The Daily Novel

Twenty

Mrs. Richardson had pivoted me onto the couch and tucked me into a blue quilt. I woke up all cozy and rested, but I felt like a busted spring.

The light was pink against the curtains, and I didn’t know where her bathroom was. I scouted quickly and found it, and when I came out there was light and cheer in the kitchen. Mrs. Richardson was cooking bacon and eggs. She told me it was a long time since she had kept a man overnight, and she laughed at me and fed me, and when I tried to thank her, she treated me like some kid who was trying to sell his truck to pay her for the breakfast.

When I stood by her door, the sun was almost up. She stood in front of me, a little old lady with a big wrinkly nose and big wrinkly hands. Her hair was all white, and it was neat, though I don’t know when she’d had time to fool with it that morning. I stood by the door, and I looked down at her. I felt the way Tammy Manchester would have felt if she had been lucky enough to have a father who wasn’t a jerk.

“Thank you,” I said, “I—”

Mrs. Richardson’s old hands came up and touched my cheeks. They were warm and smooth, the way wrinkled, plump, old hands are. Her fingers made little circles on my face, and then she pulled down, gentle as a leaf. She kissed me on the mouth, softly, quietly. Tenderly.

“Thank you,” I said. I went along the green rubber runner in the hall and out the door. The shadows in the street were long, and the light between them was darkest gold. I arced out backward and whined down the street, past the grocery, past the post office corner, past the deceased diner. It was all morning and empty. At the stop sign I looked to the left. A battered black Pontiac was lonesome on the apron, and I wondered if Randy Scheidt were going to hammer on its brakes today. The sign still said Mar ak.

I drove past where Ron Miller had shot my car and shot my car and missed me and missed me and ticked me. I drove past the phone booth and thought about when Perkins was a man and a friend. Once I had walked south with him and wanted to keep walking through the night. Now I was driving northwest, and I wanted to go and go and go and leave him so far behind that I would never have to think of him again.

I drove on blacktop through the wheat. It wanted to be gold. The gold was creeping up from the feet, like the way hemlock works on you. After a while, the wheat turned to wheat-amid-scabrock. The ponds in the scab lands were low this year, but the ducks seemed to be doing OK. I stopped in a town called Sprague and mailed a postcard to Dr. Johannasvater. I told him I was sorry I had not come back to let him finish fixing my hand. I thanked him for fixing me up as much as he had.

The scablands slid into the low hills, and then there were hills and then it was the mountains. The road was new and broad, and my car did not complain going up the wall and over the hump. Sometimes there was a funny whistling sound from the bullet hole in the hood. But only when the wind was right—or wrong.

I tried to stay blank, but a couple of times I had to pull off and wait. Once it was in the pothole country, and once it was way up in the pines. It was dry and dusty up there, and even the pines just smelled like dust. I stopped once more just over the top of the mountains. I was leaning on the wheel, and I went to sleep. I woke up and it was raining, lightly. I could smell the smell of the new rain on the dusty, warm concrete.

I got to Seattle from the wrong direction, but I drove all the way through so I could go to Tomasino’s. Traffic wasn’t too bad till I got near the north side. I fought my way through it and past Northgate and started to think I could taste the anchovies.

It hadn’t been three weeks since I had been there. But Tomasino’s was closed, swirls of soapy white paint over the window. It looked like fingerpainting in pus.

After a little, I went back to my place. My Hudson was still in mothballs over by Roselawn. It was too late to go over there, and I had no reason to go over there. But I sort of felt like going over there. I couldn’t find any Buckhorn, so I drank Rainier. I tried not to think of Perkins. Outside it was dark, but the city made a glow in the sky. I tried not to think about Perkins.

•

Almost two years later, a little man with a bow tie hired me to find out a number of things that are not germane here. I did so. In the process, I visited a house on Pike Street, a couple dozen blocks up from the market.

At first, Miss Nancy, the madam, was inclined to be snotty. I showed her how wrong her attitude was, and we got along fine. I found out what I needed to find out and headed home to collect my fee.

At the bottom of the stairs, I turned and spoke to Miss Nancy. Fifteen feet down the hall to our left, a phantom shape in a green satin wrapper came out of a door, then ducked quickly out of sight. Her long red hair flickered behind her like a fox tail. It was Tammy Manchester.

Miss Nancy was pleased that things had turned out as pleasantly and placidly as they had. She said, “What was that, Chapman?”

I looked down the empty hall.

“Never mind,” I said. “Nothing.”

THE END