Odds Against Tomorrow

Chapter Nine

Sheriff Burns buttoned up his long black slicker as he stepped from his small private office. Morgan, his deputy, smiled at him and said, “Good night to be on the way home, if you ask me. It’s pretty miserable, eh?”

Burns looked out the window. The rain was still lashing the sycamores behind his office, although it sounded as if it might be easing off a bit. Adjusting the chin strap of his hat, he glanced at the radio phones that kept Crossroads in direct, round-the-clock contact with the State Police substation five miles down the highway. He didn’t bother answering Morgan’s comment about the weather; Burns didn’t consider the weather a very significant topic just now. He had no prejudice against irrelevant chatter except when it wasted time; most people enjoyed wrapping themselves in cocoons of idle conversation, and he suffered this without really understanding it, victimized somewhat by his essential good humor and tolerance. Still staring at the radio phones, he said, “Who was that in here while I was talking to that colored fellow?”

“Oh — a fellow asking for directions.”

“What did he look like?”

“Let’s see: pretty big, tall and rangy. Black hair, tanned face. Kind of hard-looking.”

“Was he wearing a black overcoat and a brown felt hat?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Morgan knew something was bothering the sheriff. He waited patiently, his expression deliberately impassive; as a six-month rookie he had learned to keep his hero worship under wraps. Burns was just another man, he realized, although there were still times when he felt this judgment was ridiculously inadequate. Like saying Everest was just another mountain.

“Did he talk about anything else?” the sheriff said.

Morgan hesitated, reassembling every detail of the conversation. The sheriff always wanted details; nothing was irrelevant in his opinion until it had been proven so. But the conclusions he drew from details frequently bewildered Morgan.

“I got the feeling he didn’t like colored people.” Morgan was encouraged by the sheriff’s thoughtful nod. “He asked if the colored folks here gave us a lot of trouble — just like he’d ask if two and two made four. You know what I mean?”

“Did he happen to mention the colored man in my office?”

“Why, yes he did!” Morgan was excited and surprised. “He saw you bringing him in and he asked if he was in trouble.”

“So?”

“Well—” Morgan hesitated. “I said there was no charge against him.”

“That wasn’t necessary, was it?”

“No — but he got me kind of annoyed.” Morgan punched the space bar of the typewriter in exasperation. “I should have kept my mouth shut.”

The sheriff pulled on his gauntlets and said, “Keep your ear close to that speaker tonight. If anything takes the State Police cars away from this area, I want to know about it. Right away. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

At the doorway the sheriff paused and glanced at Morgan with a slight smile. “Don’t blame yourself for being annoyed at that character. I’m getting annoyed with him, too.”

At the corner of Main Street the sheriff paused and glanced up and down the blocks of busy shops, his figure tall and black in the shining slicker. Everything seemed nice and quiet; people hurrying along the wet sidewalks, couples strolling into the movie, merchants making their weekend deposits in the brightly lighted bank, the traffic whizzing through the town in orderly lanes. Crossing on the green light, he stopped beside the bank and stared for a few seconds at the battered blue station wagon that was parked on the side street. It looked like a candidate for a junkyard, but the sheriff knew all about the powerful engine under its hood. Tommy Bailey at the Atlas station had told his boss about it, and the news had drifted casually back to the sheriff. He hadn’t thought much about it at the time. Lots of people liked to soup-up old cars. Nothing unusual about that. But then the colored man had come to town, a big-city Negro with soft hands and considerable know-how with a deck of cards. And when he’d taken him in for a little talk the tall, dark-haired man who owned that station wagon had popped right in to pump Morgan about it.

So what did it add up to? Two strangers... a big-city card shark and a man who had spent a day poking about the area in an old crate that could move like a streak of lightning. A man who said he wanted to go into farming but sounded as if he didn’t know a damned thing about it. Hadn’t made up his mind whether to try sheep or steers or a dairy herd... That’s what he said, just as if there weren’t a hundred different problems in land and money involved in such a choice...

The sheriff glanced at his watch: twenty to eight. For an instant he hesitated, staring at the car, and then letting his eyes sweep down the shining street. It didn’t add up to anything yet. That’s what nagged at him — that little word yet.

There was the fragrance of a good dinner in the warm hallway of the sheriff’s comfortable home on the outskirts of Crossroads. He hung up his hat and slicker, smoothed his hair down and went into the living room to warm his big hands at the fireplace. Everything in the worn and faded room was part of the life he had lived before his wife died; the family pictures on the mantel, the crocheted mats on the backs of the big chairs, the shelves of familiar books beside the hearth. He liked things as they had been in those happier days, and he had resisted the sporadic attempts of his daughter to brighten up the place.

Filling a stubby black pipe, he called, “Nancy? You home?”

“Yes, Dad. In the kitchen.”

“That sounds hopeful.” He strolled down the hallway, unbuttoning his uniform jacket. “What’s for dinner?”

“Roast beef, hashed brown potatoes, et cetera, et cetera. You’ll manage.”

“An army could manage on that.”

“Do you want a drink? There’s time.” She stood at the stove with an apron over the dark skirt she had worn to the office, a tall girl with blond hair and something of her father’s strength in the planes of her face.

He didn’t want anything to drink because he might have to go out again, but he said, “Sure, let’s celebrate, honey. Want me to do the honors?”

“No, I’ll take care of it.” When she turned from the stove he put a hand on her arm. “Hard day?” He studied the clean, familiar lines of her face with a smile. “All tuckered out in the interests of Slade and Nelson, attorneys at law?”

“Just the usual — nothing out of the ordinary.”

He patted her shoulders. “Well, it’s a nice night to put your feet up and relax.”

She glanced at him briefly and said, “How very true.” Then she slipped past him and went into the pantry for glasses and the bottle of whisky.

The sheriff sat down at the kitchen table and took his time applying an even light to the tobacco in his pipe. Rain pattered against the sides of the house, streaming down the dark windowpanes in slow, level waves. A good night to put your feet up and relax, he thought. An innocent comment, but it annoyed her. But how was he to know that?

She made his drink, whisky with a touch of water, and put it beside him on the table. “How about you?” he asked her.

“I don’t feel like anything.”

“Means I drink alone then. Most pretty girls would save a man from that.”

She pushed a strand of blond hair from her forehead. “How was your day?” she said.

“Like yours, I guess, just the usual routine.” He couldn’t tell whether she was really interested or not; she was stirring the gravy and her voice had matched the mechanical rhythm of her turning hand. “I had a speeder this morning, an idiot salesman with a schedule he couldn’t have kept with a jet plane. He had to be in Wilmington by ten, but had three calls to make in Crossroads first.”

She went into the pantry, and the sheriff sipped his drink slowly, relishing the warmth spreading through his body.

When his daughter returned he tried to think of something else to talk about, but this was always a difficult chore for him; he had no taste for tidbits of conversation and his occasional jokes never seemed to strike her funny bone. And his thoughts were turning on his own problems. The two strangers... He wondered what they were doing. He had given the Negro the address of Mrs. Baker’s boardinghouse. He should be there by now. If he really wanted a room.

“Well, what happened to your speeder?”

“Oh, him. Well, I had to throw the book at him. His commissions aren’t worth a child’s life.” Finishing his drink, he said, “Excuse me a second, hon. I’ve got to make a phone call.”

He went into the hall and dialed Mrs. Baker’s boarding-house. When she answered he said, “Sheriff Burns, Mrs. Baker. Hope I didn’t take you away from supper.”

She laughed. “If you did I wouldn’t mind none. What is it, Sheriff?”

“I sent a man over to your place a while ago. I just wondered if he’d shown up yet.”

“No, not yet. What was his name?”

“John Ingram.”

“I’ll watch for him. I’ll keep something hot for him. And I’m much obliged to you, Sheriff, for recommending my home.”

“Don’t mention it. Good night, Mrs. Baker.”

When he put the receiver down the sheriff realized that his vague uneasiness was hardening into suspicion. He knew his town well and he trusted his feelings about it; when something felt wrong he became cautious. His picture of the village was made up of conscious and unconscious impressions, tactile, emotional, intuitive. The place had a right-and-wrong impact on him and when something was wrong he couldn’t relax until he had pinned it down. But when everything felt right the town seemed whole and perfect; the smell of burning leaves or factory smoke, the sounds of traffic and the activities of dogs, cats and small boys, all of these merged into reassuring patterns of harmony and sense.

Now something was wrong; the pattern was blurred and little storm signals flew in his mind.

“Hon, I’ve got to get back to the office for a while,” he said, buttoning his jacket.

“Right now? Before dinner?”

“I’m afraid so, hon.” He saw the quick disappointment in her eyes and it puzzled and hurt him; why couldn’t he ever figure out this girl of his? He had felt she was bored, and would just as soon be alone. But no. She wanted to have dinner with him, and had gone to a lot of trouble to make a little occasion of it. Instead of chops or an omelet, there was roast beef with all the trimmings. That meant she must have shopped on her lunch hour, probably had driven all the way to Pierce’s for the roast...

“I may not be long,” he said rather awkwardly. “Could you hold things up for half an hour?”

“It doesn’t matter. I might as well go ahead.”

Every kid in town brought him his problems, he thought, somewhat bitterly; they trusted him, listened hopefully to his injunctions or suggestions. Grownups, too. Men with business worries or family mix-ups talked them out with him, knowing his judgments were usually tempered with humor and common sense. He was not an educated man but he had a knack of seeing straight to the core of a situation without being distracted by emotional irrelevancies.

Everybody in town leaned on him — everybody except this girl of his.

It was a failure that had rebuked him since his wife’s death a dozen years ago. When Nancy was just a child he had been ruefully amused by his inability to understand her completely; sometimes she would snuggle in his arms for hours at a stretch, but on other occasions he couldn’t even coax a smile to her lips. When his wife was alive it hadn’t seemed too serious. His wife used to say: “She’s a real live girl, not a little toy. Just let her be, let her grow. Open your arms and let her go — she’ll come back, don’t worry.”

But with his wife gone he had felt his inadequacies much more keenly. He had been eager for Nancy to marry, feeling that might solve most of it. He had dreamed of gunning trips with her imaginary husband, family dinners on Sunday, and grandchildren to teach all the things he knew about the woods and fields around Crossroads. It wasn’t a selfish dream; he wanted it for her, not himself. The right kind of man would fuse all of her contradictory moods into his own strength and needs, and children would challenge her quick intelligence and release the springs of compassion he knew were locked beneath the cool surface of her personality.

If they could only talk things over, he thought. Sit down with a cup of coffee and be free and easy with each other. He didn’t want to run her life, but he longed to be a useful part of it. When she wanted to take a job in New York a couple of years ago he had sent her off with a smile — even though he knew the house would be a tomb without her. But he had opened his arms and let her go, as he’d promised his wife he would. She seemed happy in New York. Her letters bubbled with excitement. New job, new friends, all kinds of fun. He had visited her several times, wearing a good suit and determined not to play the hayseed in front of her friends. She shared an apartment with a saucy, bright-eyed girl who did something with women’s clothes in a department store. The walls were covered with odd-looking pictures and bullfight posters. They sat on little stools about eight inches high and ate dishes made with sour cream and wine.

He had adopted an approving manner for her sake. Her friends chattered like birds, but he didn’t expect her to share his preference for men who could hunt together for a week without using more than a few dozen words the whole time. One young man had asked him how many bandits he’d killed, but he was too old to fall into traps like that. He had got along fine. Nancy hadn’t been ashamed of him; if she had been he couldn’t have stood it. Not for himself, but for her.

And then, without any warning, she had returned to Crossroads. He knew something was wrong, but there was no way to bridge the awkward gulf between them; they had both tried but the attempts had been frustrated, and finally lost in a waste of banalities.

It was such a damned loss, he thought now, feeling the stiffness and hurt in her silence. She was a lovely, moody child in his eyes, but she had the hips and breasts of a woman, and her limbs were slim and graceful and strong; she was more than ready for the pain and joy of a home and children, but here she was keeping house for a father who couldn’t even guess at the thoughts running through her head. In spite of her maturity, she was still the little girl who had baffled him with her reserve and her secrets; she had to carry her troubles by herself because she wasn’t able to ask him for help. And that was his fault, not hers.

It was a hell of a thing to fail in, he thought wearily. “I’ll shove along,” he said, touching her shoulder. “I’m sorry, hon. Dinner smells wonderful.”

“I’ll leave yours on the stove,” she said.

“Sure. Thanks.” He hesitated an instant, smiling at her smooth cheeks, then turned and walked into the front hallway. The rain had stopped, but he put on his slicker anyway; at this time of year you couldn’t tell. He adjusted the chin strap of his hat, checked his gun out of long habit, and stepped out into the night.