Time is the Simplest Thing

FIFTEEN

Blaine sat on the stool in the hamburger joint, waiting for the man to bag a half-dozen sandwiches and fill the pail with coffee. There were only two other customers in the place, and they paid no attention to him. One had finished eating and was reading a paper. The other, poised above his plate, was shoveling in a gooey mess that originally had been eggs and fried potatoes but now looked like some new kind of dog food from being thoroughly mixed together.

Blaine turned from looking at the men and stared out the massive slab of glass which comprised two sides of the building.

The morning street was quiet, with only a few cars moving and only one man walking.

Probably it had been foolish, he told himself, to come out like this in an utterly mad and perhaps rather useless attempt to throw Riley off his guard, to attempt to reassure him. For it was more than likely that no matter what he did and no matter what Riley said, the trucker would continue to carry some suspicion.

But, Blaine thought, it would not be for long, for they must be near the river, and Pierre must be just a few miles to the north. And a funny thing, he thought — Riley had never told him where he had been going. Although it was not queer; it fit in with all the rest of it — the man’s evident fright and his secrecy concerning what he carried.

He swung back from the window and watched the man put the hamburgers in the sack and fill the pail with coffee. He paid with the five-dollar bill Riley had given him and pocketed the change.

He went out into the street and headed for the bulk oil station where Riley and the truck were waiting. It was too early yet for anyone to be at the station, and they’d eat their breakfast while waiting for someone to show up. Then they’d fill the tank and be on their way, and this, thought Blaine, might be the last day he’d be with the truck.

For once they hit the river, he’d get off and start heading north for Pierre.

The morning was cool almost to the point of chill, and the air burned in his nose as he breathed it in. It was going to be another good day, he knew — another moment of October with its winelike air and its smoky sky.

As he came to the street where the bulk station was located, the truck was not in sight.

Perhaps, he told himself, Riley might have moved it. But even as he thought it, he knew it was not right. He knew he had been ditched.

At the cost of a few dollars, at the cost of finding someplace else to get a tank of gas, the trucker had rid himself of Blaine.

It came to Blaine as no great shock, for he realized that he’d been expecting it, although not admitting to himself that he expected it. After all, from Riley’s point of view, it was an astoundingly simple solution to his suspicions of the night before.

To convince himself, to make sure there was no mistake, Blaine walked around the block.

The truck was not in sight. And he was on his own.

In just a little while the town would be coming to life, and before that happened he must be out of sight. He must find a place where he could hide out for the day.

He stood for a moment to orient himself.

The nearer edge of town, he was certain, lay to the east, for they had driven through the southern edge of it for a mile or two.

He started out, walking as fast as was possible, but not so fast, he hoped, as would attract attention. A few cars went by along the street, once a man came out of his house to pick up the morning paper, once he met another man with a lunch bucket swinging from his hand. No one paid attention to him.

The houses dwindled out, and he reached the last street in the town. Here the prairie ended and the land began to tumble down, in a jumble of wooded hills and knolls, each one lower than the last, and he knew that the Missouri lay beyond. Somewhere down there where the last hill ended, the mighty stream gurgled on its way with its shifting sand bars and its willow islands.

He made his way across a field and climbed a fence and went down the bank of a steep ravine and at the bottom of it was a tiny creek that chuckled at its banks and just beyond was a pool with a clump of willows growing close beside it.

Blaine got down on his hands and knees and crawled beneath the willows. It was a perfect hideout. It was outside the town and there was nothing to bring anybody here — the stream was too small to fish and it was too late for swimming. He would not be disturbed.

There would be no one to sense the flashing mirror he carried in his mind; there’d be no one to yell “Parry!”

And come night he could move on.

He ate three of the hamburgers and drank some of the coffee.

The sun came up and filtered through the willows to make a dappled pattern of sunshine and shadow.

From the town came far-off sounds — the rumble of a truck, the purring of an engine, the barking of some dogs, the calling of a mother rounding up the kids.

It had been a long road from that night in Fishhook, Blaine told himself, sitting in the willow shade and poking with a stick into the sandy ground. A long ways from Charline’s and from Freddy Bates. And up until this moment he’d had no time to even think about it.

There had been a question then, and there was still a question now: Whether it had been smart to run away from Fishhook; whether, despite all Godfrey Stone had said, it might not have been the wiser course to stay and take his chances of whatever Fishhook might have had in store.

He sat there and thought about it and he went back to the bright blue room where all had been set in motion. And he saw the room again as if it were only yesterday — better than if it were only yesterday. The alien stars were shining faintly down on this room which had no roof, and the bright blue floor was smooth beneath the rolling of his wheels, and the room was filled with the weird fabricated pieces that might have been furniture or art objects or appliances or almost anything at all.

It all came alive for him as it should not come alive — clear and concise, with no rough edges and nothing blurred, with not a thing put in and not a thing left out.

The Pinkness was sprawling at its ease and it roused and said to him: So you came back again!

And he was really there.

Without machine or body, without any outward trappings, with nothing but his naked mind, Shepherd Blaine had come back to the Pinkness.