The Long Wait

Chapter One

The bus came up over the rise and there was Lyncastle nestling in the dark palm of the mountains like a jewel box with the moon shining on it. From a distance the avenues and streets were like burlap woven of lights and neon tubes, a crosshatch pattern that went on long after midnight, moving and screaming with a false, drunken gaiety.

I took the envelope out of my pocket and tore it until my lap was filled with the remains, then slid the window open and let the fragments whip out into the night.

The fat lady behind me poked a chubby finger into my shoulder and said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like that window shut.” The way she said it you’d think I was a damn kid.

I said, “I’d like your mouth shut too.” She shut it. All day it had been flapping about everything from the way the driver handled the crate to the noise the baby up front made, but this time it was shut so tight even her lips didn’t show.

The last of the shreds steamed by the window and I thought that there goes a big fat reason for killing somebody, scattered over a mile of concrete, and no matter how hard he tried, nobody could go back and pick up the pieces fast enough to find out why.

I left the window open and hoped it would blow the wig off the fat lady and I didn’t close it until the bus angled into a port that was the other half of the railroad station.

The driver killed the engine and half turned his head while he said, “This is Lyncastle. Change here for railroad and bus connections to Chicago and all points east. There will be a twenty-minute rest stop for anyone going south.”

For me it was the end of the line.

I waited until the fat woman puffed by and traded her a nasty grin for something she said too low to hear, then hauled my metal overnight case out of the rack and followed her off the bus.

A mile off a train hooted twice and its eye swiveled around a curve and led it down the stretch to the station. A redcap inside the station was warning the group headed for the rest rooms that there was no time to waste and those who were making the connection ran for the platform.

I put the overnight case down and pulled the last cigarette out of my jacket pocket, lit it, and went into the waiting room. A flimsy lunch counter ran along one side of the wall with a newsstand opposite it by the ticket booth. All the seats were filled so I went back to the men’s room and did what I had to do.

For a minute I thought of washing up, but it was going to take more than a bowl and a jar of liquid soap to take the grime of a thousand miles out of my skin. I needed a haircut and shave more than I needed a change from the greasy pants and leather jacket. So I washed my hands and let it go at that.

This time there was an empty stool at the lunch counter and I could see why it was empty. The fat woman had the next one and was shooting her mouth off again. Something to do with the grease in the doughnuts. The tired-looking waitress was next to tears and if I hadn’t climbed onto the stool fatty would have gotten her second cup of coffee thrown in her face. She shut up when she saw me and wrinkled her nose like I smelled bad or something.

The waitress came down and I said, “Coffee. A ham and Swiss on rye, too.” She made up my order and rang up the change on the register. I had a second coffee to put a lid on the meal and turned around on the stool.

For the first time I noticed the old man in the ticket booth. But it wasn’t the first time he had noticed me. I could tell that much. There were four people lined up in front of his window waiting to get tickets and he wasn’t paying much attention to what he was doing. He kept looking past them, squinting alternately through and above his steel-rimmed glasses with his face drawn into a puzzled frown that held something of a father’s worried look when his kid is sick.

For a thousand miles I had been wondering when the first time would be. For a thousand miles I thought and speculated and now it was here. Just a grizzled old man with a handlebar mustache that looked like a yellow-tipped broom from straining so much tobacco juice.

It wasn’t like I thought it would be at all.

The last man in line picked up his ticket and walked back to the bus port and I took his place. The old man started to smile and I said, “Hello, Pop.” Just like that.

It looked like somebody pulled his mustache up with a string. Forty-eight false teeth showed a great big grin that was hesitant going up but solid once it was there. “Gawd! Johnny McBride. Johnny boy...”

“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, Pop?”

I couldn’t figure the look on his face. But at least I was sure of one thing... he recognized me. “Gawd, yes!” he said.

“How’s things in town?”

He made a funny hollow noise with his teeth to keep the smile in place. “Same as ever. You... planning to stay around?”

“For a while.”

“Johnny...”

I picked up my bag. “See you, Pop. rm tired and dirty and I want to get sacked in for the night.” I didn’t want to stay there too long. From now on I had to go slow and easy. Sort of feel my way around the details I didn’t know. Too much at once could ruin a lifetime.

Over at the newsstand I picked up a pack of Luckies and a package of gum and had one of each while the attendant made change of my buck. When I got back to the platform I stood there in the shadows watching the bus that brought me pull out and I knew that it was too late to do anything except go through with it even if I didn’t want to.

But I did want to. I wanted to more than I ever wanted anything else and just thinking about it was nice, like eating a thick juicy steak when you were hungry. For somebody else it wasn’t going to be so nice.

For three people. One was going to die. One was going to get both arms broken so he could never use them again. One was going to get a beating that would leave the marks of the lash striped across the skin for all the years left to live.

That last one was a woman.

Something in the deeper shadows that formed the comer of the building moved and evolved into the bulk of a man. He stood there a minute, broad and tall, then took a step into the light. He was ponderous, the way a heavyweight is when he goes to fat, but without losing too much of his speed and strength. The light from the window hit his face, highlighting the coarse features that seemed built around the stub of the cigar in his mouth. He had on a new broad-brimmed hat with a narrow rancher’s band, but his suit was strictly working clothes and would have fit if there wasn’t the bulge of a gun in his hip pocket.

I didn’t look at him, but I felt it when he was by my shoulder. “Got a light, buddy?”

I flicked a match with my thumbnail and held it out. The face I thought was only coarse took on a brutal appearance. He nodded and I blew it out, squeezing the head out of habit to make sure there was no warmth left before I chucked it down. “Staying in town long?” He blew the cigar smoke right in my face.

“Could be,” I said.

“Where you from?”

“Oklahoma.” I gave him a faceful of cigarette smoke and he coughed. “The oil fields,” I added.

“No work like that here.”

“Who says?”

I wondered if he was going to swing on me. He did something with his hand, but all it was was to show the silver glint of a badge against a black leather folder. “I says.”

“So?”

“We don’t like migrants. Especially Oakies out of work. There’s a bus leaving m twenty minutes. You better be on it.”

“What happens if I’m not?”

“If you’re real interested I could show you.”

My cigarette hit and splashed sparks in the road. Just for the hell of it I leaned into the shadows where there was nothing but dark, nothing at all, and he was there in the light squinting a little to see where I was. “I’m real interested,” I said.

There’s one thing nice about the guys who play rough. They can always tell when they got a sucker or somebody who’s not such a sucker. “Twenty minutes,” he said. His cigar glowed to a cherry red as he pulled on it. “They turn the lights back on out here then.”

A cab cruised in and slowed down. I picked up my case and walked over. The driver was a young kid with his hair slicked back and he gave me the eyes up and down while I opened the door. I said, “Town.”

The cop moved out of the shadows and stepped off the curb. The kid leered, “What do I get paid with?”

So I took out the roll in my pocket and riffled through the twenties and fifties until I found a pair of singles and threw them on the seat beside him. He tucked them in his pocket fast and got polite all of a sudden. “Town it is, friend,” he told me.

I shut the door and looked back out the window. The cop was still there, but his face was all screwed up in a scowl and he was trying to figure out how he had made such a big mistake twice in figuring me for a sucker and for a poor sucker at that.

The cab spun to the main drag and I settled back against the cushions after telling the kid to take me to the Hathaway House. I watched the pattern of the lights shriek into a blaze of color and thought that so far it had been a hell of a homecoming.

But it was about what I had expected.