I rode a streetcar to the edge of the city limits, then I started to walk, swinging the old thumb whenever I saw a car coming. I was dressed pretty good—white shirt, brown slacks and sport shoes. I’d had a shower at the railroad station and a hair-trim in a barber college, so all in all I looked okay. But no one would stop for me. There’d been a lot of hitchhike robberies in that section, and people just weren’t taking chances.
Around four in the afternoon, after I’d walked about ten miles, I came to this roadhouse. I went on past it a little ways, walking slower and slower, arguing with myself. I lost the argument—the part of me that was on-the-beam lost it—and I went back.
The bartender slopped a beer down in front of me. He scooped up the change I’d laid on the counter, sat down on his stool again, and picked up a newspaper. I said something about it was sure a hot day. He grunted without looking up. I said it was a nice pleasant little place he had there and that he certainly knew how to keep his beer cold. He grunted again.
I looked down at my beer, feeling the short hairs rising on the back of my neck. I guessed—I knew—that I should never have come in here. I should never go in any place where people might not be nice and polite to me. That’s all they have to do, you know. Just be as nice to me as I am to them. I’ve been in four institutions, and my classification card always reads just about the same:
William (“Kid”) Collins: Blond, extremely handsome; very strong, agile. Mild criminal tendencies or none, according to environmental factors. Mild multiple neuroses (environmental) Psychosis, Korsakoff (no syndrome) induced by shock; aggravated by worry. Treatment: absolute rest, quiet, wholesome food and surroundings. Collins is amiable, polite, patient, but may be very dangerous if aroused…
I finished the beer, and ordered another one. I sauntered back to the restroom and washed my face in cold water. I wondered, staring at myself in the mirror, where I’d be this time tomorrow and why I was bothering to go anywhere since every place was just like the last one. I wondered why I hadn’t stayed where I was—a week ago and a thousand miles from here—and whether it wouldn’t be smart to go back. Of course, they hadn’t been doing me much good there. They were too overcrowded, too under-staffed, too hard up for money. But they’d been pretty nice to me, and if I hadn’t gotten so damned restless, and if they hadn’t made it so easy to escape… It was so easy, you know, you’d almost think they wanted you to do it.
I’d just walked off across the fields and into the forest. And when I came out to the highway on the other side, there was a guy fixing a tire on his car. He didn’t see me. He never knew what hit him. I dragged him back into the trees, took the seventy bucks he was carrying and tramped on into town. I caught a freight across the state line, and I’d been traveling ever since… No, I didn’t really hurt the guy. I’ve gotten a little rougher and tougher down through the years, but I’ve very seldom really hurt anyone. I haven’t had to.
I counted the money in my pocket, totting it up mentally with the change I’d left on the bar. Four bucks. A little less than four bucks. Maybe, I thought, maybe I ought to go back. The doctors had thought I was making a little progress. I couldn’t see it myself, but…
I guessed I wouldn’t go back. I couldn’t. The guy hadn’t seen me slug him, but what with me skipping out about that time they probably knew I’d done it. And if I went back they’d pin it on me. They wouldn’t do it otherwise. They probably wouldn’t even report me missing. Unless a guy is a maniac or a kind of big shot—someone in the public eye, you know—he’s very seldom reported. It’s bad publicity for the institution, and anyway people usually aren’t interested.
I left the rest room, and went back to the bar. There was a big station wagon parked in front of the door, and a woman was sitting on a stool near mine. She didn’t look too good to me—not right then, she didn’t. But that station wagon looked plenty good. I nodded to her politely and smiled in the mirror as I sat down.
“Rather a warm day,” I said. “Really develops a person’s thirst, doesn’t it?”
She turned her head and looked at me. Taking her time about it. Looking me over very carefully from head to foot.
“Well, I’ll tell you about that,” she said. “If you’re really interested in that, I’ll give you my theory on the subject.”
“Of course, I’m interested. I’d like to hear it.”
“It’s a pronoun,” she said. “Also an adverb, conjunction and adjective.”
She turned away, picking up her drink again. I picked up my beer, my hand shaking a little.
“What a day,” I said, kind of laughing to myself. “I was driving south with this friend of mine, Jack Billingsley—I guess you know the Billingsleys, big real estate family?—and our car stalled, and I walked back to a garage to get help. So I get back with the tow-truck, and darned if that crazy Jack isn’t gone. I imagine what happened is—”
“—Jack got the car started himself,” she said. “That’s what happened. He started looking for you, and somehow you passed each other on the highway. Now he doesn’t know where you are, and you don’t know where he is.”
She finished her drink, a double martini, and motioned to the bartender. He fixed her another one, giving me a long hard glare as he placed it in front of her.
“That darned crazy Jack,” I said, laughing and shaking my head. “I wonder where in the world he can be. He ought to know I’d come in some place like this and wait for him.”
“He probably had an accident,” she said. “In fact, I think I read something about it.”
“Huh? But you couldn’t—”
“Uh-huh. He and a young lady called Jill. You read about it too, didn’t you, Bert?”
“Yeah.” The bartender kept on staring at me. “Yeah, I read about it. They’re all wet, mister. They got their heads busted. I wouldn’t wait around for ’em much longer, if I was you.”
I played it dumb—kind of good-natured dumb. I said I certainly wasn’t going to wait very much longer. “I think I’ll have just one more beer, and if he hasn’t shown up by then I’m going to go back to the city and catch a plane.”
He slopped me out another beer. I started to drink it, my eyes beginning to burn, a hedged-in feeling creeping over me. They had my number, and hanging around wasn’t going to make me a thing. But somehow I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t any more than I could have walked away from the Burlington Bearcat that night years ago. The Bearcat had been fouling me, too, giving it to me in the clinches, and calling me all kinds of dirty names. He’d kept it up—just like they were keeping it up. I couldn’t walk away from him, just like I couldn’t walk away from them, and I couldn’t get him to stop, just like I couldn’t get them to stop.
It came back with neonlike clarity. The lights were scorching my eyes. The resin dust, the beerish smell of ammonia, were strangling me. And above the roar of the crowd, I could hear that one wildly shrieking voice. “Stop him! Stop him! He’s kicking his brains out! It’s murder, MURDER!”
Now I raised my glass and took the rest of the beer at a gulp. I wished I could leave. I wished they’d lay off of me. And it didn’t look like they would.
“Speaking of planes,” she was saying. “I heard the funniest story about a man on a plane. Honestly, I just thought I’d die laughing when I—” She broke off, laughing, holding her handkerchief to her mouth.
“Why don’t you tell it to him?” The bartender grinned, and jerked his head at me. “You’d like to hear a real funny story, wouldn’t you, mister?”
“Why, yes. I always enjoy a good story.”
“All right,” she said, “this one will slay you. It seems there was an old man with a long gray beard, and he took the plane from Los Angeles to San Diego. The fare was fifteen dollars but he only had twelve, so they dropped him off at Oceanside.”
I waited. She didn’t say anything more. Finally, I said, “Yes, ma-am? I guess I don’t get the point.”
“Well, reach up on top of your head. Maybe you’ll feel it.”
They both grinned at me. The bartender jerked his thumb toward the door. “Okay, Mac. Disappear.”
“But I haven’t done anything, I’ve been acting all right. You’ve got no right to—”
“Beat it!” he snapped.
“I haven’t asked you for anything,” I said. “I came in here to wait for a friend, and I’m clean and respectable-looking and polite. And—and I’m an ex-serviceman and I’ve been to college—had a year and a half of college and—and—”
The veins in my throat were swelling. Everything began to look red and blurred and hazy.
I heard a voice, her voice, say, “Aah, take it easy, boy. Don’t race your motor, kid.” And from what I could see of her through the haze, she didn’t look so bad. Now, she looked rather gentle and pretty—like someone you’d like to have for a friend.
The bartender was reaching across the counter for me. “Don’t, Bert! Leave the guy alone!” she said, and then she let out a scream. Because he’d grabbed me by the shirt front, and when he did that I grabbed him. I locked an arm around his neck and dragged him halfway across the counter. I slugged him so hard it made my wrist ache.
I let go of him. He slid down behind the counter, and I ran.
It’s funny how wrong your first impressions of people can be. Me, now, the first impression I’d had of her was that she wasn’t much to look at—just a female barfly with money. And she did hit the booze too hard. Even I could see that. But I was all wrong about her looks. She was young. I’m thirty-three and she couldn’t have been any older. She was pretty—beautiful, I should say—when she dolled herself up a little. She’d led a hard life for a long time, and it told on her face. But she had the looks, all right, the features and the figure. And sometimes—well, quite a bit of the time—she could act just as nice as she looked.
I’d only got down the road a few hundred yards when the station wagon drew up beside me and she swung the door open. “Get in,” she said, smiling. “It’s all right. Bert isn’t going to make any trouble for you.”
“Yeah? Well, he’s not going to get the chance, lady. I just stopped in there for a minute, and now I’m going on.”
“I tell you it’s all right. Bert’s the last person in the world to holler for the cops. Anyway, we’re not going back there. I’m taking you home with me.”
“Home with you?” I said.
“It’s not far from here.” She patted the seat, smiling at me. “Come on, now. That’s a good boy.”
I got in rather uncertainly, wondering why she was acting so friendly now when she’d been so ornery a little while ago. She answered the question just as I started to ask it.
“I had a couple of reasons,” she said. “For one thing, I didn’t want Bert to know that I might be interested in you. The less a man like Bert knows about my business the better I like it.”
“What else?”
“The other reason… well, I wanted to see what you would do; how nervy you were. Whether you were really the kind of guy I thought you might be.”
I asked her what kind of guy that was exactly. She shrugged, a little impatiently.
“Oh, I don’t know! Maybe… probably it doesn’t make any difference, anyway.”
The highway dipped down through a grove of trees with a narrow lane leading off to the south. She turned the car into the lane, and after about a quarter of a mile, just over the crest of a little hill, we came to her house.
It was a big white cottage standing in a clearing among several acres of trees. It looked like it might have been a nice place at one time. It still was fairly nice, but nothing like it could have been. The paint was peeling and dingy. Some of the front steps were caved in. Bricks from the chimney were scattered over the roof, and there were big rusted-out holes in some of the screens. The lawn didn’t look like it had ever been cut. The grass was so high you could hardly see the sidewalks.
She sat looking out the window for a moment after we’d stopped. Then, she sighed and shook her head, murmuring something about work being the curse of the drinking classes.
“Well, here we are.” She opened the door. “By the way, I’m Mrs. Anderson. Fay Anderson.”
“I’m very happy to meet you, Mrs. Anderson.”
“And I’m very happy to meet you. It’s a unique privilege. I don’t believe I’ve ever met a man before who didn’t have a name.”
“Oh, excuse me,” I laughed. “I’m Bill Collins.”
“No! Not the Bill Collins.”
“Well, uh, I don’t know. I guess maybe I am.”
“Well, don’t you feel bad about it. It’s your story so you stick with it.”
She was changing again, getting back to the orneriness. She was on and off like that all the time, I found out—nice to you one minute, needling you the next. It all depended upon how she felt, and how she felt depended upon how much booze she had in her. With just the right amount—and that changed, too, from hour to hour—she was nice. But if she didn’t have it, if she had a little too much or not quite enough, she got mean.
“Well, come on!” she snapped. “What are you waiting for, anyway? Do you want me to carry you piggy-back?”
I hesitated, kind of fumbling around for something to say. She swore under her breath.
“Are you worried, Mr. Collins? Are you afraid I’ll rob you of your money and valuables?”
I laughed and said, no, of course not. “I was just wondering… well, what about your husband? You said you were—”
“He won’t rob you either. They only let him out of his grave on national holidays.”
She slammed out of the car and flounced away a few steps, then she kind of got control of herself, I guess, and she came back.
“I’ve got a big steak in the refrigerator. I’ve got some cold beer and just about everything else in the beverage line. I’ve got some pretty good suits that belonged to my husband, and—But let it go. Do whatever you want to. Just say the word and I’ll drive you back to the highway.”
I said I wasn’t in any particular hurry to get back to the highway. “I was just wondering—I mean, what can I do for you?”
“How do I know?” Her voice went brittle again. “Probably nothing. What’s the di. . .
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