I gathered her up and kissed her. “All right, you can quit worrying about it. There won’t be any more ‘loans’ to Sutton. And between the two of us we can put every nickel of it back and have the books straight in less than three months.”
I wasn’t as optimistic about it as I sounded, but I wanted to get the load off her mind right then, so she could get some rest.
“But, Harry, I’ve got to go to Mr. Harshaw—“
“No, honey,” I said. “You can’t. Don’t you see, with his heart in the shape it’s in, you can’t tell him anything like that now? When it’s all over and we’re square with the world you can tell him if you want, but I don’t see any sense in it. Actually, he’ll have been making money on it at around three per cent per month for a year, so he should kick.”
“But—“ she protested, “there isn’t any reason for you to get mixed up in it—paying it back, I mean.”
“Yes,” I said. “I can think of one. Maybe I mentioned it before. I’m in love with you.”
For the first time, she smiled. It wasn’t much, and she had to work at it awfully hard, but it was there and to me it looked like the sun coming up.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s look for tear stains. I’m going to take you home, and I don’t want your sister to think I’ve been beating you.”
I switched on the light, and she repaired the damage.
While she was poking around in her purse, something fell out of it, bounced once on the seat, and fell on to the floor mat. I groped around for it and found it for her. It was a money clasp, apparently of sterling silver and made in the shape of a dollar sign.
“Say that’s a pretty thing,” I said.
“My mother gave it to me when I graduated from high school.”
I handed it back to her and she dropped it into her purse. “We can be married any time,” I said. “We’ve already got our silver started.”
She laughed, and finished rubbing out the tear stains. She felt a lot better, and I kept on clowning so she wouldn’t know the way I was raging inside.
* * *
When I left her at the gate it was like pulling off an arm to let her go, but I was anxious to get started before she thought to ask me what I was going to do. I didn’t want to lie to her any more than I had to, and I knew she’d be frantic and try to make me promise if she got an inkling of what was going on in my mind.
When I got over on Main I stopped under a street light and got out and opened the trunk. I found what I was looking for, and threw them in the front seat. They were a pair of leather gloves I’d won on a punchboard one time and kept in the car for changing tires. They were leather all over, very thick and tough. For a job like this they’d save your hands almost as well as having them taped.
I was doing seventy by the time I got out of town. I’d forgotten about Tate and the Sheriff and the fact that they were still keeping an eye on me. If they tried to follow me, they got lost. I had to slow down when I left the highway, but I was crowding it all the way across the sandhills and through the river bottom. I went up over the second ridge bucking along like a madman in the uneven ruts, and when I hit the clearing I drove right up in his yard. And he wasn’t home.
The car was gone, and in the beams of the headlights I could see the cabin door was closed. I sat there cursing for two or three minutes before I remembered it was Saturday night. A big sport like Sutton would be in town, or even in the county seat. He had to spend all that easy money some way.
There was no use going back and looking for him around the beer joints and pool halls. The only thing to do was wait. I looked at my watch. It was a little after eleven.
I waited until twelve. And then it was one a.m. Somewhere far off a train whistled for a crossing, and once in a while a little night breeze would rustle through the oaks around the clearing. What was the use of hanging around any longer? He was probably bedded down somewhere by this time and wasn’t coming back.
I gave it up finally at two-thirty and went back to town. I took a shower and lay down in the darkness with an all-night pass on the merry-go-round. The ash-tray on the floor beside the bed filled up and overflowed, and the sheets stuck to me every time I’d turn. I’d think of him, not satisfied with squeezing her dry with blackmail but having to dress it up with that crawling joke of his and humiliate her for his own particular brand of laughs, and the anger would come boiling up and choke me.
When was it going to end, and where? If I got him stopped, how about Dolores Harshaw? The whole thing was changed now. I wanted to stay here, and I wanted to marry Gloria. So then she’d just wish us luck, and that Sheriff would get off my back and take up raising orchids? There wasn’t any way to guess what she was going to do.
I must have dropped off to sleep sometime towards dawn, for the next thing I knew it was ten-thirty and I could hear church-bells ringing. Sutton was back in my mind with the opening of my eyes, as if he’d never been gone, and even while I was looking at my watch I was rolling out of bed. I dressed and went downtown. Sunlight was brassy in the streets, stabbing at my eyes. Only a few people were in the restaurant. I ordered orange juice and coffee, and while I sat drinking it a man in a white hat came in and sat down at the second stool on my left. It was Tate. He nodded.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“All right, I guess.”
“Anything new in the bank deal?”
“No,” he said. “We’re still waiting.” He looked at me, the level gaze devoid of any expression at all, and then went back to the newspaper, “just waiting.”
I finished the coffee and put some change on the counter. “See you around,” I said, and went out. I could feel him there behind me. Waiting, I thought. They’d wait a long time. I threw my cigarette savagely into the street and headed for the car, forgetting them. He ought to be home by now.
When I crossed the bridge over the river I thought of last night, and of her telling me, and began to ride the accelerator. And then when I hit the clearing I could see the car parked near the porch. He was home. I rolled to a stop in the front yard, grabbed the leather gloves off the seat, and got out.
I went up on the front porch and in the door without knocking. He wasn’t there. I stood in the middle of the room, looking around, feeling the wicked proddings of impatience and baffled rage. It looked about the same as it had that other time, when I’d come out here with Gloria, the bed unmade and dirty dishes sitting on the table by the rear door. Maybe he’d gone hunting. I turned, looking along the walls. The .22 rifle was lying in a rack near the front door and just above it was a pump shotgun. He couldn’t have gone far. A sudden thought occurred to me and I went over and checked the guns. The .22 was empty, but when I worked the action on the shotgun it was loaded. I jacked the three shells out on to the floor, picked them up, and threw them under the bed.
I sat down on the bed and leaned back against the wall. Outside I could hear a woodpecker hammering on a tree. The air was dead and very hot and I could feel sweat breaking out on my face. And then I heard him coming. He was climbing out of the ravine behind the house. I sat there as he appeared in the rear door, carrying a bucket of water in each hand.
He was wearing overalls, but no shirt, and the black hair on his arms and chest glistened with sweat. The smooth moon face split open with a grin that didn’t get as far as his eyes.