John D. MacDonald
The Second Chance
The blue-and-silver bus shouldered its way through the brawling, irritable traffic of the big Midwestern city. It turned slowly off a narrow street into the covered ramp of the terminal, and in the enclosure the heavy motor sounded louder. Lew Barry stood up, his tall hard body cramped from too many miles. The pest beside him stood up too, flashing his eager, terrier smile.
“Like I was saying, Champ, if you was to try a comeback now, you couldn’t pick a better time. The division is full of bums. I know you the minute I lay eyes on you. Even if it is five years. I sure’d like to see you back in there.”
Lew had endured the chatter uncomplainingly. In a sense it had helped. It had kept him from thinking too much about what was waiting, from wondering too much and too long. Lew was a big man in his middle thirties, and he showed the indelible marks of sixty-three professional fights: Brown hair thinned by the arcs. Brows and lips thickened and white-laced. Big hands broken and mended too many times. The thickness of brows made his clear blue eyes look small, sunken, cold and remote. But he still carried his weight high, in chest and neck and shoulders, and moved his body with spare, effortless economy.
“It’s been too long, friend,” he said in his soft husky voice. “Too long. They’d knock my ears off.”
“Aw, they don’t punch any more, Champ.”
“I never did get that title, friend.”
“On you it would sound good, Champ. You got a trucking business now, so maybe that’s better. Maybe it’s a lot better. But a guy can dream. I’ll never forget that second Louis fight. Never.”
“He killed me,” Lew said, smiling.
“But he didn’t knock you out. Nobody ever knocked you out.”
They stood beside the bus and he shook hands with the little man, and when the bags were unloaded from the compartment in the side of the bus, he surrendered his ticket and took his bag and walked into the waiting-room, feeling in his pocket for change for the phone. The phones were at the far end; as he walked toward them she appeared suddenly in front of him, and she looked the way she had looked in all the dreams of the past five years — a tall woman with a look of clean integrity, with an odd inner radiance that glowed in fine gray eyes.
She kissed his cheek lightly and quickly and stood back, her hands tight just above his wrists, a faint glimmer of tears in her eyes. “Lew, bless you!”
“It’s... good to see you, Ivy. I didn’t expect you to meet me.”
“The car’s outside. Your wire said you’d get in about three. I checked the planes and trains and buses. If you didn’t come in on that bus, I was going over to the railroad station to meet the three-ten from the East.”
They went out into the bright warm sunshine. She walked beside him in the remembered way, her stride long and good.
“How’s Jack?”
“He’s fine, Lew. Anxious to see you, of course. I’ll let him tell you what’s on his mind.”
The car was a chartreuse convertible with dealer’s plates. She said, “I’d better drive, Lew. It’s tricky finding your way out of town.”
While she was concentrating on traffic, moving deftly through the openings, he half-turned in the seat to look at her. The same Ivy or almost the same. Now there were perceptible lines at the corners of her eyes, a look of strain around her mouth, a trace of gauntness in her figure. In the sunlight he saw white hairs in the jet hair, just a few above her car. Time goes by and things change. And he couldn’t let himself think of her as Ivy Brownell. She was Mrs. Terrance now, Mrs. Jack Terrance, even if he couldn’t rid himself of the pointless dreams.
After many turns through narrow streets, she turned left onto a broad boulevard. “There!” she said, relaxing a bit. “It’s simple from now on. Jack’s sorry he couldn’t meet you. He should be back at the house by five, he said. Lew, why didn’t you ever write?”
“I’m not much of a hand at letters, Ivy.”
“But you’ve left us both in the dark. We don’t know anything about you any more, except that you went into the trucking business. Did you get married?”
“No time for it, Ivy.”
“How is the business going?”
“Fine,” he said heartily. “It took a while to get established. Things are okay now.” He wondered if he had sounded too confident. Ivy had always been able to tell, somehow, when he was lying. Business was dandy. Got up to five rigs a year and a half ago. Then two of them were gone within one week. One rolled down the slope of a Pennsylvania mountain and was pounded into junk, crippling the driver. One was smacked head-on by a drunk in a big Cad, killing both drivers and burning the rig. That eight-balled the best contract, and the bank took back the biggest, newest outfit. Somehow, after that streak of bad luck, he hadn’t been able to climb back. Maintenance took too big a chunk of the gross. He’d driven one and Whitey the other, on a killing schedule, never getting ahead. And then the wire had come from Jack Terrance.
NEED HELP AND ADVICE. WANT TO SEE YOU. WIRE TIME OF ARRIVAL.
Very typical of Jack Terrance, he thought. No question of whether it would be convenient or even possible. “Come at once,” and the blithe assurance that you would, that if your old pal Jack needed you, you’d drop everything and come running.
The wire had come at six, and by luck he had been there instead of off on a week-long swing, bidding on the wildcat loads. He had thought of Jack, and thought of Ivy, and thought of the endless ache to see her. And he had gotten drunk for the first time since losing the two rigs in a week, and the next day he had sold out his equity in both rigs, receiving twenty-one hundred dollars. He gave Whitey a month’s pay, settled his own debts, and checked out of the small furnished apartment permanently.
He met Ivy’s quick glance with bland assurance and said, “The business is doing well.”
“I’m glad, Lew. Terribly glad.”
The boulevard led straight into the flatlands, and she turned right toward gentle hills. She suddenly pulled off the road where there was heavy shade. “I want to talk,” she explained.
“Sure,” he said, wondering at the bitterness in her tone.
She tapped a cigarette on the back of her hand. He brought out matches and lit it for her.
“It puts me in a funny spot, Lew,” she said.
“How do you mean?”
“I want to talk to you, yet I don’t want to be disloyal to Jack. The three of us, Lew — we were a good trio. It was fun, while it lasted. You two were my date. Singular. I’ll never know why you walked out, will I?”
“Maybe not.”
“I married Jack.” She touched his hand. “Lew, I don’t regret that. And I know you were in love with me.”
He managed a smile. “Still am.”
“Please! This is hard enough to say without—”
“Sorry, Ivy.”
“Jack is going to ask you something. I promised him I’d let him bring it up, so I can’t tell you what it is. But I can tell you this much, Lew. I don’t approve of his asking you this. It’s too much to ask. He was always able to get around you, to get you to do things for him. You did too much in the past. He’s very clever, Lew. I’m afraid he’s going to make this favor sound as though you would be doing it for both of us. You’re not. If you want to do it, you’re doing it for him, not for me. I personally hope it falls through. But I can’t be loyal to Jack and at the same time ask you to refuse. Because, you see, what he’s going to ask you means a great deal to him.”
“Sounds confusing.”
“It will clear up when he brings it up. Don’t give him an immediate answer; tell him you have to think about it. Then we can find a chance to talk it over, and I’ll explain where I stand. Is that agreed?”