She brushed some blond hair out of her face and said, “Okay.”
Two minutes later we were together in Johnny’s Grille in a back booth, both sitting on one side, snuggled together, almost like lovers. But there wasn’t much sex in it, really; just the closeness of two people who have shared something, which we certainly had, thanks to Punjab.
“How can I thank you?” she said.
“You can’t,” I said. “A hero like me comes along once per damsel-in-distress lifetime.”
Martha, the manager of the place, who also waited tables during slow times, stopped by the booth and I asked for a couple coffees.
Janet touched my hand. “Would you mind terribly if I had hot chocolate instead?”
I grinned, shrugged and made the correction, opting for hot chocolate myself. When I looked at her I saw she was grinning, too. A playful grin, and even with the wan face with its prematurely deep lines ’round eyes and mouth, and roots marring the beauty of blond hair that swept around her face
in two gentle arcs, and eyes that had an old woman in them, even with all of that, she was a child. A child who’d walked home from school in a snowstorm and when the winter dark began to fall, got scared and cold; when she finally got home her mother fixed her hot chocolate and then she was better. That kind of child.
“I-never-saw-that-horrible-man-before-in-my-life,” she said suddenly, “ever.”
“Listen,” I said, “don’t feel obligated to tell me anything you don’t want to. No explanations necessary.” In a way I meant it: momentary heroism or not, pretty blonde or no, I had no driving compulsion to “get involved.” As if I wasn’t already.
“I’m telling you the truth, Mal.”
“I believe you, Janet.”
“It’s just that it must seem kind of unbelievable to you that something like that could just walk in out of nowhere and accost somebody.”
“Not so unbelievable. I just experienced it myself, remember? It must’ve been some weird mistaken identity trip, that’s all.”
“It must have.” She looked at me, reached for my hand and squeezed: she sensed my disbelief, evidently, despite my claims to the contrary. “I’m not putting you on, Mal. I never saw him before, and I don’t know anyone who’d have any reason for sending somebody like that.”
“I said I believe you, Janet.” And I was almost starting to.
“Christ, he was big. And that eye... the one that... wasn’t there. Brrrrrr. I have to say you handled yourself well, Mal. It must not be the first fight you were ever in.”
“No.”
“You know, sometimes when I’m waiting by myself, at a bus stop or in a reception room, I sometimes play a game of trying to guess people from their looks—I guess that’s something everybody does, huh? But that’s what I was doing with you while we were sitting waiting in the terminal....”
Martha came with our hot chocolate and I said thanks and Janet continued. “Anyway,” she said sipping, “I couldn’t get a reading on you. Nothing. Not a thing.”
I blew some heat off the chocolate. “You could’ve guessed anything and probably hit something I’ve been one time or another.”
“Just what are you now?”
“Have to tell you?”
“Have to.”
“A college student. Of sorts.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not at all. Right now I’m on quarter break. Thanksgiving vacation.”
“Come on.”
“I know, I know. I look a little weathered for a college boy. Well, I’m not twenty-five yet, I’ll have you know, and people a hell of a lot older than that go to college.”
“Don’t be so defensive about it. I didn’t mean you seemed too old or anything... you just don’t look the college type. How’d you end up that way?”
“Ran out of other things, I guess. I was in Vietnam a short tour, got wounded and sent home. I worked construction. I was a cop for a while, a little while, tried newspaper work, tended bar, finally dropped out, as they used to say, and was into the dope thing, briefly. Things were seeming kind of pointless, so I
tried coming home and starting over. Been back since August, started school in September.”
“And you’re not putting me on? You were a cop, and a doper, too?”
“I just saved your rear end, lady, would I put you on? Besides, wait till you hear what I do for a living.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“I write mystery stories.”
“You’re kidding!”
“No, really. Although saying I make a living out of it may be stretching a point.”
“You mean, like you write books?”
“Not yet. But I’ve been selling short stories to
Ellery Queen
and
Mike Shayne.
Those are mystery magazines.”
“I’m impressed,” she said, meaning it, smiling.
“Don’t be,” I said. “What about you? Janet Taber? What’s the story of
your
life?”
It was like a shadow came over her face. The brightness, the child in her was gone, and she looked tired again and the old woman was back in her eyes.
“Janet? Hey, I didn’t mean to bring you down....”
She shook her head; the hot chocolate in her hands shook, too, spilled a little. “Christ,
self-pity
brings you down after a while. Listen, if I went into all of it, it’s just a friggin’ bore, real bummer, the depression that comes with it and all.”
I held up a hand. “Any way you want it, Janet.”
“You don’t mind? I just rather not go into any of that.”
“Hell, no—unless,” I said, and I slurped at my hot chocolate for dramatic effect, “unless maybe there’s something back there in what you don’t want to think about, and don’t want to talk about, that’s... dangerous.”
She got my meaning and started to stiffen up. “I told you I never saw him before.”
“And I told you I believe you.”
“Well...” She stared down into her mug of chocolate. “I got to admit it isn’t the only strange thing that’s happened to me lately.”
“Oh?”
“Well, not to me exactly. To my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“That’s what the bus is all about. I live here in Port City, have lately at least. I’m going up this afternoon to Iowa City, to the University Hospital.”
“I don’t follow you, Janet.”
“My mother. That’s where she is. The hospital.”
“I’m sorry. What’s the trouble?”
“She’s dying, I’m afraid.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
She sipped at the mug of chocolate calmly and told me that somebody had beaten her mother half to death and set the house on fire and left the old lady to burn.
“I’d been living for the last four or five years with a guy in Chicago—a guy I met during my first and last year at Drake in Des Moines. We weren’t married, but it was more than a shack-up thing, you know. We, uh, had a kid, and you know, stuck it out together.
“We were part of the Old Town scene—he turned out op art paintings and sold ’em on the street and through various shops, and I clerked in a bookstore—just a couple hippies with a love child, right? Gradually we both got into drugs, him kind of heavy, me not so—I found I couldn’t let go of the idea I was supposed to be a ‘good mother’ to my child.
“The kid was getting along fine, until one day he—by this time he was about three-and-a-half—he started acting sickly. Short of breath all the time, and complaining sometimes about chest pain. I took the kid to a doctor—and from the doctor to a specialist, and found that he had a heart condition that... that could eventually require surgery. Boy, did
I
come down quickly out of that druggie fantasy-world. I immediately started making mental lists of the changes that would have to take place in my life; that night I tried to tell my soulmate what the score was and he said, ‘No more fuckin’ hassles,’ and walked out. I haven’t seen him since.
“The moment the door closed behind my ex, I reached for the phone and called my mother and started pouring it all out. It’d been years since I talked to her, years since I’d dropped out of college, turned runaway, moved to Old Town and had a kid and all. I’d hardly got a word out when Mom told me that Dad died three years ago. I... I slammed the receiver down and waited for the tears, but there weren’t any, so I laughed instead. The kind of laughing that doesn’t have a damn thing to do with being happy, y’know? And, after the laughter, I thought of suicide. Real seriously thought of suicide. But my kid came first, before any such luxury, so I picked the phone up again and called Mom back.”
She stopped, and I thought for a moment she was going to break down; her one hand clutched the cup of hot chocolate, the other was on the table, trembling. My instinct was to hold that trembling hand—to give her some support. I didn’t know her well enough to do that, of course—but then we’d been through a war together, hadn’t we? A one-eyed war, so I followed my instinct and took her hand, and she gave me a quivery little smile that said she hadn’t taken my gesture the wrong way, and she got her story going again.
“Mom said she could help me, help
us,
my kid and me, but she also said certain arrangements would be necessary and that she would call me later, after the... arrangements were made. Four hours dragged by. Then the phone rang again, and I picked it up and it was Mom. What my mother told me seemed strange to me, but I didn’t argue. I was glad for the help. Anyway, she said I wasn’t to come to Des Moines—that’s where my family always lived—but was to meet her at an address in Port City. I didn’t know she’d even ever
been
to Port City. But that was where we’d be living from here on out, according to Mom. She wouldn’t explain why, only said she’d tell me more later, after we were settled in.”
Here she paused again, looking down into the cup of hot chocolate like she was looking for tea leaves to read.
“What I later found out was that an ‘old friend of the family’ who lived in Port City was interested in my kid, and wanted to make sure the boy was given the ‘best possible care.’ Those words: best possible care. Only this old friend wanted to remain anonymous. I had an idea who this person was, but I thought I better not make waves... at least not when I found out my boy was to be sent to this famous clinic, in New York.
“Still, several things were really bothering me. Mom and me were supposed to stay in Port City. We weren’t to follow the boy back east to the clinic. There was no reason given for this, it was just a... condition. And so as to stay as anonymous as possible, our benefactor
insisted
on making all his arrangements with Mom—that made me
sure
I knew who it was but Mom always denied it. I... never pressed the issue. My kid came first.”
Now her voice started to catch every few words; the blue eyes were moist.
“Last night... last night I spent the evening with a friend of mine. Since I didn’t have a car, my friend offered to drive me home, to Mom’s house, where I’ve been living. Half... half a dozen blocks from home the air started to fill with black smoke. The sky was... it was orange. Our house was in flames.”
She was squeezing my hand, now; she didn’t seem to know she was, but she was.
“I... I jumped from the car before it even stopped, and started running. As I was running I saw a couple firemen trying to carry a burning sofa out of the... the blaze. On the sofa was... was what I could only make out as a... ch-charred lump. Which the firemen put from the sofa onto a stretcher, to
put it in the ambulance that was backed up on the sidewalk. I looked closer, and... the charred lump... was Mom.”
And now she cried. Finally she cried.
I started, “You don’t have to...”
But she went on. Choking back the tears, their wet trails shiny on her face, like thin narrow ribbons.
“Mom’s hair was burned off, only short black stalks of it were still there. Her skin was showing through the burned strips of clothing that were on her, and h-her skin was ash-gray, where it wasn’t black. Her face was so... so burned it swelled three times normal size. It...”
“Stop, Janet,” I said. “Don’t put yourself through this.” I’d taken a paper napkin and was dabbing at her face, drying the tears like a parent; she didn’t seem to know I was doing it.
“They didn’t let me ride in the ambulance with her. They said she had to go to the University Hospital, in Iowa City, where they have this burn unit. They sent me to my friend’s house to stay the night; a doctor came with me to give me sedation, but I wouldn’t let him. Five hours later I called the hospital and a doctor told me that my mother’s condition was critical but that there was something weird about the nature of her condition: There were definite signs that led them to believe my mother was beaten—
badly
—before the fire.”
And she looked at me with blue eyes that weren’t moist anymore; they were cold and clear and, somehow, frightened and frightening at the same time.
Then Meyer came in, and said her bus was there. She got up quickly to go, and I followed along, getting in a couple quick questions, getting back a couple quick answers. One of them was “Yes,” when I asked if she’d call me when she got back from Iowa City, and let me know how she and her mother were making out.
Then she was just this pale sad face in a bus window, gliding away from me.
Ten minutes after Janet Taber’s bus left for Iowa City, John’s bus pulled in.
He stepped off the bus, two heavy bags in each hand and a clothes bag over one arm, and the smile under his sunglasses said he saw me. The sunglasses were wraparound goggles, two huge silver mirrors reflecting the sun, and the smile was John’s usual white dazzler, so the main impression of him at first glance was all sunglasses and teeth.
Not that the rest of him wasn’t striking at first glance: there was the way he was dressed, too. He had on black leather pants and a yellow-dyed buckskin coat—they were big on the West Coast for a week or two that year—with the longest hanging fringe I’d seen since the day Roy Rogers came to town when I was six. An open-collared blue shirt was showing under the coat, and a gaudy multicolor scarf was tied in a confident knot around his neck. Only his short black hair, his erect posture and the stride he used as he approached me might tip you to his being an Army sergeant arriving home on leave.
We clasped hands firmly and used our free hands to grip each other’s shoulder.