“She seems to be coming out of it OK,” he said. “She’s home now, but she’s got to take it pretty damned easy.”
“I’m glad to hear she’s better,” I said.
“Sloane and Larkin both called me after they came down—say, how sick was old Cal anyway? He says one thing, and Stan says another.”
“He was pretty damn sick,” I said.
“Yeah, I kind of thought he might have been. How was the hunt?” His voice sounded wistful.
“The hunt was pretty good,” I said. “Things got a little hairy a time or two though.”
“McKlearey?”
“Yeah.”
“I figured Miller’d be able to keep him in line.”
“He did OK, but things still got a little woolly a time or two.”
“Did anybody get that white deer Sloane told me about?”
“McKlearey shot him and he fell off a cliff. We never found him.”
“Too bad—say, Dan, I gotta get back to work. Gimme a buzz tonight, OK?”
“Sure, Mike. After supper, OK?”
“Right. Bye now.”
I guess his boss had been standing over him. I called the pawnshop. Sloane answered. His voice sounded a little puny, but otherwise he seemed OK.
“How are you feeling, Cal?” I asked him.
“Hell,” he said, “I’m OK now. I was startin’ to come out of it by the time we got back down the hill.”
“You see a doctor?”
“Yeah.” He giggled. “Claudia was on me about it as soon as I got back. He says it happens to guys my age some times. He’s got me takin’ it kinda easy for a couple of weeks.”
“Good idea,” I said. “Oh, we got your deer for you.”
“Hey, great, man—how big?”
“Five-point. He’s in prime condition.”
“Thanks a lot, Dan. Who shot ’im?”
“I did. Miller and I went out and found him.”
“Shoot out the liver?” He giggled.
“Not a chance,” I said. “Old Clint was threatening to burn me at the stake if I did.”
He told me he’d call a processing plant to take care of the deer, and I said I’d drop the hide and horns by later that morning after I’d cleaned my guns.
After I hung up I sorted out all my hunting clothes and took them over to the washhouse. Then I went back and cleaned my guns and Mcklearey’s rifle. Then I bundled up Lou’s gear and the two deer hides and drove on over to the shop.
“Come on in, Dan,” Cal called as I pushed my way on in with a big armload of gear.
“I brought Lou’s stuff on over,” I said.
Cal wanted to know where Lou was. He hadn’t shown up for work that morning. I told him that I didn’t know and filled him in on the way Lou’d taken off from Clint.
“God,” Sloane said, “that doesn’t sound like Lou. He’s pretty irresponsible sometimes, but he’s never gone that far before.”
“He was pretty badly shook up,” I said. “I don’t think he was thinking straight toward the end.” I told him about McKlearey’s shooting the white deer and then not being able to find it.
“God damn,” Cal said, “you say he took that .38 along with him?”
“That’s what Clint said.”
“Christ,” he said, his face darkening, “that damn gun’s on the record as being here in the shop. If he’s gone off the deep end or something and does something stupid with it, it could get my ass in a helluva lotta trouble.”
“Shit,” I said, “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Now what the hell do I do? I don’t want to report the gun stolen—that’d get him in all kinds of trouble. I wish I knew where the hell he was.”
“Beats me, Cal. He didn’t even say good-bye when he left.”
Sloane shook his head. “I’ll figure something out,” he said. “You want a drink?”
“Sure.”
“Come on back.” He jerked his head, and we went on into the back room. I dumped Lou’s gear in a corner and Cal reached down the bottle and handed it to me.
I took a belt and handed it back to him. He capped it up and put it away.
“Doctor said I oughta back off for a while,” he said. “I’m cuttin’ way down on my smoking, too—and I’m on a diet.”
“Jesus, Sloane, you’re going whole hog, aren’t you?”
“Let me tell you, man,” he said seriously, “I could feel the buzzards snappin’ at my ass up there. The doctor told me I came about that close to havin’ a coronary.” He measured off a fraction of an inch with his fingers. “Goddamn heart was workin’ doubletime to make up for the lack of oxygen. About one more day and I wouldn’t of made it back down. He says I gotta quit smokin’, cut way back on the booze, lose fifty pounds, and get then hours sleep a night. Christ, I feel just like a goddamn invalid.”
“Jesus,” I said, “you were sicker’n any of us figured then.”
“I was sicker’n I figured even,” he said. “That damned doctor like to scared the piss outa me.”
“You’re going to be OK, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I’ll come out of it OK. He said there wasn’t any permanent damage, but little Calvin’s gonna walk the straight and narrow for a while.”
“Not a bad idea,” I said, lighting a cigarette. I saw the hungry look in his eyes and mashed it out quickly. “Sorry, Cal,” I said.
“It’s a little tough, right at first,” he said.
We went on back out to the shop.
“You know,” he said, “it’s funny.”
“What?”
“You remember that day up there when I told you I was gonna buckle down after the trip—maybe grow up a little?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I remember.”
“Looks like I’m gonna have to do just exactly that.” He giggled, suddenly sounding like the Cal I’d always known. “This ain’t exactly what I had in mind though.”
“Somebody once said that a guy shouldn’t make promises to himself,” I told him. “He winds up having to keep them.”
“Boy, that’s sure as hell the truth,” he said.
He gave me the address of the packing plant where they’d process the deer for him, and I told him that Jack and I would get it over there for him that afternoon.
About noon, Claudia came in.
“Hello, Dan,” she said in her deep voice.
“Claudia,” I said. She still gave me goose bumps.
“How many cigarettes, Calvin?” She wasn’t badgering; she was just asking.
He mutely held up three fingers.
“Truth?” she asked.
“Ask Dan,” he said.
“He’s only had one since I got here about ten thirty,” I said. “Cross my heart and hope to turn green all over.”
She laughed, and her hand touched my arm affectionately.
“And how many nips from your hide-out bottle?” she asked him.
“What bottle?”
“The one on the top shelf in the storeroom.”
“How’d you find out about that?”
“I’ve always known about it,” she said.
He stared at her for a minute and then started laughing. “I give up,” he said. “What the hell’s the use anyway?”
“How many?” she repeated.
“Not one. I gave Dan a belt, but I haven’t touched a drop.”
“Good,” she said. “I’m not nagging you, Calvin. This is for your own good.”
“I know, dear,” he said. It was the first time I’d ever heard him use any term of endearment to her.
“You’d better run on along home now,” she said. “I put a big bowl of salad in the refrigerator for you.”
“I’m startin’ to feel like a damn rabbit,” he complained. “I got lettuce comin’ out of my ears.”
“But you’ve lost weight, haven’t you?” she said.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said grudgingly.
“And take your nap this time,” she commanded.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I said good-bye to him, and he went on out. I’d been ready to leave, too, but Claudia had given me a quick signal to stick around. After he left she turned to me, her face serious.
“Just how bad was he up there, Dan?” she asked me.
“He was pretty sick,” I told her. “He couldn’t seem to get his breath, and there were a couple times when he couldn’t keep anything down. We all figured he’d snap out of it, but he just couldn’t seem to get adjusted.”
“Why didn’t you send him down earlier?” she asked.
“I don’t think any of us really knew how sick he really was,” I told her. “A couple times it seemed like he was getting better. He’d go on our hunting and things seemed to be coming along fine, but then he’d conk out again. We were all watching him pretty closely, but he kept telling us that he’d be all right in just a little bit.”
She shook her head. “Men!” she said. “You’re all just a bunch of overgrown children.”
“I’ve been finding that out,” I told her.
“I’d the if I lost him, Dan.”
Sloane?
I guess it must have shown on my face.
“You don’t understand, do you, Dan?”
“It’s none of my business really,” I told her.
“I know,” she said, “but I want to tell you anyway.”
Why me, for God’s sake? Why always me?
“I think I’m as happy now as I’ve ever been in my life,” she said, looking out the window. “For the first time, Calvin-needs me—not just the fact that I can keep his books or pick out furniture or any of that. He needs me. When he came home, he was frightened—terribly frightened. He came to me for the first time without making it some kind of deal—you know, ‘I’ll do this for you if you’ll do that for me.’ It was the first time he didn’t try to buy me. You have no idea what that means to a woman.”
“I think I do,” I said quietly.
“I suppose maybe you would,” she said. “You seem to see a lot of things that other people don’t.” She looked steadily up at me for a minute. “You see, Dan,” she said finally, “I can’t have any children. I did something pretty stupid when I was about seventeen, and I had an abortion. It wasn’t even a doctor who did it, and of course I went septic. I wound up losing everything.” She passed her hand across her lower abdomen. “Calvin and I decided not to adopt children—I suppose we could have, but we just decided not to. So Calvin is my baby. That’s the way it’s always been.”
I nodded.
“But this is the first time he’s ever turned to me this way. Maybe it really isn’t much of a basis for a good marriage but—” she shrugged.
“It’s probably as good as any,” I said, “and better than a lot of them.”
She smiled at me. “Thank you,” she said, “I thought you’d understand.”
We talked a while longer, and then I took off. She was one helluva woman.
I picked up Clydine after her last class, and we went on back to my place. She’d told me quite emphatically that morning that she was going to spend every spare minute with me until I left for Seattle. I wasn’t really about to argue with her.
35
I didn’t see Stan until the next weekend. I’m not sure why, but I think I was avoiding him. When I called to make sure he was home, I got the distinct impression that he’d have preferred to keep it that way, but it was too late then.
He was growing a mustache, and it made his face look dirty. Stan didn’t have the kind of face you’d want to put a mustache on. And instead of one of the usual sober-colored, conservative sport shirts I’d always seen him in, he was wearing a loud checkered wool shirt—outdoorsy as all hell, and on him about as phony as a nine-dollar bill.
“Well, Dan,” he said with a nervous joviality, “how the hell have you been?” As if he hadn’t seen me in ten years, for God’s sake.
“Fair, Stan. Just fair.”
We went on into his tidy little living room.
“How’s old Cal?”
“He’s coming along. His doctor’s got him on a short schedule and cut him off on booze and cigarettes.”
“He gave me a damn bad scare up there, the poor bastard.”
What the hell was all this?
He fidgeted around a little, and our conversation was pretty sketchy. I wasn’t sure what this he-man role he was playing was all about, but I desperately wanted to tell him that it wasn’t coming off very well.
“Oh,” he said, “I’ve been fixing up the den. I wanted you to see it.” He led me back to the room he’d identified as the study the last time I’d been there.
He’d redone the place in early musket ball. The rifle and his shotgun were hanging on the wall where they could collect dust, and there were hunting prints hanging all over the place. I could see copies of Field and Stream and The American Rifleman scattered around with a studied carelessness. The place looked like a goddamn movie set.
“I’m having that buck’s head mounted,” he said. “How do you think it would look right there?” He pointed to a place that had obviously been left empty for the trophy.
“Ought to be OK, Stan,” I told him.
We went back into the living room and I listened to him come on like the reincarnation of Ernest Hemingway for about a half hour or so.
Then Monica came in and suddenly it all fell into place.
“Did you pick up the beer like I asked you to?” he said to her, his voice cocked like a gun.
“Yes, Stan,” she said—rather meekly, I thought.
“Why don’t you open a couple for Dan and me?”
“Of course,” she said and went on back out to the kitchen.
I watched Stan, who had never smoked, light a cigar. I wanted to tell him that he was overplaying it, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it.
I sat around for another half hour or so, listening to him swear and give Monica orders, and then I’d had a gutful of the whole thing. I made an excuse and got away from them.
I suppose that what made the whole thing so pathetic was the fact that it was all so completely unnecessary. After her little misjudgment with McKlearey, Monica would have been pretty docile even without his big hairy-chested routine. Stan was saddling himself with the necessity of playing a role for the rest of his life. He’d get better at it as time went on. In a few years he might even get to the point where he believed it himself, but I don’t think he’d ever really be comfortable with it.
I picked up Clydine and told her about it as we drove back on across town to my place.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I can’t do a damn thing,” I said. “I sure as hell can’t tell him that McKlearey got to Monica, and that’s the only way I could convince him that this act of his isn’t the thing that put him in the driver’s seat.”
“But if this is so unnatural for him,” she objected, “he’s really no better off than he was before, is he?”
“No,” I said, “he isn’t. He’s still in a box—it’s just a different box, that’s all.”
“But you ought to be able to do something,” she said.
“Hell, Rosebud,” I said, “I didn’t hire on as God. Last time I tried to walk on water, I got wetter than hell.”
She crossed her arms and glowered straight ahead. “I still think there’s something you could do,” she said. “It’s just awful to think about what they’ll have to go through for all the rest of their lives.”
“Well,” I said in my best Hemingway manner, “don’t think about it then.”
She didn’t catch the allusion, and so she was angry with me for being an insensitive clod. You can’t win.
When we got to my place, she was still steamed, so we sat around listening to records and not talking to each other. She sure could be stubborn when she wanted to be.
Then Cal called. “Dan,” he said, “I just got a call from one of the bartenders on the Avenue, and he said he just saw McKle
arey.”
“No shit? I thought he’d blown town.”
“I really don’t much give a damn what he does,” Cal said, “but I sure as hell want to get that goddamn pistol back from him. I could write it off on the three days’ pay I owe him from the car lot, but the paper has got to be straightened out.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I see what you mean.”
“Are you busy right now? I tried to get hold of Jack, but he’s out delivering a camper trailer.”
“What do you need?” I asked him, glancing at Clydine. She still wasn’t looking at me.
“Somebody’s gonna have to run him down—somebody who knows the score. I can’t get away until later, and I’m afraid he’ll go back in his hole before then.”
“You want me to find him?”
“Right. Just tell him to come by the shop. I want him to pick up all this shit of his anyway—and tell me what he wants done with his goddamn deer.”
“Which way was he going?”
“God, I really don’t know.”
“I’ll just have to hunt him down then, I guess,” I said.
“Thanks a lot, Dan.”
“Sure, Cal.”
I hung up and went back to the dinky little living room.
“Do you want to play private detective?” I asked her.
She brooded for a minute or so, probably trying to decide whether it would be more fun to keep sulking or to find out what I was talking about. I couldn’t quite make up my mind whether I wanted to give her a good solid spanking or a big kiss right on the end of her little snoot.
“What do you have in mind?” she finally asked, not really wanting to give up the good pout she had going.
“We’ve got to go find McKlearey,” I told her.
“Old Creepy-Jarhead himself?”
“That’s our man,” I told her. “He’s got a hot gun, and we’ve gotta get to him before the fuzz do or before he pulls a caper with it. Our client would find that pretty embarrassing.” I lit a cigarette and squinted at her through the smoke.
“Have you been watching television?” She laughed, unable to help it.
“It’s a big case, baby,” I said, putting the Bogart accent on even more thickly. “Every shamus in town would give his eyeteeth to get a piece of the action.”
“OK, Knuckles,” she said toughly, standing up and hitching up her blue jeans. “Let’s go run down the subject. We gonna rub ’im out when we find ’im?”