Now and on Earth (14 page)

We walked back home, and Mom was waiting on the front steps.

"Part of her clothes are gone, Roberta. So's that little dressing case of Frankie's."

Roberta slumped. "Mom!"

"I don't know where the child could be, do you? Jimmie, can't you think of anything?"

I didn't know what to think. Once, when she was three, she'd told us she was going away and leave us for good, and, traditionally, we'd said that's just fine, and we'd fixed her a lunch and packed some clothes for her to take; thinking we'd bluff her out of it, you know. It was almost a day before we got her back. A brakie found her sitting in the caboose of a freight that was getting ready to pull out for Chicago.

"I don't know," I said. "She didn't have any money, did she?"

"Not that I know of."

"Well," I said, thinking out loud, "that night we were down to the bay she kept wanting to get into one of the boats. She said she bet she could cross the ocean if-"

Roberta screamed. "That's where she's gone! She'll be drowned! I know she's drowned! My baby, my-"

Then she fainted.

Mom and I lugged her into the house. Frankie started telephoning. She called the Travelers' Aid. The police. The transportation company. She was almost hysterical, for one of the few times in her life, and I guess they could only half-understand what she was talking about because- But I didn't wait for her to finish. As soon as I'd dropped Roberta, I got out and headed for the bay as fast as I could run.

There wasn't any beach there, there at the place where we had been. Just an embankment and a private dock and the mud flats that were already vanishing under the incoming tide. Forty or fifty feet out from the water's edge was a small rowboat, one of dozens that were rocking and leaping with the waves. Something white clung desperately to its side, and strangling, faintly, I could hear Shannon calling.

I knew what had happened. She had walked out there on the mud before the tide started coming in. Perhaps, as the waves began to sweep and crash around her, she had tried to walk back. Perhaps she had been trying to get the anchor undone and had fallen over. Now-

I shouted for her to hold on. Shouting, I slid down the embankment to the mud and plowed into the water. A wave swept me off my feet, and I still kept shouting, and I was strangled. But I came up half-running-trying to run-and half-swimming toward the boat. I got there. Holding on to the edges, I worked my way around to the place where Shannon was.

It wasn't Shannon. It was a piece of canvas…

I was plodding back up the hill, so completely out of my head that I didn't know how cold I was, when I met Frankie coming down.

"Jimmie! What on earth!"

"She's dead," I said. "She fell into the bay and-"

"She's home in bed," said Frankie. "She was with the druggist."

"B-but-"

"You know how much she gets on Jo's nerves. Well, during all the excitement this afternoon, Jo wrote a note to the druggist on your typewriter and signed your name to it, and asked him to look after Shannon for a few days. She said you were going to be out of town, and you knew how much he enjoyed having her, and so on. It was a darned sight better than I could have written; I don't blame the guy for being taken in. As soon as Jo saw all the commotion she was causing, she got scared and told us about it."

"But why-"

"I told you. Jo has a lot of plays she's working on, and she didn't want Shannon around. At least that's all she'd say. She didn't have time to say much before she locked herself in the bathroom."

When we got home, Mom was standing in the door way, very red and apologetic, and a cop was sitting in a scout car out in front. There was another cop coming down the steps, and he was mad and apologetic. And the old man in front of him-a very dignified old codger- was just plain damned mad. He was cursing every breath he drew, but the little girl in his arms was bawling so hard that you couldn't understand what he was saying.

Frankie and I kind of scurried around the procession, and just as we darted in the door, another car pulled up in front. A woman in a blue suit and an overseas cap emerged. She opened the rear door of the car, and a Negro girl-a cute little tot of six or seven with pink-ribboned pigtails and an ear-to-ear grin-got out.

Mom gritted her teeth and told me to take care of Roberta. "I'll settle this."

Frankie started telephoning again.

I made for the bathroom.

Roberta had an insect-spray gun. She was trying to shoot the spray through the keyhole and kick the door down at the same time. She was shouting that she'd kill Jo if she didn't open the door, and that she'd kill her as soon as she did get it open. Jo wasn't saying anything. She was (I knew) sitting on the stool reading. There's always something to read in the bathroom.

Mom got rid of the Travelers' Aid woman, and Frankie finished notifying people that the lost was found, and between the three of us we dragged Roberta into the front room and held her down until she'd cooled off.

Mom told about the cops and the old fellow with the little girl, and the Travelers' Aid woman with the little Negro girl, and it was funny. Funny unless you thought about it from my standpoint. Roberta began to giggle, then to laugh. Mom made a pot of coffee for all hands and told me I'd better change clothes. I went back and advised Jo that it was safe to come out. Roberta shook her a little by one arm in a sort of absent-minded way and that was all there was to it.

I didn't think it was funny, and it wasn't just because I'd got a ducking out of the business. Jo wouldn't feel any different toward Shannon tomorrow than she did tonight. She wanted to get away from Shannon, and she couldn't; so she was trying to get Shannon away from her. And it was pretty obvious that she didn't care how she did it. As obvious as the fact that Shannon wasn't going to change or make herself any less detestable to Jo.

Jo is resourceful; she has the I.Q. of a person ten years older; and there is no use denying that she can be deadly hard and contemptuous of consequences. I couldn't help thinking what a nineteen-year-old girl might do to a- I shut the idea out of my mind. Things weren't that bad-yet. Jo still felt a deep affection for Shannon. She was proud of her fighting prowess. She'd dress her up and drag her around the neighborhood to plays. Share things with her. So-no, they weren't that bad, yet. But they were bad enough.

Long after she forgot kindnesses, Shannon would remember such things as being shoved off on the druggist under false pretenses- remember and hold it against Jo. Just as I hold things against Marge, now. The violin lessons for instance; her frailties and fawnings and simperings that got her the things I was denied.

Yes, I do hold it against her. I may as well admit it.

It was about three in the morning before I went to sleep, and I have been getting up at five since I started walking again. I didn't think I could make it, but of course I did. There's nothing new about that, so I won't go into details. I won't take up the days individually.

Moon was-well, I'll use the present tense, because things haven't changed any except for the worse-Moon is distinctly cold. There's no more going up to the office for a walk; no more soothing drawl to wake me when I doze off. I'm strictly on my own. Murphy doesn't speak to me. Vail ignores me, which means, naturally, that I get the cold shoulder from Busken also. Gross pretends friendliness but that only makes matters worse. It only makes Moon more cool and watchful.

I don't know whether he is angry because of the way Roberta acted, or whether he blames me for the considerable expense he was put to on our Tia Juana excursion, or whether he is simply on the defensive because of Frankie. Probably all those things figure in it to an extent. The chief factor, I believe, however, is that he thinks I'm trying to put something over on him. He doesn't like it because I didn't discuss this new records system with him before taking it up with Baldwin. He can't conceive of a man going to all that extra effort merely to do a job that needed doing.

I should explain about the system. There's nothing very original about it. I'm simply taking the parts off the release books and putting them on cards, the cards to be filed in chronological order. This does away with any chance of duplications. It makes it possible to locate a part and the data on it in a second instead of fifteen minutes. And there is only one posting to make, instead of from one to thirty as used to be the case. There are two columns per card: one for stockroom inventory, one for the assemblies. Debits and credits are reflected within the balances, not set out by themselves, so the number of parts needed to complete 750 ships can be obtained instantly by adding the two balances-less any "X" items-and subtracting the total from that amount. "X" items are spare or extra parts.

The thing has one serious flaw, or will have when I get it finished. We issue parts and make shortage reports by positions. My cards are filed in chronological order. This will mean that to locate all the cards in one position I will have to search through the entire file of several thousand cards.

I'll have to get around that some way. I've been playing with several ideas, but I can't seem to-

I'm off the track again.

I had to keep up our present records system. I had to work on the new one. I had to have inventories taken, and no one would take them for me. I had to work twice as hard as I had before, and I felt half as much like working. And I had to walk back and forth.

That's the way it was. That's the way it still is.

We got a wire from Marge Tuesday, saying that Pop was pretty sick, and we were all in an uproar for the rest of the week. I mean we had the uproar from that in addition to our customary one. Mom felt that she "just had to go," but she knew that neither Frankie nor I had the money, and she wouldn't let us borrow any, so what was the use of asking us twenty times a night if-

I wanted a drink. I was sick for one. And I didn't know what to do with my hands all evening, sitting around without a cigarette. But I followed instructions.

Sunday night we got a long-distance call from Marge-a collect one because Walter was slowly being hounded out of his job by bill collectors and he'd told her she simply couldn't run up any more bills. Pop was better, well enough to be taken back to the place-and after she'd divulged that, she talked of absolutely nothing at all, to the best of my knowledge, for fifteen solid minutes. Roberta and I had gone to bed, and Mom was doing all the talking or listening. Roberta kept saying, you've just got to stop her, Jimmie; we'll never be able to pay it, and Frankie won't be able to pay it, and we'll be stuck. Now you just go in there and tell her…

When Mom came in to tell us what Marge had said, Roberta turned over on her side with her back to her. That made everything lovely.

Then I came home Monday evening and everything was lovely. Roberta couldn't wait until I got in the house to throw her arms around me and kiss me all over the face, and the kids-even Jo-were screaming with excitement. Mack was going away on the choo-choo, and Shannon was going to buy a gun, and Jo was going to take dancing lessons. Mom got the opened letter off the mantel and gave it to me. It was from the foundation.

They had a project (they believed) which would interest me very much. But, before discussing that, they were forced to mention the matter of last year's research. It was not impressive; it definitely was not. The style was stilted; the subject matter superficial. At least, so it appeared to them. But this was doubtless more their fault than mine. They had given me a great deal of latitude in working, and they had not made their wants clear. In fact, there had been some doubt in their own minds about what was most desirable. Now, however…

I began to laugh.

Roberta didn't understand. "Isn't it nice, honey? I'm so glad for you."

I kept on laughing. "Stop it," I said. "You're killing me."

"What's so funny?" said Roberta, smiling uncertainly. "I don't see-"

"Why they've 'discovered' that old collection of mine! The one that was published three years ago."

"Well?"

"All they want me to do," I said, "is write like that. Write like I did then. That's all."

And I got down on the floor and rolled.

The doctor came and went and I didn't know about it. I only know that I went to sleep. When I woke up, I began pumping Roberta as to what he'd said, and I couldn't get much out of her for a while except that "he asked all about you and everything."

"He didn't mention anything about three months of absolute rest, did he?" I said.

"Well, he did, but when I told him-"

"I know."

"I don't want you to work so hard, Jimmie. I don't know what I can do about it, though."

"I know you don't," I said. "Have you got the whisky yet?"

"What whisky?"

"The whisky he told you to let me have."

"I didn't know what kind-he did say you mustn't drink too much, Jimmie."

"What about cigarettes?"

"You mustn't smoke too many of them either."

"That's damned good advice," I said. "I'll have to remember it."

"I hope you will, honey. I get so worried-"

"One more thing. He told you there wasn't anything organically wrong with me at all?"