The Bible Salesman (13 page)

He didn’t like to shoot people, but sometimes it just happened because it was the only way to get through some problem to a place where he had to be. No other way to handle it. Nobody should ever slap anybody like that.

Henry was awake when Clearwater drove into the cabin camp. He pulled back his window shade and looked. Clearwater opened his trunk, lifted something out — a crowbar? a car jack? — and walked into the woods with it. What was he doing? He lay back down, thought of Marleen, her blond hair, the way it hung around her face.

Back in his room, Clearwater sat on his bed. Leaving before they were scheduled to leave might look suspicious. No need to run. No way to trace the mess to him. No way at all.

A drawbridge for automobiles, rather than a single trolley track, now spanned the channel from McNeill to Swan Island. Henry — in the driver’s seat — and Clearwater waited for the drawbridge to lower. As he had driven the Chrysler north from South Carolina, where they’d been working for over a week, Henry told Clearwater about his memories of the trolley, the Electra, the lights, the band, and what he’d heard from his aunt about his uncle’s plan that night long ago. How it had gone bad. Clearwater knew of the Electra and the big bands, of good fishing, of German sub sightings from the island, and had decided to come up a couple of days early — like Henry asked — before picking up the dump truck and forklift for their next gig, in Florida.

A yacht was moving through the drawbridge gap. Low white clouds scatted along the sky, and a clean salt smell rode the air through the open car windows.

“That’s something, ain’t it?” said Clearwater. “You could live in a yacht and never come out except for some fun. Hire some people to do everything for you.”

As they turned right at the big Papa John McNeill mansion on Swan Island, Henry decided he’d better tell Clearwater about Caroline, Carson, and Aunt Dorie. He’d made arrangements, had reserved three rooms at the Deluxe Olympia Hotel, a place Carson told him about on the telephone. It was close to the Electra. A room for Clearwater, a room for Caroline and Aunt Dorie, and a room for him and Carson. But Clearwater didn’t know about all that.

“Some of my folks might be down here,” said Henry.

“What?”

“My sister and cousin and aunt. The ones I’ve told you about.”

“What do you mean ‘they might be down here’?”

“I sort of mentioned to them that I was going to be here, and . . . But I didn’t say anything about you.”

“Why the hell didn’t you check with me? This is not a good idea at all. Goddamn, Dampier.”

“But we’re not working.”

“What have you told them about me?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to see them a little bit — and you didn’t want to go through Simmons. So I just kind of set things up. Told them I could get them a room and all. They don’t have to know anything about you. I started not to tell you at all — just . . . I knew you’d be in a different room and —”

“You can’t hide information from me. This is serious business.” Clearwater felt something slip away from him. But he’d be through with Henry within a couple of weeks. “You go ahead and check in and then I will. I’ll take the car, and I’ll see you Monday morning in front of the hotel. Seven-thirty. I’m going to do a little scouting around.”

“There’s the Electra right down there. See it? I think that’s it. The hotel is just beyond it. Yeah, that’s it.”

Henry slowed the car and in a minute stood, holding his suitcase and valise. He could identify the building by its shape — in spite of its having been converted into three distinct places of business: Swan Island Laundry and Dry Cleaning, Bobbins Hardware, and Dance Hall Bar. The hardware store, the one in the middle, looked closed down. A mattress lay on its steps. Plants grew from the gutters.

Henry walked through the front doorway of the lobby at the Deluxe, carrying his valise and suitcase. The back door was open to the ocean. Caroline sat on a couch reading a magazine. She looked up. He set down his suitcase and valise.

“Henry! Hey,” she said. She stood, moved to him. “We’ve been missing you.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him tight.

He hugged her. “I wish I could have come to Simmons, but this ought to be fun.”

“I know. The beach! Sit down for a minute.”

“Did you see the Electra?” asked Henry.

“It’s terrible. It looks run-down.”

“I never thought about it changing.”

“Me either.”

Henry sat in a big chair. He looked around. “This looks like a nice place. Where’s Carson?”

“He’s swimming and wants you to come out. Thank you for our room. You didn’t have to do that. We could have stayed over in McNeill.”

“No. I’m glad I can do this. I figured this would be a good time to catch up on things. I’ve got another couple of weeks of pretty regular work, and then I’ll have some time to come home, I think. Let’s go swimming.”

“Sure. I’ve got to put on my bathing suit. Come on up.”

“Is Aunt Dorie on the beach?”

“She couldn’t come. She stepped on a nail this morning, out behind the packing barn. That tall grass out there. But she wants you to come see her if you can. Do you have a car? I never quite figured that out.”

“I do and I don’t. It’s kind of complicated. I’ll be able to tell you before too long what I’m doing.”

“It’s not dangerous — or crazy — is it?”

“Oh no. Not a bit. Did you drive?”

“Carson drove. He could take you to see Aunt Dorie tomorrow, maybe. Up and back.”

A short while later, as Clearwater checked in at the desk, he heard Henry talking, coming downstairs into the lobby. He saw him, and . . . and . . . a stunning woman. In her neck and shoulders and face he recognized a proud vulnerability and loveliness that almost called aloud to him. The boy’s sister? In a bathing suit, a big white towel around her waist. He stood staring.

Caroline noticed the man standing at the registration counter. And then, just as she entered the doorway that led to the beach, she glanced back.

Clearwater walked over to the door, watched her walk, the light blue sky meeting the darker blue ocean far out ahead of her. He breathed in the clean salt breeze. Another boy, the cousin probably, ran up to Henry and they started talking and laughing. She let the towel
drop
and ran with the boys toward the ocean.

Carson and Henry decided to drive up to Simmons right away, see Aunt Dorie, and drive back before bedtime. That way they could then stay for two uninterrupted days at Swan Island. Caroline came out of the water, and as Henry and Carson walked across the sand toward her, they met Clearwater. Henry knew to pretend he didn’t know him, but Clearwater raised his finger, stepped aside, said, “Give me just a minute.”

Carson walked on ahead while Clearwater told Henry he’d changed his mind, there was a better way to proceed under the circumstances, a better way to handle things than trying to avoid each other — especially since they wouldn’t be on call. They could say they were doing secret army work — USAUO, U.S. Army Undercover Operations — related to Russian spies, a problem with Russian submarines hanging around the island. He had some friends working on exactly that. He would handle it all.

“Can we tell them it’s the FBI?” asked Henry.

“No. The procedure in a case like this is to say something like I just said, and that’s it. You haven’t told them anything, have you?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Because if you have, this will get really confusing.”

“I haven’t told them anything.”

“The less said, the better. Introduce us, let me talk, and then we can all relax.”

Caroline, sitting on the quilt she’d brought from home, saw Henry, Carson, and the man approaching. She pulled the towel over her legs. The man wore pleated pants, suspenders, a blue tie and white shirt. He reminded her of somebody, but she couldn’t place who. Clark Gable?

Where the gearshift came up out of the floorboard of the black ’39 Plymouth was a hole that you could see through. Carson drove and Henry sat in the passenger seat. Simmons printing, simmons, n.c., 4-0948 was printed on the front door. The car belonged to Carson’s boss. In the backseat sat two cardboard boxes holding seven hundred bumper stickers.

“Why can’t you talk about it?” asked Carson.

“I just can’t. I just can’t. Before too long I can, probably. In a couple of weeks. It’s a
lot
of stuff, boy. It —”

“That guy looked pretty neat, and it must be good money — you staying in a hotel and all. Do you and him use a gun or anything?”

“Not yet. I mean, I probably could, though. I can’t talk about it now. Tell me some more about these bumper stamps.”

“Bumper
stickers
. Oh man. I read a article about them, no wires for hanging, no nothing. Just wet the back and stick it on.” Carson drove with one hand, talked with the other, looked back and forth between Henry and the road. “So I called this guy in Virginia, and he could send them to me for two cents each with nothing on them, and man they do stick good. Wet it with a wet rag. So I figured it’d be just the thing for the printing shop, and Mr. Ferguson says, okay, if I wanted to take it on — he wouldn’t have time to mess with it — and I was thinking about sports teams, you know, stuff like that, and I was thinking
one for every car in North Carolina
, then in the South, then in
America
, okay, so I ordered this waterproof ink — a lot of people wouldn’t have thought about the waterproof — from this place that had a special deal. I got red and black, and I figured out how to run it on the press, just practiced with cutout paper, same size, and then I got to thinking about what I could print on there, you know, where I could sell a lot of them, and all that, and I was thinking about a bunch of ball teams, maybe State, Carolina, Wake Forest, East Carolina, places like Ballard, all the minor league baseball teams, Little League, you know, figure out a way to get the mascot drawed on there — there’s ways to do that — and some more colleges, and so then we got your call and I asked Mr. Ferguson for a vacation day, and I figured why not hurry up so I could sell them on the way to Swan Island, and maybe while I was down here too, so I just out of the blue thought about ‘Jesus Saves,’ and then I thought ‘God Is My Co-Pilot’ and then ‘Where Will You Spend Eternity?’ ”

Henry was thinking about Marleen, calling her on the phone.

“So, see, I’m not talking about every car in America exactly, but I’m talking about every
Christian
car in America, and that’s a lot of cars, and so what I did on the way down is I sold them for five cents each at these stores, service stations, grocery stores, and a couple of stores bought
fifty
, and I’m selling them for five cents each, and then I’ll come back to the store in a month to pick up the ones they ain’t sold — that they don’t want to keep — I buy them back and for the ones that are already sold or ones they know they want to keep I collect five more cents, see — I got it all wrote down — and then they get to sell them for whatever they want to, I said fifteen cents, so they make five cents each, and I figure ten cents is wholesale, and if they don’t want some I give them back a nickel apiece, but I’ve only got that two cents for the blank bumper sticker in it
up front
, plus the ink, which ain’t nothing, and then, so I’ll make at least seven cents on each one, so those seven hundred in the backseat, hell, man, that’s forty-nine dollars clear profit, and I haven’t even
tried
. I haven’t even
tried
.”

Henry had the phone number on a piece of paper in his billfold.

“That’s selling at wholesale, and I could sell them retail and make twenty-five more dollars on that first forty-nine. I’ve already called the guy up and ordered a thousand more and on Monday I might order more. And listen, they go like hotcakes, I’m telling you. And my phone number is right there on the bumper sticker, and my business name, so when I get back home I bet you I’ll be getting orders — it says ‘Carson’s Premier Printing, Simmons, N.C., phone 6-5912’ and all. It’s not like just anybody can do this, not everybody has a printing press — and so heck, man, I’m starting my own company. Trucks, sooner or later, shipments, orders. So I got to thinking on the way down here. If I order two thousand, that’s forty dollars my cost, okay, and then I could find forty churches. I know I could find forty churches. And you know they’d buy fifty each. I’ll tell them just put one in each hymnbook. That ought to work. Sell them at ten cents each and that’s two hundred dollars total —”

“You sure you got the math right?”

“I got the math right. I figured it. What you’ve got then is, see, one dollar per church I’m spending and I’m making
five
. So what
you
could do if you want to go in with me is you buy five thousand and I buy five thousand and you don’t have to do nothing. You spend a hundred dollars, and what I’ll do when I sell one of your bumper stickers is I keep five cents and you keep five cents, and so you’re making good — you’ll get back two hundred and fifty dollars for every hundred dollars you spend, and what I’ll get is two fifty for being out on the road selling them along with mine. You don’t lift a finger. What do you think?”

“Sure. Here.” Henry got out his billfold, handed two twenties to Carson. “I can get the rest back at the hotel,” he said. He looked to be sure the phone number was in its place.

“Damn. You are making some money.”

“And listen. I got a fruit stand I can get some sold at maybe. I got to tell you about that.”

“Where?”

“Down in Jeffries, Georgia.”

“You bought a fruit stand?”

“No. No, it’s just one I know about — where I met this girl.”

“Yeah? Fruit stands, grocery stores will be good places to sell. Watch this. This Gulf station coming up. I’ll pull in. Where’s Jeffries? What about the girl?”

“Not far from Atlanta. There’s this girl that runs the fruit stand, and I’m definitely going back to see her first chance I get. I got this ride to see her with these two old ladies, and I’m supposed to call her tonight. She don’t have a phone, but her sister does, where she’ll be. Her name’s Marleen Green. Marleen. Marleen. Marleen Green.”