Finally he said, “How far are you from the bus station?”
“About three miles.”
The phone went quiet again. Then he said, “I’ll see if I can hitch a ride. If I can’t, I’ll walk it. Which way do I go?”
“Turn left outside the bus station. That’s Main Street heading south. Stay on it. The garage is on the right just after you pass a diner and a movie house.”
“Look for me.” He hung up the phone.
I went back to my room and looked out the back window at the parking lot behind the garage. Charlie Fenway’s old Chevy was there, and a new, fancy looking road van, the kind with little curtains on the windows and the ladder on the back. The van belonged to Mr. Spaulding, the real estate man in town. I didn’t like him much. He always looked at me like I wasn’t there.
Charlie Fenway was different. He always had a smile and a joke for me, like I was an old friend of his, which I really wasn’t but he made me feel that way anyhow. He and his wife had dropped off the Chevy for a brake job around five o’clock so she could drive him in her car to his night shift at the bridge.
Timmy, the mechanic, had gone right to work on the Chevy for Charlie ’cause he promised Charlie he could come and pick it up first thing Monday morning even though it would be ready before then, but Mr. Johnson wouldn’t open the station for anyone on Sunday. He was real strict about not working on the Lord’s day of rest, he always told us, but like I said, he probably wouldn’t have minded one little bit if he thought he could trust me and I pumped enough gas to bring in some money for him, even if it was on the Sabbath.
Timmy let me help him with the Chevy brake job. He was teaching me how to be a mechanic. Both of us knew Mr. Johnson wouldn’t ever hire me for that, but Timmy gave me lots of pointers anyhow. He told me I didn’t have to pump gas and sweep out garages all my life.
But Timmy didn’t let me help with Mr. Spaulding’s road van. He said Mr. Spaulding would have a fit if something went wrong and he knew I’d touched his fancy van. So Timmy did it all by himself. The job was just putting in some kind of liquor cabinet in the back of the van that Mr. Spaulding said he had to have done right away ’cause he was taking out some important clients on Monday. Timmy could have done the job right then and finished it before Mr. Johnson closed up for Saturday night, but Timmy told Mr. Spaulding it would take a lot of time to make sure the cabinet would fit in just right, and Timmy winked at me when no one was looking and I knew he was going to make Mr. Spaulding go without his fancy van for the whole weekend. I liked that idea.
I walked up and down in my room for a while, trying to think, but the room was small and didn’t give me much space, so I went out into the garage again and walked back and forth by the big bay door with the glass windows in it. The street light in front kept it from being real dark in there.
After a while, I went out back and walked around the parking lot, trying to think everything out. I leaned up against the side of Mr. Spaulding’s van, sort of doing it on a dare to myself, and I kept on thinking and wondering about Ed and thinking some more.
After a while, it hit me that if Ed had got a hitch, he’d be along any minute. I hurried back into the garage and stood by the bay door and waited.
It took a long while before he showed up. He was walking slow and sort of limping along, so I knew he hadn’t got a hitch. He saw me, and I waved to him and pointed for him to come around the side of the garage.
I went to my room and opened the door to the parking lot in back, and Ed came limping around the corner of the garage and looked at me kind of hardlike and pushed right past me and went into my room and sat down on the edge of my bed.
I had left the radio on all this time, and the country music was going good and loud. Ed reached down and grunted and started pulling off one of his pointy-toe cowboy boots, and he stared at me and said, “Turn that damn thing off!”
I hurried over and turned off the radio. Ed had the boot off by now and was rubbing his foot.
“Hi, Ed,” I said, trying to make it sound like I was glad to see him.
“Had to walk all the way out here,” he said.
“I’m sorry about that,” I told him.
He grunted at me and pulled the boot back on and stood up. “I’m hungry. What you got to eat?”
Mr. Johnson had let me keep a hot plate and one of those small fridges, and I pointed to them in the corner. “Not much, Ed. Just some bread and milk and a jar of jelly, and I think there’s still some coffee in the pot on the hot plate over there.”
Ed went to the fridge and yanked it open and took out the milk carton and put it to his mouth and took a big swallow. He opened the bread and grabbed a couple of slices. “Gimme something to spread the jelly,” he said, not even looking at me.
I got an old table knife from the box where I kept all that kind of stuff and handed it to him. He opened the jelly and slapped gobs of it on the bread slices and took big bites and chewed away and washed everything down with gulps from the milk carton. I stood there and watched him and listened to him make lots of slurping noises, and when he finished he belched loud and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
He turned around to me, and this time his look wasn’t hard. I thought he might even be grinning a little.
“So here you are, Donny, huh?”
I nodded my head. “Yeah, here I am, Ed.”
He sat back down on my bed and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He was wearing one of those cowboy shirts, the kind with lots of stitching and two big pockets. He got a kitchen match from his other pocket and lit it with his fingernail. He took a deep drag on the cigarette and shook the match out and dropped it on the floor in front of my bed. I stayed where I was, standing in the middle of the room.
He blew smoke at the ceiling and looked at me. “Let me spell it out for you, Donny. I got a call yesterday from an old buddy of mine down in Ellenville. You know where that is?”
“Yeah. South of here about ten miles down Route 90 on the other side of the river.”
“I was headed there on the bus when it broke down. We just about made it to the depot. They told us we’d have to wait three hours till they could bring in another bus.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Then I remembered that time you called me at the joint after you got out. You told me you were working at Johnson’s garage in this town here — at least that’s what I thought I remembered. I took a chance and looked it up in the phone book. Real good luck my finding you, huh?”
He blew more smoke out of the side of his mouth and dropped the cigarette on the floor and stepped on it with the toe of his boot. I didn’t say anything.
“I can’t wait another three hours for the bus,” Ed said, staring straight at me. “I gotta be in Ellenville an hour from now.”
I still didn’t say anything.
“My buddy who called me got a real sweet job lined up. In and out fast tonight, and we make a bundle. Then we just disappear. You get what I’m talking about, Donny?”
I nodded. “I think so, Ed.” I scratched my head. “But ain’t you busting parole — I mean, going out of town without permission?”
He looked at me and then threw back his head and laughed. “Yeah — that and pulling this job, too. Donny, old buddy, you’re even dumber than you were in the joint, you know that?”
I looked away from him.
“You think maybe I was gonna go back on Monday and report to my parole officer like a good little boy? That what you were thinking, dummy Donny?”
I shook my head.
Ed’s face turned serious. “This is a one-time deal. I won’t get a chance like this again.” He stood up quick and started to walk up and down. “I gotta get to Ellenville. I’m just about broke right now. I got no money, no gun, nothing, just a lousy little pocket knife.” He turned and glared at me. “I feel naked, you know that, naked — and I don’t like feeling like that.”