Hell Hath No Fury Part 2

"Madox," I said. "Harry Madox."

"Oh, yes. George told me about you. Well, I won't keep you from your work." She switched on the ignition and pressed the starter b.u.t.ton. The motor didn't take hold the first time and she kept grinding at it. I'd started away, but turned now and came back.

"What do you suppose is the matter?" she asked petulantly.

"I think it's flooded. Hold the accelerator all the way to the floor while you crank it."

"Oh," she said. "Like this?"

I looked in the car. It was stupid, actually, because anybody would know how to press down on the gas to cut out an automatic choke, but I looked anyway. She had very small feet in white shoes which were mostly heels, and around one ankle, under the nylon, she had one of those gold chains women wore a year or so ago. The seersucker skirt was up over her knees. Well, I thought, she asked me to. What did she expect?

"Yes," I said. "Like that."

She jabbed at the starter again and in a moment the motor caught and took off. She smiled. "Well. How did you know that?"

"It's just one of those things you pick up."

"Oh. I see. Well, thanks a lot." She waved a hand and drove off.

In about twenty minutes she was back. I was sitting in the office, and when she tapped the horn I went out. "George hasn't got back yet?" she asked.

"Not yet."

"Oh, darn. He never remembers anything."

"Is there anything I can do?"

She hesitated. "I hate to ask you. I mean, you're working."

"I'm not hurting myself. What is it?"

"Well, if you really wouldn't mind. It'd only take a few minutes." She gestured towards the rear of the car. "I've got a lot of papers and old clothes I want to unload in our storeroom, and I promised to take the key back before noon."

"Sure," I said, "where is it?"

"Are you sure it'll be all right to leave for a few minutes?"

"Yes. Gulick can hold it down." I looked up the lot. He and the Negro boy were still rooted in the same spot, staring at the old convertible. It's like a horse trade, I thought; it'll be hours before either of them makes a move.

I slid in beside her and we started down Main Street. "It's awful nice of you," she said. "The stuff is tied up in heavy packages, and I couldn't carry it by myself."

"What is it?" I asked. "A junk drive?"

"Uh-uh. It's our club project. We store the stuff in Mr. Taylor's old building and every two or three months a junk man comes and buys the paper. We sort out the clothes and send bundles."

That's nice, I thought. They send bundles. Well, maybe it keeps them off the streets. We went down a block beyond the bank and turned right into a cross street which was only a couple of blocks long. There wasn't much here after you got off the main drag. A small chain grocery stood on the corner, and beyond that there was a Negro juke joint covered with Coca-Cola signs. She went on up to the second block and stopped in front of a building on the right. It was a boxlike two-storey frame with gla.s.s show-windows in front and vacant lots full of dead brown weeds on both sides. You could still see the lettering "TAYLOR HARDWARE" on the windows, but they were fly-specked and dirty and the place was vacant, and the door was closed with a big padlock. A "FOR RENT" sign leaned against the gla.s.s down in one corner. We got out and she fished around in her bag for the key. Standing up, she wasn't as tall as the Harper girl and had none of her long-legged, easy grace, but she was stacked smoothly and twelve to the dozen against the contoured retaining-wall of her clothes.

She went around and opened the trunk of the car. "I expect it'll take two trips," she said.

I glanced in. There were two bundles of old newspapers and magazines tied up with cord, and a lot of loose clothes. I hefted the papers. They weren't over fifty or seventy-five pounds each, so I gathered them up and asked her to stuff the old clothes under my arms.

She looked up at me with a kittenish smile. "Well, goodness, I expect to carry something myself. I don't look that puny, do I?"

Let it be, I thought. This is a small town. We went inside. The place was empty except for some old counters and shelves, and our footsteps rang with a hollow sound. There was dust everywhere. "We have to go upstairs," she said.

The stairs were in the rear. I went up first and I could hear the high heels clicking after me. All the windows were closed, and heat lay like a suffocating blanket across the lifeless air. I could feel sweat breaking out on my face. The whole second floor was a jumble of discarded junk, old pieces of furniture, loose and bundled papers, piles of clothing, cast-off luggage, and even some old feather mattresses piled in a corner. A fire marshal would take one look at it, I thought, and run amok. They'd have a fire here some day that would really turn the town out. It wouldn't take much. Just some turpentine and rags...

"What?" I asked, suddenly aware that she had come up behind me and said something. I turned. She was throwing the clothing on a pile. Her face was flushed with the heat and there were little beads of perspiration on her upper lip.

"I said you must not know your own strength. You carried those things all the way up here, and then forgot you had them. Why don't you set them down?"

I was still holding the bundles of papers. "Oh," I said.

I threw them down. She was still looking at me, but she said nothing. It was intensely still, and hot, and there was an odd feeling of strain in the air.

"Is that all of it?" I asked.

"Yes. That's all," she said. "Thanks."

"You're welcome."

"How do you like our town?"

"All right. What I've seen of it." Why did you have to stand here and talk in this stifling hotbox up under the roof? Her face was expressionless as she watched me.

"Did you ever live in a small town?" she asked.

"Yes. I grew up in one."

"Oh? Well, you probably know what they're like, then."

"Sure."

"Well, maybe we'd better go," she said. "It's awful hot up here, don't you think?"

"It's murder." I nodded for her to go first, and we started weaving our way through the junk, towards the stairs.

"I wondered if I was just imagining it. I usually don't mind the heat, when I keep my weight down."

That was the second time she'd thrown it out there, but we understood each other about the small town now.

"Why do you want to keep your weight down?" I asked.

"She looked around at me. "Don't you think I ought to?"

"It looks perfect to me."

"Thank you."

"Not at all. It was a pleasure."

"I mean for carrying the stuff up, when Mr. Harshaw forgot."

Well, the h.e.l.l with you, I thought. You just remember you're married and I won't have any trouble with you. "That's what I meant," I said. "It was a pleasure."

We went down the stairs. Just as we hit the lower floor I heard her say, "Oh, darn it. What a mess!" I looked at her, and she held out a hand covered with dirt, staring at it disgustedly. She'd forgotten about the dust and had held on to the railing.

I took out my handkerchief. "Here," I said. "Let me."

"It's all right," she said. "I think the water's still turned on in the washroom. I'll only be a minute."

She walked on back to the end of the building and disappeared into a room walled off in one corner. I stood there looking around and waiting for her, and then before I knew it I was thinking about that boar's nest of trash and junk upstairs. The place was a natural firetrap.

I don't know why I did it; there was no idea or plan in my mind. But I reached over and wiped my hand through the dust on a step, and when I saw her come out of the washroom I started back that way. "I got some of it, too," I said, holding out the hand.

There was a window in the washroom, all right, as I'd thought there would be. It was closed and locked with an ordinary latch on top of the lower sash. Before I washed my hands I reached over and took hold of the latch and unlocked it.

4

Why not? In this world you took what you wanted; you didn't stand around and wait for somebody to bring it to you. I sat on the side of the bed stark naked in the sweltering night, listening to Umlaut beget Frammis in an age-cracked voice on the other side of the wall, and thought how easy it would be. There'd be ten or fifteen thousand dollars or maybe more lying around in that comic-opera bank for a man with nerve enough to pick it up. And you could get away from the rat-race for a long time with that kind of money, with a brown-eyed girl on the beach somewhere in the Caribbean, sailing a catboat and going fis.h.i.+ng off the reefs and drinking Cuba Libres where it's always afternoon.

Why kid myself? I wasn't a salesman. And I couldn't go back to sea, if I wanted to. I wasn't getting any younger, and another whole year was down the drain. I'd quit two jobs and got fired from three, and I'd had to get out of Houston in a hurry after a brawl with a longsh.o.r.eman over some turning-basin chippy. We tore up a lot of the fixtures in a cheap beer joint by the time the thing became general, and somewhere in the confusion the longsh.o.r.eman had his jaw broken with a bottle of Bacardi rum. It wasn't just an isolated incident, either; life was just a succession of jams over floozies of one kind or another.

It had been a little over a year now since the night I'd got back to the States after eleven months of that monotonous tanker shuttle between the Persian Gulf and j.a.pan, with a four-hundred-a-month allotment to Jerilee, to find she'd shoved off with the bank account and some boy friend she'd forgotten to tell me about. I tore my second mate's ticket into strips and flushed it down the can in a Port Arthur ginmill and for a while I seemed to have some purpose in life, but after I'd had time to think it over a little I quit looking for them and threw away the gun. It wasn't worth it. She was just another b.u.m in a succession of them, the only difference being that I'd been married to her.

On the other side of the wall they were piping Noah over the rail and getting ready for the rain. Sweat ran down my face and I thought about the bank to keep from thinking of that Harshaw woman. Keep her weight down! She could quit leaning it against me. But what about the bank?

It wasn't so simple, if you stopped to think about it. When you break the law you can forget about playing the averages because you have to win all the time. Who ever won all the time? Yeah, but the thing which always trips 'em is a.s.sociation with other criminals, and I don't know any, talkative or otherwise. An amateur's got a better chance than the pro because n.o.body knows him and he hasn't got any clippings in the files. I lay there for hours, thinking about it.

The next day was Sat.u.r.day. Harshaw was across the street at his desk in the loan office all morning and at noon when they closed it, he came over and said he was going fis.h.i.+ng for three days down at Aransas Pa.s.s.

"I'll be back on Monday night," he told Gulick. "If you run into any snag making out papers for sale, you can always get hold of Miss Harper."

We didn't sell anything. The town was jammed with the usual Sat.u.r.day-afternoon crowd, but n.o.body was looking for a car. I prowled morosely around the lot and wondered what Gloria Harper did when she wasn't working. Just before we closed, the telephone rang. I answered it.

"Mr. Madox?"

I recognized the voice. So she didn't go with him, I thought. "Yes. Madox speaking."

"This is Mrs. Harshaw. I know you'll think I'm an awful pest, but I wonder if I could ask another favor?"

"Sure. What is it?"

"Mr. Harshaw has gone fis.h.i.+ng, and he promised me a car off the lot while he was gone with ours, but he forgot to bring it home. I wonder if you'd drive it out for me when you close up?"

"Sure. How do I get there?"

"Go down Main Street to the bank and turn right. It's about three or four blocks beyond the edge of town. There are a couple of cross streets, I think, and then a filling station on the left. The next block is big oak trees on both sides of the street, and only two houses. Ours is the two-storey one on the right-hand side."

"Check," I said. "Which car is it?"

"He said there was a Buick. A coupe."

"Yes. It's still here. I'll bring it out."

"There's no hurry. Any time after you close up. And thanks a lot."

It was around six when we locked up the cars and the shack. I told Gulick where I was taking the coupe, and left my own car on the lot. The place wasn't hard to find, after I'd threaded my way through the double-parked congestion of Sat.u.r.day-afternoon Main Street. Beyond the filling station she had spoken of, the road swung a little to the right as it entered the oaks. The house itself was back in the trees and had a big lawn in front and a gravel driveway running back beside a hedge of oleanders. It was a smaller copy of the old-style southern plantation house, with a columned porch running across the front and down one side next to the drive. I stopped by the side porch and got out. It was secluded back in here, partly cut off as it was from the street, with long shadows slanting across the lawn.

"h.e.l.lo," she said.

I glanced around, but didn't see her until she opened the screen door and came out on to the porch. She had on a little-girl sort of summer dress with puffed-out short sleeves tied with bows, and was rattling ice cubes in a highball gla.s.s. She was bare-legged and wearing wedgies with gra.s.s straps, and her toenails were painted a flaming red. I don't know anything about women's clothes, but still I was conscious that she jarred somehow. The teenage dress didn't do anything for that over-ripe figure except to wander on to the track and get run over, and she looked like a burlesque queen in bobby socks.

"Oh, h.e.l.lo," I said. "I left the keys in it."

"Thanks. It was sweet of you to drive it out for me."

"Not at all."

"How about a drink before you go?"

"Yeah. Sure."

I followed her inside. The Venetian blinds were half closed in the living room and a big electric fan oscillated like a slowly shaking head on the mantel above the fireplace. She stopped and faced me, and again I could feel that faint strain in the air.

"Bourbon and water?"

"That's fine."

"Push some of those magazines out of the way and sit down. I'm sorry the place's in such a mess." She turned to go, and then stopped and added, as if it was an afterthought, "I gave the girl the week-end off, to visit her folks."

She went out. It was hot in the room, even with the fan going, and I was conscious of a deep quiet, unbroken except by the whirring of the fan blades and now arid then a tinkle of ice against gla.s.s out in the kitchen. I lighted a cigarette and put the match in a tray. It was heaped up and overflowing with b.u.t.ts smeared with lipstick. Movie and confession magazines were scattered over the sofa and lying on the floor, and I could see the rings left by highball gla.s.ses on the coffee table. Standing there looking around at the evidence of boredom was like watching a burning fuse.

She came back in a minute with the drink, and I saw she'd refilled her own. She sat down in the big chair across from me with her legs stretched out and the toes of the wedgies touching each other, and looked at me with her chin propped on her hand.

"Well, how are you standing the excitement?"

I shrugged. "Maybe it picks up on Sat.u.r.day night."

"Yes, it really does. They show two westerns at the movie instead of one."