The Complete Crime Stories (6 page)

“When did you start?”

“Oh, I don't just remember. I've been at it quite a while. Maybe a week.”

“Just think! And I didn't know a thing about it.”

He rather fancied his new job now. As a matter of fact, the truck had a wheel that had always taken his eye; it was a big, horizontal wheel, something like the wheel on the rear end of a hook-and-ladder, and there now leaped into his mind a picture of himself behind it.

“Say, you ought to see me in there, swinging her around corners, dodging traffic, shooting her up beside the curb, ringing the bell—I forgot that. I'm the one that rings the bell.”

He acted it out, his feet hanging over the water, his hands caressing the wheel. He shifted gears, pedaled the brake, sounded the bell, pulled up short just in time to avoid a collision with a lady pushing a gocart containing an infant, went on with a noble, though worried, look on his face. A captious listener might have reflected that evening was a strange time for infants to be abroad in gocarts; might have taken exception, too, to a certain discrepancy between the critical situations in which this ice-cream truck seemed always to find itself, and the somewhat innocuous tinkle of the bell which accompanied its doings. However, his listener wasn't captious. She gazed at him with wide-open eyes, and a rapture so complete that all she could think of to say was an oft-repeated “My!”

They took turns dressing, and as they started home he glowed pleasantly under her admiration. Yet admiration, even now, was not quite enough. He craved definite superiority.

“Beat you to the edge of the woods.”

“No you can't.”

She started so suddenly he was taken by surprise, and as she raced ahead of him he had one twinge of fear that she not only could dive better than he could, but run faster. But the distance was in his favor. She tired, and as he clattered past her he had at last what he had craved all afternoon: the hot, passionate feeling that he was better than she was; that from now on she must be his creature, to worship him without question, to look on from a distance while he dazzled her with tricks. It was short-lived. He felt a jolting, terrible pain in his face, having tripped on the wet bathing suit and slammed down in the road, the dust grinding into his mouth, the little stones cutting his cheek. He set his jaws, closed his eyes, screwed up his face in an agony of effort not to cry.

“It's all right, Burwell. You're not hurt bad. You're just scratched up a little bit. Here, I'll wipe it off for you.”

He felt the wet bathing suit wiping his face, then the soft dry dabs of her handkerchief. The effort not to cry was becoming more than he could stand. He clenched his fists.

“Open your mouth and close your eyes, I'll give you something to make you wise.” A quick, warm little kiss alighted on his mouth, stayed a moment, pressed hard, and then left.

A wave of happiness swept over him. The strain eased, he hadn't cried. He opened his eyes. She was gone.

They were at supper when he got home, and his mother jumped up when she saw him. “Mercy, Burwell, what on earth has happened to you?”

“I fell down.”

“Mercy! Mercy!”

“I'm all right.”

“Are you sure? My, I'll have to put something on your face before you come to the table.”

“I don't want any supper.”

She felt his brow.

“I'm going to bed.”

“I don't think he has any fever.”

“I'm all right, but I'm going to bed.”

However, at this point Liza, the cook, appeared with a platterful of sliced watermelon, then hastily backed out: “Ah thought you-all was th'oo.”

His eye caught the wet redness, and he couldn't shake it out of his mind. “Well, maybe I could eat a little bit.”

“Then sit right down, and I'll put something on your face later.”

He sat down, and permitted himself to be coaxed into eating three pieces of fried chicken, two new potatoes, four ears of corn on the cob, a dish of pickled beets, and two big slices of watermelon.

While he was putting this away, his mother kept up a sort of running soliloquy: “I wonder if I ought to let him go to that party tonight. It seems a pity to have him miss it, and yet—we'll see.”

It annoyed him that his mother seemed to have forgotten he didn't want to go to the party, and discussed it as though it were something he had been looking forward to for his whole life. However, there was nothing to do but fall in with that view of it, and dodge the main issue, if possible.

“It's all right. I don't mind. I'm going to bed.”

“Did you shine your shoes?”

“No'm, I was going to, but—I fell down.”

“Well, I'll shine them. You keep quiet after supper, and then we'll see.”

“It's all right. I don't want to go.”

“Why, Burwell! You know you want to go.”

“I do not! I'm going to bed!”

He had overplayed it, and he knew it. At his insistent shout his father, who had been eyeing him narrowly for some time, suddenly spoke: “Burwell.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What's this about the party?”

“Nothing.”

“When you get through supper you're to shine your shoes. You're to bathe and dress. When you're ready, come to me, and we'll get some collodion on that face so it'll have a beauty suitable to the festivities. Then you're going to the party.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bathed, shined, dressed, and patched, he started out, but he was in no hurry to get there. He was troubled, and he fingered the birthday present in his pocket most uneasily. How to explain his absence from his job wasn't what bothered him. He already had a plan that would take care of it handsomely. He was at an age when it would be sufficient to say, “Yah, were you kidded! Did you bite! Yah!” and this would settle anything. But somehow he didn't like it. He didn't know it, but what ailed him was that he had already tasted triumph, or anyhow some sort of triumph, and what he craved now was humility, the sweet sacrifice of love: the sensation of being unselfish, and noble, and wan about the eyes.

He loitered outside the billiard hall watching the mysterious business of white balls clicking against red; scuffled past the picture show, examining all the posters; dillied and dallied, but after a while he had it. He would put the first plan into effect almost as soon as he got there, but he would combine it with another plan, to be uncorked later. After Marjorie had had an hour of moping brokenheartedly trying to be gay with her guests, he would call her aside and tell her the truth, or what at the moment seemed to be the truth. He had worked for Red. He had helped him on the truck; had helped him for two weeks, as a matter of fact; and all because he knew that tonight would be her birthday, and he wanted to give her something out of his own money, and—well, here it is. Then she would know she had cruelly misjudged him, and they would sit there in the shadows, happy, but in a soft dreamy way, since she would be aware at last of his lofty nature.

So it was quite dark when he got there and the party was in full swing out in the backyard. The yard had been strung with lanterns, and as he slipped back of the house he could see them all out there dancing on the clipped grass, to the radio. He paused in the shadows and looked for Marjorie. She wasn't there. He kept looking and looking, and then a sound caught his ear, so close he jumped. He turned, and found himself looking in the dining-room window. In front of it on a small table, not three feet from him, was the big cake, with Marjorie's name on it, the unlit candles spaced around its edge, with one in the middle.

And approaching that cake, in the dark room, was Marjorie. She got to it, picked up the knife, hesitated. Then he felt creepy at the enormity of the thing she was about to do. She was cutting the cake that was to be carried out before the guests as the grand surprise of the evening.

He was numb with shocked astonishment as he saw the knife go in twice, saw Marjorie pick up the wedge of cake in her hands and hurry out of the room. He was still staring at the mutilated cake when he heard a step, saw her run out of the front of the house, flit down the lawn to the pillar of the driveway, and wait. Then shame, panic, fear, and love shot through him in one terrible stab. He crept to the edge of the porch. He slipped the present under the rail. He ran blindly to the street, into the night.

From the distance, up the street; came the bell of the ice cream truck.

Brush Fire

H
e banged sparks with his shovel, coughed smoke, cursed the impulse that had led him to heed that rumor down in the railroad yards that CCC money was to be had by all who wanted to fight this fire the papers were full of, up in the hills. Back home he had always heard them called forest fires, but they seemed to be brush fires here in California. So far, all he had got out of it was a suit of denims, a pair of shoes, and a ration of stew, served in an army mess kit. For that he had ridden twenty miles in a jolting truck out from Los Angeles to these parched hills, stood in line an hour to get his stuff, stood in line another hour for the stew, and then labored all night, the flames singeing his hair, the ground burning his feet through the thick brogans, the smoke searing his lungs, until he thought he would go frantic if he didn't get a whiff of air.

Still the thing went on. Hundreds of them smashed out flames, set backfires, hacked at bramble, while the bitter complaint went around: “Why don't they give us brush hooks if we got to cut down them bushes? What the hell good are these damn shovels?” The shovel became the symbol of their torture. Here and there, through the night, a grotesque figure would throw one down, jump on it, curse at it, then pick it up again as the hysteria subsided.

“Third shift, this way! Third shift, this way. Bring your shovels and turn over to shift number four. Everybody in the third shift, right over here.”

It was the voice of the CCC foreman, who, all agreed, knew as much about fighting fires as a monkey did. Had it not been for the state fire wardens, assisting at critical spots, they would have made no progress whatever.

“All right. Answer to your names when I call them. You got to be checked off to get your money. They pay today two o'clock, so yell loud when I call your name.”

“Today's Sunday.”

“I said they pay today, so speak up when I call your name.”

The foreman had a pencil with a little bulb in the end of it which he flashed on and began going down the list.

“Bub Anderson, Lonnie Beal, K. Bernstein, Harry Deever. …” As each name was called there was a loud “Yo,” so when his name was called, Paul Larkin, he yelled “Yo” too. Then the foreman was calling a name and becoming annoyed because there was no answer. “Ike Pendleton! Ike Pendleton!”

“He's around somewhere.”

“Why ain't he here? Don't he know he's got to be checked off?”

“Hey, Ike! Ike Pendleton!”

He came out of his trance with a jolt. He had a sudden recollection of a man who had helped him to clear out a brier patch a little while ago, and whom he hadn't seen since. He raced up the slope and over toward the fire.

Near the brier patch, in a V between the main fire and a backfire that was advancing to meet it, he saw something. He rushed, but a cloud of smoke doubled him back. He retreated a few feet, sucked in a lungful of air, charged through the backfire. There, on his face, was a man. He seized the collar of the denim jacket, started to drag. Then he saw it would be fatal to take this man through the backfire that way. He tried to lift, but his lungful of air was spent: he had to breathe or die. He expelled it, inhaled, screamed at the pain of the smoke in his throat.

He fell on his face beside the man, got a little air there, near the ground. He shoved his arm under the denim jacket, heaved, felt the man roll solidly on his back. He lurched to his feet, ran through the backfire. Two or three came to his aid, helped him with his load to the hollow, where the foreman was, where the air was fresh and cool.

“Where's his shovel? He ought to have turned it over to—”

“His shovel! Give him water!”

“I'm gitting him water; but one thing at a time—”

“Water! Water! Where's that water cart?”

The foreman, realizing belatedly that a life might be more important than the shovel tally, gave orders to “work his arms and legs up and down.” Somebody brought a bucket of water, and little by little Ike Pendleton came back to life. He coughed, breathed with long shuddering gasps, gagged, vomited. They wiped his face, fanned him, splashed water on him.

Soon, in spite of efforts to keep him where he was, he fought to his feet, reeled around with the hard, terrible vitality of some kind of animal. “Where's my hat? Who took my hat?” They clapped a hat on his head, he sat down suddenly, then got up and stood swaying. The foreman remembered his responsibility. “All right, men, give him a hand, walk him down to his bunk.”

“Check him off!”

“Check the rest of us! You ain't passed the
P's
yet!”

“O.K. Sing out when I call. Gus Ritter!”

“Yo!”

When the names had been checked, Paul took one of Ike's arms and pulled it over his shoulder; somebody else took the other, and they started for the place, a half mile or so away on the main road, where the camp was located. The rest fell in behind. Dawn was just breaking as the little file, two and two, fell into a shambling step.

“Hep! … Hep!”

“Hey, cut that out! This ain't no lockstep.”

“Who says it ain't?”

When he woke up, in the army tent he shared with five others, he became aware of a tingle of expectancy in the air. Two of his tent mates were shaving; another came in, a towel over his arm, his hair wet and combed.

“Where did you get that wash?”

“They got a shower tent over there.”

He got out his safety razor, slipped his feet in the shoes, shaved over one of the other men's shoulders, then started out in his underwear. “Hey!” At the warning, he looked out. Several cars were out there, some of them with women standing around them, talking to figures in blue denim.

“Sunday, bo. Visiting day. This is when the women all comes to say hello to their loved ones. You better put something on.”

He slipped on the denims, went over to the shower tent, drew towel and soap, stripped, waited his turn. It was a real shower, the first he had had in a long time. It was cold, but it felt good. There was a comb there. He washed it, combed his hair, put on his clothes, went back to his tent, put the towel away, made his bunk. Then he fell in line for breakfast—or dinner, as it happened, as it was away past noon. It consisted of corned beef, cabbage, a boiled potato, apricot pie, and coffee.

He wolfed down the food, washed up his kit, began to feel pretty good. He fell into line again, and presently was paid, $4.50 for nine hours' work, at fifty cents an hour. He fingered the bills curiously. They were the first he had had in his hand since that day, two years before, when he had run away from home and begun this dreadful career of riding freights, bumming meals, and sleeping in flophouses.

He realized with a start they were the first bills he had ever earned in his twenty-two years; for the chance to earn bills had long since departed when he graduated from high school and began looking for jobs, never finding any. He shoved them in his pocket, wondered whether he would get the chance that night to earn more of them.

The foreman was standing there, in the space around which the tents were set up, with a little group around him. “It's under control, but we got to watch it, and there'll be another call tonight. Any you guys that want to work, report to me eight o'clock tonight, right here in this spot.”

By now the place was alive with people, dust, and excitement. Cars were jammed into every possible place, mostly second­-­, third-, and ninth-hand, but surrounded by neatly dressed women, children, and old people, come to visit the fire fighters in denim. In a row out front, ice-cream, popcorn, and cold-drink trucks were parked, and the road was gay for half a mile in both directions with pennants stuck on poles, announcing their wares. News­paper reporters were around too, with photographers, and as soon as the foreman had finished his harangue, they began to ask him questions about the fire, the number of men engaged in fighting it, and the casualties.

“Nobody hurt. Nobody hurt at all. Oh, early this morning, fellow kind of got knocked out by smoke, guy went in and pulled him out, nothing at all.”

“What was his name?”

“I forget his name. Here—here's the guy that pulled him out. Maybe he knows his name.”

In a second he was surrounded, questions being shouted at him from all sides. He gave them Ike's name and his own, and they began a frantic search for Ike, but couldn't find him. Then they decided he was the main story, not Ike, and directed him to pose for his picture. “Hey, not there; not by the ice-cream truck. We don't give ice cream a free ad in this paper. Over there by the tent.”

He stood as directed, and two or three in the third shift told the story all over again in vivid detail. The reporters took notes, the photographers snapped several pictures of him, and a crowd collected. “And will you put it in that I'm from Spokane, Washington? I'd kind of like to have that in, on account of my people back there. Spokane, Washington.”

“Sure, we'll put that in.”

The reporters left as quickly as they had come, and the crowd began to melt. He turned away, a little sorry that his big moment had passed so quickly. Behind him he half heard a voice: “Well, ain't
that
something to be getting his picture in the paper?” He turned, saw several grins, but nobody was looking at him. Standing with her back to him, dressed in a blue silk Sunday dress, and kicking a pebble, was a girl. It was a girl who had spoken, and by quick elimination he decided it must be she.

The sense of carefree goodness that had been growing on him since he got his money, since the crowd began to jostle him, since he had become a hero, focused somewhere in his head with dizzy suddenness. “Any objections?”

This got a laugh. She kept her eyes on the pebble but turned red and said: “No.”

“You sure?”

“Just so you don't get stuck up.”

“Then that's O.K. How about an ice-cream cone?”

“I don't mind.”

“Hey, mister, two ice-cream cones.”

“Chocolate.”

“Both of them chocolate and both of them double.”

When they got their cones he led her away from the guffawing gallery which was beginning to be a bit irksome. She looked at him then, and he saw she was pretty. She was small, with blue eyes, dusty blonde hair that blended with the dusty scene around her, and a spray of freckles over her forehead. He judged her to be about his own age. After looking at him, and laughing rather self-consciously and turning red, she concentrated on the cone, which she licked with a precise technique. He suddenly found he had nothing to say, but said it anyhow: “Well, say—what are you doing here?”

“Oh—had to see the fire, you know.”

“Have you seen it?”

“Haven't even found out where it is, yet.”

“Well, my, my! I see I got to show it to you.”

“You know where it is?”

“Sure. Come on.”

He didn't lead the way to the fire, though. He took her up the arroyo, through the burned-over area, where the fire had been yesterday. After a mile or so of walking, they came to a little grove of trees beside a spring. The trees were live oak and quite green and cast a deep shade on the ground. Nobody was in sight, or even in earshot. It was a place the Sunday trippers didn't know about.

“Oh, my! Look at these trees! They didn't get burnt.”

“Sometimes it jumps—the fire, I mean. Jumps from one hill straight over to the other hill, leaves places it never touched at all.”

“My, but it's pretty.”

“Let's sit down.”

“If I don't get my dress dirty.”

“I'll put this jacket down for you to sit on.”

“Yes, that's all right.”

They sat down. He put his arm around her, put his mouth against her lips.

It was late afternoon before she decided that her family might be looking for her and that she had better go back. She had an uncle in the camp, it seemed, and they had come as much to see him as to see the fire. She snickered when she remembered she hadn't seen either. They both snickered. They walked slowly back, their little fingers hooked together. He asked if she would like to go with him to one of the places along the road to get something to eat, but she said they had brought lunch with them, and would probably stop along the beach to eat it, going back.

They parted, she to slip into the crowd unobtrusively; he to get his mess kit, for the supper line was already formed. As he watched the blue dress flit between the tents and disappear, a gulp came into his throat; it seemed to him that this girl he had held in his arms, whose name he hadn't even thought to inquire, was almost the sweetest human being he had ever met in his life.

When he had eaten, and washed his mess kit and put it away, he wanted a cigarette. He walked down the road to a Bar-B-Q shack, bought a package, lit up, started back. Across a field, a hundred yards away, was the ocean. He inhaled the cigarette, inhaled the ocean air, enjoyed the languor that was stealing over him, wished he didn't have to go to work. And then, as he approached the camp, he felt something ominous.

Ike Pendleton was there, and in front of him this girl, this same girl he had spent the afternoon with. Ike said something to her, and she backed off. Ike followed, his fists doubled up. The crowd was silent, seemed almost to be holding its breath. Ike cursed at her. She began to cry. One of the state police came running up to them, pushed them apart, began to lecture them. The crowd broke into a buzz of talk. A woman, who seemed to be a relative, began to explain to all and sundry: “What if she
did
go with some guy to look at the fire? He don't live with her no more!
He
don't support her—never
did
support her! She didn't come up here to see
him;
never even knew he was
up
here! My land, can't the poor child have a good time once in a while?”