The Good Old Stuff

Check Out at Dawn (aka Night Watch, as Scott O’Hara)

At five minutes of five the disc jockey topped off his program with a recording by the All Stars. Barney Bigard’s clarinet was sweet and strong, to the counterpoint noodling of Earl “Fatha” Hines. He kept the car radio tuned so low that the rhythm was a whisper, the tune like a memory in the mind. As the piece ended he turned off the radio, cupped his hands around the lighter from the dashboard as he lit another cigarette.

When it was finished he eased the car door open and stood out in the crisp, pre-dawn air, the wet spring-smell of the woods. Four months of waiting and watching. The tiredness was deep in him, and the boredom. A leaden-muscled, sag-nerved tiredness.

Behind the house three hundred feet away, the roosters screamed brassy defiance at distant hen runs, and lonesome through the dregs of night came the far-off sigh and pant of a train.

Barry Raymes leaned against the side of the government sedan, sensing, for the hundredth time, his own unreality — neatly dressed, as the Bureau demanded, the regulation Special making its familiar bulge, the regulation hammer on the regulation empty chamber, the entire picture anachronistic in the threat of dawn, in the sleepy peace of the Georgia countryside. In the war there had been the long time on the ship, so long that things that happened before faded away, and the future was immeasurably distant. This was not unlike that time on the ship. At eight Sturdevant would relieve him, to be relieved in turn at four in the afternoon by French, who would carry on until midnight, when once again Barry Raymes, with the thermos of coffee, the bundle of sandwiches from the hotel, would begin the vigil that had begun to seem pointless. But no agent of two years’ seniority can hope to point out to the Special Agent in Charge that the assignment, in his measured opinion, is of no value. Patience is a quality more precious than gold to the Bureau. A man without patience does not last long.

And so there has to be reconciliation to the night after night, the hundred and twenty-six nights thus spent, and the possible hundred and twenty-six yet to come. Even though each night added another cumulative factor to the deathly weariness. Weariness came from recurrent alertness, the adrenaline that came hard and fast into the blood whenever a car seemed to slow on the highway. Or there would be an unidentifiable sound that made necessary a cautious patrol of the grounds with the Bureau variation of the wartime infrared snooperscope.

All because the Bureau was gambling that Craik Lopat would return to see the girl he had intended to marry...

As dawn paled the eastern sky, the kitchen lights went on, slanting yellow-orange oblongs out onto the packed dirt of the dooryard, and he could see her, tall, as she moved about in the kitchen, putting the coffee on before going back to her bedroom to exchange the robe for the cotton dress and sweater that she usually wore. The sweater was a heavy maroon cardigan, too large for her, and he suspected that it had belonged to Lopat. Somehow, this past month, when he thought of Marra Allen wearing Lopat’s sweater, an ugly anger thickened within him. He recognized the potential danger of his attitude and sought to recover his original indifference, but without any particular success.

In the night watch you could think of taking this Marra Allen, with her ignorance and her superstitions and her unlettered tongue, and becoming Pygmalion, because there was no denying that her slim loveliness was more than just an attribute of youth. The bone structure was good, and she would take beauty to her grave. And French told of the innate fastidiousness, the kitchen shades drawn, the water heated each night in the big tub in a countryside where Saturday baths were a mark of eccentricity.

And also, in the long night, you could think of her breathing softly in sleep on her bed and think of how her warm breath would come from lips parted just a bit, probably, and the golden hair spread over the pillow. She was three hundred feet away, and one night you quite calmly stepped over to the birch which was white in the starlight and clubbed it hard with your clenched fist, later sucking the swollen knuckles, but cured for the moment.

Barry Raymes had always been a quick and competent — though shy — man, with a wide dark line in his mind separating right from wrong. The frequency with which his thoughts and his dreams turned to Marra Allen disturbed him because he sensed wrongness in a Bureau agent’s involving himself personally with any female in any case, no matter what intrinsic worth said female seemed to possess.

Sturdevant and French both made the usual, the expected, jokes about the midnight-to-eight trick, and the obvious advantages pertaining to the hour, and in the beginning he had laughed in the expected way and hinted broadly of the mythical delights of such an assignment, but of late he had felt the flush on the back of his neck, and laughter had not been as easy.

When she returned to the kitchen the dawn light was brighter, paling the artificial light from the kitchen. She opened the kitchen door and looked over toward the small side road where his car was hidden in the heavy brush. The light behind her outlined her, and the morning wind caught at the hem of the cotton dress.

He had long since decided that there was no compromise of Bureau directives involved. The SAC — Special Agent in Charge — had made it quite clear that it would be impossible to carry out the assignment without tipping off the girl. And so his conscience had been made easy. And it had become a morning custom.

He came across the dooryard, taking out the Special when he was forty feet from her. She stepped aside as usual, saying, “Morning, mister,” that look of amusement on her face as though he were a small boy playing some absurd variation of cops-and-robbers.

He went through the house as he had been taught in the School. It did not take long. Four rooms, like small boxes, on one floor. Bedroom, sitting room, storeroom, and kitchen.

When he came back into the kitchen she had put the coffee cups on the table, taking, as usual, the one without the handle.

Without turning, she said, “Find any crooks in my house?” She stood at the wood stove, turning the eggs.

“Not today.”

“Gives me a funny feeling, kinda, mister. You don’t trust me much, do you?”

“Of course I trust you, Marra. I just have to follow orders.”

“Sure,” she said, her tone weary. He sat down in his usual place, his back to the wall. She brought over the two plates of eggs, the thick-cut bacon, taking, as usual, the chipped plate for herself.

They ate in silence, and, as on every morning, she lowered her face almost to the plate for each forkful. In another woman it would have amused and partially revolted him. In Marra it seemed oddly pathetic. It seemed as though a girl of breeding sat there, intent, for some strange reason, on playing this part that had been given her. And in the depths of her gray-blue eyes he saw the deadness, a nothingness, as though a part of her had been dead — for four months.

They finished breakfast, and he found the fifty-cent piece in his pocket. He slipped it under the edge of the plate, without her seeing him do it. They had never spoken of the fee he had arbitrarily selected as proper for the morning breakfast, and he knew that she would not take the plate away until he left.

“When you people goin’ ta give up?” she asked.

“When we get Lopat.”

“He hid good, eh?”

“He hid very good. Maybe we’ll find him. Maybe he’ll come back to be found.”

She took one of his cigarettes. She sighed. “For me, mister, it might just as well be jail. When Craik was around I got to go jukin’ once in a while. Now none of the boys’ll ask me. Solly, or Tad, or Jesse or any of ’em. They know there’ll be you G’s taggin’ along.”

“Are you in love with Craik Lopat?”

“Love is a big word, mister. Craik’s always good for laughs. Big husky guy with a mean eye on him. Like a... well, like one of them mountain cats. Mean. Big white teeth. See him work out once on one of them Turner boys from Patton Ridge. Gouged an eye out of him in about three seconds.”

“Did he get into trouble just out of meanness, do you think, Marra?”

She frowned, took her time answering. “I can’t say. He always wanted a big shiny car and money in his pocket. He got fired off the gas station, and they wouldn’t take him back in the mill again because of the trouble last time. I guess he was sore at the mill and that’s why he done it.”

Barry Raymes, thinking aloud, said, “And he had beginner’s luck, all right. If they’d gotten the safe closed... if it hadn’t been payday... if that guard hadn’t lost his nerve... lots of ifs. He got thirty-five thousand, in small bills and change, and drove off in the plant manager’s car to boot and took that payroll clerk with him. That’s how we come into the picture.”

“Because of the state line?”

“He rolled the clerk out into the brush in Alabama, remember, and shot him through the stomach. The clerk didn’t die easy, Marra.”

“He was always wild-like,” she said softly. “Even when he was just a kid.”

“You were going to marry him,” he said accusingly.

“Oh, I know what you mean. He’d have given me a bad time, that’s for sure. Other women and getting likkered up and maybe slamming me around. He done that once, you know.” She laughed, almost fondly. “Gee, did I have a fat eye on me!”

“After what’s happened,” he asked, “if you had a chance to go with him, would you?”

She regarded him steadily. “Mister, I couldn’t rightly say.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?”

“I might.”

He wanted to hurt her. He pushed his chair back and stood up. He said, “You’ll find the half buck under the plate.”

She flushed. “That’s all right.”

Anger didn’t fade entirely until he was back at the car. And then he was ashamed for speaking of the money, knowing that it would make a difference between them.

Sturdevant showed up a little before eight, and Barry Raymes drove back to the small city eight miles away and went to bed.

He was up at five, had another breakfast, and went to a movie. At eleven he finished his lunch, picked up the sandwiches and coffee, and went out and relieved a bored and sleepy Paul French.

The long night hours went by without incident. She did not come to the kitchen door. He waited longer than usual and then went over.

“I want to search the house,” he said harshly.

She stepped aside without a word. As before, the house was empty.

He went back into the kitchen and said, “I could use some breakfast, Marra.”

“I can sell you coffee, eggs, and bacon for a half a buck, if you want it.”

“I... I’m sorry I acted like I did yesterday, Marra.”

She looked directly at him. “You was ugly.”

“I had a reason.”

“What reason?”

“You said you might go away with — with him. Marra, I don’t know what’s happened to me, but...”

She moved a half step closer to him and, with dignity, lifted her face to look directly up into his eyes. He felt the warmth of her breath against his chin. As he bent to kiss her, her hands fastened with hard force around his arms above the elbows. His reactions were delayed. He twisted away, reaching for the revolver.

“I wouldn’t try that,” a man said softly. The army Colt in his hand was aimed at Barry’s belt buckle. “You did right well, Marra, and I thank you for it. Back real slow against the wall next to the stove there, mister. Hands way up. That’s right. Go git me some cloth, Marra, a wad of it.”

Craik Lopat wore an expensive-looking suit, but the knees were stained with dirt and one button was missing from the suit coat. He wore no tie, and his white shirt was open at the collar. He was thick in the shoulder, slim and flat in the belly and hips. Black eyebrows met over the bridge of his nose, and the mouth was heavy with cruelty and sensuousness.

“A cop,” he said, “trying to love up my woman! They musta got you outa the bottom of the barrel, sonny. I been here for two days, lay in’ up in the hills until I figured out your hours. When you looked around, I was outside the bedroom window. And it’ll be nearly two hours before the next one shows up. You couldn’t find me before, and you won’t find the two of us either. I got a good car stashed over beyond the grove.”

Marra came back into the kitchen with a wad of sheeting.

“You want me to tear it into strips, Craik?” she asked.

“No. Give it here. I got to wad it around the end of this here forty-five because it makes too damn much noise. You want to see me shoot him, you kin stand over there, ‘f you want. Sonny gets it low down in the gut. He woulda got it in the head except for what I seen him trying to do to you.”

Barry Raymes felt the sweat run down his ribs. His mouth was dry and he was dizzy. Some of it was genuine fear. More of it was anger and frustration that he should have been taken in so easily. He looked at Marra. Her face was pale, and she moistened her lips.

“Right... right here in the kitchen?” she asked weakly.

“You got no more use for this little old shack, honey. You don’t like it, go on in the next room.”

“They’ll never give up if you kill me, Lopat. Never,” Barry said. He despised the tremble that came into his voice.

“They got no pictures of me, sonny, and no prints. I got a nice new name and a lot of good neighbors in a place you’ll never find. I told ’em all I was going back to pick up my wife.” He wrapped the barrel in the sheeting. “Brace yourself, sonny.”

“Craik,” she said. “Wait a minute. Let me get my stuff together afore you kill him. It’ll make some noise, and I don’t want to have to run for it without my things.”

“I’m going to buy you new stuff, honey.”

“After we get married?”

Craik Lopat frowned. “If we get time to make out the papers, honey. You’ll get the new stuff anyway.”

“I’ll hurry. Don’t shoot him yet. I want to see it, Craik. I never did see a man get hisself killed yet.”

She smiled, quite merrily.

“Make it fast, baby,” Craik growled.

She hurried out of the room. Craik stood, whistling tonelessly, the muzzle, shrouded in sheeting, steady as a boulder. Barry made his plans. They hadn’t taken the revolver. That was an oversight. He’d watch Craik’s eyes. They might flick over to the girl when she came back into the kitchen. At that moment he’d throw himself to the left, snatching the revolver as he fell, hoping to get in at least one shot.

He heard Marra’s quick footsteps. She appeared in the bedroom door. She lifted the shotgun, and the full blast at short range caught Craik Lopat in the back of his thick, tanned neck. The big man stumbled one step forward, his head nearly severed from his body, and fell heavily, full length, the .45 spinning out of his dead hand, his face smashing against the worn floorboards.

Barry Raymes bent stupidly and picked up the .45. Marra Allen knelt beside the body, picked up the dead hand, sat back on her heels, and crooned — a low, sad tone that was without tears.

“You were going to go with him.”

“He was changed, mister. Changed. He was like a dog I see once in town, with suds on his mouth and his eyes crazy.”

“Was it because he was going to kill me?” he asked softly.

She turned her head slowly and looked at the wall against which Barry had been standing. Her voice sounded far away. “You see that blue color, don’t you? Last year I wanted to fix the place up. He bought the paint and painted it. I got those little red things. Funny little things. You wet the paper and then they slide right off onto the wall. He thought they were pretty. And we were going to live here, you know.”

She still held the lifeless hand. He saw the expensive band of the watch, the black hair curling harshly on the back of the hand, between the knuckles of the fingers.

“That’s where he was going to kill me, against that wall.”

“It didn’t mean anything to him, mister. It didn’t mean a damn thing to him.”

He shifted his weight uneasily and said, with mock joviality, “Well, no matter why you felt you had to do it, I want you to know that I really feel...”

She wasn’t listening. She had started that toneless crooning again, and he suddenly realized that it was the sound many women make when they wish to soothe infants, wish to send them off to sleep.

He walked out the open kitchen door, then turned, saying, “Did you say something?”

“I just said, mister, that it’ll scrub off the floorboards. It sure would have messed up that wall.”

He walked through the dooryard and across the vegetable patch, careful not to step in the freshly planted rows. The night mist was drying on the hood and top of the black government sedan. When the sending set warmed up, he lifted the hand mike off the prongs, knowing as he did so that not only had Craik Lopat died but also a girl who had existed almost entirely in his mind, and said, “Raymes reporting, Raymes reporting in.”

“Go ahead, Raymes.”

He licked his lips and planned how he would phrase it.