James Cain - The Baby in the Icebox and Other Short Fiction

He leaped from the porch, went scampering to her in his shorts. Taking her by the hand, he jerked her to her feet, put his arms around her, ran her to the house. As he pulled her into the cold interior, her teeth chattered. He grabbed her dripping handbag, clawed it open. “You got a match? We’ll freeze if we don’t get a match!”

“There’s some in the car.”

He dashed out again, ran down to the car, jerked the door open, jumped inside. In the dashboard compartment he found a package of paper matches, wiped his hand dry on the seat before he touched them. He looked around for something to wrap them in, to keep the rain off them. On the back seat he saw robes. He grabbed them, wrapped them around the matches.

When he got back to the house he waited only to open the robes and dry his hands again, pawing with them on the wool, Then he struck a match, and it lit. He touched the tar paper with it. A blue flame appeared, hesitated, spread out, and licked the wood. The fire crackled. It turned yellow and light filled the room. He felt warmth. He crowded so close he was almost in the fireplace.

“Come on, kid, you better get warm.”

“I’m already here.”

She picked up one of the robes, held it in front of the fire to warm it, put it around him. Then she warmed the other one, pulled it around herself, squatted down beside him. He sat down on the robe, tucked it around his feet. The fire burned up, scorched his face. He didn’t move. The heat reached him through the robe. His shivering stopped, he relaxed with a long, quavering sigh. She looked at him.

“My, you must have been cold.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“I almost died, myself. If you hadn’t come, I don’t know what I would have done. I went clear down, in that water.”

“I yelled at you, but you was already in it.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to the car,”

“It’ll be all right soon as it dries out.”

“You think so?”

“Just got water in it, that’s all.”

“I hope that’s all.”

“Some rain!”

“It’s awful, and it’s going to get worse. I had the radio on in the car. They’re warning people. Over in Hildalgo they took everybody out. Half the town’s washed away.”

“Yeah, I seen them.”

“You were in Hildalgo?”

“Yeah...What you talking about? This is Hildalgo.”

“This is Hildalgo?”

“That’s what it says on the sign at the station.”

“Oh, my! I thought Hildalgo was on the other road.”

“Well? So it’s Hildalgo.”

“But there’s nobody here. They took them all away.”

“O.K. Then it’s us.”

“Suppose this washes away?”

“Till it does, we got a fire.”

She got up, holding the robe tightly around her, and pulled a sawbuck over to the fire. On it, he noticed for the first time, were her sweater, stockings, and skirt. She must have taken them off while he was down in the car. She looked around.

“Are those your things over there? Don’t you want me to move them closer to the fire, so they’ll dry?”

“I’ll do it.”

The sight of her absurdly small things had made him suddenly aware of her as a person, and he was afraid to let her move his denims to the fire for fear that in the heat they would stink. He got up, pulled the pile of tar paper to the fire for her to sit on. Then he took the denims off the sawbuck and went back with them to the kitchen. The fixtures were in, though caked with grit, and on his previous tour of the place he had seen a bucket and some soap. He dumped the denims on the floor, filled the bucket with water, carried it to where she was. By poking with a piece of flooring he made a place for it on the fire, and while it was heating, studied her.

She wasn’t a pretty girl exactly. She was small, with sandy hair, and freckles on her nose. But she had a friendly smile, and she wasn’t bawling at her plight. Indeed, she seemed to take it more philosophically than he did. He took her to be about his own age.

“What’s your name?”

“Flora. Flora Hilton... It’s really Dora, but they all began calling me Dumb Dora, so I changed it.”

“Yes, I guess that was bad.”

“What’s yours?”

“Jack. Jack Schwab.”

“You come from California?”

“Pennsylvania. I — kind of travel around.”

“Hitchhike?”

“Sometimes. Other times I ride the freights.”

“I didn’t think you talked like California.”

“What you doing out in this storm?”

“I went over to my uncle’s. I went over there last night, to stay till Monday. But when it started to rain I thought I better get back. It wasn’t so bad over where he lives, and I didn’t know it was going to be like this. They’ve got no radio or anything. But then, when I turned the car radio on, I found out. I still thought I could make it, though. I thought I was on the main road. I didn’t know I was coming through Hildalgo.”

“Well, they’ll be coming for you. The cops, or somebody. We’ll see them when they find the car.”

“I don’t know if they’ll be coming for me.”

“Oh, they will.”

“My father, he don’t even know I started out, and my uncle, he probably thinks I’m home by now.”

“Then we got it to ourselves.”

“Sure looks like it.”

The water was steaming by now. He wrapped the hot bucket handle in tar paper, lifted it off the fire, and went back to the kitchen with it. First washing out the sink, then using a piece of tar paper as a stopper, he soaped the denims and washed them. The water turned so black he felt a sense of shame. He put them through two or three waters, wrung them dry. The last of the hot water he saved for the shorts he had on. With a quick glance toward the front of the house, he stepped out of them, washed them, wrung them out. Then he spread them, to step back into them. They were no wetter than when he took them off, but he hated the idea of having them touch him. However, they were hot from the water, and felt unexpectedly pleasant when he buttoned them up.

Back at the fire, he draped the denims on the sawbuck, beside her things, to dry.

“Well, Flora, nice climate you got.”

“Sunny California! It can rain harder here than any place on earth. Well, you know what they say. We only have two kinds of weather in California, magnificent and unusual.”

“I’ll say it’s unusual.”

“Just listen to that rain come down.”

“What do you do with yourself, Flora?”

“Me? Oh, I work. I got a job in a drive-in.”

“Slinging hot dogs, hey?”

“I wish you’d talk about something else.”

“A hot dog sure would go good now, wouldn’t it?”

“I was the one that played dumb this morning. They wanted me to wait for breakfast, but I was in such a hurry to get away I wouldn’t listen to them. I haven’t had anything to eat all day.”

“Breakfast? Say, that’s a laugh.”

“Haven’t you had anything to eat either?”

“I haven’t et a breakfast in so long I’ve forgot what it tastes like. By the time they get around to me it’s always dinnertime, and even then, when they get to me, sometimes they close the window in my face.”

“I guess it’s hard, hitchhiking and—”

“Flora! Are we the couple of dopes!”

“What’s the matter, Jack?”

“Talking about hot dogs and breakfast. That store! There’s enough grub in there to feed an army!”

“You mean — just take it?”

“You think it’s going to walk over here and ask us to eat it? Come on! Here’s where we eat!”

When he seized the largest of the carpenter’s chisels and the hammer, she still sat there, watching him, and didn’t follow when he went outside. He splashed around to the rear of the store, drove the chisel into the crack of the door, pulled. Something snapped, and he pushed the door open. He waited a moment, the rain pouring on him from the roof, for the sound of the burglar alarm, but he heard nothing. He groped for the light switch, found it, snapped it, but nothing happened. If all wires were down in the storm, that might explain the silent burglar alarm. He began to grope his way toward the shelves. Suddenly he felt her beside him, there in the murk.