by Jim Thompson
…It was a pretty chilly night, and she’d gotten into bed with me. We lay close together, whispering when we had anything to say, her head pillowed on my arm.
“I’d better start getting used to doing without you,” I said. “We can’t keep this up, baby. If there’s something we have to talk over, sure; we’ll risk it. Otherwise, we stay out of the clinches.”
“But…but it’ll be months, Carl! You mean we’ve got to wait all that time until—”
“Maybe not. I guess not,” I said. “Like I said, there’ll be times we have to get together. But we’ll have to hold ’em down, Fay. The more we’re together, the more chances that someone will find out about it.”
“I know, honey. I know we have to be careful.”
“Another thing”—I suddenly remembered something. “Those amytal capsules. Why in the name of God did you buy them, kid?”
“Well…he uses so damned many of them, and they cost so much if you go to a doctor and get a prescription—”
“Don’t try to save dough that way again,” I said. “The stuff is poison. You buy it without a prescription, and he accidentally takes an overdose—”
“Whew!” she shivered. “Why—why someone else might slip him a load and I—I’d—”
She left the sentence unfinished.
At last she snickered softly. I gave her a pat…and took a long deep breath.
“Something funny?”
“That Ruth! Every time I think about it I want to burst out laughing.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s a riot, all right.”
“Ugh. It makes me kind of sick to think about it. What in the world would anyone—what could he be like, Carl?”
“I wonder,” I said.
14
I was up and dressed early the next morning, but I didn’t go downstairs right away. I’d started to when I remembered about Ruth, about being alone with her—and I would have been alone with her at that hour. So I sat down on the edge of the bed and waited. Smoking and fidgeting. Feeling pretty queasy and nervous about getting started in school—Christ, imagine me in school!—but wanting to get it over with.
I waited, listening for Kendall’s door to open. Then, I waited a few seconds more, so it wouldn’t look like I had been waiting for him, and headed for my door.
He knocked on it, just as I turned the knob.
“Ah, good morning, Mr. Bigelow,” he said. “All ready to begin your college career?”
“Yes, sir. I guess I am,” I said.
“Such enthusiasm,” he laughed sympathetically. “A little nervous, eh? A feeling of strangeness and unreality? Well, that’s natural enough. Do you know, I have half a notion to—uh—”
“Yes, sir?”
“Would you regard it as—uh—presumptuous if I accompanied you? I am rather well acquainted with the faculty, and possibly as my—uh—er—protégé you might feel somewhat more—”
“I wish you would,” I said. “I can’t think of anything I’d like better.”
“Really?” He seemed pleased as all get out. “I—I feel very flattered, Mr. Bigelow. I was going to suggest it last night, but I was afraid it might seem an intrusion.”
“I wanted to ask you,” I said. “But it seemed like a pretty nervy thing to do.”
“Tsk, tsk,” he beamed. “We must be less—uh—diffident with one another from now on. How about breakfast, eh? I seem to have an unusually hearty appetite this morning.”
I didn’t know. I’d been practically sure yesterday, but now he had me wondering again.
He could be both things. The nice, dignified, little old guy and the other, too. You can do that, split yourself up into two parts. It’s easier than you’d think. Where it gets tough is when you try to get the parts back together again, but…He didn’t need to be pretending. Most of the time I’d never pretended I’d really like a guy or want to help him along, but I’d go right ahead and—and do what I had to.
Well, anyway, I was damned glad he was going with me. It seemed funny, with all the other things I had to worry me, that I’d been uneasy about getting enrolled in a hick college. But I just couldn’t help it. I guessed maybe it went back to the days when Luke and me and the rest of us had been crop tramps, and maybe you’d get two days in a school one week and three days a month in another. You never knew a thing about the lessons, and you smelled kind of bad and maybe you had a head full of lice, and you’d get put way off somewhere by yourself. You couldn’t see worth a damn and your teeth had screwed up your hearing, and there was nothing you could do that someone didn’t laugh at you or lay into you. And…
Skip it. Forget it. I was just trying to explain why I felt like I did.
Ruth served breakfast to us, and the way she kept trying to catch my eye I had a notion to take it out and hand it to her.
If she hadn’t been kind of awed by Kendall, I think she might have suggested walking to the college with me. Shy as she was, much as she hated to show herself on that crutch.
She seemed to have it that bad.
I wondered whether there wasn’t some safe way of getting Fay to give her the gate. And I guessed there was, probably, but I knew I wasn’t going to do it. I’d tell her where to head in if I got the chance—if I had to.
But I wouldn’t get her fired.
Kendall finally finished eating—I’d just been dragging my breakfast out, waiting for him—and we got started. I hadn’t thought much about what courses I would take. I didn’t know the score on those things, naturally, and I’d just supposed that you wouldn’t have much say-so about your studies.
Kendall said it wouldn’t be that way.
“That would be somewhat the case if you were a regular member of the freshman class or if you were majoring in a specific subject. But since you’ll be classified as a special student—you’re attending as a matter of self-improvement and for, I assume, the prestige value of college study—you have a great deal of latitude as to subjects. Now if you wouldn’t—uh—if you would like my suggestions—”
“I certainly would,” I said.
“Something, then, which would not point up any shortcomings in your past schooling. Something that is not predicated upon earlier studies in the same field…English literature. One can appreciate Pope without ever having read a line of Dryden. Political Science—more a matter of common sense than doctrinaire. History—merely another branch of literature…How does that sound to you, Mr. Bigelow?”
“Well—it sounds pretty—”
“Impressive? Impressive is the word.” He chuckled, pleased with himself. “With such a course, no one could doubt your seriousness as a student.”
Impressive wasn’t the word I’d been thinking of. I’d been about to say it sounded pretty damned tough.
“Whatever you say,” I said. “If you think I can get by in those things.”
“You can and shall…with perhaps some slight assistance from me. You may depend upon it, Mr. Bigelow, I would not suggest subjects for you in which you could not—uh—get by.”
I nodded. I didn’t think I’d have much trouble getting by either.
With someone like Kendall to steer me—someone who knew the ropes—I couldn’t miss.
I imagine I could have got the enrollment over in thirty minutes, and I did get my registration over and my fees paid in about that time. But Kendall wasn’t through when that was done. He introduced me to the president and the chancellor and the dean of men—and they were all polite and respectful to him. Then, he took me around and introduced me to each of the instructors I’d have.
When noon came we still had one more guy to see, so we ate in the school cafeteria and looked him up after lunch. By the time we got through with him it was two o’clock, and Kendall said there wasn’t much point in starting any classes that day.
“Let’s see, now”—he glanced at his watch as we left the campus—“why don’t you use the rest of the afternoon to pick up any books or supplies you need? Then, after dinner, around
six-thirty, say…Would that be agreeable, Mr. Bigelow? I was thinking we might set your working shift at, loosely, six-thirty to eleven.”
“Couldn’t I come in earlier than that?” I said. “I won’t need more than an hour or so to do my shopping, and after today I’ll be out of my class at three. I’d like to come in earlier, Mr. Kendall. For a while, anyway.”
I sounded plenty sincere—like maybe Dick Doordie, fighting through to fortune—and that’s just how I felt. Until Ruthie cooled off, I had to have some place to hang out.
“Well—uh—of course, there wouldn’t be any more money for you, but…”
“I don’t care about that,” I said. “I just like to be doing something, learning something.”
He turned his head slowly and looked at me, and for a moment I thought he was going to ask who the hell I was kidding. And when he finally got around to speaking, he seemed so pleased he was all choked up.
“Mr. Bigelow, I—I can’t tell you how glad I am that you came to Peardale. My only regret is that we could not have met—that the circumstances of our association could not have been—uh—”
He broke off, blowing his nose, and we walked a block before he said anything more.
“Well, we must take things as we find them, eh? We must look on the bright side. You are industrious, you have fortitude, the will-to-do, and now you are doing all that can be done to round out your education…A powerful triumvirate, my s—Mr. Bigelow, flawed and shadowed as it may be. When you consider someone like poor Ruth, whose sole assets virtually are ambition and a quick mind—and handicapped as she is they are doubtful assets indeed—your own situation seems one of great good fortune.”
“I’m not complaining,” I said. “You say Ruth’s pretty smart?”
“Brilliant. Far from worldly-wise, of course, but an exceptionally keen intelligence. An honor student at the college. She’s very well thought of there, incidentally. If you should encounter some difficulty with the curriculum, I’m sure she’d be glad to—”
“I wouldn’t want to bother her,” I said. “She gets embarrassed so easily. I don’t want to pester you either, of course, but if I do have any trouble I’d rather talk it over with you. I feel more—well, more at home with you.”
“Hem!” He swelled up like a poisoned pup. “Splendid—uh—that is to say, excellent! A pleasure, Mr. Bigelow.”
We separated down near the middle of town. He headed for the bakery, and I picked up my school supplies, taking a fast gander at Jake’s barber shop as I passed it. It was a two-chair joint, but a cloth was draped over the front chair. Jake was dozing in the rear one, his head drooped forward on his chest.
I finished my buying, and had some coffee in a drugstore. Going out the door, I ran head on into Sheriff Summers.
“Howdy there, son.” He stood back from me a little. “Thought you’d be in school today.”
“I’ve been there most of the day,” I said. “Mr. Kendall went with me to see that I got off on the right foot, and we met so many of his friends I was all day in registering.”
“Well, well. Kendall went with you, eh? Didn’t think nothin’ short of a three-ring circus could get him away from that bakery.”
“I’m on my way to work there now,” I said. “I’ve just been picking up some things I need at school.”
“Swell. Good boy.” He clapped me on the back. “Uh—kinda hopin’ I might run into you. Bessie’s been—I mean, how about eatin’ with us this Sunday?”
“Well”—I hesitated—“I…If you’re sure it wouldn’t be any trouble for you, sheriff.”
“Nothin’ like it,” he said heartily. “Tickled to death to have you. How’d it be if we meet you at church and go right from there?”
I said that would be fine.
“We’ll be lookin’ forward to it, then. I’m doggone glad you’re gettin’ lined up so well, son, after that—after all that mess at the beginning. Just keep up the good work, huh?”
“Thank you,” I said. “I certainly intend to, sheriff.”
I passed Jake’s shop again on the way to the bakery. And there he was, standing right up against the glass, staring straight out at me.
I could feel him watching me all the way up the street.
I put my books in my locker at the bakery, and changed clothes. I went up the stairs, whistling, feeling about as happy as a guy like me could feel. I knew I had plenty to worry about, and it wasn’t any time to be getting cocky and careless. But the way things had gone today—getting squared away at school and the sheriff warming up to me and…and everything—I just couldn’t worry much.
Kendall spotted me the moment I hit the floor, and he was all business now.
“Come along, Mr. Bigelow,” he said, herding me toward the stockroom. “I’ll get you started off, and then I’ll have to leave you.”
We entered the stockroom, the main one, and he handed me the batch cards. There were fourteen of them—cardboard oblongs a little wider than a cigarette package and about three times the length. Each one listed the quantity and kind of ingredients wanted for a dough batch: bread, cake, piecrust, doughnuts and so on.
“Read them all, all right, Mr. Bigelow? Everything clear to you? Let me see you set up the sponge on that whole-wheat bread mix.”
I picked out the card, and shoved the others into my pocket. I looked at the list of ingredients and started for the substoreroom. Then, I remembered and picked up a pail instead.
“That’s right,” he smiled briskly. “The flour’s just there for the record; they can draw that themselves. Pretty hard to over or under-draw on sacked flour. All you’re concerned with is the sponge. Sugar, first, remember. Then—”
I remembered.
I scooped sugar from a barrel and weighed it on the scales. I dumped it into the pail, and weighed in salt and powdered milk. I wiped the scales clean, dribbled some of the plaster-of-Paris compound on them, and emptied it into a glassine bag. I tucked the bag into the pail, up against the side of it. Then I carried the pail into the cold-storage room.
I’d worked up a light sweat, but it was gone the second I stepped inside. He stood watching me, holding the door open.
There was another set of scales in there. I weighed lard onto them and dumped it into the pail. I punched a depression in the lard with my fist, measured a pint of malt syrup into the depression, and carried the pail outside. Kendall let the door slam shut, nodding approvingly.
“Very good, Mr. Bigelow. Just drop the batch card in at the side, there, and you have it done…Now about that door—you can’t be too careful about that. Be very sure it’s off the latch when you go in, or better still block it open slightly. One of those barrel scrapers should do the job.”
“I’ll be careful, all right,” I said.
“Please do. You’ll be here alone most of the time. You could be locked in there several hours before you were discovered, and it would be of very little use to discover you even after a much briefer lapse of time. So…Oh, yes. Speaking of doors.”
He motioned to me, and I followed him into the substoreroom. He led me to the street door—the one he’d hinted I might use as a private entrance—pulling out a key ring.
“I’ve had a key made for you”—he took it off the ring. “We receive flour and other supplies through this door, so regardless—uh—So you’ll doubtless find use for it. We’ll just see how it works, now, and—”
It didn’t fit too well, apparently. Kendall had to twist it back and forth and push up on the knob before the door finally opened.
“Well,” he frowned. “I suppose we’ll have to make it do for the time being. Perhaps with use—”
His mouth came shut, tightening with distaste. I looked across the street where he was looking—staring—and I saw Jake Winroy duck his head quickly and speed up that sagging, lopsided lope of his by a notch or two.
He passed out of viewing range.
Kendall slammed the door, jerked on the knob, testing it, and handed me the key.
“I don’t know”—he shook his head—“I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone I so thoroughly detested. Well, we can’t waste our valuable time on him, can we? Any questions? Anything that’s not clear to you? If not, I’ll get back to the floor.”
I said I thought I had everything down pat, and he left.
I went back to the main stockroom.
I lined up all the sponge pails in a row, measured the dry ingredients into each of them, and carried them into the cold-storage room. I measured in the lard and malt, tucked in the batch cards, and set the pails just outside the entrance to the baking room.
I came back into the stockroom, studying the cards for the sweet doughs.
I was kind of breathless. I didn’t need to, but I’d been rushing my head off. Not out here, but in there. In the cold-storage room.
I lighted a cigarette, telling myself I’d better take it easier. I wouldn’t last long, rushing. Hard work—steady hard work—well, I’d given my lifetime quota on that a long time ago.
Aside from that, it would be easy to screw things up if I hurried too fast. I didn’t know the job good yet. Working with all those different ingredients and measurements, a guy wouldn’t have to be even pretty careless to get a little too much of one thing and not enough of another. And there wouldn’t be any way of spotting the mistake until the stuff came out of the ovens—as hard as brick-bats maybe or as tough as shoe leather.
I glanced at the cold-storage room, and I shivered a little. So it was cold. What of it? I didn’t need to stay in there, like I’d done on the sponges, wrapping up everything at one time. I could stay in, say, for five minutes, come out and go back in again for another five. Why stay in there, freezing my tail off, trying to do everything at once?”
I knew why, and I made myself admit it. The goddam place kind of gave me the creeps. I wanted to get through in there as fast as I could. It was so damned quiet. You’d hear a noise and sort of start, and then you’d realize that you’d gulped or one of your muscles had creaked and that was the noise you’d heard.
The door was so thick and heavy that you seemed locked in even when you knew you weren’t. You kept looking at the scraper to see if it was still in place. And everything was kind of greasy and damp in there—everything seemed about the same shade—and you could look two or three times and still not be sure.