Джон Макдональд - The End of the Night

“We can stop and work some,” Shack said.

“Never use that word in front of me again, sir,” Sandy told him.

“It’s on account of we’re too many,” Nan said. “I’ve been telling you. We can split up and you and me, honey, we could make it all the way through in a day, honest to God. I know.”

“We’re all too happy together to break it up,” Sandy said.

“This is happy?” she asked sullenly.

“Shut up,” he said. “This is hilarious like. Anyhow, I’ve got an idea. For tomorrow. We’ve got to start being shrewd like. Use all assets and talents. We need a car of our own, children.”

“Grand theft auto,” Shack said darkly.

“Maybe we can just borrow one.”

“How?” I asked.

“Watch and learn,” he said. “Watch and learn, college boy.”

The next day was Tuesday, the twenty-first of July. That’s the day they say we started our “career.” He slugged us so hard Monday night, we weren’t stirring until noon, and then he hopped the three of us high and far, and got what was left of the tequila into Shack. He made us walk east on 90 until we were dragging. It was a blinding, dizzying day. The coaching didn’t start until he found a place that suited him.

It went off exactly the way he planned it. Nan stood on the shoulder of the road with her hatbox. We lay flat behind rocks and brush. A man alone, in a blue-and-white Ford station wagon, a new one, came to a screaming stop fifty yards beyond her and backed up so hastily you could guess that he thought he’d better get her before the next guy stopped. She got into the front seat with her hatbox. She smiled at him and suggested he set the hatbox in back. He took it in both hands and strained around in the seat. While he was in that position she stuck the point of her little knife into the pit of his belly, puncturing the skin just enough, and told him that if he moved one little muscle, she’d open him up like a Christmas goose. She convinced him. He didn’t even let go of the hatbox. She held him there until two cars went by. When the road was clear in both directions, she gave a yell and we scrambled up and hurried to the wagon and got in. Sandy and I got into the back. Shack went around and opened the door on the driver’s side, took aim and chunked the man solidly under the ear with his big fist. The man sagged. Shack bunted him over with his hip and got behind the wheel and in a moment we were rolling along at a legal speed. Nan checked the glove compartment. She found a .32-caliber automatic and handed it back to Sandy. He shoved it into his rucksack.

“I do like station wagons!” Sandy said reverently, and suddenly we were all laughing. No reason.

I felt no slightest twinge of guilt or fear. It didn’t seem to me then that we had done anything serious. It was all like a complicated joke.

The man stirred and groaned and lifted his head. “What are you people doing...”

Nan put the knife against his short ribs. “No questions now, Tex,” Sandy said. “Later.”

After we’d gone maybe five miles, Sandy told Shack to slow it down. The road was clear. We turned off onto a sandy road that was hardly more than a trace. We crawled and bumped over rocks until we had circled around behind a barren hill, completely out of sight of the road. Sandy had Shack turn it around so we were headed out. Shack took the key out of the switch. We got out. In the sudden silence we were a thousand years from civilization. A lizard stared at us and ran. A buzzard circled against the blue, high as a jet. You could hear the hard high whine of the cars, fading down the scale as they went by on the invisible highway.

There was a pile of rocks twenty feet from the car. Nan and Sandy sat on the rocks. I sat on my heels not far from them. Shack took a half cigar from his pocket and lit it, and stood leaning against the front fender. The man stood beside the open door of the car. He rubbed his neck and winced. He was maybe thirty-five, with blond hair cut short and a bald spot. He had a round, earnest, open face, pale-blue eyes, a fair complexion. His nose, forehead and bald spot were red and peeling. He wore a light-blue sports shirt, sweaty at the armpits, and gray slacks, and black-and-white shoes. He had a long torso, short, bandy legs, and a stomach that hung over a belt worn low. He wore a wide gold wedding band and, on the little finger of his right hand, a heavy lodge ring.

He tried to smile at all of us, and said, “I thought the little lady was traveling alone. My mistake.”

“What’s your name, Tex?” Sandy asked.

“Becher. Horace Becher.”

“What do you do, Horace?”

“I’m sales manager of the Blue Bonnet Tile Company out of Houston. I’ve been making a swing around the territory. Checking up.”

“Checking up on girl hitchhikers, Horace?”

“Well, you know how it is.”

“How is it, Horace?”

“I don’t know. I just saw her there...” He visibly pulled himself together. His smile became more ingratiating. You could almost hear him telling himself that he was a salesman, so get in there and sell, boy. “I guess you folks want money and I guess you want the car. Everything is insured, so you go ahead and take it. I won’t give you a bit of trouble, folks. Not a bit. I’ll wait just as long as you say before I report it, and I won’t be able to remember the license number when I do. Is that a good deal?”

“Throw me your wallet, Horace,” Sandy ordered.

“Sure. Sure thing.” He took it out and threw it. It landed near me. I picked it up and flipped it to Sandy.

Sandy counted the money. “Two hundred and eighty-two bucks, Horace. That’s very nice. That’s decent of you, man.”

“I like to carry a pretty good piece of cash on me,” Horace said.

“Mm-m. Credit cards. Membership cards. You’re all carded up, Horace. American Legion too?

“I got in just as the war ended. Had some occupation duty in Japan.

“That’s nice. Belong to a lot of clubs, Horace?”

“Well, the Elks and the Masons and the Civitan.”

“What’s your golf handicap?”

“Bowling’s my game. Class A. One eighty-three average last year.”

“Drink beer when you bowl?”

“Well, that’s part of it, I guess.”

“You’re in lousy condition, Horace, with that big disgusting gut on you. You should cut down on the beer.”

Horace slapped his stomach and laughed. It was a flat and lonely sound under the hot sun, and it didn’t last long.

“Who’s the fat broad in this picture, man?”

“That’s my wife,” Horace said rather stiffly.

“Better take her off the beer too. These your kids?”

“Two of them. That was taken three years ago. I got a boy eighteen months old now. Like I said, you people can take the car and the money, and no hard feelings.”

“If we do, would you call it stealing, Horace?”

The man looked blankly at Sandy. “Wouldn’t it be?”

“That’s a raunchy attitude, man. You’re a big successful clubman. And you get this chance to loan us a car and some money.”

“A loan?”

“We’re your new friends. Treat your friends right, Tex.”

“Sure thing,” he said brightly. “It can be a loan, if that’s the way you want it.”

He had been edging back toward the open door of the car. I had noticed it and I guessed Sandy had. Suddenly he whirled and plunged headlong into the car, yanking the glove compartment open. He scrabbled with both hands, releasing a gay rain of trading stamps, dislodging Kleenex, sun lotion, road maps. His hands moved more slowly and stopped. He lay half across the seat as though in exhaustion, and we heard the rasp of his breathing. He pushed himself slowly back out of the car and stood and smiled in a small sick way.