Wait For The Wagon

by Mary Lasswell

  “To heave a rock,” Mrs. Feeley said. “You’re a hundred per cent right. Two of us had oughta stand guard at a time. Don’t never give him a chance to get back what he hid. Don’t forget that machete he drawed on us when we went to wake him up! Two of us. An’ the hell with him! Here he comes now. You go on in an’ eat, Miss Tinkham. Then Mrs. Rasmussen can go in an’ just bring me a cheese sandwich when you come; I’m gonna have cold beer an’ cheese.”

  “What’s going on out here? You say you’re in such a hurry and then waste time like this. I could walk, quicker.” Dr. Freemartin stood at the side of the car picking his teeth.

  “One more word outa you, an’ tha’s just what you’ll be doin’,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Take your time, Miss Tinkham.”

  Dr. Freemartin stared at the ladies malevolently. He began to pace up and down in front of the gasoline pumps, puffing on his odorous cigar.

  “Do him good to take a little extra-size,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  Old-Timer paced up and down beside the analyst, wiping his face with his red bandanna.

  “Up mit your basket,” Mrs. Rasmussen addressed Aphrodite, “we’re gonna stand you up right between the jump seats where you belong.”

  Dr. Freemartin turned to stare at Miss Tinkham who was making a leisurely exit from the restaurant. She opened the door of the limousine.

  “I feel like a new woman,” she said. “Do try the scrambled eggs with hot sausage! It is delicious—the wonderful Mexican influence is making itself felt in the cooking.”

  “I’ll just do that,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  Miss Tinkham smiled and polished her glasses.

  “Would you like me to take over the navigation now, Mrs. Feeley? Perhaps you would like a rest…”

  “Me an’ Ol’-Timer’s good for many a mile yet,” she said. “Couldn’t sleep, nohow, this close to home. It sure gets you, don’t it?”

  “The purple hills, the call of the West,” Miss Tinkham said. “With reasonable luck, we should be in Tucson this afternoon around three. The absence of traffic and small towns is the greatest possible advantage to us. And while I have the opportunity to mention it, don’t let Doctor Freemartin sit in the back seat. He is a desperate man and would not hesitate, if he feared capture, to open the door of a fast-moving car and jump out.”

  “He smells worse’n a buck goat,” Mrs. Feeley said, “but it might be a good idea to keep him in the middle of the front seat from now on. We don’t want to show up empty-handed when we call Mike Shea.”

  Mrs. Rasmussen came out of the restaurant with a large brown paper bag.

  “Wasn’t she clever to bring sandwiches?” Miss Tinkham said. A man followed her carrying two cartons of canned beer. “Sheer genius,” Miss Tinkham said. “It will be frightfully hot going across the desert.” She reached up and unscrewed the magenta chiffon lampshade from the lamp. “I think Aphrodite will be cooler without her hat.”

  The Thursday afternoon sun blistered down and tempers were short. Dr. Freemartin’s weaseling grew more and more frequent as the Border country came nearer. Miss Tinkham kept a sharp eye on him and an even sharper eye on the map.

  “The afternoons are always the most difficult,” she said. “I suggest that we sing to keep awake—what about the analyst’s theme song: ‘You Tell Me Your Dream, And I’ll Tell You Mine’? Nice harmony in that one.”

  “I never dream less’n I eat pig’s feet an’ cabbage late at night,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  “Don’t try to enlighten the journey with your crappy songs,” Dr. Freemartin said. “Let’s get this over with…”

  “You seem to forget,” Miss Tinkham said gently, “that you are not here at our invitation. We shall certainly sing whenever the spirit moves us.”

  Mrs. Feeley turned in the front seat to get a cold beer. She looked through the back window of the limousine and her eyebrows ran up to her hair line. Miss Tinkham turned and looked behind her. A heavy truck loaded with washing machines was bearing down on them. Two riders on the back of the truck were crouched down behind the washing machines, their heads just visible.

  “We gone scot free too long,” Mrs. Feeley muttered. “Step on her, Ol’-Timer. Outrun ’em.”

  They were doing sixty-five when she spoke and Old-Timer needed no urging. The needle soared to eighty-five and the truck bore down on the blue Cadillac like a jet-propelled plane.

  “Goose her! Give her the gun,” Mrs. Rasmussen shouted.

  The truck was less than a yard behind the Cadillac when two loud shots sounded thunderously across the desert. The limousine lurched and bumped with a horrible thudding sound to the side of the road where it slewed over with a spurt of sand.

  “Goddlemighty, I’m killed!” Mrs. Feeley shouted.

  “They’ve shot the wheels right out from under us,” Miss Tinkham cried. “Are you gravely wounded, Mrs. Feeley?”

  “I’m bleedin’ to death! Bleedin’ to death—sta’nch the flow, somebody.”

  Old-Timer got out of the car to see where they had been hit. Miss Tinkham and Mrs. Rasmussen leaned over Mrs. Feeley and tried to sop up the blood flowing from her wounds.

  “Aw,” Mrs. Rasmussen said, “you just turned over your beer bottle in your lap.”

  “Better’n a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.” Mrs. Feeley grinned. “They was sure out to get us, though. Shot them tires to ribbons. I seen it in the movies a hundred times.”

  Old-Timer was fishing the tools out of the trunk. When he got the tires off, he examined them carefully. There were no bullet holes in sight. When he removed the inner tubes, it was another story.

  “Gawd, you could throw a cat through them holes,” Mrs. Feeley said. “How you reckon they shot us from the inside?”

  “Blowout,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Too hot. Too fast.”

  “They was brand new,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  “Won’t nothin’ hold up in this heat at that speed,” Mrs. Rasmussen said stubbornly.

  Old-Timer began removing the white-walled spares from their racks on the side of the car.

  “Bear a hand!” Mrs. Feeley gave Dr. Freemartin a sharp poke with her beer bottle. He got out crossly and obeyed her. “I always knew that a little common sense beats all this here sigh-chiatry. Least we cured him of his ‘sneak atomic attack’ business. Get their minds off onto somethin’ important. I’ve a mind to start a see-ance of my own an’ put ’em outa business.”

  “I know you feel very spiritual after such a hair-breadth escape,” Miss Tinkham said, “but I should enjoy some cold beer while the tires are being changed.”

  Mrs. Rasmussen opened beer for everyone but Dr. Freemartin. Old-Timer changed the tire on the left hind wheel with great dispatch. He removed the jack to begin on the second tire. The new spare tire sank to the ground, flatter than a bride’s biscuits. Mrs. Feeley and her friends got out to look.

  “How the hell could that happen?” Mrs. Feeley glared at Dr. Freemartin. “Brand new. They ain’t been on there a week yet.”

  Old-Timer tried the second tire.

  “That one sank more quickly than a wallflower’s heart at the beginning of a waltz,” Miss Tinkham said.

  “Look at the pickle you got us into.” Mrs. Feeley advanced on Dr. Freemartin with her hand raised. “This is some o’ your homework, I’ll be bound!”

  “Me? Me?” he shouted. “I’ve had to remain under the influence almost the whole way out here to try to get a little sleep with that infernal yacking going on. Now you accuse me of this! Persecution! Suspicious of me! Spying on me all the time…”

  Miss Tinkham walked over and straightened his tie.

  “I advise you to shut up, Doctor. Your paranoia is showing.”

  At last a passing car driven my someone of Samaritan descent stopped and agreed to send a tow car from Tucson.

  “It’s fifty miles,” Miss Tinkham said. “A hundred, by the time the man gets here.”

  “We had it too good,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  “So close to home,
too,” Mrs. Feeley sighed and lay down on the back seat.

  It was ten o’clock Thursday evening before the sad and silent caravan set off for Tucson with the mended inner tubes in the tires on the wheels.

  “I hated to keep you waiting so long and to charge you folks so much for the patching,” the man from the garage said, “but the spare tubes was just one solid mass of little tiny pinholes—you never saw anything like it. Go slow, ’cause you have no spares. Can’t buy tubes this size in Tucson. If I didn’t know that such a thing was well-nigh impossible, I’d say some meddlesome Matty had poked ’em full o’ holes with a hatpin.”

  As the Cadillac started off on the highway again, Miss Tinkham sighed contritely.

  “What is it you say, Mrs. Feeley? It’s all for the Flag!”

  “At least we rested while we was waitin’ for the tires,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “I ain’t a bit sleepy.” She spoke to Miss Tinkham across Dr. Freemartin who was sound asleep in the front seat between them.

  “If I ever have insomnia,” Miss Tinkham said, “I would like to know what preparation it is that he takes. It is obviously the same one Rip Van Winkle used.”

  “We gotta shout to make ourselfs heard over him,” Mrs. Rasmussen laughed. “Worse’n a trombone.”

  “Just the same, I would feel safer if we had a weapon of some kind. Sitting here so close to him—we should have something we could use for defense.”

  Something poked Miss Tinkham between the shoulder blades. She turned with a start. Old-Timer passed something to her in the dark. She held it under the dashlight. It was a long, slender case knife.

  “Looks just like the one he pulled on us at the Blue Grotto.” Mrs. Rasmussen looked at the knife. “That thing’s got a blade at least ten inches long. We don’t have to be afraid now. Ol’-Timer musta snuck it outa his pocket when he was drivin’ along beside him.”

  Miss Tinkham looked back for an answer, but all the answer she got was Old-Timer’s bass snoring, keeping time with oompahs to Mrs. Feeley’s soprano riffle and Dr. Freemartin’s baritone.

  “One more and we’d have the Quartet from Rigoletto. Old-Timer is the only man I have ever heard snore in perfect pitch,” Miss Tinkham said. “Of course, my opportunities have been rather limited, but I don’t believe there are many who can keep up a perfect bass in descending fourths the way he does—c,g, c,g, all night long like a virtuoso on the bass viol.”

  “He ain’t asleep,” Mrs. Rasmussen laughed. “He’s just doin’ that.”

  “Orpheus and Morpheus,” Miss Tinkham laughed softly. “Ordinarily, I care little for radio, but it is a pity Doctor Freemartin destroyed the portable set. The music would have been pleasant going across the desert in the cool of the night. It might have drowned out the concert we have to listen to now. It was not what Mozart meant when he wrote A Little Night Music.”

  “Yeah. Mrs. Feeley says to me the other day when you was asleep, ‘Miss Tinkham’s on the music again.’ Soon’s you made up that song for Uremia, that’s what she said to me.”

  “Of course, it is my ruling passion,” Miss Tinkham said. “I’d like to try my hand at a bit of composition. It takes too much time out of the day, so I’ll just do it in bed at night instead of crossword puzzles.”

  “We’ll have some real fine harmonizin’ soon’s we get the Ark buffed up and all the neighbors in. I’ll make us a great big, bubbly pizza and get us some brew. I can see you sittin’ at the red piano now gettin’ us all on the chord.”

  “It will be delightful,” Miss Tinkham said. “The trip has been stimulating. Mrs. Feeley is all agog over the redecoration of the Ark, and I know you are itching to try out some new recipes, probably something exotic showing the influence of Sadie Gutstein’s luscious cuisine. I have a modest project of my own. Popular magazines are a good source of revenue. I am going to write for Impossible Detective and Improbable Love.”

  “If anybody can do it, you can,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “The trip was kinda spoiled”—she glanced at the busy sawmill beside her—”him an’ her, an’ all. But one thing, it’s sure gettin’ us home fast. Without haulin’ cargo, we’d a been explorin’ them cactus gardens an’ desert parks an’ all that.”

  “Just between you and me,” Miss Tinkham whispered, “I shall feel greatly relieved when we turn over our cargo, as you call it, to those best qualified to deal with it. My little night searches have not been entirely fruitless. I shan’t be able to relax until the mission is accomplished.”

  “We’re rollin’ right along,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “That signboard in Tucson sayin’ four hundred an’ twenty-one miles to San Diego sure made me feel good. I could drive right on through.”

  “You could except for the immigration people at Yuma,” Miss Tinkham said.

  “We’re all citizens, ’cept maybe him.” Mrs. Rasmussen nodded her head at Freemartin. “I got mine right up to San Diego High School. They ain’t got nothin’ to do with us.”

  “I’m afraid it isn’t quite that simple,” Miss Tinkham said. “The state of California has so much to offer that many undesirables try to enter the state with insufficient funds to maintain themselves. They become public charges and cause the tax figures to assume astronomical proportions. The Department of Agriculture also has to maintain watch at the State Line. For many years I have been puzzled by the American practice of searching automobiles and letting train after train enter the state without examination of any sort. Exactly like the ostrich in Africa, who buries his head in the sand and whistles through his fundamental orifice the airs of his native land, which causes the Trade Winds to blow.”

  “You oughta be on the television, Miss Tinkham. Honest, you had.”

  “As dear Mrs. Feeley would say: That’ll be the day!’ I like things the way they are. I am still concerned about the interview facing us at the border. It will call for much tact and diplomacy; we do not wish to startle the quarry. You follow me?”

  “We gotta cover for him, ain’t it?”

  “Precisely, Mrs. Rasmussen; you are a Baker Street Regular. If I seem to act in an irrational manner, please bear with me and reassure the others in our party. I am evolving a course of action. Above all, do not let the cargo alight from the car. You can see what danger there would be for all of us if we were to be discovered with certain…well, packages, in our possession.”

  “An’ nobody to blame ’em on!” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  “Exactly. I feel that the logical thing to do at this point is to notify the proper persons at the end of the line by telephone.”

  “Yeah. That’d help a lot. Better load your pocket with change an’ I won’t say nothin’ when you get outa the car ’less I get the chance to speak to ’em private.” Mrs. Rasmussen chuckled to herself. “I was just thinkin’ what you told me one time when we all first set up housekeepin’ together: ‘Many a headache, but never a dull moment.’”

  At ten minutes past six Friday morning the blue Cadillac approached the city of Yuma, Arizona. Old-Timer was at the wheel. Dr. Freemartin sat next to him.

  “Why do you keep shoving me in the middle all the time?”

  “I can’t ride any place but the outside of a car,” Mrs. Feeley said, “just like you can’t ride on trains. Get this here oyster-phobia they’re always talkin’ about.”

  “July’s a nice month for it,” Miss Tinkham said. “I do think you look much better without your mustache, Doctor Freemartin. You’ll be so much cooler.”

  “I’ll be glad when all this needling is over,” he said.

  “I thought you were going into the business,” Miss Tinkham said.

  “Oh, I am! There is no doubt in my mind that this is a fertile field, full of nice neurotics who need help.”

  “What the hell you reckon is the meanin’ o’ all this line o’ cars ahead of us?” Mrs. Feeley said. “Miles an’ miles of ’em! Must be a detour or somethin’.”

  There was a long line of cars ahead of the limousine. Law-enforcement officers of every description rod
e up and down in cars and on motorcycles. People craned their necks from cars old and new, large and small. Children got out and ran about the sides of the highway, glad to escape the confinement of the cars. Orange peel littered the roadside. Dirty paper napkins and Kleenex strewed the plains.

  “They ain’t movin’ a inch.” Mrs. Feeley stuck her head out the window and yelled at a man who emerged from behind a clump of cactus. “What’s the matter?”

  “T.B.,” the man said.

  “I don’t mean you! Up at the head o’ the line. What’s the delay?”

  “They’re going over the cars with a fine-tooth comb. Smugglers. They got a hot tip—somebody bringing in something highly illegal. That’s what they said over the walkie-talkie. Don’t look like we’ll ever get to Loss Angle-lees.”

  “That’s all right with me, bud,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Thanks just the same.”

  Dr. Freemartin crisped up in the seat. He pulled his hat down as far as his ears would allow. Old-Timer rolled a watchful eye over the line of cars. Mrs. Rasmussen and Miss Tinkham sat as though frozen in the back seat.

  “Smugglin’, huh?” Mrs. Feeley said lightly. “What you reckon it could be?”

  “They’re moving up a bit!” Miss Tinkham was happy to see Old-Timer advance a few feet. “Look at that poor woman in the car ahead of us. She is expiring from the heat. Her face is absolutely blue.”

  She got out of the car and spoke to the people in the car ahead.

  “That is her daughter with her,” Miss Tinkham said when she came back a few minutes later. “They are taking her out to San Diego to sea level. Her daughter was breaking little silk-covered capsules in a handkerchief for her mother to inhale. What a fate! We are really too lucky, enjoying perfect health…”

  “An’ a clean conscience…,” Mrs. Feeley said. “We know we ain’t got nothin’—legal or illegal—so we don’t have to worry. Anybody knows we ain’t got a thing to conceal. They can tell by lookin’ at us that we wouldn’t do nothin’ like that. Even Doctor Freemartin looks real decent since he shaved that dirty swipe off his upper lip.”