Hot Spot Page 5

  “How are you tonight, Uncle Mort?” she asked.

  “Jes’ fine, Miss Gloahia,” he said. “Thank you.”

  He’d recognized her by her voice. “Who is he?” I asked as we went on and got in the car.

  “Just Mort. He’s been there in that spot fifteen hours a day six days a week since I was in rompers. Maybe he’s been there forever,” she said.

  “Did you need a pencil?”

  She blushed. “Well, you can always use one.”

  We drove around for a while and when I took her home the house was dark. The Robinsons were gone somewhere. We stood by the gate for a moment in the moonlight. I was conscious of thinking she wasn’t merely pretty; she was one of the loveliest girls I had ever seen in my life. For a moment I was like an awkward kid; I wanted to kiss her and I was afraid to.

  “Well, good night,” I said.

  “Good night,” she said. “And thank you. I enjoyed the picture very much.”

  Well, if you’re not a silly bastard, I thought. Why didn’t you ask her to go to the church supper?

  I shoved off around ten the next morning, but I didn’t go to Houston. I drove over to a fair-sized town about a hundred miles away, a place I’d never been before. I got a room at a tourist court and then went shopping.

  At a drugstore I picked up a hand-wound alarm clock. Then I bought two rolls of surgical cotton at another one, and went around to two or three five-and-ten-cent stores for the rest. I got a cheap soldering-iron, a little solder, a pair of pliers, a short piece of heavy copper wire, and some big sheets of of sandpaper. I mentally checked it off the list. That was about all except some thread and a small flashlight. After I bought those I dropped into a market and bought a carton of canned beer and a box of big kitchen matches and got the clerk to give me a cardboard box about a foot wide and eighteen inches long. I went back to the motel, put the beer in the little refrigerator to keep cold, drew the blinds, and went to work on the clock.

  I took the bell cover off, exposing the clapper or striker. After plugging in the soldering-iron, I cut off two pieces of the copper wire just a little shorter than the thickness of the clock from front to back. When the iron was hot enough, I soldered them side by side on top of the clapper, putting on lots of solder and making it as rigid as I could. Then I wound the clock, set the alarm, and tried it out. The wire cross-arm vibrated nicely and held together all right.

  Going out to the kitchenette, I opened a can of beer and came back to look at what I’d done so far. I’d know in a few minutes whether I could depend on it or not. I took a drink of the beer, lighted a cigarette, and went on with the job. First, I wrapped a sheet of sandpaper around each of the two rolls of cotton and made it fast with some of the thread. Then I took four of the big kitchen matches, laid them together with two pointing each way and overlapping a little in the centre, and placed them on the cross-arm I’d soldered on to the bell clapper. I secured them with several turns of the thread, letting them stick out about a half inch over the clock in front and back. After winding and setting the alarm, I placed the clock upright in the bottom of the box the market clerk had given me, and put in the two sandpaper covered rolls, one on each side. It didn’t fit right; the rolls were too large and tended to bind the clapper cross-arm so it couldn’t move freely. It had to have just the right amount of tension; that was the reason I’d used cotton to back up the sandpaper instead of something solid. A block of wood or something like that would do if you got the spacing absolutely correct to within a sixty-fourth of an inch or so, but if you didn’t the matches might not touch at all or it might be too close and bind.

  I took out the rolls of cotton, pulled some of it off, and rewrapped them with the sandpaper. This time it was just right. The match heads pressed with just the right tension against the slightly yielding wall of sandpaper. Good, I thought. I took another drink of beer and sat back to wait. In a minute there was a click and the alarm went off, the cross-arm vibrating wildly. The match heads whirred against the sandpaper and all four of them burst into flame.

  I tried it twelve times, and it never failed once. I took off the burnt matches for the last time and sat back with my beer to look at it. And that was when it really came home to me what I was about to do. I was going to rob a bank, committing the additional crime of arson in the process, and if I got caught I’d go to prison.

  Well, I thought, go on selling second-hand jalopies for another forty years and maybe somebody’ll give you a testimonial and a forty-dollar watch.

  6

  WHEN I GOT BACK I left the whole thing in the trunk of the car. If I took it into my room the nosy old girl who ran the place would probably be in it the first time she cleaned, and it was crazy enough to start her wondering. I already had a blanket in the car, an old one which had been in it when I bought it eight months ago. That was safe enough; nobody would ever trace it. I still had to have a piece of line, though, and I didn’t want to buy it because something like that was too easy for a clerk to remember. If I kept my eyes open I should find a short length around somewhere.

  I checked right in at the lot when I got to town and didn’t go out to the rooming house until after work. There were two letters for me on the hall table, addressed in the same hand and postmarked here in town, but with no return address on them. I sat down on the bed and tore them open.

  “Dear Harry,” the first one said. “Please call me. I miss you so and I’m sorry I acted the way I did. I want to see you so bad. Your loving Friend.” There was no signature. Well, at least she had that much sense.

  I spread the other one open. “Harry,” she had scrawled, “why don’t you call me? Why? I can’t stand not hearing from you. I told you I was sorry, what more can I do? I’ve just got to see you.”

  Was she crazy? I tore the letters into strips and burned them in the ash-tray, feeling a little chill of apprehension go over me. What would she do next? And the next time she got plastered?

  The following day was Sunday. I drove out the highway after I’d had breakfast and turned off on to the dirt road going towards the river bottom and the oil well. When I got up in the pine on the sandhill near the old abandoned farms I found a pair of ruts leading off into the timber where I could get the car off the road and out of sight. It was a beautiful morning, still and hot, with the heavy scent of pine in the air, and it was good to be out here alone and away from town. I got out and started walking up the hill, keeping away from the road. In a little while I found what I was looking for, the remains of an old pine on the ground, the sap wood long since rotted away and only the heart and pine knots remaining. I didn’t have an axe, but it was easy to lay it across another log and break off a section of the heart by jumping on it. I looked at the end where it had broken. It was pure pitch pine, the kind we used for kindling when I was a boy.

  I was about to start back to the car with it when I noticed I was near the edge of the clearing where one of the abandoned farmhouses stood. Leaving the chunk of pine in an open place where I could find it again, I circled the edge of the field and came up behind the house. The doors were torn off, and there wasn’t much in it, just dust and cobwebs and pieces of glass here and there from the broken windows. I walked on through to the front door and looked out. The road was in plain sight from here, the sand blazing white in the sun, but it was completely deserted and I couldn’t hear any sound of a car. The barn was off to the left of the house a short distance across the sand and dead weeds. I went over and looked in.

  It was shadowy and cool, with a faint odour of dusty hay and old manure. There was a loft overhead which appeared to be empty, and a walled-off corn crib in one corner, in front of the stalls and feed-boxes. I went over and looked into the crib, and found just what I was looking for. An old horse collar with the stuffing coming out of it was hanging from a harness peg on the wall, and dangling from the same peg was a piece of discarded rope ploughline possibly ten feet long. I took it in my hands and tested it. It was very old, but plenty strong
enough for what I wanted.

  I was coiling it up when I stopped suddenly and listened. A car was approaching out there on the road. I could hear it plainly now, the motor lugging in the heavy sand. I shook off the sudden nervousness and swore under my breath. I was too jumpy. It was only Sutton, either going to town or just now coming home from Saturday night. But the car didn’t go on past. I heard it slowing down, and then it was turning in. It stopped in front of the house.

  I was sweating. It wasn’t that I was doing anything wrong, but just that I’d look suspicious and attract attention, the very thing I didn’t want, if somebody saw me prowling around out here. What explanation could I give for my being here in this old barn, with my car parked a half mile away in the timber? I whirled, looking for a way to get out or a place to hide. I couldn’t leave by the door. That was in plain sight of the house. But two planks had been torn off the rear wall, and I might be able to squeeze out there. I started to run back to it when I noticed a small hole in the wall next to the house. Maybe I could find out who it was and what he was up to. Whoever it was might leave in a minute, anyway, without coming near the barn. I could see the house and the car pulled up in front of it. And it wasn’t a man getting out of the car. It was Gloria Harper.

  It threw me for a minute. What would she be doing out here? And what the devil was she unloading out of the car and putting on the porch. It looked like a fruit jar and a china plate, as nearly as I could tell, and there was something else which resembled a bread board. Was she going to set up housekeeping in that broken-down shack?

  She had something in her hand now which looked like little sticks, and then I began to catch on. They were paint brushes. It was a water colour outfit she had, and the thing I’d thought was a bread board must be a block of paper. She had on a pair of brief white shorts and a striped T-shirt, and the long-legged, easy way she moved was enough to make you catch your breath.

  She got all of her equipment together and sat down in the shade on the edge of the porch with her feet on the steps and the block of paper on her legs, and began sketching the barn with long strokes of a pencil or charcoal stick. After she had it blocked in she started mixing paints in the white plate, dipping her brushes in the jar of water. She was completely absorbed in what she was doing and, alone like this and not knowing she was being watched, there was something almost radiant about her face, somehow sweet and infinitely appealing and still full of that quiet dignity she had. I wanted to go out there where she was.

  Was I blowing my top? I couldn’t go out there. How would I explain why I’d been hiding in the barn? But wait, I thought. She’d be here for a long time yet. I could sneak out the back of the barn and get into the timber without her seeing me, go back and get the car, and just happen to be driving by on my way to the river to go swimming. That would be plausible enough.

  I had just started to turn away when somebody beat me to it. I heard a car coming along the road, and then I knew whoever it was had seen her there on the porch because he slowed abruptly and turned in. I looked back towards the house. She had put down the brush and was watching apprehensively as the man got out of his car. It was Sutton.

  He walked over to the porch and said something I couldn’t hear. I watched her, and it wasn’t uneasiness alone that was in her expression; there was loathing too. Knowing they wouldn’t be watching the barn now, I moved to the front door and peered out. I could hear them there. I waited.

  “And how’s my little chum today?” he said.

  “If you mean me,” she said, “I’m very well, thank you.”

  “Well, you look nice, honey. Nice outfit, too.” He grinned and looked her up and down, taking it off as he went. “And you sure have the legs for it, haven’t you, baby?”

  “Did you want to see me about something?” she asked coldly.

  “No. No. Just stopped for a minute to say hello. By the way, where’s your friend this morning?”

  “Which friend?”

  “Big Boy, what’s his name.”

  “Do you mean Mr. Madox?”

  “I guess so. Anyway, the guy you came out to the house with the other day. I saw you going to the movies the other night, and figured you was kind of chummy. Maybe he’s a little funny, too, huh?”

  “Funny?” I could see the revulsion on her face.

  “You know what I mean, baby.”

  I could feel my hands digging against the door frame. Was that what was behind that dirty joke of his and the contemptuous grin? He couldn’t mean anything else, the way he had said it. But to her? Was he crazy? Or just stupid?

  “Would you leave now?” she asked, her voice on the ragged edge of going all to pieces. “Or would you mind if I did?”

  “Oh, I was just going. But you mind if I see your picture? I’m a great art lover, myself.”

  Without a word she tore it off the block and handed it to him, as if she didn’t want him to defile more than one sheet of paper. He took it and pretended to study it with great seriousness, holding it at arm’s length and nodding his head like an instructor.

  “Promising,” he said. “Very promising. But, honey, don’t you think it needs a little red? To kind of overburden the harmisfralcher?”

  She said nothing. He reached down for one of the brushes, dipped it into the plate, and smeared it across the paper. He handed it back to her. She let it slide to the ground. It was sickening.

  I started out the door, and caught myself just in time. What was I, a sap? He wasn’t bothering me, was he? I was supposed to be looking out for Harry Madox, not making a chump of myself for nothing. I stayed where I was.

  “Well, I’ll see you around, baby,” he said. He got in his car and drove off.

  She sat there for a few minutes after he left, just staring off at nothing, and then she slowly gathered everything up and put it in the car. When she was out of sight down the road I walked over to the porch. The picture was lying face up in the sand. I picked it up. It looked fine except for the smear of red he had drawn across it from one corner to the other. He liked his little joke, all right.

  One of these days somebody would probably kill him. I wondered who.

  Monday evening while I was putting on a fresh shirt the landlady knocked on the door.

  “Telephone, Mr. Madox.”

  I went down the hall to the phone. “Hello. Madox,” I said.

  “Harry,” she said, “why didn’t you call me?”

  “You think I’m crazy?”

  “I want to see you, Harry.”

  “Look—”

  “I miss you.”

  I started to tell her to go to hell and then hang up, but I didn’t. I began to think about her. She could do that to you, even on the phone. Maybe it was because her voice matched the rest of her.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “At the drugstore. I thought I’d go to the movie, but again I may not. I’m sort of restless—you know how it is. So I might go for a ride.”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe up the highway about five miles to where a road turns off to the right and goes over to an old sawmill. It’s not hard to find. Once you get on the road you can’t get off.”

  I put the phone back on the cradle. She’d said it, all right. Once you got on the road you couldn’t get off.

  I tried to eat some dinner, but it was straw and it choked me. I walked restlessly up the sidewalk, going nowhere. Sutton was in front of the pool hall with a handful of numbers from a tip board, reading them and throwing them on the sidewalk. He nodded and we looked at each other. I thought of what he had said to Gloria Harper. He liked his laughs so well, why not shag him one in the mouth and watch him laugh his teeth out? Why not mind his own business? He wasn’t shoving me around, was he? And I wasn’t Gloria Harper’s mother.

  I got in the car. Why try to pretend I wasn’t going out there? Did I think I could kid myself? I found the road without any trouble. The moon wasn’t up yet, and it was very dark under the trees. The old sawmill w
as on the side of a wooded ravine a mile or so from the highway. I saw a dilapidated shed and a pile of sawdust in the headlights, but there was no other car. I cut the lights and sat there, waiting, but I was too restless to sit still very long and got out and walked around.

  I heard the car coming then. It stopped under the trees and the lights went off. The ceiling light came on momentarily and I knew she had opened the door to get out. I walked over. I could see her very faintly, just the blur of her face and the blonde head, but she couldn’t see me at all.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  I didn’t answer. I stepped closer and reached out and put my hands on her. She gasped, and turned, her arms reaching out, groping for me. I kissed her roughly and her arms tightened about my neck with an urgent wild strength in them. She twisted her face a little to one side and her mouth whispered against my cheek, “Harry, I just had to see you.”

  She was partly right, anyway. She just had to see somebody.

  We were in the car with moonlight spilling into the other side of the ravine. “Do you love me, Harry?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, that’s a fine answer. You might at least say you did.”

  “Why should I?”

  “I just thought it might sound better that way. It don’t make any difference, though, does it?”

  “No.”

  “I suppose you think I’m in love with you, don’t you?”

  “And why would I?”

  “Because I’m here. Well, let me tell you—”

  “You don’t have to tell me. I know why you’re here. But you don’t think we’re going to get by with much of this, do you?”

  “Why not?”

  “And you’re the one who asked me if I’d lived in a small town.”

  “It’s all right. He’s at a lodge meeting.”

  “It’s dangerous as hell. You know that.”

  “I notice you’re telling me that now. You didn’t say anything about it a couple of hours ago.”