Chapter II: Part 2

"Pretty well. In a deal like that you get to know people well. Whatever they are, it shows. You knew him well, too, I guess."

"We went steady. It started seven years ago. Somehow it seems like longer than seven years. We were seniors in high school when it started. He'd been going with a friend of mine. Judy Currier. They had a sort of spat and they were mad at each other. I was mad at the boy I'd been going with. When he wanted to take me out I went. And we went together from then on. When we graduated we both went up to state college at Redding. He only went two years and then came back to help George. When he quit, I quit, too. We came back here and everybody thought we were going to get married." She smiled a small wry smile. "I guess I did, too. But then things changed. I guess he lost interest. He worked very hard. We drifted apart."

"Were you in love with him?"

She gave me a slightly startled glance. "I thought I was, of course. Otherwise we wouldn't have been as close. But--I don't know as I can explain it. You see, Timmy was very popular in high school. He was a good athlete, and everybody liked him. He was president of the senior class. I was popular, too. I was queen of the senior pageant and all that sort of thing. We both liked to dance and we were good at it. It was as if people _expected_ us to go together. It seemed right to other people. And that sort of infected us, I guess. Maybe we fell in love with the way we looked together, and felt the responsibility of what other people wanted us to be. We made a good team. Do you understand that?"

"Of course."

"When it finally ended it didn't hurt as badly as I would have thought it would. If it hadn't ended, we would have gone on and gotten married and--I guess it would have been all right." She looked puzzled.

"What kind of a guy was he, Ruth?"

"I told you. Popular and nice and--"

"Underneath."

"I don't want to feel--disloyal or anything."

"Another drink?"

"No. We better order, thanks." After we had given the order, she frowned beyond me and said, "There was something weak about Timmy. Things had come too easily. His mind was good and his body was good and he made friends without trying. He'd never been--tested. I had the feeling that he thought that things would always be that easy all his life. That he could always get whatever he wanted. It worried me because I'd learned the world isn't like that. It was as though nothing had ever happened to him to make him grow up. And I used to wonder what would happen when things started to go wrong. I knew he'd either turn into a man, or he'd start to whine and complain."

"He turned into a man, Ruth."

There was a sudden look of tears in her eyes. "I'm glad to hear that. I'm very glad to hear that. I wish he'd come back."

"I think you would have seen that I'm right. After he stopped going with you, who did he go with before he went into the army?"

Her eyes were evasive. "No one."

I lowered my voice. "He told me about Eloise."

Her face became more pale. "So it was true, then. I couldn't be completely certain. But I suspected it. It made me sick to think that could be going on. And it was part of the pattern. Everything came so easily. I don't think he even realized what he was doing to himself and to George. She was trash. Everybody was sorry and shocked when George married her."

"Timmy told me about Eloise and he told me he was sorry about it. He wanted to come back so he could make things right. I guess he knew he couldn't turn the clock back and make things like they were before, but he wanted to be able to make amends of some sort."

"I don't think George has ever suspected. But even if he knew now it couldn't hurt too much. He knows what she is now."

"What was she like?"

"Quite pretty in a sort of full-blown way. A tawny blonde, with a kind of gypsy-looking face. I don't know where she got those features. They're not like the other people in her family. She was a year ahead of me in school at first, and then in the same year, and then a year behind me. She never did graduate from high school. She was dumb as a post as far as schoolwork is concerned. But smart in other ways. Very smart. She was sloppy. You know, soiled collars, bare dirty ankles. She always soaked herself in perfume. She had a very sexy walk, full hips and a tiny waist and nice legs. She had a lot of little provocative mannerisms. Boys used to follow her around like stupid dogs, their eyes glazed and their tongues out. We used to make fun of her, but we hated her, and in some funny way we were jealous of her. She did as she pleased. She always seemed to be mocking everybody. It was a very good marriage for her, to marry George. Then the three of them were living in that house. I guess she got bored. Being right there in the house, once she got bored Timmy had as much chance as--hamburger in a panther cage. I guess they were careful, but in a place this size people get to know things. Quite a few people were talking by the time Timmy went away. I hadn't had a date with Timmy for over two years when he went away."

"Then Eloise went off with a salesman."

"That was so stupid of her. She had everything she wanted. George believed in her. The man's name was Fulton. He was a big red-faced man who drove a gray Studebaker and came to Hillston about once every six months. Eloise ran off almost--no, it's over two years ago. George had to be out of town on business. People saw Eloise and Mr. Fulton right here in this place having dinner one night, bold as can be. They must have left that night. When George came back they were gone."

"Did he try to trace her?"

"He didn't want to. He was too badly hurt. She'd packed her prettiest things, and taken the house money and gone without even leaving a note. I'll bet that some day she's going to come crawling back here."

"Would George take her back?"

"I don't know. I don't know what he'd do. I've been trying to help George." She blushed. "Dad always teases me about the way I keep bringing kittens and homeless dogs back to the place. He says my wards eat up all the profits. It's sort of the same with George. He hasn't got anyone now. Not a soul. Not anyone in the world. He's drinking all the time and he's lost most of his business. I do what little I can. Cook for him sometimes. Get his room cleaned up. Get his clothes in shape. But I can't seem to make him wake up. He just keeps going down and down. It makes me sick."

"I saw him at the store. He wasn't in very good shape. He acted strange."

"The store is doing almost no business at all."

"The lumberyard looks all right. I was out there to talk to Fitzmartin. He was in the same camp."

"I know. He told me that. I--is he a good friend of yours?"

"No."

"I don't like him, Tal. He's a strange man. I don't know why George hired him. It's almost as if he had some hold over George. And I have the feeling he keeps pushing George downhill. I don't know how, or why he should. He kept bothering me. He kept coming to see me to talk about Timmy. It seemed very strange."

"What did he want to talk about?"

"It didn't make much sense. He wanted to know where Timmy and I used to go on picnics when we were in high school. He wanted to know if we ever went on hikes together. And he acted so sly about it, so sort of insinuating that the last time he came it made me mad and I told him I wouldn't talk to him any more. It seemed like such a queer thing for him to keep doing. He's creepy, you know. His eyes are so strange and colorless."

"Has he stayed away?"

"Oh yes. I got very positive about it.... He had such an unhealthy kind of interest in Timmy I wondered if it was the same sort of thing with you. But if you're going to write about him I can understand your wanting to know things."

The honesty in her level eyes made me feel ashamed. There was an awkward pause in our conversation. She fiddled with her coffee spoon and then, not looking up, said, "Timmy told you about Eloise. Did he tell you about me?" She was blushing again.

"He mentioned you. He didn't say much. I could make something up to make you feel better, but I don't want to do that."

She raised her head to look directly at me, still blushing. "This isn't anything to go in your book. But it's nothing I'm ashamed of. And maybe you can understand him better, or me better, if I tell you. We went steady during our senior year here. A lot of the kids, a lot of our friends, who went steady, taking it for granted that they were going to get married as soon as they could, they slept together. It was almost--taken for granted. But Timmy and I didn't. Then we both went up to Redding. We were both away from home. We were lonely and in a new environment. It--just happened. It got pretty intense for a few months, but we began to realize that it wasn't helping anything. We stopped. Oh, we had a few lapses, accidents. Times it wasn't meant to happen. But we stopped, and felt very proud of our character and so on. You know, I sometimes wonder if that is what spoiled things for us. It's a pretty Victorian attitude to think that way, but you can't help wondering sometimes."

I felt ill at ease with her. I had never come across this particular brand of honesty. She had freely given me an uncomfortable truth about herself, and I felt bound to reciprocate.

I said, too quickly, "I know what you mean. I know what it is to feel guilty from the man's point of view. When they tapped my shoulder I had thirty days grace before I had to report. I had a girl. Charlotte. And a pretty good job. We wondered if we ought to get married before I left. We didn't. But I took advantage of all the corny melodrama. Man going to the wars and so on. I twisted it so she believed it was actually her duty to take full care of the departing warrior. It was a pretty frantic thirty days. So off I went. Smug about the whole thing. What soft words hadn't been able to accomplish, the North Koreans had done. She's a good kid."

"But you're back and you're not married?"

"No. I came back in pretty bad shape. My digestive system isn't back to par yet. I spent quite a while in an army hospital. I got out and went back to my job. I couldn't enjoy it. I used to enjoy it. I couldn't do well at it. And Charlotte seemed like a stranger. At least I had enough integrity not to go back to bed with her. She was willing, in the hopes it would cure the mopes. I was listless and restless. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. Finally they got tired of the way I was goofing off and fired me. So I left. I started this--project. I feel guilty as hell about Charlotte. She was loyal all the time I was gone. She thought marriage would be automatic when I got back. She doesn't understand all this. And neither do I. I only know that I feel guilty and I still feel restless."

"What is she like, Tal?"

"Charlotte? She's dark-haired. Quite pretty. Very nice eyes. She's a tiny girl, just over five feet and maybe a hundred pounds sopping wet. She'd make a good wife. She's quick and clean and capable. She has pretty good taste, and her daddy has yea bucks stashed."

"Maybe you shouldn't feel guilty."

I frowned at her. "What do you mean, Ruth?"

"You said she seems like a stranger. Maybe she is a stranger, Tal. Maybe the _you_ who went away would be a stranger to you, too. You said Timmy changed. You could have changed, too. You could have grown up in ways you don't realize. Maybe the Charlotte who was ample for that other Tal Howard just isn't enough of a challenge to this one."

"So I break her heart."

"Maybe better to break her heart this way than marry her and break it slowly and more thoroughly. I can explain better by talking about Timmy and me."

"I don't understand."

"When Timmy lost interest the blow was less than I thought it would be. I didn't know why. Now after all this time I know why. Timmy was a less complicated person than I am. His interests were narrower. He lived more on a physical level than I do. Things stir me. I'm more imaginative than he was. Just as you are more imaginative than he was. Suppose I'd married him. It would have been fine for a time. But inevitably I would have begun to feel stifled. Now don't get the idea that I'm sort of a female long-hair. But I do like books and I do like good talk and I do like all manner of things. And Timmy, with his beer and bowling and sports page attitude, wouldn't have been able to share. So I would have begun to feel like sticking pins in him. Do you understand?"

"Maybe not. I'm the beer, bowling, and sports page type myself."

She watched me gravely. "Are you, Tal?"

It was an uncomfortable question. I remembered the first few weeks back with Charlotte when I tried to fit back into the pattern of the life I had known before. Our friends had seemed vapid, and their conversation had bored me. Charlotte, with her endless yak about building lots, and what color draperies, and television epics, and aren't these darling shoes for only four ninety-five, and what color do you like me best in, and yellow kitchens always look so cheerful--Charlotte had bored me, too.

My Charlotte, curled like a kitten against me in the drive-in movie, wide-eyed and entranced at the monster images on the screen who traded platitudes, had bored me.

I began to sense where it had started. It had started in the camp. Boredom was the enemy. And all my traditional defenses against boredom had withered too rapidly. The improvised game of checkers was but another form of boredom. I was used to being with a certain type of man. He had amused and entertained me and I him. But in the camp he became empty. He with his talk of sexual exploits, boyhood victories, and Gargantuan drunks, he had made me weary just to listen.

The flight from boredom had stretched my mind. I spent more and more time in the company of the off-beat characters, the ones who before capture would have made me feel queer and uncomfortable, the ones I would have made fun of behind their backs. There was a frail headquarters type with a mind stuffed full of things I had never heard of. They seemed like nonsense at first and soon became magical. There was a corporal, muscled like a Tarzan, who argued with a mighty ferocity with a young, intense, mustachioed Marine private about the philosophy and ethics of art, while I sat and listened and felt unknown doors open in my mind.

Ruth's quiet question gave me the first valid clue to my own discontent. Could I shrink myself back to my previous dimensions, I could once again fit into the world of job and Charlotte and blue draperies and a yellow kitchen and the Saturday night mixed poker game with our crowd.

If I could not shrink myself, I would never fit there again. And I did not wish to shrink. I wished to stay what I had become, because many odd things had become meaningful to me.

"Are you, Tal?" she asked again.

"Maybe not as much as I thought I was."

"You're hunting for something," she said. The strange truth of that statement jolted me. "You're trying to do a book. That's just an indication of restlessness. You're hunting for what you should be, or for what you really are." She grinned suddenly, a wide grin and I saw that one white tooth was entrancingly crooked. "Dad says I try to be a world mother. Pay no attention to me. I'm always diagnosing and prescribing and meddling." She looked at her watch. "Wow! He'll be stomping and thundering. I've got to go right now."

I paid the check and we went out to the car. On the way back I steered the conversation to the point where I could say, "And I remember him talking about a girl named Cindy. Who was she?"

Ruth frowned. "Cindy? I can remember some--No there wasn't any girl named Cindy in this town, not that Timmy would go out with. I'm sure he never knew a pretty one. And for Timmy a girl had to be pretty. Are you certain that's the right name?"

"I'm positive of it."

"But what did he say about her?"

"He just mentioned her casually a few times, but in a way that sounded as though he knew her pretty well. I can't remember exactly what he said, but I got the impression he knew her quite well."

"It defeats me," Ruth said. I turned into the driveway and stopped in front of the animal hospital and got out as she did. We had been at ease and now we were awkward again. I wanted to find some way of seeing her again, and I didn't know exactly how to go about it. I hoped her air of restraint was because she was hoping I would find a way. There had been too many little signs and hints of a surprising and unexpected closeness between us. She could not help but be aware of it.

"I want to thank you, Ruth," I said and put my hand out. She put her hand in mine, warm and firm, and her eyes met mine and slid away and I thought she flushed a bit. I could not be certain.

"I'm glad to help you, Tal. You could--let me know if you think of more questions."

The opening was there, but it was too easy. I felt a compulsion to let her know how I felt. "I'd like to be with you again even if it's not about the book."

She pulled her hand away gently and faced me squarely, chin up. "I think I'd like that, too." She grinned again. "See? A complete lack of traditional female technique."

"I like that. I like it that way."

"We better not start sounding too intense, Tal."

"Intense? I don't know. I carried your picture a long time. It meant something. Now there's a transition. You mean something."

"Do you say things like that just so you can listen to yourself saying them?"

"Not this time."

"Call me," she said. She whirled and was gone. Just before she went in the door I remembered what I meant to ask her. I called to her and she stopped and I went up to her.

"Who should I talk to next about Timmy?"

She looked slightly disappointed. "Oh, try Mr. Leach. Head of the math department at the high school. He took quite an interest in Timmy. And he's a nice guy. Very sweet."

I drove back into town, full of the look of her, full of the impact of her. It was an impact that made the day, the trees, the city, all look more vivid. Her face was special and clear in my mind--the wide mouth, the one crooked tooth, the gray slant of her eyes. Her figure was good, shoulders just a bit too wide, hips just a shade too narrow to be classic. Her legs were long, with clean lines. Her flat back and the inswept lines of her waist were lovely. Her breasts were high and wide spaced, with a flavor of impertinence, almost arrogance. It was the coloring of her though that pleased me most. Dark red of the hair, gray of the eyes, golden skin tones.

It was nearly three when I left her place. I tried to put her out of my mind and think of the interview with Leach. Leach might be the link with Cindy.

I must have been a half mile from the Stamm place when I began to wonder if the Ford coupé behind me was the one I had seen beside Fitz's shed. I made two turns at random and it stayed behind me. There was no attempt at the traditional nuances of shadowing someone. He tagged along, a hundred feet behind me. I pulled over onto the shoulder and got out. I saw that it was Fitz in the car. He pulled beyond me and got out, too.

I marched up to him and said, "What the hell was the idea of going through my room."

He leaned on his car. "You have a nice gentle snore, Howard. Soothing."

"I could tell the police."

"Sure. Tell them all." He squinted in the afternoon sunlight. He looked lazy and amused.

"What good does it do you to follow me?"

"I don't know yet. Have a nice lunch with Ruthie? She's a nice little item. All the proper equipment. She didn't go for me at all. Maybe she likes the more helpless type. Maybe if you work it right you'll get a chance to take her to--"

He stopped abruptly, and his face changed. He looked beyond me. I turned just in time to see a dark blue sedan approaching at a high rate of speed. It sped by us and I caught a glimpse of a heavy balding man with a hard face behind the wheel, alone in the car. The car had out-of-state plates but it was gone before I could read the state.

I turned back to Fitz. "There's no point in following me around. I told you I don't know any more--" I stopped because there was no point in going on. He looked as though I had become invisible and inaudible. He brushed by me and got into his car and drove on. I watched it recede down the road. I got into my own car. The episode made no sense to me.

I shrugged it off my mind and began to think about Leach again.

FOUR

Though the high-school kids had gone, the doors were unlocked and a janitor, sweeping green compound down the dark-red tiles of the corridor, told me I could probably find Mr. Leach in his office on the ground floor of the old building. The two buildings, new and old, were connected. Fire doors separated the frame building from the steel and concrete one. My steps echoed in the empty corridor with a metallic ring. A demure little girl came out of a classroom and closed the door behind her. She had a heavy armload of books. She looked as shy and gentle and timid as a puppy in a strange yard. She looked at me quickly and hurried on down the corridor ahead of me, moccasin soles slapping, meager horsetail bobbing, shoulders hunched.

I found the right door and tapped on it. A tired voice told me to come in. Leach was a smallish man with a harsh face, jet eyebrows, a gray brushcut. He sat at a table marking papers. His desk, behind him, was stacked with books and more papers.

"Something I can do for you?"

"My name is Tal Howard. I want to talk to you about a student you used to have."

He shook hands without enthusiasm. "An ex-student who is in trouble?"

"No. It's--"

"I'm refreshed. Not in trouble? Fancy that. The faculty has many callers. Federal narcotics people. Parole people. Prison officials. County police. Lawyers. Sometimes it seems that we turn out nothing but criminals of all dimensions. I interrupted you."

"I don't want to impose on you. I can see how busy you are. I'm gathering material about Timmy Warden. Ruth Stamm suggested I talk to you."

He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. "Timmy Warden. Gathering material. That has the sound of a book. Was he allowed to live long enough to give you enough material?"

"Timmy and some others. They all died there in the camp. I was there, too. I almost died, but not quite."

"Sit down. I'm perfectly willing to talk about him. I take it you're not a professional."

"No, sir."

"Then this, as a labor of love, should be treated with all respect. Ruth knows as much about Timmy as any person alive, I should say."

"She told me a lot. And I got a lot from Timmy. But I need more. She said you were interested in him."

"I was. Mr. Howard, you have probably heard of cretins who can multiply two five digit numbers mentally and give the answer almost instantaneously."

"Yes, but--"

"I know. I know. Timmy was no cretin. He was a very normal young man. Almost abnormally normal if you sense what I mean. Yet he had a spark. Creative mathematics. He could sense the--the rhythm behind numbers. He devised unique short cuts in the solution of traditional class problems. He had that rare talent, the ability to grasp intricate relationships and see them in pure simple form. But there was no drive, no dedication. Without dedication, Mr. Howard, such ability is merely facility, an empty cleverness. I hoped to be a mathematician. I teach mathematics in a high school. Merely because I did not have enough of what Timmy Warden was born with. I hoped that one day he would acquire the dedication. But he never had time."

"I guess he didn't."

"Even if he had the time I doubt if he would have gone any further. He was a very good, decent young man. Everything was too easy for him."

"It wasn't easy at the end."

"I don't imagine it was. Nor easy for hundreds of millions of his contemporaries anywhere in the world. This is a bad century, Mr. Howard. Bad for the young. Bad for most of us."

"What do you think would have become of him if he'd lived, Mr. Leach?"

The man shrugged. "Nothing exceptional. Marriage, work, children. And death. No contribution. His name gone as if it never existed. One of the faceless ones. Like us, Mr. Howard." He rubbed his eyes again, then smiled wanly. "I'm not usually so depressing, Mr. Howard. This has been a bad week. This is one of the weeks that add to my conviction that something is eating our young. This week the children have seemed more sullen, dangerous, dispirited, inane, vicious, foolish, and impossible than usual. This week a young sophomore in one of my classes went into the hospital with septicemia as the result of a self-inflicted abortion. And a rather pleasant boy was slashed. And last Monday two seniors died in a head-on collision while on their way back from Redding, full of liquor. The man in the other car is not expected to recover. When Timmy was here in school I was crying doom. But it was not like it is now. By comparison, those were the good old days, recent as they are."

"Was Timmy a disciplinary problem?"

"No. He was lazy. Sometimes he created disturbances. On the whole he was co-operative. I used to hope Ruth would be the one to wake him up. She's a solid person. Too good for him, perhaps."

"I guess he was pretty popular with the girls."

"Very. As with nearly everything else, things were too easy for him."

"He mentioned some of them in camp. Judy, Ruth, Cindy."

"I couldn't be expected to identify them. If I remember correctly, I once had eight Judys in one class. Now that name, thank God, is beginning to die out a little. There have never been too many Cindys. Yet there has been a small, constant supply."

"I want to have a chance to talk to the girls he mentioned. I've talked to Ruth. Judy has moved away. I can't remember Cindy's last name. I wonder if there is any way I could get a look at the list of students in hopes of identifying her."

"I guess you could," he said. "The administration office will be empty by now. You could ask them Monday. Let me see. Timmy graduated in forty-six. I keep old yearbooks here. They're over there on that bottom shelf. You could take the ones for that year and the next two years and look them over, there by the window if you like. I have to get on with these papers. And I really can't tell you much more about Timmy. I liked him and had hopes for him. But he lacked motivation. That seems to be the trouble with too many of the children lately. No motivation. They see no goal worth working for. They no longer have any dreams. They are content with the manufactured dreams of N.B.C. and Columbia."

I sat by the windows and went through the yearbooks. There was no Cindy in the yearbook for '46. There was one in the '47 yearbook. I knew when I saw her picture that she could not be the one. She was a great fat girl with small, pinched, discontented features, sullen, rebellious little eyes. There was a Cindy in the '48 yearbook. She had a narrow face, protruding teeth, weak eyes behind heavy lenses, an expression of overwhelming stupidity. Yet I marked down their names. It would be worth a try, I thought.

I went back to the '46 yearbook and went through page after page of graduates more thoroughly. I came to a girl named Cynthia Cooper. She was a reasonably attractive snub-nosed blonde. I wondered if Timmy could possibly have said Cynthy. It would be an awkward nickname for Cynthia. And even though his voice by that time had been weak and blurred, I was certain he had said Cindy. He had repeated the name. But I wrote her down, too.

Ruth Stamm's yearbook picture was not very good. But the promise of her, the clear hint of what she would become, was there in her face. Her activities, listed under the picture, made a long list. It was the same with Timmy. He grinned into the camera.

Mr. Leach looked up at me when I stood near his table. "Any luck?"

"I took down some names. They might help."

I thanked him for his help. He was bent over his papers again before I got to the door. Odd little guy, with his own strange brand of dedication and concern. Pompous little man, but with an under-current of kindness.

I got to the Hillston Inn at a little after five. I got some dimes from the cashier and went over to where four phone booths stood flanked against the lobby wall. I looked up the last name of the fat girl, Cindy Waskowitz. There were two Waskowitzes in the book. John W. and P. C. I tried John first. A woman with a nasal voice answered the phone.

"I'm trying to locate a girl named Cindy Waskowitz who graduated from Hillston High in nineteen forty-seven. Is this her home?"

"Hold it a minute," the woman said. I could hear her talking to someone else in the room. I couldn't make out what she was saying. She came back on the line. "You want to know about Cindy."

"That's right. Please."

"This wasn't her home. But I can tell you about her. I'm her aunt. You want to know about her?"

"Please."

"It was the glands. I couldn't remember the word. My daughter just told me. The glands. When she got out from high school she weighed two hundred. From there she went up like balloons. Two hundred, two fifty, three hundred. When she died in the hospital she was nearly four hundred. She'd been over four hundred once, just before she went in the hospital. Glands, it was."

I remembered the rebellious eyes. Girl trapped inside the prison of white, soft flesh. A dancing girl, a lithe, quick-moving girl forever lost inside that slow inevitable encroachment. Stilled finally, and buried inside her suet prison.

"Is your daughter about the same age Cindy would have been?"

"A year older. She's married and three kids already." The woman chuckled warmly.

"Could I talk to your daughter?"

"Sure. Just a minute."

The daughter's voice was colder, edged with thin suspicion. "What goes on anyhow? Why do you want to know about Cindy?"

"I was wondering if she was ever friendly in high school with a boy named Timmy Warden."

"Timmy is dead. It was in the papers."

"I know that. Were they friendly?"

"Timmy and Cindy? Geez, that's a tasty combination. He would have known who she was on account of her being such a tub. But I don't think he ever spoke to her. Why should he? He had all the glamour items hanging around his neck. Why are you asking all this?"

"I was in the camp with him. Before he died he gave me a message to deliver to a girl named Cindy. I wondered if Cindy was the one."

"Not a chance. Sorry. You just got the wrong one."

"Was there another Cindy in the class?"

"In one of the lower classes. A funny-looking one. That's the only one I can remember. All teeth. Glasses. A sandy sort of girl. I can't remember her last name, though."

"Cindy Kirschner?"

"That's the name. Gosh, I don't know where you'd find her. I think I saw her downtown once a year ago. Maybe it's in the book. But I don't think she'd fit any better than my cousin. I mean Timmy Warden ran around with his own group, kind of. Big shots in the school. That Kirschner wasn't in that class, any more than my cousin. Or me."

The bitterness was implicit in her tone. I thanked her again. She hung up.

I tried Kirschner. There was only one in the book. Ralph J. A woman answered the phone.

"I'm trying to locate a Cindy Kirschner who graduated from Hillston High in nineteen forty-eight."

"That's my daughter. Who is this calling, please?"

"Could you tell me how I could locate her?"

"She married, but she doesn't have a phone. They have to use the one at the corner store. She doesn't like to have people call her there because it's a nuisance to the people at the store. And she has small children she doesn't like to leave to go down there and answer the phone. If you want to see her, you could go out there. It's sixteen ten Blackman Street. It's near the corner of Butternut. A little blue house. Her name is Mrs. Rorick now. Mrs. Pat Rorick. What did you say your name is?"

I repeated the directions and said, "Thanks very much, Mrs. Kirschner. I appreciate your help. Good-by."

I hung up. I was tempted to try Cynthia Cooper, but decided I had better take one at a time, eliminate one before starting the next. I stepped out of the booth. Earl Fitzmartin stepped out of the adjoining booth. He smiled at me almost genially.

"So it's got something to do with somebody named Cindy."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"'I was in camp with Timmy. Before he died he gave me a message to deliver to a girl named Cindy.' So you try two Cindy's in a row. And you know when they graduated. Busy, aren't you?"

"Go to hell, Fitz."

He stood with his big hard fists on his hips, rocking back and forth from heel to toe, smiling placidly at me. "You're busy, Tal. Nice little lunch with Ruth. Trip to the high school. Tracking down Cindy. Does she know where the loot is?"

He was wearing a dark suit, well cut. It looked expensive. His shoes were shined, his shirt crisp. I wished I'd been more alert. It's no great trick to stand in one phone booth and listen to the conversation in the adjoining one. I hadn't even thought of secrecy, of making certain I couldn't be overheard. Now he had almost as much as I did.

"How did you get along with George, Howard?"

"I got along fine."

"Strange guy, isn't he?"

"He's a little odd."

"And he's damn near broke. That's a shame, isn't it?"

"It's too bad."

"The Stamm girl comes around and holds his hand. Maybe it makes him feel better. Poor guy. You know he even had to sell the cabin. Did Timmy ever talk about the cabin?"

He had talked about it when we were first imprisoned. I'd forgotten about it until that moment. I remembered Timmy saying that it was on a small lake, a rustic cabin their father had built. He and George had gone there to fish, many times.

"He mentioned it," I said.

"I heard about it after I got here. It seemed like a good place. So I went up there with my little shovel. No dice, Tal. I dug up most of the lake shore. I dug a hundred holes. See how nice I am to you? That's one more place where it isn't. Later on George let me use it for a while before he sold it. It's nice up there. You'd like it. But it's clean."

"Thanks for the information."

"I'm keeping an eye on you, Tal. I'm interested in your progress. I'll keep in touch."

"You do that."

"Blackman runs east off Delaware. It starts three blocks north of here. Butternut must be about fourteen blocks over. It's not hard to find."

"Thanks."

I turned on my heel and left him. It was dusk when I headed out Blackman. I found Butternut without difficulty. I found the blue house and parked in front.

As I went up the walk toward the front door the first light went on inside the house. I pushed the bell and she opened the door and looked out at me, the light behind her, child in her arms.

"Mrs. Rorick?"

"I'm Mrs. Rorick," she said. Her voice was soft and warm and pleasant.

"You were Cindy Kirschner then. I was a friend of Timmy Warden in prison camp."

She hesitated for a moment and then said, "Won't you come in a minute."

When I was inside and she had turned toward the light I could see her better. The teeth had been fixed. Her face was fuller. She was still a colorless woman with heavy glasses, but now there was a pride about her, a confidence that had been lacking in the picture I had seen. Another child sat on a small tricycle and gave me a wide-eyed stare. Both children looked very much like her. Mrs. Rorick did not ask me to sit down.

"How well did you know Timmy, Mrs. Rorick?"

"I don't think he ever knew I was alive."

"In camp, before he died, he mentioned a Cindy. Could you have been the one?"

"I certainly doubt that."

It confused me. I said, "When I mentioned him you asked me to come in. I thought--"

She smiled. "I guess I'll have to tell you. I had the most fantastic and awful crush on him. For years and years. It was pathetic. Whenever we were in the same class I used to stare at him all the time. I wrote letters to him and tore them up. I sent him unsigned cards at Easter and Valentine Day and Christmas and on his birthday. I knew when his birthday was because once a girl I knew went to a party at his house. It was really awful. It gave me a lot of miserable years. Now it seems funny. But it wasn't funny then. It started in the sixth or seventh grade. He was two grades ahead. It lasted until he graduated from high school. He had a red knit cap he wore in winter. I stole it from the cloakroom. I slept with it under my pillow for months and months. Isn't that ridiculous?"

She was very pleasant. I smiled back at her. "You got over it."

"Oh, yes. At last. And then I met Pat. I'm sorry about Timmy. That was a terrible thing. No, if he mentioned any Cindy it wasn't me. Maybe he would know me by sight. But I don't think he'd know my name."

"Could he have meant some other Cindy?"

"It would have to be some other Cindy. But I can't think who. There was a girl named Cindy Waskowitz but it couldn't have been her, either. She's dead now."

"Can you think of who it could be?"

She frowned and shook her head slowly. "N--No, I can't. There's something in the back of my mind, though. From a long time ago. Something I heard, or saw. I don't know. I shouldn't even try to guess. It's so vague. No, I can't help you."

"But the name Cindy means something?"

"For a moment I thought it did. It's gone now. I'm sorry."

"If you remember, could you get in touch with me?"

She smiled broadly. "You haven't told me who you are."

"I'm sorry. My name is Howard. Tal Howard. I'm staying at the Sunset Motel. You could leave a message there for me."

"Why are you so interested in finding this Cindy?"

I could at least be consistent. "I'm writing a book. I need all the information about Timmy that I can get."

"Put in the book that he was kind. Put that in."

"In what way, Mrs. Rorick?"

She shifted uneasily. "I used to have dreadful buck teeth. My people could never afford to have them fixed. One day--that's when I was in John L. Davis School, that's the grade school where Timmy went, too, and it was before they built the junior high, I was in the sixth grade and Timmy was in the eighth. A boy came with some funny teeth that stuck way out like mine. He put them in his mouth in assembly and he was making faces at me. I was trying not to cry. A lot of them were laughing. Timmy took the teeth away from the boy and dropped them on the floor and smashed them under his heel. I never forgot that. I started working while I was in high school and saving money. I had enough after I was out to go to get my teeth straightened. But it was too late to straighten them then. So I had them taken out. I wanted marriage and I wanted children, and the way I was no man would even take me out." She straightened her shoulders a little. "I guess it worked," she said.

"I guess it did."

"So put that in the book. It belongs in the book."

"I will."

"And if I can remember that other, I'll phone you, Mr. Howard."

I thanked her and left. I drove back toward the center of town. I began to think of Fitz again. Ruth was right when she used the word creepy. But it was more than that. You sensed that Fitz was a man who would not be restrained by the things that restrain the rest of us. He had proved in the camp that he didn't give a damn what people thought of him. He depended on himself to an almost psychopathic extent. It made you feel helpless in trying to deal with him. You could think of no appeal that would work. He couldn't be scared or reasoned with. He was as primitive and functional as the design of an ax. He could not even be anticipated, because his logic was not of normal pattern. And then, too, there was the startling physical strength.

In camp I had seen several minor exhibitions of that power, but only one that showed the true extent of it. Those of us who saw it talked about it a long time. The guards who saw it treated Fitz with uneasy respect after that. One of the supply trucks became mired inside the compound, rear duals down to the hubs. They broke a towline trying to snake it out. Then they rounded up a bunch of us to unload the supply truck. The cases aboard had obviously been loaded on with a winch. We got all the stuff off except one big wooden packing case. We never did learn what was in it. We only knew it was heavy. We were trying to get a crude dolly under it, but when we tilted it, we couldn't get the dolly far enough back. Every guard was yelling incomprehensible orders. I imagine Fitz lost patience. He jumped up into the bed of the truck, put his back against the case, squatted and got his fingers under the edge. Then he came up with it, his face a mask of effort, cords standing out on his throat. He lifted it high enough so the dolly could be put under it. He lowered it again and jumped down off the truck, oddly pale and perspiring heavily.

Once it was rolled to the tail gate on the dolly, enough men could get hold of it to ease it down. When it was on the ground one of the biggest of the guards swaggered up, grinning at his friends, and tried to do what Fitz had done. He couldn't budge it. He and one of his friends got it up a few inches, but not as high as Fitz had. They were humiliated and they took it out on the rest of us, but not on Fitz. He was left alone.

Back in town I decided I would have a drink at the Inn and a solitary meal and try to think of what the next step should be. I was picked up in front of the Inn, ten steps from my car.

FIVE

There were two of them. One was a thin, sandy man in uniform and the other was a massive middle-aged man in a gray suit with a pouched, florid face.

"Your name Howard?"

"Yes, it is."

"Police. Come on along."

"What for?"

"Lieutenant wants to talk to you."

I went along. They put me in a police sedan and drove about eight blocks and turned into an enclosed courtyard through a gray stone arch. Other cars were parked there. They took me through a door that was one of several opening onto the courtyard. We went up wide wooden stairs that were badly worn to the second floor. It was an old building with an institutional smell of dust, carbolic, and urine. We went by open doors. One door opened onto a big file room with fluorescent lights and gray steel filing cases. Some men played cards in another room. I could hear the metallic gabbling voice of some sort of communication system.

We turned into a small office where a thin, bald man sat behind a desk that faced the door. His face was young, with a swarthy Indian harshness about it, black brows. His hands were large. He looked tall. A small wooden sign on his desk said _Det. Lt. Stephen D. Prine_. The office had cracked buff plaster walls. Books and pamphlets were piled in disorder in a glass-front bookcase. A smallish man with white hair and a red whisky face sat half behind Lieutenant Prine, on the small gilded radiator in front of the single window.

One of the men behind me gave me an unnecessary push that made me thump my knee against the front of the desk and almost lose my balance. Prine looked at me with complete coldness.

"This is that Howard," one of the men behind me said.

"Okay." The door behind me closed. I glanced back and saw that the man in uniform had left. The big man in the gray suit leaned against the closed door. "Empty your pockets onto the desk," Prine said. "Everything."

"But--"

"Empty your pockets." There was no threat in the words. Cold, bored command.

I put everything on the desk. Wallet, change, pen and pencil, notebook, cigarettes, lighter, penknife, folder of traveler's checks. Prine reached a big hand over and separated the items into two piles, notebook, wallet, and checks in one pile that he pulled toward him.

"Put the rest of that stuff back in your pockets."

"Could I ask why--"

"Shut up."

I stood in uncomfortable silence while he went through my wallet. He looked carefully at every card and piece of paper, at the photograph of Charlotte, at the reduced Photostat of my discharge laminated in plastic. He went through the notebook and then examined the traveler's checks.

"Now answer some questions." He opened a desk drawer, flipped a switch, and said, "April 20, seven-ten p.m., interrogation by Lieutenant Prine of suspect picked up by Hillis and Brubaker in vicinity of Hillston Inn. What is your full name?"

"Talbert Owen Howard."

"Speak a little louder. Age and place of birth."

"Twenty-nine. Bakersfield, California."

"Home address."

"None at the present time."

"What was your last address?"

"Eighteen Norwalk Road, San Diego."

"Are you employed?"

"No."

"When were you last employed and by who?"

"Up until two and a half weeks ago. By the Guaranty Federated Insurance Company. I had a debit. Health and life. I was fired."

"For what reason?"

"I wasn't producing."

"How long did you work for them?"

"Four years all together. Three and a half before the Korean war. The rest of it since I got back."

"Are you married? Have you ever been married?"

"No."

"Parents living?"

"No."

"Brothers or sisters?"

"One sister. Older than I am. She lives in Perth, Australia. She was a Wave and she married an Aussie during the war."

"Do you have any criminal record?"

"N--No."

"You don't seem sure."

"I don't know if you'd call it a criminal record. It was when I was in school. One of those student riots. Disturbing the peace and resisting an officer."

"Were you booked and mugged and fingerprinted and found guilty?"

"Yes. I paid a fine and spent three days in jail."

"Then you have a criminal record. How long have you been in Hillston?"

"I arrived here--Wednesday night. Two days."

"What is your local address?"

"The Sunset Motel."

"On this vehicle registration, do you own the vehicle free and clear?"

"Yes."

"You have a little over a thousand dollars. Where did you get it?"

"I earned it. I saved it. I'm getting a little sick of all this. It's beginning to make me sore."

"Why did you come to Hillston?"

"Do I have to have a reason?"

"Yes. You need a reason."

"I knew Timmy Warden in prison camp. And I knew others there that didn't come back. I'm going to write a book about them. There's my notes. You have them there."

"Why didn't you tell George Warden that?"

"I didn't know how he'd take it."

"You didn't tell Fitzmartin, either?"

"He has no reason to know my business."

"But you went out there to see him. And you were both in the same camp with Timmy Warden. It would seem natural to tell him."

"I don't care how it seems. I didn't tell him."

"If a man came to town with a cooked-up story about writing a book, it would give him a chance to nose around, wouldn't it?"

"I guess it would."

"What else have you written?"

"Nothing else."

"Are you familiar with the state laws and local ordinances covering private investigators?"

I stared at him blankly. "No."

"Are you licensed in any state?"

"No. I don't know what--"

"If you were licensed, it would be necessary for you to find out whether this state has any reciprocal agreement. If so, you would merely have to make a courtesy call and announce your presence in this county and give the name of your employer."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Do you know a woman named Rose Fulton?"

"No. I've never heard of her."

"Were you employed by Rose Fulton to come to Hillston?"

"No. I told you I never heard of her."