A Night for Screaming Read online

  We all waited, but she didn’t come back.

  Finally the two cops drained off their cups, and then Dot’s lover turned on the stool, and it squealed under his two-hundred pounds. He set himself with his feet wide apart and stared at me.

  I concentrated on the cereal. My coffee was inside me now, and I felt better. The panic was there, but the milk and cereal and the coffee diluted it slightly.

  “Howdy,” the cop said.

  My stomach muscles tightened. The word struck against the side of my face as though he’d spat on me. There was belligerence in his tone. I knew they’d come in here because I was in here, but it had been routine, something to check because there wasn’t anything better to do in the hot morning.

  But now the waves this boy was sending out had the rage in them that he felt against the waitress. Rage was like acid. It had to burn out of you in some direction. He didn’t dare vent it on Dot; he had intelligence enough to see he’d gone too far there already. He had to strike out at something. I was nearest. I was a stranger. I needed a shave.

  Hell, it was easy to follow his reasoning. I knew how men like him reacted. I knew all about it, too much.

  I nodded without looking up from my cereal. It was almost gone. I couldn’t stall over it very long.

  “I said howdy,” he said again. He turned his head. “He ain’t a very friendly cuss, is he, Arnie?”

  “Maybe he don’t like policemen,” Arnie said.

  “You like policemen, mister?”

  “I got nothing against cops,” I said, bearing down on the word. “When they mind their own business.”

  “Tough. He’s tough, Arnie.”

  Arnie pushed away his cup, his mouth twisted. He got up, came around his partner and stood beside me.

  “What’s your name?” Arnie said.

  “Why?” My cereal was gone, the coffee cup was empty, except that the waitress had said she was bringing me an order of pancakes there was no reason for me to stay on that stool. The backs of my legs were weak.

  “I asked you your name. You want to take a little ride down to police headquarters?”

  “No.”

  “Then get smart,” the other cop said. “What’s your name? Show me your wallet”

  I felt the tightness in my throat, the trembling in my legs. I went on sitting there. I turned just enough to look up at them. I pulled my mouth into a savage kind of grin.

  “Sure,” I said. “You show me your warrant.”

  Arnie laughed. “He wants to see my warrant, Cotton. How about that?”

  “You got one?” I said.

  “You’re in a mess without getting smart-off,” Cotton said.

  I felt the increased pumping of my heart. Had that dame reported me? God knows there isn’t much to do in a small town, but what could that act buy her, except a brief laugh, and she wasn’t even around to see it?

  “You’re a stranger in town,” Arnie said.

  “What ordinance does that violate?” I said.

  Amie shrugged. “Depends. We got a lot of ordinances. Where’s your car?”

  “I don’t have a car.”

  “How’d you get in town?” Cotton said.

  “On the train.” I neglected to mention that it had been a freight train, going west between three and four A.M. today.

  “Which train?” Cotton said.

  “Hell, I don’t know. I bought a ticket. The conductor punched it. We got west of the tree belt -”

  “Where’d you get this train?”

  “Kansas City”

  “What time you get in here?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. I slept. I told you. We got out of the tree belt. The country looked the same. The dames on the train were the kind you guys would go for. All the towns looked alike; a grain elevator and a few squatty buildings. I fell asleep.”

  “What’d you get off here for?”

  I began to think about why I had gotten off that freight, the way I had gotten off of it. I was afraid it would show in my face. I grinned up at them some more. “Now that I’ve seen it, I’m damned if I know”

  “How long you expect to be in town? What’d you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t say.”

  Cotton was looking over my head toward the double doors to the kitchen. They were closed, leather-padded, still. Nothing happened back there. He jerked his gaze back to Arnie.

  “Think we ought to take him in, Arnie?”

  “Sure.”

  “What for?” I said.

  “We need a reason?” Cotton said.

  “Yes.” I clenched my hands on the edge of the counter, watched my knuckles go white.

  “How about this?” Arnie laughed and nudged Cotton with his elbow. They both grinned, having a ball. “There’s an ordinance in this town against panhandlers, bums.”

  “Ordinance 718, paragraph b,” Cotton said.

  “Right. That’s the one. Loitering in the streets, in public places, begging, soliciting funds. It’s pretty complete.” Arnie was pleased with himself.

  “There’s just one little thing,” I said. “I’m not on a public street. I’m on private property. I’m having breakfast. For all you characters know, I have a thousand bucks in my wallet.”

  “You don’t look like you got the price of a shave,” Arnie said.

  “Still, I might have it.”

  “Sure,” Cotton said. “So let’s see your wallet.”

  “You try to take it in here,” I said, “without a warrant, and you’ll be back jockeying a reaper in the wheat fields.”

  Arnie and Cotton looked at each other, grinning.

  “He talks tough,” Arnie said. “Like a road bum should.”

  Cotton nodded. He looked me over. “It’ll be a pleasure to arrest you.”

  Arnie licked his lips. “You’ll resist, won’t you?” His eyes looked hot with anticipation. “Kind of mild, even? Just a little bit? Knot your fist, or lift your hand? Please.”

  I swallowed, but I kept my voice level. “Why don’t you try it and see?”

  Arnie and Cotton looked at each other again, and laughed. They hadn’t had so much fun since they’d clubbed a sixty-year-old drunk.

  “Oh, not in here,” Arnie said. “We wouldn’t think of disturbing your breakfast, Mr. - what did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t say.”

  He shrugged. “We’ll be outside on the sidewalk. Okay? When you come out. No hurry. Right, Cotton?”

  Cotton was watching the kitchen doors. They were shoved open and Dot came through with an order of pancakes, syrup, butter, side order of bacon, and a bowl.

  “Sure,” he said, not giving it much attention.

  The waitress set the bowl down on the rear shelf, then turned as if she and I were alone in the café. “Sorry I took so long, sir,” she said. Deftly she removed the cereal bowl and set the pancakes and bacon before me. The odor of the food assailed my nostrils and I was afraid I was going to be sick. I gripped the counter hard. I’d never realized before that the smell of bacon and pancakes on an empty stomach could make you ill. For a moment she spun around my head like a blue fly.

  “Thanks,” I managed to say. Neither of the cops noticed what was happening to me. Cotton was staring at his waitress, trying to force her to meet his gaze. Arnie was enjoying his own cleverness.

  “We’ll be out front,” Arnie said. He tapped Cotton’s arm with the backs of his fingers, and turned to walk out. He shifted his gunbelt on his thick hips as he walked.

  Cotton hesitated a moment He seemed to have forgotten I was alive. He was staring at the waitress, his face rigid. “Dot” he said.

  She looked up at him, hating him for what he’d said as she went into the kitchen. She met his gaze, but didn’t answer.

  “Dot, I’ll see you. Tonight. When you get off.”

  She didn’t say anything. She didn’t even appear to be breathing. She just stared at him.

  The doors closed behind the cops. My queasy stomach settled s
lightly and I buttered the pancakes, poured syrup over them.

  It was quiet, the chilled, air-conditioned silence settling over the whole room. Outside, the two cops lounged against the front fenders of their cruiser. Cars passed on the street and people moved along the walk, calling to each other, laughing, but none of the sounds penetrated into the café.

  “Nice town,” I said at last, chewing.

  She pulled her gaze from the front window, looking at me as if she’d just awakened standing there, as though she’d never seen me before in her life.

  “Wonderful,” she said.

  “Why do you stay here?”

  She shrugged. “I got a job. Why did you come here?”

  I shook my head. “You weren’t born here?”

  “God, no. My God, no.” Then she laughed suddenly, in an abstracted way, as if remembering something. “But the town I was born in -” She shook her head and laughed again.

  “Worse than this?”

  “Just like it.”

  She brought me a fresh cup of coffee. She smiled, pushing the backs of her fingers along her blonde temples as though strands of hair were loose on her forehead. But they weren’t.

  “You were really hungry,” she said. “How long has it been since you ate?”

  I shrugged. I motioned with my fork toward the pancakes, bacon and coffee. “Why’d you do it?”

  She exhaled. “You had a pretty face.” She was staring through that window, as if sick, as if she’d lost her last tipping customer. “Does your mother love that face?”

  “I don’t know. They took her away. Screaming. When I was born.”

  She managed to smile. “I’ll bet they did.”

  She began to work with the polishing rag. I ate, beginning to feel almost human again. Finally, I realized she was speaking, talking to herself more than to me.

  “A girl comes to a town, new town, nobody knows her, and nobody knows a thing about her. And everything is fine. For the first time. For the first damned time everything is fine. She can get a job, go to church, feel like she’s just as good as other folks. Then there’s this guy. Nothing much. But he’s got a steady job—”

  “With a pension.” I glanced through the window. Arnie leaned against the cruiser, waiting in the white sunlight, but Cotton stood stiffly, back to the café window. Only he couldn’t stay like that. He’d glance over his shoulder at Dot, lips set and gray.

  “With a pension,” she agreed, barely hearing me. She scrubbed hard at the aluminum ice cream covers. “She tells herself she could do a lot worse.”

  “We all make mistakes,” I quoted.

  She looked up, stopped polishing, and smiled. “You want some more coffee?”

  “No. I may as well go out there and face it. Thanks. I can take it now … I don’t think I could have before.”

  She didn’t say anything. She turned, picked up the bowl she’d brought from the kitchen and set on the rear shelf. She brought it to me, leaned against the counter and pushed the bowl toward my plate.

  My heart sank. The bowl was almost full of change, dimes, quarters, fifty-cent pieces and two one-dollar bills. Her smock pocket that had been bulging with tips, sagging out of shape with the money, was empty now.

  I stared at the money in that bowl.

  “Why?” My throat felt raw and tight.

  She ignored that. “Lucky you came in this morning. Couple men in who always tip me a dollar when they buy a dime cup of coffee. They think it’s going to buy them something extra.”

  “Sort of a living trust,” I said.

  “Sure. Annuity.”

  I pushed the bowl away. “You fed me.” I still didn’t look up at her. “You didn’t adopt me.”

  “Don’t be a fool. Feeding you won’t get you out of town.” She glanced through the window again. “I better tell you something looks like you don’t know. You ever hear of the Great Plains Empire?”

  I shook my head. “Sounds real melodramatic.”

  “You better listen good,” she said in that flat voice. “It covers about two or three hundred sections. You know how much that is out here?”

  “About twenty-eight acres to a section? Big.”

  “A man named Cassel owns the Great Plains Empire. Wheat Cattle thick like fleas. Truck farm—”

  “I’m not looking for work here.”

  She laughed in a flat way. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. If Cotton and Arnie arrest you for panhandling, you’ll get thirty days at labor—”

  “And Cassel pays the sheriff for prison help?”

  She nodded. “He has a big place. Needs a lot of help. If you went out there, he’d hire you. You’d live in a barracks, he’d pay you. But you get arrested in town, you’ll sleep in a different barracks behind barbed wire fences, and the sheriff will get paid for your work.”

  “You’ve been reading Daphne DuMaurier.”

  Her expression didn’t alter. “Not unless she writes for the local paper.”

  I remembered the leggy, busty dame handing me a business card. I fumbled in my shirt pocket pulled out the card. It was senseless, but my hands trembled when I read it:

  BARTON M. CASSEL

  Great Plains Empire Farms

  U.S. Highway 40 East of Fort MacKeeney, Kansas

  Phone 404 - Blue

  2

  I dropped the card with its face up on the counter.

  “So you see how it is?” she said, barely glancing at the card. She’d seen cards like it before. She moved up the counter to the cash register where the box of mints, the bowl of toothpicks and a card holder were grouped on top of the cigar case. She brought a business card to match mine and laid it on the counter beside it.

  “Gin,” I said.

  “Bingo.” She smiled.

  I glanced through the blue-tinted window at the cops in the sunlight. They were getting impatient. Arnie was standing up now, mopping at the sweat on his forehead and around his thick neck under his open shirt collar. His blue shirt was discolored at the armpits. He was staring into the café, his face muscles set and rigid.

  Cotton was saying something coldly and emphatically.

  “Mr. Cassel is a good customer of ours,” Dot said.

  “A dollar tip?” I said.

  She shrugged. “Sometimes five dollars. Especially if he’s been drinking. And he doesn’t come in very often unless he’s been drinking.”

  “I thought this was a dry state.”

  She shrugged. “He leaves a stack of cards for us. Likes us to give them out to men looking for work.”

  “You keep talking about work,” I said. “I don’t want to work. Not around here. I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me, Dot. Never. I’ll send you some money to pay for it, but I can’t ever thank you—”

  “I’m all heart,” she said. “I fed you to keep those two goons from arresting you. Now I’m telling you to take that money and buy yourself the biggest bus ticket it’ll buy. You got no chance of getting a job at Great Plains, even if you were fool enough to want it”

  “I don’t want it. But why not?”

  “Stop wasting time with stuff that don’t matter, mister. They’re not going to let you get a job out there, because if they arrest you, they’ll get paid for the work you’ll be forced to do. Put that money in your pocket. Walk up front, pay me a dime, wait for some change and walk out of here.”

  I scooped up the money, closing my fist over it and dropping it in my jacket pocket. I put the two singles in my wallet and stood up. She had moved up to the cash register and was standing there, waiting.

  I moved slowly toward her, disliking the idea of facing those boys even with money in my pocket.

  I leaned against the cigar case, looking straight at her.

  “I don’t think your friends are in any mood to let me leave town,” I said. “Even with a bus ticket. I better go out the kitchen door and make a run for it I’ll repay this. I’ll send you a letter: ‘Dot, care of the Fort MacKeeney Café, with love—from
Mitch Walker.’ What’s the last name, Dot?”

  “What difference does it make?” Her eyes were cold. She took the dime at the side of the register, punched a key on the cash register and handed me two half-dollars in change. “Dot. That’s enough. It’s all you need to know”

  “What’s with the cold shoulder all of a sudden? I thought you were a friend of mine? You don’t think I’ll repay you?”

  “I know you won’t if you try to run out that back door. How smart are you? How’d you ever get this far?”

  “It wasn’t easy.”

  “I’ll bet it wasn’t. Don’t you know Arnie and Cotton are waiting for you to make a run through that back door? Either one of them would shoot you in the back in that alley. Resisting arrest.”

  “They’re about to have an orgasm out there thinking about getting me in a cell.”

  “You can take a beating,” she said. “You’re young. You’ll get over it. Besides there’s nothing more they can do to that face of yours.”

  I shook my head, my voice hurried. “What’s with this face bit, honey-lamb? You feed me, you fill my pockets with gold, and you act like you hate my guts.”

  Her voice was bitter and her eyes were chilled. “All right, you’re a handsome guy. Is that supposed to make me feel better? A guy walks in here and I act like his fairy godmother, just because he’s young and pretty?”

  I looked around, trapped. I could not deny a sudden painful sense of relief. I could not get out of here. Those cops were hovering, waiting. It was over. It was ended. All the running, and the hiding out—it had ended. Highway 40. Fort MacKeeney, Kansas. Dead end.

  “There’s one way,” she said.

  I didn’t believe her, but I looked up, and from the corner of my eye saw Cotton move toward the thick doorway. But I didn’t think he’d come back in here. They wanted me on the street, they wanted me stripped of defenses.

  “The men’s room,” she said. “A window in there. Opens on the alley. It’s locked, but you’re a big boy. You can go in there. They’ll buy that for two or three minutes. Everybody has to go, sooner or later. Even those goons know that.”