The Kind One (37 page)

I heard more shots, and looked around and saw Mousie Kornblum staggering toward us. It looked like somebody had dumped a pail of red paint over his head. Dulwich had taken his gun but now there were plenty of other guns lying around that nobody was using anymore and he must have picked up one of them. Or maybe he’d had two guns all along. Two Gun Mousie Kornblum.

I fired at Mousie with Dulwich’s gun. I fired as many times as there were bullets in the clip and Mousie went down, for good this time.

When I turned back around, Dulwich was sitting next to the driveway with his back propped up against the trunk of a palm tree. His hands were still on his throat, and he was making choking noises. Darla was bending over him, looking as though she was about to burst into hysterical screams.

“What do we do?” she said.

“Gotta stop the bleeding,” and I knelt in front of him and pried loose his hands. I was immediately hit by rhythmic jets of his blood. I took out my handkerchief and tried to cram it into the hole in his throat.

“You’re gonna be all right, Dulwich,” I said.

He couldn’t talk. But I could feel his hazel eyes burning into me.

“We’ll get the bleeding stopped. Then we’ll call a hospital, and they’ll send an ambulance. You’ll be all right.”

But the bleeding wouldn’t stop, and the handkerchief was soaked through, and my fingers were slippery with the blood.

“You’ll be all right,” I said, and I could feel his burning eyes. Then he smiled a little, and reached for my hand and squeezed it, and then his eyes went dead and he was dead.

Darla said that we had to go. Said that we couldn’t do Dulwich any good by staying here any longer.

She was right. We went down the hill to my car.

   I DROVE SOUTH through the empty, dreamless streets. Darla said: “I forgot something.”

“What?”

“My lamb. The one Mr. Bruff gave me.”

“Well, we’re not going back.”

After that, we could have been department store dummies for all the talking we did to each other. It didn’t take long to get to La Vista Lane. I pulled over and parked. Darla looked around like she was coming out of a trance.

“Why are we stopping? Where are we?”

“This is where I live.”

Now I saw Sophie with a suitcase coming down the steps.

“Who’s that?” said Darla.

“Sophie. She’s my neighbor. She’s coming with us.”

Darla looked at me. “You’re kidding.”

“No.”

I got out. Sophie’s smile faded as I walked toward her.

“What’s that on your clothes?” she said.

I put my hand on her shoulder.

“Sophie. Listen to me. Something terrible has happened.”

Her eyes got scared. “What?”

“Mr. Dulwich went with me. To pick up Darla. Some men tried to stop her from leaving. Bad men. They—they shot Mr. Dulwich.”

“He’s dead?”

“Yeah. But you and me and Darla—we’re gonna be just fine. I don’t want you worrying about anything. Okay?”

Sophie looked over at Darla in the car, then back at me. She nodded.

“Here, I’ll put that in the trunk,” I said, taking her suitcase. It was little, and light. I took mine and Darla’s suitcases out of the trunk.

“Darla? We need to wash up and change clothes.”

Darla had blood on her too. She nodded, and got out. She and Sophie looked each other over.

“Hello,” said Darla.

“Hi.”

“We’ll be back in a few minutes,” I said to Sophie. “You wanna just wait here for us?”

“Okay.” But then as Darla and I started away, she said: “Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“What about Tinker Bell?”

“Who’s Tinker Bell?” said Darla.

“Dulwich’s cat,” I said.

“Who’s gonna take care of her?” said Sophie. “What’s gonna happen to her?”

I thought about it a minute, then said: “We’ll take her with us.”

   We left Los Angeles on Route 66—the same highway Dick Prettie and I had taken to Lake Arrowhead.

Sophie was in the back seat with Dulwich’s cat, who was in her cage. Sophie had brought along her cat food and food dish and water dish and cat toys, but understandably Tinker seemed pretty unhappy, meowing loudly every second or two.

“Where are we going, by the way?” asked Darla.

“New York,” I said.

“Is that cat going to be doing that all the way to New York?”

“She’s just scared, is all,” said Sophie. “She’ll be better soon.”

“You know, Darla,” I said, somewhat coldly, “we wouldn’t be here right now if it wasn’t for Dulwich. The least we can do is take care of his cat.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. Geez.”

The rabbit ranches and avocado orchards Dick and I had seen were lost in the darkness. There wasn’t much traffic. I drove pretty fast. We listened to the radio and Darla smoked and Tinker meowed and Sophie talked.

“I made sandwiches for us, is anybody hungry?”

“I’m not,” I said, and Darla shook her head.

“I’m not either. We can eat ’em later. See my lunchbox? It’s a Jackie Coogan lunchbox.”

She handed it up to Darla. A picture of the adorable waif as “The Kid” covered the front of it.

“Cute,” said Darla, and handed it back.

“Jackie Coogan’s gotten too old to play kid parts now. I don’t even think he’s been in a movie since
Huckleberry Finn
. I was in the third grade then. He played Tom Sawyer in
Huckleberry Finn
. He also played Tom Sawyer in
Tom Sawyer
.”

She wasn’t acting all that downcast about what had happened to Dulwich. It probably didn’t seem real to her. I guessed it would sink in later.

We passed the turn-off for Lake Arrowhead in San Bernardino and the road jogged north and then we were in new territory as far as I was concerned. In the back seat, Dulwich’s cat had calmed down, or just exhausted herself, and Sophie was finally running out of steam too.

“I think Tinker’s sleeping,” she said.

“Good,” I said. “I think she’ll be all right. Dulwich told me she loved to travel.”

A minute or two passed, then Sophie said: “It’s kinda lonely back here.”

“Wanna come up here with us?”

Sophie eagerly scrambled over the seat, kicking me in the head in the process.

“Oops! Sorry.”

Now she settled down between Darla and me. Within five minutes, she was asleep, her head on Darla’s shoulder.

“What’s her story?” said Darla quietly.

“Kind of like the story you told me about yourself. She’s leaving home because she has to.”

“Poor kid.”

And in a sort of flash I could see that it was all going to work out, that we were going to become a family—man, woman, kid, and cat.

The road began to rise, then in a series of switchbacks it climbed the face of the Sierra Madre Mountains. We passed over the mountain range at the Cajon Pass, then began a winding descent through an evergreen forest.

Darla had been silent for so long I thought she was asleep too. I thought I had the night to myself. But then I heard her say: “Why are you crying?”

“Dulwich, I guess. I guess I was crying about Dulwich.”

“I’m sorry, Danny.”

“You know, it was my fault.”

“What was?”

“Him getting killed.”

“How do you figure that?”

“He wanted to kill Mousie, but I talked him out of it. Then Mousie wound up killing him.”

“You’re not to blame. Things just happen.” She lit a cigarette, moving carefully so as not to awake Sophie. “You shouldn’t feel so bad. In a way, I think Dulwich died happy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the last word he ever said was ‘Danny.’ And the last thing he ever saw was you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I think he was probably in love with you. From everything you told me.”

“In love with—? That’s crazy.”

She shrugged. “Is it?”

“Who turned off the bathwater?” Sophie mumbled fretfully in her sleep, then her face began to twitch, then she turned over and leaned against me and was quiet again. Headlights flared into the car, as a vehicle came up fast behind us. When it pulled out in the other lane to pass, I saw it was a truck. STEVE’S STOVES was painted on the side. That Steve sure got around. The truck roared by, then its taillights dwindled as it left us behind. Steve was in a hurry. As long as there was anybody in the world that still needed a stove, Steve would be on the job.

“How much money you got?” said Darla.

“About 400 bucks. How about you?”

“A lot less. Bud never liked me to have much cash. He wanted me to have to depend on him for everything. But he gave me all this jewelry that must be worth a mint.” She opened her purse, dug into it, pulled out her diamond engagement ring. “Like this,” she said, and then she pulled out her ruby ring. “And this. We can sell this stuff off whenever we need to. We can live in style. For a while, anyway.”

I liked the “we.”

“And I’ll get some kind of job.”

“And I can start singing again,” she said dreamily, then dropped the rings back in her purse.

“Why’d you shoot him?” I said.

“’Cause he was about to shoot
you
.”

“No he wasn’t.”

“Well, I thought he was.”

“He wouldn’t ever have shot me. Not in a million years.”

“No? What makes you so special?”

I didn’t answer. We passed through Victorville. It was starting to get light.

   JUST OUTSIDE BARSTOW, a billboard showed a picture of an evilly smiling hobo holding up a sign that said: CALIFORNIA OR BUST. Under the picture it said, in lurid black and red letters: “UPTON SINCLAIR—AN
EPIC
FRAUD! HE’LL TURN CALIFORNIA INTO A HAVEN FOR RADICALS, FLOATERS, AND BOXCAR TOURISTS! VOTE FOR FRANK MERRIAM FOR GOVERNOR!”

We stopped at a Standard Oil station to gas up and use the restrooms. Sophie took Tinker around the back of the station to a weedy area where she used the restroom too.

I went in the office to pay for the gas and buy a road map and some bottles of soda. The owner had a pockmarked face and wispy red hair that went every which way. He looked mean, but had a kindly manner.

“Which way you folks headed?” he said.

“Towards Arizona.”

“Well, sody pop’s just fine and dandy, but if I was you, I’d buy me some water too. You’ll need it. It ain’t gonna be no church picnic out there. Not in August, it ain’t.”

I bought three gallons, and we got back on the road. Route 66 turned due east here, straight into the heart of the Mojave Desert. The sun was floating up in front of us; I lowered the sun visor and Darla donned her sunglasses.

We were all getting hungry. Sophie opened up her Jackie Coogan lunchbox.

“I have three sandwiches. Delicious grape jelly and peanut butter, scrumptious butter and sugar, and boring Spam. Who wants what?”

“What do
you
want, honey?” said Darla.

“Well—grape jelly and peanut butter’s my favorite.”

“Okay. I’ll have the butter and sugar. Danny?”

“Guess I’ll have the Spam.”

Soon it got hotter than I thought it possible to get. Heat mirages lay like puddles of water on the shimmering road. The landscape was unearthly and blasted-looking. What vegetation there was seemed primitive and savage: thorny cacti and twisted little trees with clumps of spiky leaves. You couldn’t imagine even bugs or lizards living out here. Off in the molten-blue distance, mountain ranges jutted up like giant slag heaps. It was hard to see how the pioneers in the olden days had ever made it.

A railroad ran parallel to 66. Sophie leaned out the window and waved wildly at a freight train coming toward us. The red-capped engineer saw her and waved back and, much to her delight, gave a long, mournful toot on his whistle.

About an hour out of Barstow I saw an old jalopy pulled off on the side of the road, its radiator geysering steam. Two guys in shabby clothes were standing by it, one fanning forlornly at the steam with his hat. When I suggested that maybe we ought to pull over and give them some of our water, Darla said: “Keep driving, Danny. We need that water for us.”

We did need it. We drank and drank it and still it didn’t seem to be enough, it was like it was evaporating right out of us without even taking the time to turn into sweat first. Our lips burnt and cracked. I felt like I was drying up, becoming a mummy. The tongue of Dulwich’s cat hung out as she panted like a dog. I wondered what she thought about all this. Snatched away from her peaceful, bird-filled bungalow court, encaged now in a baking Packard speeding over a dismal wasteland.

We passed through towns. It wasn’t like the desert didn’t have any towns. But Daggett, Ludlow, Siberia, Bagdad, Amboy, Chambliss, Summit, Danby, Essex, Java, were towns in name only, usually consisting of no more than a gas station and cafe and some woebegone tourist cabins, and sometimes not even that, just a deserted train station by the railroad tracks. When the sun was at its highest and hottest, we reached our first genuine town, Needles.

It felt like an oasis. Real trees were growing here, with actual green leaves on them, not thorns or spines. We drove slowly down the main street, looking for a place to eat, but everything seemed closed.

“How come nothing’s open?” I said.

“’Cause it’s Sunday,” said Darla.

It seemed strange, that it was Sunday. Days of the week, months of the year, seemed so regular and normal; they oughtn’t to exist in a world that had lost its moorings, a world of murder and screaming, of shame and grief. Where a man’s teeth could roll across the floor like dice.

“Look!” said Sophie. “Indians!”

Indeed, four Indians, a man and a woman and two little ones, were walking down the street. They were dressed gaily, in red and yellow and blue.

“Maybe they’ll know a place to eat,” said Darla.

But when I slowed up beside them, they looked at us so sternly I decided to drive on.

A little further along we found the Black Cat Cafe.

A sign over the lunch counter said: “CUP OF COFFEE, CIGARETTE, & TOOTHPICK—6¢.” It was kind of a dumpy joint, but the food was okay. Darla had the fried chicken dinner and Sophie and I had hamburgers and french fries, and all of us gulped down glass after glass of iced tea.