The White Widow: A Novel (14 page)

The badge-changing ceremony was simple. Jack and the other six had already removed their regular silver-and-red badges from their caps.

“Here is your badge, Jack,” Pharmacy said at the microphone. “Congratulations.”

Jack shook Pharmacy’s hand and then took the badge. There, as five of the others had already done, he undid the little screws on the back of the gold badge and then stuck it onto the front of his cap where it belonged.

He looked hard at the badge as he did it. It was a beautiful thing, with the words “Great Western Trailways” encircling a map of the United States at the top of the shield, and the words “Master Operator” right below. He had seen it on Progress Paul and a few others for years. Now it would be on him. Where it belonged.

He put on his cap. There was much applause.

He would have given anything for Ava to be there to see him, to see this. It would have made her see what a substantial and important and meaningful thing driving a bus really was.

Look at this badge, Ava. I am no longer just an ordinary bus driver, an ordinary man. I am a Master Operator. I am now worth loving.

As the dinner was breaking up a few minutes later, Pharmacy came over to say a final good-bye and good night to each of the new Master Operators.

“And how’s it going for you, Jack?” he asked when he got to Jack.

“Just great, Pharmacy, just great.”

“I see the weight’s still off.”

That made Jack mad. It was a completely unnecessary thing to say. He hadn’t had a weight problem in more than seven or eight years. All he said was “My looks speak for themselves, Pharmacy.”

“That’s right. What’s happening to you on Fridays, Jack?”

Jack felt his body quiver. “Fridays?”

“I was looking at some log reports this afternoon with Hubert. You were out of Victoria on time but late into Corpus three Fridays in a row. That is something for our man On Time Jack.”

“Last Friday I had a breakdown.”

“Right. Something happened to the ignition wire.”

“Yeah. I think it was bad when I left Houston. I had trouble getting it out of the garage.”

“I read that. You missed throwing off some papers one Friday.”

“Now I do not know what happened on that. I really do not …”

“And an agent said you forgot a passenger?”

Forgot a passenger? “I don’t know about that.”

“She was going to Hungerford, if my memory serves.”

“Oh, right. Her.”

“Well, again, good luck and congratulations. You are one of our best.”

Jack thanked him and Pharmacy moved on to talk to someone else.

Jack ran into Horns Livingston in the hotel lobby. He was looking for somebody to go to the movies with him.

“I guess you’re not interested in my kind of movie, are you Master Operator Oliver? Congratulations, by the way.”

“Thanks and thanks,” Jack said. “I
am
interested.” And he smiled and nodded and walked out the front door of the Milam with Horns Livingston in the direction of the Lone Star Majestic Theater.

The movie,
Lovesick Spies Blues
, was not even in color. It opened with a shot of a guy in a light-colored raincoat waiting under a lamppost on a brick-paved street. “Lisbon, 1944,” it said underneath. He smoked a cigarette and looked around and smoked another cigarette and looked around again. Somebody was supposed to meet him, obviously. They were late. He was worried.

Then there was the sound of high heels hitting the bricks. He turned in the direction from whence it came. And there she was. A blond woman in a dark cloth coat. She looked scared and sad. They extended their arms to each other and
embraced. They spoke, but Jack could not understand what they were saying. It was in French.

“Dearest,” the subtitle said at the bottom of the screen.

“My darling,” it said right afterward.

Both gave startled looks. There was the sound of boot heels on the bricks.

“Someone’s coming!” said the subtitle.

The man and the woman put up the collars on their coats and walked away together. After a few seconds they started running. The sound of the boot heels on the bricks remained, getting louder and then fainter. Finally the sound stopped as the pair stopped running at the entrance to a large park. They hugged and went into the park. In a few seconds they were surrounded by bushes.

He removed his coat and placed it on the ground. He assisted her to the ground with a touch to the elbow not unlike the one Jack used to help Ava and other passengers on and off his bus.

He joined her on his coat.

“This must be the last time,” she said in the subtitle.

“I know,” he said. “But I would rather die.”

“We will both die if we continue.”

“It is then only a matter of how and when I die, my dearest.”

“For me as well.”

They kissed. He removed her dark cloth coat. He ran his right hand through her hair and over her shoulders. He put his head down on her chest.

“Why must our nations be at war, Jacques?” she said.

“It is a matter for history, not for people who love one another, Maria.”

“We Italians should not have done what we did.”

“We French had no choice but to do what we did.”

“I know, my dear Jacques, I know. But I am first and always an Italian. I must serve my country.”

“But it is Fascist.”

“I know, but it is my country.”

“But you are stealing secrets. You are a spy.”

“So are you.”

“But for a just cause, to defeat fascism.”

He unbuttoned her blouse.

“I must,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

Her breasts were exposed. He kissed each one fervently.

“Oh, why must we be enemies?” she asked.

“It is in our blood,” he said after coming up for air.

“So is our love.”

“It is our blood that will be spilled.”

He removed his suit coat, tie and shirt.

And so it went for over an hour. Full intercourse was never quite shown but most everything else was. Jack had heard of movies like this but this was the first time he had ever seen one.

He had felt dirty and stupid when he first came into the lobby. He did not look at either the woman who sold the tickets or the young man who took them at the door. It was pitch-black inside the theater itself and that was just fine with Jack. It took a few seconds to get used to the dark in order to find a seat but he didn’t mind.

“I like to sit right down front,” Horns said.

“Not me,” said Jack. “I’m a back-of-the-theater man.”

“All right,” said Horns. “I’ll see you when it’s over.”

And when it was over he went out into the lobby and waited for Horns.

Both of the spies, Maria as well as Jacques, did not survive. She was arrested and then tortured in a hotel room by a
Gestapo officer in plainclothes. He wanted to know everything she had told her French lover. She repeatedly claimed she told him nothing, but the Nazi did not believe her. He had two hoods take her to a cliff overlooking an ocean and throw her several hundred feet to her death.

Jacques died in a gun battle with the Gestapo hoods after he arrived at the cliff seconds too late to save the woman he loved.

“Our love was not to be,” he said as he lay bleeding to death.

Jack left the theater wondering if, and hoping that, the turn-on he had received from watching Jacques and Maria would last until he came home to Loretta the next day.

But it was gone by the time he got back to the hotel and into his room.

He went to sleep thinking about Ava and vowing to try again in the morning on the way back to Corpus to see if he could bring back Maria and Jacques.

T
he custom and practice among Great Western Trailways drivers was to flash their bus headlights at each other when approaching from opposite directions. One flick meant simply Hi and all is well. Two flicks meant Hi and look out for a speed trap, an accident or some other hazard up ahead. Three flicks meant Stop, I need to talk to you.

The next morning between Ganado and Edna, Jack flicked three times at the oncoming bus from Victoria, Corpus and the Valley. College was driving it. There had been a lot of swapping of runs and bringing in of extra-board people to accommodate the needs of drivers like Jack to be at the Master Operator dinner in Houston. College was the guy who had ended up driving Jack’s run south the previous day.

“I need a couple of cash fare receipts,” Jack said to College. Jack had stopped his bus on the westbound shoulder of the highway and dashed across to College, whose bus was on the other shoulder.

“I cannot believe the new Master Operator went off without something like that,” said College. He stepped up into his bus and returned in a minute with a whole book of cash fare receipts.

“Congratulations, by the way, Jack,” he said. “Let me look at it.”

College was an inch or so taller than Jack. He stepped up to look right at the gold badge on Jack’s hat. “A thing of beauty,” he said. “If things don’t work out you can melt it down and sell it for gold. Well, got to be on our way.”

Jack had the sad thought—the sad
certain
thought—that College Tony Mullett would never get a gold badge. Nobody who never smiled could ever become a Master Operator.

“How did it go on my run yesterday?” Jack asked quickly, trying his best to appear casual, normal, nonchalant.

“Same as always.”

“Did you happen to pick up a passenger in Victoria who looked sick?”

“Sick? No, not that I remember. There were only five or six. A couple of Mexicans and a few others. Everybody looked well. Look, we both need to get a move on.”

“Nobody asked about me there in Victoria?”

“Progress Paul. He talked about how wonderful it was that you got your gold badge and all. Said it was progress, you see.”

“I mean the passengers.”

“Jack, come on. Like I said, there were two Mexicans. The only other passenger I remember was some looker of a woman, a White Widow type. She sure as hell didn’t ask about you. I kept wishing she would ask about me. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her. But that was it. Did you hear about Texas Red Rocket?”