C Corwin - Dig

“You know,” said Bud, “I don’t think we all came back together from Columbus. In fact, I’m sure we didn’t.”

I was puzzled. “Didn’t come back together? With my Lawrence you mean?”

“No,” he said. “I mean the debate team. The tournament ended at four. We got our trophies and your husband took that picture that ran in the college paper. We were all supposed to go out for dinner with the debate coach, Professor Cook, stay another night at the hotel and then come back on the Thursday morning bus. But Rollie was anxious to get back. He had something waiting for him the rest of us didn’t. A girlfriend. He asked Professor Cook for permission to take the overnight bus.”

I was more than puzzled now. I was flat out thrown for a loop. “What time did that bus leave Columbus?”

Bud let go with another one of his irritating moans. “I have no idea,” he said. “I do remember Rollie going to dinner with us. Your Lawrence, too. But I know Rollie didn’t come with us afterward on our tour of the local rathskellers.”

“What about my Lawrence,” I asked. “He took the tour, did he?”

Bud laughed like a nervous goat. “As I recall, it was his idea.”

I fought off my old feelings of betrayal and got back on the subject at hand. “About those trophies,” I asked, “did you get to keep them? Or did they end up in a glass case somewhere?”

“Professor Cook got one for the case outside his office. But, sure, we got to keep our individual trophies.”

“Just out of curiosity-exactly what did your trophies say?” I asked.

Either Bud was staring directly at his trophy or his memory was very good: “First Place, State of Ohio Collegiate Debate Tournament, Columbus, 1956-57.”

I jotted that down. “And did they also put your name on it?”

“Not the same day we won them of course,” he said. “But later Professor Cook collected them and had our names engraved.”

“All four of them?”

“No. Just our separate names.”

“I mean did he have all four trophies engraved?”

“I suppose he did.”

“But you don’t remember for sure?”

Tuesday, June 12

I called the Greyhound station as soon as I got to work. In the sweetest voice I could muster I asked the sleepy man on the other end if he had any bus schedules from 1957 lying around. He questioned my sanity in the sweetest voice he could muster. He also suggested that I call the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland. “They got a whole bunch of old train and bus memorabilia up there,” he said. The word memorabilia stumbled off his tongue as if he’d never had the opportunity to use the word before.

I took his advice. The librarian at the historical society, out of some sense of sisterhood I suppose, spent the next four hours digging through the files. She called me back at two o’clock, just as I was heading toward the cafeteria with my empty mug. “I’ve got some good news for you,” she said.

Friday, June 15

I could have driven over there Tuesday night. Or Wednesday night. But I just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t face the ugliness of it all.

But by Thursday night my curiosity was back in the driver’s seat. I watched the midnight repeat of Larry King on CNN-he was doing his umpteenth show on the Scott Peterson murder trial-and then I watched some silly half-hour infomercial on a gizmo that peels hardboiled eggs perfectly every time. Then I loaded James into the backseat and headed for Hemphill College. It was a quarter to two in the morning. West Tuckman was absolutely empty. As if the rapture had sucked everybody up to heaven but James and me.

I reached the college in ten quick minutes. I pulled over in front of Mueller Hall. It sits right on the corner of West Tuckman and Balch Avenue. It’s where Greyhound used to have its campus bus stop. Hannawa was on the north-south route between Cleveland and Columbus. In addition to the main station downtown, the buses would make a curbside stop here for college students. That campus stop was eliminated years ago. These days even the poorest students have cars. But in the fifties the big noisy Greyhounds would pull over right where James and I were now standing.

“I suppose you’re wondering what we’re doing here at this ungodly hour,” I whispered to James. He was preoccupied with the glorious smells along the curb but I told him anyway. “According to the old bus schedule that the librarian at the historical society found for me, the overnight bus left Columbus at ten-fifteen. It made its way up Route 42, through Mansfield and Ashland and a dozen other towns. It reached the college at two, and then headed downtown before continuing on to Cleveland.”

I gave James’ leash a tug and we started up the sidewalk. “There’s no way to know now if Rollie got off the bus exactly at two. But it was spring. No snow or ice on the roads. So more than likely the bus arrived on time. And more than likely he was the only one who got off. It was Easter week. Nobody would be coming back to the college that week. Anyway, Rollie got off the bus with his suitcase and his big first place trophy.”

James found a nice forsythia bush to lift his leg on. I gave him all the time he needed. “We can’t say for certain that Rollie came this way. But even if he cut across the lawn between Mueller Hall and the field house, he still would have ended up on Hester Street. And Hester is the only sensible way to get to the apartment building on Liberty Street where Gwen lived her senior year. She’d talked her father into renting it for her, even though he’d already bought her that pink Buick.”

James finished. We walked on in the dark. The streetlights looked like dim, faraway flying saucers. “Rollie could have gone straight to his dorm on the other side of Tuckman, of course. But the reason he took the overnight bus was to see Gwen, wasn’t it? That’s what Bud Wetzel figured and I’m sure that’s right. He was anxious to show Gwen his trophy. Reap whatever romantic reward it might bring.”

We reached Hester Street and headed east. “It’s impossible to know which side of the street Rollie walked on. He could have crossed here and walked along the north side. Or he could have stayed on this side until he reached Liberty. But it doesn’t matter. If Rollie saw what I think he saw, then he could have seen it from either side of the street.”

We crossed Mortuary Street and then Church Street. The big, turn-of-the-century houses along Hester gave way to two blocks of Tudor-style apartment buildings. They had brown brick facades and green tile roofs. I stopped and gave James a biscuit, a reward for his patience. I pointed my chin at the building directly across the street from us. “See that building,” I said. “That’s where David Delarosa was killed. Early Thursday morning. Easter week 1957. Well, you can see what I’m thinking, can’t you, James?” I painted the picture for him in case he didn’t. “The street is dark and empty just like it is tonight. And Rollie is hurrying along on his way to Gwen’s. No doubt he’s exhausted. It’s been a rough couple of days and he’s had a long bus ride. But he’s also a man with not just one big trophy, but two. Never in his life did he think a classy girl like Gwen Moffitt would fall in love with him. But she had. She’d looked beyond his family’s embarrassing working-class status. She’d recognized his potential. Just that past fall she’d accepted the modest diamond ring he’d bought with his grocery packing money. So Rollie is a tired but happy young man that morning. Then he sees it. A pink Buick convertible. As bright as neon under the street light. Parked in front of that apartment building where all the athletes stay.”