I won’t tell you much about how I got out of there, about the guy that seen me, and stopped his car, and found a length of rubber hose, and threw me one end of it, and then ran me home, and wrapped me in blankets, and opened up a can of hot soup, and then give me hot coffee and hot milk mixed, and then put me to bed. If I told you too much, maybe you could figure out who he is, and he’d be in more trouble than I’m worth. And anyway, what I want to tell about, what I been leading up to all this time, was next morning, when he come in the little room he had put me in, and sat down beside the bed, and it was just him and me. He kind of mentioned that his wife and little boy were visiting her folks over the weekend, and I got the idea that was what he was trying to tell me, that it was just him and me, that nobody else knew anything. After a while he says: “What’s your name?”
“...Bud O’Brien’s my name.”
“Funny. I thought it was Conley.”
“What made you think that?”
“There was a convict named Conley that made his escape yesterday. From the stencil marks on those denims you were wearing, I figured you came from a prison yourself.”
“In that case, you might be right.”
“Want to read about it, Conley?”
“Yeah, I’d kind of like to.”
He went out and came back with the papers, and it was all plastered over the front pages how me and Bugs had slipped out in the meat truck, killed the driver, then killed another guy and taken his car, then been shot by the cops, with Bugs wounding a cop before they got him, and my body washing down the storm drain. Identification was certain, though, it said, because a cop recognized me before I went down. So I read all that stuff, and then I started to talk, and I told the guy what I’ve just told you, and ’specially I tried to make him believe I never killed anybody, which I didn’t. He listened, and sat there a long time, and then he said: “I figured it might be something like that. ’Specially when I read that item that covered Calenso’s record and your record... All right, let’s say it’s true, the way you tell it. Well — O.K. I guess I really believe it. You didn’t kill anybody, and you’re dead. So far as the cops are concerned, they know they got you, and that means that today, this Sunday morning, you can, if I say the word, begin a new life. Suppose I do say the word, what then? What are you going to do with this life?”
Well, what was I going to say? The last I did any thinking about my life, I was ten feet under the street, in a drain pipe that was drowning me so fast I couldn’t see myself sink, and I wasn’t ready to talk. I began mumbling about I hope I would die if I ever pulled any crooked stuff again, and how I sure was going to get a job and go to work, and he listened, and then cut me off short. “That’s not good enough, Conley.”
“It’s all I know to do.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
“There’s just one place for a guy your age, these days, with your country in a war. Just one place, and you haven’t once mentioned it.”
“Well, I’m all registered up.”
“You sure of that?”
“You bet I’m registered up. O.K., so it’s the army, but don’t you think I’d have been in it long ago if it hadn’t been for that rap I was doing?”
“Which is your draft board?”
We talked for a minute about that, and then we both seen that wouldn’t do, because even if I give a new name to the draft board, the fingerprints would trip me, and then all of a sudden I said: “O.K., mister, I got it. This man’s army, the one we got, it can’t take me, because before it does, it’s got to turn me over to the state of California to die for what Bugs Calenso done. But that’s not the only army. There’s other armies—”
He looked up and come over and shook hands. So that’s where I am now, on my way to another army, that’s fighting for the same thing and that needs guys just as much as our army does. And I’m writing this on the deck of a freighter headed west, and the agreement is I mail it to him, to prove I did like I promised. If it all goes O.K., he keeps this locked up, and that’s that. If something goes wrong, and the ship gets it, or maybe my number goes up and I check in over there, why then maybe he hands it to some guy, to be printed if somebody wants to read it. So—
Say, that’s a funny one. Them reporters, they generally get it right, don’t they? Because now, if you happen to read this, why then Red Conley, he is dead!
Pay-Off Girl
I met her a month ago at a little café called Mike’s Joint, in Cottage City, Maryland, a town just over the District line from Washington, D. C. As to what she was doing in this lovely honkytonk, I’ll get to it, all in due time. As to what I was doing there, I’m not at all sure that I know as it wasn’t my kind of place. But even a code clerk gets restless, especially if he used to dream about being a diplomat and he wound up behind a glass partition, unscrambling cables. And on top of that was my father out in San Diego, who kept writing me sarcastic letters telling how an A-1 canned-goods salesman had turned into a Z-99 government punk, and wanting to know when I’d start working for him again, and making some money. And on top of that was Washington, with the suicide climate it has, which to a Californian is the same as death, only worse.
Or it may have been lack of character. But whatever it was, there I sat, at the end of the bar, having a bottle of beer, when from behind me came a voice: “Mike, a light in that ’phone booth would help. People could see to dial. And that candle in there smells bad.”
“Yes, Miss, I’ll get a bulb.”
“I know, Mike, but when?”
“I’ll get one.”
She spoke low, but meant business. He tossed some cubes in a glass and made her iced coffee, and she took the next stool to drink it. As soon as I could see her I got a stifled feeling. She was blonde, a bit younger than I am, which is 25, medium size, with quite a shape, and good-looking enough, though maybe no raving beauty. But what cut my wind were the clothes and the way she wore them. She had on a peasant blouse, with big orange beads dipping into the neck, black shoes with high heels and fancy lattice-work straps, and a pleated orange skirt that flickered around her like flame. And to me, born right on the border, that outfit spelled Mexico, but hot Mexico, with chili, castanets, and hat dancing in it, which I love. I looked all the law allowed, and then had to do eyes front, as she began looking, at her beads, at her clothes, at her feet, to see what the trouble was.
Soon a guy came in and said the bookies had sent him here to get paid off on a horse. Mike said have a seat, the young lady would take care of him. She said: “At the table in the corner. I’ll be there directly.”
I sipped my beer and thought it over. If I say I liked that she was pay-off girl from some bookies, I’m not telling the truth, and if I say it made any difference, I’m telling a downright lie. I just didn’t care, because my throat had talked to my mouth, which was so dry the beer rasped through it. I watched her while she finished her coffee, went to the table, and opened a leather case she’d been holding in her lap. She took out a tiny adding machine, some typewritten sheets of paper, and a box of little manila envelopes. She handed the guy a pen, had him sign one of the sheets, and gave him one of the envelopes. Then she picked up the pen and made a note on the sheet. He came to the bar and ordered a drink. Mike winked at me. He said: “They make a nice class of business, gamblers do. When they win they want a drink, and when they lose they need one.”