Odds Against Tomorrow

Chapter Eighteen

Ingram stood at the windows in the living room of the farmhouse and watched the first mud-colored light of dawn pushing back the darkness that hung at the top of the meadow. It was too late for them to start moving; by the time they got ready to go the sun would be up. He glanced at Earl who was sleeping with his head against the back of the sofa and his good arm resting protectively across his wounded shoulder. In the dim lamplight his face was a mask of weakness and pain; the hollows beneath his eyes were like deep purple bruises, and his whiskers had grown into a black furry smudge across his soot-gray skin. Looks as bad as I feel, Ingram thought.

They would have to sit tight here today, he decided, glancing to where Earl’s woman lay sleeping. She had made her bed with the rear cushion from the car, and was lying with her knees drawn up under an old comforter she had found in an upstairs closet. There was something grim about the way she slept, Ingram thought. Like a fighter taking a last rest before going into the ring — her breath came deep and steady, and her flat body seemed purposefully and deliberately still, as if she were readying herself for some big ordeal. A tidy cat of a woman, too; pumps lined up neatly, bed made like a Girl Scout, and even a ribbon tying back her long, black hair. He could see the pale triangular blur of her face, and the rhythmic vaporings of her breath in the cold air. She was strong, he knew; tough and selfish. She was watching out for herself and Earl — and nobody else. Maybe that was right, he thought, feeling a surprising stab of loneliness. That was a woman’s need — to guard the life she had with a man. He began to feel sorry for himself, pitying his body its lonely sickness and pain. A motherless child, he thought, trying to mock his mood. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a long way from home... He shook his head with weary humor at the plaintive words of the song. Just because my hair is curly, just because my teeth are pearly... How square could you get?

Earl shifted and opened his eyes. Ingram looked at him and said, “How’re you feeling now?”

“Okay, I guess.” Earl was staring at the windows. “It’s getting light. We better get rolling, eh?”

“It’s too late.” Ingram sat down slowly in a chair facing Earl. “I figure we got to wait till dark. We can’t get past the police in the daytime. They’ll see you’re hurt. At night you can sit with your coat collar turned up and they won’t see you too good.”

Lorraine stirred and Earl lowered his voice. “We just sit here all day?”

“I don’t see any other way,” Ingram said quietly. “We’ll be okay. The old folks won’t bother us, and the cops don’t know where we are. We just keep out of sight and we’ll be all right.”

“Maybe,” Earl said, moving his good hand in a limp, futile gesture. The pain in his shoulder was dull and slow, better than he’d expected it to be, but his mood was heavy and spiritless; his thoughts drifted with sluggish indifference about their predicament. He picked up a cigarette from the pack on the couch, and leaned forward to draw a light from the match Ingram struck for him. Inhaling deeply, he watched the smoke drift in thin, blue layers toward the ceiling. “How about the doctor?” he said finally. “Think he can bring the cops here?”

“I don’t see how. Funny, he acted like he didn’t even want to. He kept thanking me for — well, how everything turned out.”

“Yeah, that is funny,” Earl said dryly.

“But he doesn’t know anything that can help the cops. He was blindfolded all the time. So was his daughter. And I drove in circles till they were dizzy with it. I figure our chances this way: nobody knows about your woman and her car. So when it gets dark we can drive right through the roadblock. I’m small enough to curl up in the trunk, and you can ride up with your woman. Why should they stop us?”

“It sounds all right,” Earl said slowly. He was silent for a moment or so, drawing deeply on his cigarette. Then he looked curiously at Ingram. “How did you get into this deal anyway?”

“I was a fool, that’s all,” Ingram said with a weary shrug. “I was in trouble. So I went to Novak. He said he’d help me out, sure — if I came in on this job.” He sighed. “It seems like a million years ago.”

“What kind of trouble were you in?”

“I owed money to a man who wouldn’t wait for it.”

“Yeah? How much?”

“Six thousand dollars.”

Earl whistled softly. “How’d you get into that kind of debt?”

“Gambling. Just plain foolishness.” Ingram coughed and put the palms of his hands against the pain and pressure in his chest. “I got shooting craps with a friend of mine named Billy Turk. I was reckless. I didn’t give a damn. You know how that is. Something goes wrong, and you just don’t care what else happens.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Earl said. He was watching Ingram with interest, seeing him in a sense for the first time. “So this friend of yours wouldn’t wait for the dough. Is that it?”

“No, Billy Turk was all right. But he did a thing that jammed me up. He sold my paper at a discount to some boys who worked for a big shot named Tenzell. You ever hear of him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, Tenzell wouldn’t wait. He wanted the cash. And what Mr. Tenzell wants he gets.”

Earl waved a hand irritably at the smoke drifting between them; he wanted to see Ingram’s face more clearly. Until just now he couldn’t have described Ingram beyond saying he was colored; he hadn’t seen much else. This struck him as odd. He inspected Ingram carefully, puzzled by his own interest. The man was small and slender, he saw, with silky black hair and funny eyes — kind of childish, almost, as if he were watching for something that might make him smile. “I don’t get it,” he said. “What do you mean, this guy sold your paper at a discount?”

Ingram smiled. “Just that. I gave Billy Turk an undated IOU for six thousand dollars. I lost that much in twenty minutes, like a fool. Usually I don’t gamble foolish. But that night I just didn’t care, like I told you. My mother wasn’t dead long, and I felt — I don’t know — just foolish, I guess. I told Turk I’d pay him in a month. He knew I was good for it. But he got drunk that same night and sold the IOU to Tenzell’s men. Next thing I knew Tenzell wanted to see me.”

“Tenzell’s a tough guy, eh?”

“More than that, man. He runs two wards in the south end of the city. On the side he owns a fight club, a trucking company, handles all the horse rooms and numbers. He’s got cops working for him — there’s guys like him in every city.” Ingram shook his head slowly, his skin prickling with shame as he remembered his session in Tenzell’s office. Tenzell, flanked by two of his men, his bald head gleaming under a cold electric light, had said gently, “You got forty-eight hours, black boy. Use ’em.” Ingram had begged for a break, but it hadn’t helped; Tenzell could stand anything in people but self-respect, and when Ingram’s had diminished to a satisfactory nothingness, Tenzell had said, “I told you, forty-eight hours. Get out.”

Earl frowned at the sick look in Ingram’s eyes. “Why the hell wouldn’t he give you some time?” he said. “What kind of a crud is he?”

“He just wouldn’t. Sometimes he does things to remind everybody who’s boss. And he didn’t like colored people much. That was part of it.”

“You should have caught him alone and put your foot through his stomach,” Earl said bitterly. “Bastards like that aren’t tough unless they’re running in packs. Well, Novak fixed you up fine, didn’t he?” Earl stared through the windows at the black trees swaying in layers of drifting fog. “He fixed us both up fine. Country hotel, all the conveniences.”

“We’re going to get out, don’t worry.”

“How about a drink? We might as well enjoy something.”

“You want some water with it?”

“Yeah, just a little.” As Ingram stood up Earl realized that he looked taller than he was because he moved so easily and lightly, his body always in balance. Everything he did looked as if he’d rehearsed it to music, he thought.

“Aren’t you drinking?” he said, when Ingram handed him a glass.

“I don’t like whisky much.”

“You look like you could use a slug. You’re coming down with something.”

“It’s just a cold.”

Earl sipped the whisky gratefully and lighted another cigarette.

“How is working in a gambling joint? Is that a pretty good deal?” Both men were speaking softly, in almost conspiratorial deference to the sleeping woman.

“Good enough; I usually made around two hundred a week.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Some weeks I did better.” Ingram was pleased, but curiously embarrassed by the look of respect in Earl’s face. “I usually dealt and cut the pot for the house, you know. But sometimes the house would back me against the heavy betters — if I won I kept twenty-five per cent.”

“You must play damned good poker.”

“It was my job.”

“What did your mother think about you working in a gambling joint?”

“It was a respectable place. The boss paid off the cops, and he didn’t allow any drinking or loud talk.” Ingram grinned a little. “But she never did like it. My brothers had nice jobs, she thought. One drove a streetcar, the other drove a truck, and the baby of the family was working in a market. I made as much in a week as all three of them put together.”

“Women are dumb that way,” Earl said, shaking his head. “Just plain dumb. A guy has to take his chances.” For some reason talking about these things with Ingram made him feel troubled and restless. He stood and began to pace the floor, rubbing his good hand slowly up and down the side of his leg. He’d had chances too; had his share of breaks. The thought gave him confidence. “You know I damned near stumbled into something good once,” he said. He limped back to the sofa, caught up in a kind of anxious excitement. “It was quite a while back, seven or eight years ago.” He sat down and picked up his glass, watching Ingram with a frown. “I was working at a lodge in Wisconsin then, a place that had a gas station and a bar along with the hotel. A handyman, you could say. Well, there were two guys who dropped in most afternoons for a few beers. They were brothers, Ed and Bill Corley. They were builders, but they had a loan outfit and a big real-estate company, too. You ever met guys like that? With their fingers in everything?”

“They sound smart, all right.”

“I’m telling you,” Earl said irritably. “They were big guys. They were building thirty-two homes for a housing development. Does that give you an idea of how big they were?”

“That’s quite an investment.”

Earl finished his drink and put the glass on the floor. “Well, they liked me. I used to ice-up the bar in the afternoon, and I talked with them a lot. Later on I figured they must have thought I was pretty smart. Why would they talk to me if they didn’t think I was smart?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Ingram said. “Unless they were just kind of making conversation.”

“It wasn’t that way. They liked me, I tell you. But I let the chance slip right through my fingers.” Earl shifted to the edge of the sofa, tense and excited by the memory of this strange defeat. “I let it slip right through my fingers,” he said. He could see Ed and Bill Corley clearly in his mind and smell the sweet-sour smell of the beer in the pine-paneled barroom. The whole area had been booming, but he’d missed the chance to cash in on it.

“Well, where did you fit in?” Ingram said, puzzled.

“It’s plain enough for Christ’s sake. I could have saved up a few hundred dollars, say, and just plunked it on the table some afternoon. ‘Cut me in for that much,’ I’d have said. And they’d have done it.”

“Why?”

“They liked me, I tell you.”

Ingram shook his head. “You got some funny ideas about the business world. You think smart guys go around saying, ‘Let’s cut this youngster in for a piece, and let’s give a chunk to the happy kid behind the bar.’ It just doesn’t work that way.”

Ingram’s skepticism angered Earl. “What’s so funny about them guys liking me?”

“I didn’t mean to joke about it,” Ingram said. “But look: just being around money doesn’t mean anything. Rich folks aren’t giving anything away — anymore than a twenty-year-old kid is going to give some bald old man his nice curly hair.” Ingram leaned forward earnestly. “Look here. Somebody wins a thousand dollars on a number. So all his friends get excited, acting like they won something, too. They get a big kick out of just being close to luck. Then the man gives the money to his wife or pays some debts, and it’s all over — the money’s gone and the people who crowded around it feel they’ve been cheated out of something. That’s what I mean — if you feel lucky-rich because you’re around some money, you’re in for a headache.”

“But you didn’t know these guys,” Earl said stubbornly.

“Well, maybe they were different. Maybe they’d have cut you in.”

“Sure, they would,” Earl said.

But he realized suddenly and bitterly that the Corley brothers would have smiled and shaken their heads at him.

“It’s what you do yourself that counts,” Ingram said. “You plan something and you go ahead and do it. That makes you feel good. You can think about it later and get a kick out of it.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Earl said tiredly. “I used to think that in the Army. We were doing something we could remember later. But who in hell remembers?”

“You do,” Ingram said.

“It isn’t enough for one guy to remember it,” Earl said. He wasn’t sure of what he meant, but he felt he was getting at something important. “If a lot of guys do a thing together, and only one of them remembers it — well, there’s something wrong with that.”

“It didn’t mean the same to everybody, that’s all.”

“That could be it.” Earl nodded slowly, absorbing Ingram’s explanation. “Maybe you’re right.” He lighted a cigarette and flipped the match into the fireplace. “We’re going to have something to remember, Sambo. If we get out of this in one piece, we’re not going to forget it.”

“Not if we have beards all the way to our knees.”

“What did you use to do in your spare time, Sambo? I mean, did you go to ball games or what?”

“I never was much interested in baseball. I slept days and worked nights. Maybe that’s why.”

“Have you ever been to a ball game?”

“Oh sure.”

“And you didn’t like it?” Earl shook his head, exasperated for some reason. “You didn’t see anything pretty in a pickoff play? Or a long throw coming into the plate to cut off a run?”

“Sure, that’s all interesting.” Sambo’s tone was politely enthusiastic; he didn’t really know or like baseball.

“Interesting!” Earl said. “That’s like saying Marilyn Monroe is a girl!” He couldn’t understand his irritation and disappointment. “You come with me to a ball game, and I’ll show you what to look for.”

“Fine,” Ingram said. “But let’s get out of here first.”

Earl poured himself a little more whisky. Why was he thinking of taking Ingram to a ball game? He couldn’t take him to a restaurant or a bar, that was for sure. But they could sit together and talk at a ball game. Lots of colored people went to the ball parks. They would get bleacher tickets and sit in the sun and drink beer. And they could talk about this thing. What they’d done together was stupid and wrong, okay. But you couldn’t always pick your memories. If you never did anything good or smart, what in Christ’s name were you supposed to think about? You had the right to remember the wrong and stupid things if that’s all you’d ever known. Maybe they were important, anyway. He and Ingram had done something together and they had the right to keep it alive.

“We’ll go to a ball game,” he said, nodding at him. “Don’t forget it.”

“After we get out of here, okay.”

“Don’t worry about that. I got a hunch our luck is changing.” Earl smiled and took a pull on his drink. “That’s your influence. You know what they say about colored folks. Changing luck, I mean.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ingram said slowly.

“It’s just an expression. I didn’t mean anything.”

“That’s all right.” Ingram shrugged and smiled; Earl’s apology made him hot and cold all over, grateful but uneasy at the same time. “Do you feel up to eating? I put some soup on while you were asleep. That’s my real hobby. Cooking.”

“No kidding?”

“It’s a fact. I was the oldest boy, so I ran the house while my mother worked out. I got pretty good at it.”

“Where was the old man?”

“He took off when we were kids. There wasn’t any work. I guess it was all he could do.”

“He could of stuck around,” Earl said. “But it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other. My old man stuck around, and I wished to God he hadn’t.”

“Well, things turned out okay for us. We kept out of trouble. And after my brothers were married I set the old lady up in a nice apartment. I used to come over weekends and cook for her.” Ingram stood up and rubbed his chest with the palms of his hands. “This is the coldest place I’ve ever been in.”

“You ought to take some whisky, I’m telling you.”

“It just doesn’t set right with me. I’ll get your soup. It’s canned, but it smells good. Chicken and rice. You like that?”

“Sounds fine.”

When Ingram left, Earl settled himself cautiously back on the couch and lighted another cigarette. Dawn was pressing against the windows, but the trees bordering the fence line were almost lost in the heavy rolling mists. The ground was black and wet, and he could hear a lonely wind sweeping over the fields and veering away from the old stone walls of the house. Lorraine was still sleeping quietly. Earl felt the warmth of the whisky dulling the pain in his shoulder and lighting all of his thoughts with a glow of hope. They would have to leave in a few hours, of course, trusting themselves to the coldness and the night, and to the lonely, hostile roads. But now they were safe; the fog and rain were like friends hiding them from the police. Ingram was right; tonight they’d have a good chance. He felt a curious, tentative respect for Ingram. The man was smart, no doubt of that. He had been right about the Corley brothers. But Earl didn’t mind being wrong. What difference did it make?

Ingram returned in a few minutes with a bowl of soup, and placed it on the table beside the sofa. “You get this inside you and you’ll feel a lot better.”

“You better try some yourself,” Earl said.

“I don’t feel hungry yet. I’m going upstairs and keep an eye on the road. If anybody comes poking around back here we want to know about it.”

“You better take my overcoat. You’ll freeze.”

“All right, thanks.”

Earl patted the portable radio. “I’ll check the news. Maybe Russia declared war or something, and they’ve forgotten all about us.”

“Well, our draft boards would be after us then,” Ingram said. “We just can’t win for losing, man.”