the key in the lock.
I let her go. I stood there waiting for a full minute before I picked up Patsy and Rafferty’s big gun from the floor. I dropped the gun in my pocket and with Patsy in my arms, I stepped out into the corridor.
The steward was passing. I called him over.
When he came back into the room, Rafferty was sitting up on the floor. His red hair was wild, and his face was cut and swollen.
He spat blood. “All right, Henderson,” he panted. “This is your round. You win it. I say so. But it don’t square nothing. I’m on your tail from now on. Don’t you forget it. If you’re headed back to Tampa, God help you. Your mighty Nelson won’t be able to save you — because I’ll get you if it takes every man I’ve got!”
“What in the world happened!” the steward said.
Rafferty got up straightening his clothes.
“Nothing,” I said. “It was a little argument over a woman. It doesn’t amount to anything.”
When I said that, Rafferty wheeled to face me. His face was twisted with som
e emotion I had never seen before, agony and anguish and hatred all mixed at once. And his eyes were filled with helpless tears.
“Doesn’t it amount to anything?” he whispered hoarsely. “God help you Henderson. I’ll never forgive you that!”
I didn’t know what he meant. But I was too ill to care just then.
“Can you help him to his room,” I said to the steward. “Do you know where it is?”
“Of course, sir,” the steward said. “It’s right next door. We were crowded when we sailed, and when we found your wife wouldn’t be on this trip, we assigned her room to him.”
• • •
WE DOCKED in San Francisco the next morning at ten. I tried to stay awake all that night. I knew Rafferty was in the next room, and I was positive now of his intense hatred. But Patsy slept at last, and finally I fell asleep sitting up in my bed. I awoke there at nine.
There was tenseness all through the ship. Coastline and the Golden Gate Bridge was dead ahead. The crew seemed as anxious as the passengers to reach the pier and all preparations were completed, the ship cut her speed as we went under the huge gate into the harbor.
I packed our things hurriedly and a steward carried them up on the deck. I listened at the barred connecting door, but Rafferty made no sound if he was in the stateroom. I looked at the telephone, but I did not pick it up. There was no sense in calling Dorothy. There was nothing more I could say to her. I knew what I had to do, I knew what was ahead of me, and I knew how Dorothy felt about it.
And remembering the way she had looked at me when I had beaten Rafferty to the floor the night before, I knew how she felt about me, too.
And even if she had been anxious to see me, now that it was daylight, I could see more clearly. I had nothing to offer her. But thinking about her, made me feel incomplete again, and lonely.
As they lowered the gangplank to the swarming pier 15 at the Embarcadero, I looked about for Rafferty on deck. At least I told myself I was looking for Rafferty. But I didn’t see Dorothy, either.
There was no use looking around. I went down the gangplank and pushed through the crowds into the huge housing. Newsboys screamed with the latest papers, and one of the headlines was about the man lost from the Hilotania.
I was out on the street, looking for a taxi when I heard someone call my name.
I looked around. It was Dorothy.
She was wearing a light scarf about her throat, but there was a line of blue along her throat where Big Mike’s fist had caught her.
“Aren’t you going to say goodbye?”
I shook my head. “I thought I played too rough for you. Have you decided I’m not such a monster, after all?”
She didn’t answer that There was heightened color in her cheeks, her blue eyes seemed unnaturally bright.
“Where are you going?” she said.
“Check in at a hotel,” I said, “while I try to get plane reservations east.”
“ ‘I run to death,’ “ she quoted hollowly. “Can’t you wait?”
We were at the curb. A hackie opened the door of his cab for us.
“I can’t wait,” I told her. “I might change my mind.”
She put her hand on my arm.
“Do you mean that, Dan?”
I laughed bitterly. “I don’t know,” I said. “I can have you or get killed fighting for something I believe in. I hoped I wouldn’t see you again.”
“Do you mind, I’ll ride uptown with you?” Her voice really sounded light for the first time.
We got in the cab and the driver made a turn in the wide street.
“You could send the baby back to her father,” Dorothy was saying. “You need never go back, Dan.”
“Let’s not talk about it,” I said. “I’m what I am, Dorothy. I don’t know if I could change. Everything I believe in tells me I’ve got to go back to Tampa. The only reason I don’t want to go is because I feel lonely when I think I’ll never see you again.”
The taxi moved through a drizzling rain that none of the pedestrians on Market Street seemed to notice.
“Dan,” she said softly, as we left Market and started up the hill on Powell, “there’s a dance given for the teachers’ group by St. Mary’s Church. It was a USO center during the war. I went to dances up there in Chinatown when I was a WAVE. It’s tonight. Please come, won’t you?”
“If I can get a plane out of here, I won’t be in town tonight,” I said. “Besides, I’ve a baby to take care of.”
“Bring her along, Dan. There’ll be simple, good people at that dance. They’d love to hold Patsy while — you danced with me. Please, Dan, give us a chance.”
We turned again on Ellis, and pulled in before the Ramona Hotel.
“I may not be in town,” I said. “If I can get a plane.”
I pushed my suitcase out to the sidewalk and handed the driver a bill. She sat there looking at me.
“And this is goodbye, Dan? Just like this?”
With my jaw set, I looked up at her. “I didn’t expect to see you at all again,” I said.
“Dan,” she said softly. I pressed the door until its lock caught. “Dan.”
The driver waited a moment. I stood there. Dorothy sat very still in the taxi, but she said nothing. The driver looked back at us and then shifted gears. I watched them turn at Mason and then she was gone.
I got a room with bath. I spent the next three hours trying to get a plane reservation that afternoon. Anywhere east of there. None of the big lines had anything, even to Salt Lake City until the following morning.
By the time I’d called and argued with them all, I was sweated down. Patsy was fretting and hungry. I called the air line that had said they had two places on the seven o’clock flight the next morning from Oakland.
I made the reservation. In order to get it, I had to call a messenger service and pay for the tickets. I waited around in the tiny room overlooking a parking lot and a drenched patch of Ellis Street. When the messenger brought the tickets, I stood there with them in my hand.
I remembered what had happened to me in Honolulu. I tucked in three one hundred dollar bills along with the plane tickets for Patsy and me and pushed them up in the mirror backing.
I bundled Patsy up against the drizzling rain and we went out then to find something to eat. Bars were easier to find than restaurants so I had a couple of drinks, with Patsy chewing hungrily on my shirt collar as I drank them. Some of the bums in the joint looked at me with contempt. I could see what a heel they thought I was, bringing a baby into such a place. The drinks didn’t make me feel any better and we went out then and found a place to eat.
When I came back to the room, I called the Matson Line. It took me almost two hours just to find out the name of the nurse who had taken care of Patsy aboard the Hilotania — Hentzler, Sarah Hentzler. It took me another hour to find out her address. When I told her who I was and that I wanted her to baby sit, I got no objections from her.
It’s wonderful what close friendships money can make for you.
I told her to come in to the Ramona as soon as possible.
• • •
I DIDN’T EVEN suggest to myself that I was going near St. Mary’s Catholic church on Grant Street up in Chinatown. At Nine o’clock that night I was walking across Union Square and down Post Street past Ronsohoff’s, the Eastman Company and up Grant by Davis-Schonwasser and climbed upward beyond the George Washington Hotel, the White Cabin sandwich shop, to the block where even the street lights turn oriental and the shops began to smell of incense.
There were a lot of sucker-bait clubs along here with names like Shanghai Low, Forbidden City, Hong Kong Cafe, Sing Fu’s. And then I was at the top of the hill and there was St. Mary’s. There was the lighted basement.
I went down the steps feeling as empty as hunger. I stopped inside at the turn of the steps and looked over the dance floor.
She was the first person I saw. She looked so pretty to me, and I knew now how long the day had seemed because
I had told myself I was not going to see her again. She’s never looked prettier: such a beautiful, pointed, straight little nose. Her eyes were bright and blue as she smiled up at the same stout, bald man she’d been dancing with that night on the ship.
She looked toward me, around the fat man’s sleeve — she was so tiny! I knew what falling for Dorothy had done to me — it had made a kind of idiot out of me. I tried to tell myself I was set up for something, just as I had been set up so that Connice’s murder bowled me over in Honolulu. But it was too late now. It didn’t do any good.
I went over to the drink counter and with my back to the dancing and the billiards and the ping pong and the laughter, I — who needed a double shot of straight whisky across a bar — ordered an orange juice. It was served in a large paper cup, and without turning from the counter I drank it slowly trying to regain intelligence enough to leave.
I must have dawdled over that orange juice for three minutes while a baritone sang “Till the End of Time” which was years old, it belonged in the war, and so I decided that some of the ex-WAVES or WACS must have requested it. And I knew it was only Chopin’s Polonaise Militaire all jazzed up by Tin Pan Alley. There I stood, because I’d fallen for a girl who used to teach Sunday School, and knew I had no right to ask anything of her.
I knew better. I knew that if Nelson wasn’t already moving to stop me, I was going to run into another of his high walls at any minute. I knew Chopin would be sickened at the tawdry words set to his music. But the words of that song whirled around inside me. And I knew that girl dancing with the fat man was more important to me than anything else in the world.
So I stood there. I felt someone draw a line down my spine with an index finger. I looked straight ahead. In a romantic drama there would have been a mirror across a bar and our eyes would have met. But this was a service center and there was no mirror, no bar, just the noise of laughter, of school teachers laughing and talking on their holiday.
Slay Ride for a Lady Page 12