Hot Spot Page 18

  A little after seven I got up and shaved and dressed. It was still raining, so I got a raincoat out of the closet, picked up the bundle of stuff in the flannel robe, and carried it out to the car. I drove down and parked on the lot, and took the bundle out of the rear seat and locked it in the trunk.

  As I started up the street to the restaurant I looked back under the line of cars. That was something which had been worrying me. But it was all right. The water had run, and it was just as wet under the ones that’d been there all night as under the one I’d been using.

  I went on over to the restaurant. There were several people there already and they were all talking about it. It was all over town.

  Harshaw was dead. He’d died a little after three that morning of another heart attack.

  20

  I COULDN’T TAKE HOLD of it at first. Why three o’clock in the morning? I ordered some breakfast and couldn’t eat it. It was a rotten shame. And then I wondered why I felt so sorry about it. After all it hadn’t been six hours since I’d killed a man; why should the natural death of another one bother me? I walked back to the office and just sat there looking out at the dark, miserable day. When Gulick showed up I told him he could go home. We’d close the lot and the loan office for the day, and also the day of the funeral.

  Gloria came along a few minutes later. Robinson dropped her off on this side of the street and she hurried into the office. She had on a blue plastic raincoat with a hood, which made her look very pretty and young, but her face was pale and she was tired. She had already heard about Harshaw.

  “Don’t you think we ought to close up, Harry?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve already told Gulick.”

  She was in the doorway, and she turned a little away from me and looked out into the street. “It’s so terrible,” she said quietly. She had thought the world of Harshaw.

  And then I wondered if she meant Harshaw. I wanted to tell her I had her purse and shoes in the car, that there was nothing to worry about, and I couldn’t. I ran right into a wall. I couldn’t say a thing.

  I locked the office and we went out and got in the car. I drove down the highway very slowly and we were both silent, just watching the rain. When we got to the long bridge I parked the car near the end of it and we sat there looking at the water. It was brown, and we could see the river was rising a little. They might not find him for days, I thought. If there was much more rain the road through the bottom would be impassable. Once, when there were no cars in sight in either direction, I kissed her. She drew back a little.

  “It just doesn’t seem right, I guess.” She turned and looked out of the window.

  We stayed there a half hour or longer, and I could feel the wall of silence growing up between us. I knew now why I hadn’t been able to say anything back there at the office. If she couldn’t talk about it, how could I? And then I suddenly realized she wasn’t thinking about the shoes and purse at all, because she didn’t know yet that I’d killed him. And when she did find out he was dead she would know I hadn’t left them there to incriminate her. I wanted to cry out and tell her it was all right, that I knew why she’d done it and it didn’t mean a thing, but how could I? I thought of the shame and the loathing she must feel, and how having to talk about it right out in the open—even to me—would crucify her, and I couldn’t open my mouth. Maybe she could stand it if we didn’t mention it, if we pretended it hadn’t happened.

  And then I thought of something else. What would it be like when they found him? Could we ever talk about it? Everything would tell her that I’d done it, but in her heart there’d always be that hope, that slim chance I hadn’t as long as we didn’t insist on dragging it out into the open. The whole thing was an ugly mess, and maybe the only way we’d ever be able to live with it was by ignoring it.

  After a while I drove back to town. The stuff in the back of the car was still weighing on my mind, but I knew I’d have to wait until after dark to get rid of it.

  “Don’t you think we ought to see Mrs. Harshaw, Harry?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “We’d better go now.”

  I stopped in the driveway by the side porch, and the Negro girl let us in. She said yes, Mrs. Harshaw was in and she’d see us. We went in, and she was in the living room, pale and red-eyed and dressed in a housecoat and slippers. I thought she was over-doing it a little with the weeping until I noticed she had a bad head cold. That helped her to look like the grief-stricken widow.

  They had already taken him to the mortuary, and the funeral was to be on Wednesday. We expressed our sympathy and said what a fine man he’d been, and between sessions of sniffles she told us how it had happened. Apparently he had got up for something, because she had heard him out in the hall and just as she was about to call out to him and ask if anything was wrong she heard him fall. He rolled all the way down the stairs in the living room.

  “Oh, it was horrible,” she said pitifully, and I’d have felt sorry for her if I hadn’t known better. “Going down the steps in the dark, trying to get to him, I fell myself before I got to the bottom.” She slipped the housecoat down a little and showed us the bruise on her shoulder. “Somehow I got to the phone and called the doctor, but when he got here it was too late.” She started crying again. She made me sick.

  Well, she finally outlasted him, I thought. The whole works is hers now—probably a hundred thousand or more. I wondered if she’d sell out and leave. Probably, I thought. She could keep a whole stable of boy friends now, like, a riding academy or a stud farm, and it’d work out better in a city.

  Her sniffling got Gloria started. We left in a little while and I drove her home. I went back to the rooming house and tried to sleep in the afternoon, but it wasn’t any good. I kept having a nightmare about trying to run uphill out of a river bottom with a dead man shackled to my leg. I’d wake up covered with sweat and shaking.

  When would they find him? That was beginning to get me now. I hadn’t thought about that part until now that I was getting a taste of it. What about the waiting? I thought everything was all right, and that they’d go for it, but how did I know? What if I’d forgotten something? I wouldn’t know until they found him and held the inquest. Every time I thought of that cold-eyed Sheriff I’d get scared. It was going to be great. I could see that. And if it went on very long I’d be crazy.

  After it was dark I drove downtown and tried to eat. My mouth was dry and everything tasted like straw. I got in the car and drove out to the abandoned sawmill, stopping on the road for a while to be sure I wasn’t followed. The rain had stopped during the afternoon and now the stars were out. I parked beside the sawdust pile and got the bundle of clothes out of the trunk, went over all of it with the flashlight looking for laundry marks and cutting them out, and then carried the stuff down to the bottom of the ravine. Scooping out a hole in the bottom of the sawdust slide, I shoved them in, clothes, purse, shoes, everything, and covered them up. Then I went up a little way and started another slide. They were well buried, and as time went by more and more would fall down on them. Maybe, I thought if she stayed around here, she’d keep it sliding down. The place made me think of her, and remembering that night made me uncomfortable. Hating her didn’t make any difference. Maybe that was what she’d meant by saying I’d always come back. It was so easy to remember the last time.

  The funeral was Wednesday afternoon, and they still hadn’t found Sutton. I couldn’t seem to sleep at all now. I’d doze off for a few minutes and then wake up sweating and scared. I wondered how much longer I could take it.

  Gloria and Gulick and I ordered a big floral piece for the funeral, and we all went, of course. Everybody in the county seemed to be there. Gloria cried along at the end of it, and I had to blow my nose several times myself. He was a good man, a better man than I was, even if I’d been a long time in finding it out. Gloria and I drove around afterwards, not going anywhere, and that awkward silence was still there between us. When I took her home we sat
in the car a few minutes in front of the house.

  “What do you suppose she’ll do with the business?” she asked. “Do you think she’ll sell out?”

  I got what she meant, and it was the first time I’d thought of it. There’d been so much I’d overlooked that possibility of grief. If she did sell there’d be an audit of the books, and it’d probably happen before we could get all that deficit cleaned up, even though I still had the five hundred dollars that was in Sutton’s wallet. God, I thought, how messed up can you get?

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She hasn’t said a thing, and I didn’t want to bother her with business. But I’ll see what I can find out.”

  But I didn’t find out anything. She didn’t call up or come around the place, and I didn’t call her because I was reaching the point I couldn’t think about anything except Sutton, and when they’d find him, and what the inquest would turn up when they did. It went on all day and all night because I never slept more than a few minutes at a time now. In another day or two I even quit seeing Gloria. I didn’t even call her up. I was so savage and on edge I didn’t know what I’d do or say next. By the Saturday after the funeral I wondered if I wasn’t reaching the breaking point. I began to have an idea they’d found him and weren’t saying anything, just waiting for me to crack under the strain. Maybe they were just playing with me, and any minute one of them would tap me on the shoulder. And then I’d get hold of myself and I’d know this wasn’t true. They just hadn’t found him yet. Nobody ever went out there. I’d just have to wait. Wait! God, how much longer could I stand it?

  It broke on Sunday morning. Two farm boys hunting rabbits found him and came to town to report it to Tate. Everybody was talking about it around the drugstore and the restaurant. The Sheriff himself came over and they went out to the oil well and were gone for a little over two hours. When they returned, early in the afternoon, they brought the body out and went on back to the county seat. Nobody knew anything except what the boys had said. He was sitting at a table, kind of bent over it, and looked like he had been dead a long time, and they were afraid of him. They didn’t go inside the cabin.

  I had to live through Sunday afternoon with nothing more than that. I couldn’t go around asking everybody I met what they’d heard about it. I went back to my room, but in a little while I knew I’d go crazy there. The old man next door was reading the Bible again. I got in the car and drove over to the county seat to a movie. It was a long picture, or maybe it was a double feature and I didn’t realize it, and when I came back it was dark. There was still the night to get through. When I got back to town I went to the restaurant and forced down a little food. Tate had come back, somebody said, but he hadn’t talked about it. The man died of a gunshot wound. And there’d be an inquest Monday morning. That was all.

  I sat on the bed smoking cigarettes in the darkness until after three, and when fatigue caught up with me and I dozed off I began having dreams. When I shaved, I could see it on my face. I couldn’t take much more. I held on to it all through Monday morning and into the afternoon, burying myself in paper work and going out on the lot now and then to go through the motions of demonstrating a car to faceless and unreal people.

  I went up to the restaurant for a cup of coffee at three-thirty, and the waitress told me. She was just making conversation. She was bored, and it was something to talk about. Tate had been in. They’d held an inquest on that man, what was his name, the one who lived out by the oil well that had been found dead, remember—yesterday morning, wasn’t it—sure it was yesterday morning because that was Sunday and she was just dead, that dance Saturday night, honestly—but about the man, they had held an inquest, she thought that was what Tate called it, and the man had been shot through the head with a gun, wasn’t it awful, and Tate had told her the way it was—. Oh, the verdict?

  It was accidental death. The man had shot himself cleaning a gun, wasn’t it silly.

  I never did know afterwards how I got back to the lot. All I can remember is sitting there at my desk trying to get my mind to accept the news that I had done it, that we were free of Sutton forever, and that the danger was all past. It was just too much for me to take in all at once. I’d been living with the danger and the suspense for so long I couldn’t readjust that quickly.

  Suddenly, I had to tell Gloria. I wanted to call her on the phone. I’d been avoiding her because of the pressure I was under, and now I wanted to see her and start making up for it. Then I stopped. What was I going to tell her? Sutton was something we didn’t talk about. And certainly not over the phone. But I wanted to call her anyway, and make a date to see her that night. We could go on now. Everything would be just the way it had been before, and somehow we’d break down that wall that had grown up between us. Some way I could make her understand it didn’t matter. But I wouldn’t call her; she was just across the street, and I wanted to see her. I had started out the door when the phone rang.

  “Mr. Madox?” the voice said when I picked up the receiver. It was Dolores Harshaw.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t called before, but I’m sure you’ll understand. I wanted to thank you for the flowers and for being so kind, and all. It was very nice of all of you.” She paused. Now, what the hell, I thought. Why so goody-goody? There must be somebody in the room with her, one of the neighbours, or the maid.

  “Why, that’s all right,” I said. “It was the least we could do.”

  “Well, it was awful nice. But what I wanted to talk to you about was the business. I know you’ve been wonderful about it; what my plans were, I mean. Do you think you could come over tonight, say around seven, so we could discuss it, you and Miss Harper both, I mean?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll tell her. We were wondering about it, as a matter of fact, but we didn’t want to bother you. Are you planning to sell out? Is that it?”

  “Oh, no. I guess from what the lawyers say it’ll take some time for the whole thing to be settled, but I wouldn’t sell out anyway. I think I should try to carry it on—for George’s sake, you know. And of course I’ll want you and Miss Harper to go right on the way you have been. I’m sure it couldn’t be in better hands.”

  There must be a dozen people in the room, I thought. She hadn’t even thrown in a nasty dig at Gloria just for old times’ sake. Maybe she’d decided to become a social leader, and pull down the shades before she turned in with her boy friends. Well, I didn’t care a damn what she did, as long as she paid my salary.

  After she had hung up I sat there a few minutes letting it soak in before I called Gloria. It was wonderful to tell her.

  I picked her up that evening and we started over. I thought of how much it was like that other time, when Harshaw had asked us to come over. And afterwards we could go out to the river, as we had then, and I could take her face in my hands and kiss her and we could break through to each other again. We would start all over. The past was gone. Sutton didn’t matter any more. I could make her see that. I knew I could.

  She broke in on my thoughts. “Harry,” she said, “there’s something I’ve got to tell you. I’ve been trying to all week, but I want to tell you now.”

  “We’ll go somewhere afterwards and talk,” I said. “Then you can tell me, if you think you have to.”

  “Yes. I have to. It’s about Sutton.”

  I stared ahead into the lights, trying to keep my face still. “Sutton’s dead. Nothing matters about him any more. Nothing at all. You believe me, don’t you, honey, that it doesn’t matter now?”

  “This does, Harry. I’ve got to tell you. You see, I thought all week that he had gone away. Because—. Well, you see, I gave him that five hundred dollars. After you told me not to. I took it out there and begged him to leave. So now it’s going to take us that much longer—.”

  I reached out and patted her hand. “It’s all right,” I said. “It doesn’t make any difference.”

  It was a strange thing for her to say, I thought. Why brin
g up that one part of the whole mess, if we were going to ignore it? I should have got it then, but I didn’t, for we were turning in the driveway and I didn’t think about it any more. I stopped by the side porch and we got out. The light was on and as we rang the bell and stood there waiting I looked at her, thinking how pretty she was. She had on a yellow summer dress with big fluffy bows or something on the shoulders, and her stockings were some dark shade. She seemed to like dark-coloured nylons—.

  I was staring. I couldn’t say anything, and the skin on the back of my neck was tightening up into gooseflesh like frozen sandpaper. I got it now, when it was forever too late.

  It was what she was wearing on her feet. They were wedgies. They were wedgies with grass straps.

  21

  DOLORES HARSHAW CAME TO THE door then and let us in. I was numb. I was operating on pure reflex, trying to keep going and cover up. Somewhere far off I could hear them giving it the how-nice-you-look and what-a-lovely-dress routine while the wreckage fell all around me and I could see what I had done. There was no escape. There wasn’t any way to go back, so all I could do was walk the rest of the way into it and pray. It was all dangerous now, and I knew it, but I wondered if she did. We were standing hip-deep in gunpowder and she might not have any more sense than to reach for a match. I’d killed Sutton, and she was the only one on earth who knew it. Did she realize what that meant? All the time I’d thought it was Gloria, and Gloria didn’t know anything. She was standing there in the magazine with us, and no matter what happened I had to be sure she was out before it blew up.

  There was too much of it and it was coming at me too fast to see the whole picture at once. Crazy pieces of it kept flashing up in the sick confusion of my thoughts, and then they’d be gone and there’d be something else. There was Harshaw. I didn’t have to wonder any more why he’d had a heart attack and fallen down the stairs at a crazy hour like that. Had he just happened to catch her coming in at three in the morning barefoot and naked except for a dress half torn off by the underbrush and stuck to her with the rain, or had she done it deliberately? Nobody would ever know, and they couldn’t touch her. Maybe he had given her that bruise on the shoulder, or maybe she’d got it when she fell over us back there in the shack. But what difference did it make? She knew I’d killed Sutton and I had to shut her up, but how?