Charles Williams: Girl Out Back

I indicated an aluminum frame chair in the front of the showroom near the showcases. “Sit down. I’ll get the motors.”

It was dim inside the shop. I clicked on a switch and a bank of fluorescent tubes over the lone work-bench came on and an electric fan began whirring. There were a half-dozen dismantled motors scattered around on the bench in various stages of repair, but I walked on over to the end of the room where the completed jobs were clamped to individual dollies. They were both there, 3-h.p. motors with tags that read “Nunn” on one side and “Tested OK” on the other.

George Nunn ran a fishing camp on Javier Lake, about thirty miles away in another county. It was an enormous, marshy body of water in a wild area, accessible by road most of the year only at his place on the lower end. I’d been over there a few times duck hunting, but it was before he’d taken over the camp. He’d been in the store two or three times, and still owed me around fifty dollars on a motor he’d bought from me. I lifted the repaired ones on to the bench and started wiping them down with a piece of waste. In a moment I heard a clicking of high heels on the concrete floor of the showroom. She came in and stood watching me after an indifferent glance around at the bench and the shelves of tools and spare parts.

“How’s the fishing on Javier?” I asked.

She shrugged. “All right, I suppose.”

She set her purse on the bench and took out a cigarette and a folder of matches. The breeze from the oscillating fan riffled the mane of tawny hair and blew out the match before she could get the cigarette going. She threw it on the floor, in spite of the fact there was an ash-tray right in front of her. She struck another that went out. It went to the floor also. I held a lighter for her.

“Have you got a telephone out there?” I asked.

She blew out smoke and looked up at me with eyes as expressionless as nailheads. “Why?”

Business,” I said. “Advertising. If your husband will call me when he has some good catches over there I may be able to get them in the Sanport papers. You know, the outdoors columns in the Call and the Herald . Blake and Carstairs both check here twice a week by long distance.”

“We’ve got a phone,” she said. “Party line. Sometimes it even works.”

“You’d be surprised how good it is for business,” I went on, “to get the name of your place in those columns now and then. I pick up a lot of free advertising that way.”

“That s nice,” she said.

I started to give her a wheeze about how to phone in the information, to be sure to get the fishermen’s names right, and the type of gear used, and so on, but when I glanced around I saw she wasn’t even plugged in. She was still watching me, but she hadn’t heard anything I said. I finished wiping down the motors, nodded for her to precede me, and carried them out front.

“How much?” she asked.

”Just a minute,” I said. I went into the office and lifted Otis’s work order off the spike, added up the labor and material charges, and then found the amount of the old balance.

“Seventy-four thirty-five,” I said when I came back. “That includes the old balance of forty-eight dollars, plus twenty-six thirty-five for repairs.”

She came around opposite the cash register and put down her purse. Taking out a billfold, she counted out three twenties, a ten, and a five. I was inwardly congratulating myself on getting the whole amount, and it was only half-consciously I noticed two of the twenties were crisp, brand-new ones. I counted out her change, put the bills into their respective compartments in the register drawer, and closed it. I tossed a “Thank you” into the bottomless void of her disinterest, and carried the motors out to the station wagon. She got in, and I closed the door for her. It struck me then, for the first time, that it was odd she was here so early. It was a long drive, part of it over back-country roads.

“You must have left very early,” I said.

She switched on the ignition and I thought for an instant she wasn’t going to answer. Then she turned her head just briefly and trained that flat stare on my face. “I spent the night in town,” she said. “I’m a trusty.”

Two

She backed the station wagon around and took off with a scattering of loose gravel under the tires. I stood looking after her for a moment, and then shrugged and went back inside. Whatever was eating her was none of my business; I was in outboard motors. Go home, Moddom. Go back to the little home and the faithful husband.

In the office I resumed the search for the stamp box and finally ran it to earth in one of the bottom desk drawers. There were only a half-dozen threes in it. I probably hadn’t remembered to buy any since Barbara left. I stamped the letters and made out a petty cash slip for twenty dollars. Might as well get a supply while I was at it. And make the bank deposit while I was out, I thought; this was Monday morning, and we still had Friday’s and Saturday’s receipts in the safe.

I opened the safe, stamped and initialed the checks, and counted the currency and silver. After adding it all up on the machine, I remembered the money Mrs. Nunn had paid me. I should break up at least a couple of those twenties for change to start the day with. Counting out forty dollars in fives, singles, and coin, I carried it out to the register and rang up NO SALE to open the drawer. As I was sliding the twenties from under the roller in the right-hand compartment I was again idly aware of the crisp freshness of the two on top. I didn’t really know why, because in any kind of business where you handle much currency you run across new bills all the time. Perhaps it was because there were two of them back-to-back and because they had curled a little under the roller with their ends sticking up. One of them had what appeared to be a brown stain of some kind along the edge for about half the width of the bill.

I set them aside, put the petty cash receipt in the drawer, and distributed the change into the proper compartments. I slid one of the twenties into my wallet for the stamps and was just closing the drawer when I heard the rasp of a shoe on the pavement outside. I glanced up. It was Otis. He unlocked the door and came on in as I was putting the wallet in my pocket and gathering up the other two twenties for the bank deposit. He lighted a cigarette and looked sadly at the register.

“Tapping the till again, boss?”

His full name is Otis Olin Shaw. He’s around forty-five, and looks a little like the pictures of Lincoln at that age except the black hair is thinning and is gone altogether from a small round spot on his crown. His unvarying facial expression is that of an undertaker who’s just learned his best friend has been cremated by a rival establishment while owing him three hundred dollars. This bleak sadness, however, covers a gall-and-wormwood sense of humor, a lot of intelligence, and something verging on genius when it comes to internal combustion engines.

“Good morning, Herr Schopenhauer,” I said. “What’s the cheery word?”

He shook his head and followed me into the office like an aging Great Dane, sitting down at the desk and watching mournfully as I stuffed the currency and checks into the white bag I used for the deposit. “I was just telling the old lady this morning,” he said, “that there was a chance you might raise me to fourteen a week now that heroin is getting cheaper. . . .”

I added the twenties to the currency and clipped the adding machine tally to the deposit slip. “Don’t count on it,” I said. “That cheap stuff is cut, and I need more of it.”

He raised a hand. “Oh, I don’t begrudge you a nickel of it myself. It’s just—well, the old lady’s always after me. Going around town, she keeps seeing all these women wearing shoes. You know how it is, stooped over that way picking up cigarette butts. . . .”