Goldman is a widow. She lived in this house for years with her husband and then decided to rent out the upstairs when he died. Lauren Bacall can only hope she looks as good at fifty as Mrs. Goldman does. In her crisp white blouse and blue skirt, she looked thirty-five. An envelope was tucked inside her right arm. “I’m also delivering this. I found it on the porch. I don’t know why they didn’t put it in the mailbox.”
The phone rang. Mrs. Goldman smiled.
“I’ll let you catch that, Sam.”
“Thanks for the cookies.”
On the phone, Mom said, “I really had a good time at the game today, dear. I just wanted to thank you.”
“My pleasure. Did you enjoy it?”
“Very much. Even though I didn’t exactly understand a lot of what was going on. There are an awful lot of people on that field at one time. It gets confusing.”
I smiled at the thought of Cliffie’s cheer, “Kill those bastards!” If people would have shouted it, I think Mom would have mentioned it.
“Well, I’m glad you had a good time.”
“You sound sort of rushed, dear. Is everything all right?”
“Just got in the door. Haven’t even had time to get my sport coat off.”
“Well, I’ll let you go. But I just wanted to thank you for the tickets. That halftime show was great. I think that was my favorite part.”
In the interest of good health, I fixed a peanut butter, mayo, and mustard sandwich before plowing into the cookies. That particular sandwich recipe probably doesn’t sound all that good but you should give it a try.
I watched Mike Hammer with Darren
McGavin, which was pretty good; and a Lone Wolf rerun with Louis Hayward. It was always sort of sad to see once-prominent actors have to resort to humiliating cheap-O Tv shows. I wondered if fading Tv stars worried about me the way I worried about them.
I’d inherited three cats-Tasha,
Crystal, and Tess-f a girl who’d left them with me while she went to La to become a star.
She was waitressing in Redondo Beach and the cats were still mine. I’d never been what you call favorably disposed to felines but they’d grown on me.
They were nice enough to give me a portion of the bed around ten o’clock. The stuff on Tv looked bad so I picked up the Steinbeck I was rereading, In Dubious Battle, and lost myself in the bleak rage of the early labor movement. For me it was his best book.
I was asleep by eleven-thirty. The phone rang at just before midnight according to the glowing hands of my alarm clock.
One of these nights it’s going to be Natalie Wood telling me how lonely she is and that she’s always wanted to see Black River Falls, Iowa, and couldn’t she please come out and stay with me a few months.
It was Molly Blessing, who barely took time to introduce herself.
“I’m really scared, Mr. McCain.”
“What about, Molly?”
“David got real drunk tonight.”
“Where is he?”
“That’s the thing. I’m not sure. And that’s not the worst part, he’s going to drag tonight.”
“Where?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. He said the cops always check out the spots everybody uses, so they were going to find a different place.”
“Why didn’t you go with him?”
“He said he was going to pick up that bitch Rita. I’m a lot better for him than Rita is. I try to get him to stop drinking and drag racing. She just encourages him to keeping doing them.
I know I sound like a goody-two-shoes but if you really love somebody, Mr. McCain, shouldn’t you want them to do the right thing?”
“I agree, Molly. But right now the important thing is to find David.”
“He said you two had had an argument tonight. That you threatened to dump him.”
“I got pretty mad, I guess.”
“You’re the only one he can rely on, Mr.
McCain-if you didn’t represent him, I don’t know what would happen to him, I mean a lot of people think he killed Sara.” Then, “I’m at the AandW. At the phone booth. Could you pick me up and we’ll go looking for David?”
“Yeah, maybe between us we can figure out where he went.”
“He’s so drunk, he’s-”
“All we can do is hope for the best. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“I really appreciate this.”
“I appreciate your calling, Molly. We need to stop him.”
She waited on the corner for me. Even given the sudden autumnlike turn in the temperature, the AandWill was crowded with cars, kids, and brave short-skirted carhops on roller skates.
Molly got in quickly. “I’m glad you put the top up. I’m kinda cold.”
She wore a white sweater, jeans, and a rust-colored suede car coat that only enhanced the copper tones of her hair. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“May I see some Id?”
She laughed. “Believe it or not, I still have to sneak around. At home, I mean. My father found a cigarette that had dropped out of my jacket one night. He grounded me for four nights and I was seventeen.” She used the dash lighter, inhaled deeply, exhaled a long blue stream of smoke. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“I’ve been thinking. If he wants to avoid Cliffie, the two best places would be Graves Hollow or that road that runs by where the old closed mines are.”
“Graves Hollow I’d thought of, too. But I forgot about the road by the old mines.”
“I don’t know where else to go so we may as well start there.” Then, “If I were with him, I wouldn’t let him race. Not as drunk as he is.”
“How would you stop him? He’s pretty hotheaded when he’s drunk.”
“I don’t know-take his keys and throw them in the bushes if I had to.”
“He’d just hot-wire his car.”
“Then I’d take off his distributor cap and throw it in the bushes.”
“Do you know what a distributor cap looks like?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then how would you find it?”
“I’d ask somebody.”
Neither of us could keep from smiling about that one.
“Or maybe I’d stop by a gas station and pick up one of those car guides,” she said.
“They’d have something in there about a distributor cap, wouldn’t they?”
“Maybe it’d be easier to just take his tire iron and knock him out with it.”
“Believe me, I’ve thought about it. He starts brooding about his childhood and drinking-he gets so irrational. I feel sorry for his aunts. He doesn’t seem to appreciate how much time and love they put into raising him.
He always says he was orphaned. But he wasn’t. They saw to it he wasn’t. That’s the one trait I get tired of. The way he feels so sorry for himself. He didn’t have it easy, I know that. But a lot of kids had it a lot worse.” Then, “And she doesn’t do anything to stop him when he gets drunk and crazy.”
“She being Rita?”
“Of course. The lovely Rita. That bitch.
I know I sound like a spoiled brat but I’m a lot better for him than Rita is. A lot better.”
She obviously wanted me to agree with her.
I didn’t say anything.
Against the quarter-moon a scarecrow, arms flung wide, watched over a fallow cornfield and a small farmhouse with faint smoke eeling out of its chimney. Every once in a while the headlights would pick out empty beer cans and beer bottles scattered on the brown-grass sides of the road. These were the back roads where teenagers drank and went to first, second, or third base-or hell, maybe even hit a homer-depending on mood, pluck, and luck.
Graves Hollow was so named because of a graveyard that had been abandoned right after World War I. Between our war dead and two plagues of influenza, a new and much larger cemetery had been required. The dead were so long dead up on the hill that nobody alive could remember them, so nobody visited except kids who wanted to scare each other or put the make on their girlfriends. I’ve logged my share of make-out time in cemeteries. The cheap Freudian take on it all is that you’re defying death with the affirmative act of lovemaking. The less fancy explanation is that it’s a quiet place to get laid.