Departure Read online

  “I don’t know his name.” She was thinking of the six-year-old, sitting on the wagon seat.

  “You know what he looks like. If you describe him?”

  She moved back from the table, folded her hands in her lap. Her wide blue eyes were fixed on the fat man. “They threatened my son,” she said. “I have three children. My man’s shot—”

  “You’re afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid. We’ve had a lot of hard luck, maybe too much. I’ve learned not to hate. If my man lives, I’ll thank God.”

  “And if he doesn’t live?”

  “Then I’ll thank God he spared me my children.”

  “And you love him?”

  Her mild blue eyes fixed on the fat man’s face. “Why should you ask me that?” she demanded gently. “Maybe I never told him, maybe he never told me. We’re plain folks, an’ that kind of talk don’t come easy. We been through a lot together. We lost our first boy, fourteen, he’d be now. We lost our farm. It ain’t easy, pushing west like this in an old wagon, trying to feed three kids, trying to find a piece of land to light on.”

  The fat man said earnestly: “I know that, but this is the kind of West you’re pushing into, and this is the kind of thing that has to be stopped. I don’t delude myself on the power of my press, still I put out a newspaper, and people read it. If I could print the story with proof of who shot your husband, the governor might read it. It might change things.”

  She shook her head. “It might kill my child. I don’t want more trouble, mister. I want peace. I want to raise my children in peace.”

  The fat man shrugged his shoulders.

  “All right, Mrs. Wesley. I hope to God your husband will be all right.”

  They went back into the shop. The doctor has evidently finished. He was rolling down his sleeves, buttoning them. The boy and the girl had come into the shop, and were standing in awed silence by the type case. Her husband still lay on the bench, his eyes closed. He seemed to be sleeping.

  The fat man and the little woman stood and waited. The doctor crawled into his jacket, closed his bag of tools. He turned to them, then, and said:

  “He’ll be all right.”

  She wavered a bit, nodded, came forward and stood looking down at her husband.

  “He’s sleeping,” the doctor explained. “I gave him something to make him sleep. That’s what he needs most now. The wound’s nasty, but it ain’t bad. Nothing comes of it, and he’ll be up and walking tomorrow. It’s nasty, but it looks worse than it is. Through the pectoralis major, out and through the triceps. No bullet to worry about, no organs. But he can’t stay here. Suppose Jed and me, we carry him over to my place.”

  She shook her head. “You’ve done so much already—”

  “Done nothing. You sit here and read the papers, and we’ll be back.”

  After they had gone, carrying her husband, she sat on a chair near a press, smiling a little. The boy and the girl came and pressed close to her. Then she put her arms around them. She seemed lost in the wonder of having her husband’s life again, and at least ten minutes went by before she remembered the six-year-old.

  “Where’s Billy?” she asked them.

  “He was settin’ on the wagon seat, sleepin’, I guess.”

  She went outside, and the boy and girl followed. The wagon seat was empty. As in a daze, she walked round and round the wagon, looking inside from the back, lifting the brown canvas cover at the sides. She called: “Billy! Billy!” Her voice sounded strange in the almost empty sunbaked street. Then she stopped walking, leaned against the wagon, limp, tired, staring at the two children who were left.

  It was later in the afternoon now; shadows were longer. The little town appeared to be waking up. There were more horses at the hitching posts.

  “We left him on the wagon seat,” the girl said. The girl was frightened now, ready to cry again.

  The mother nodded, and pointed to the shop. “You go in there,” she told them. “Lord knows, I got enough trouble. You go in there and stay in there.”

  “Where’s Billy?”

  “You never mind that. You go in there and stay in there.”

  She leaned against the wagon until they had gone into the newspaper shop. Then she sighed, straightened up her small form. The little, etched lines of pain appeared around her mouth again. She walked to the wagon seat, reached under it, and took out a double-barreled shotgun. It was heavy, and she held it awkwardly.

  Holding it waist high, muzzles presented, she walked down the street to the saloon. In front of the saloon, she cocked both triggers. Some men, riders, were standing on the porch of the saloon, but when they saw the gun, the look on her face, they made way for her.

  “Careful about that popgun, sister,” one said.

  Another began to laugh, then allowed the laugh to die in his throat.

  She shouldered her way through the door, stepped to one side, and stood with her back against the wall. There were more men at the bar now, men at the tables, playing cards. The man who had shot her husband was there. The tall man and the short man were there. The bartender was polishing glasses, and when he saw her, he went on polishing, more and more slowly, his eyes never leaving the shotgun. One by one, they stopped drinking, stopped playing, until every man in the saloon was staring, not so much at her as at the shotgun.

  “Is this a ladies’ raid?” someone asked.

  The short man laughed; the laughter spread, then stopped as abruptly as it had started. The man who had shot her husband took a step forward, hesitated, then another step, then stopped.

  “What’s your game, lady?” he inquired.

  Her voice trembled a little as she spoke. “You took my boy. I came for him.”

  The bartender said: “Nobody took your kid, lady. Nobody seen your kid. This ain’t no place for you, an’ you’d better get out a here afore that gun goes off.”

  “I came for my boy.”

  Another step forward; his hand felt for his gun, closed over it.

  “Don’t come nearer,” she said. “You wouldn’t shoot a woman, and if you did, this shotgun might go off. I came for my boy. I’ll wait five minutes for you to bring him to me.”

  The bartender pleaded: “Lady, we ain’t got the kid.”

  The man who had shot her husband stared into her wide blue eyes, shrugged, nodded. In a whisper, he said something to the short man, who walked toward the back of the saloon. The shotgun was becoming heavier, and she thought that in a little while the weight of it would be too much for her to bear. Two minutes or five minutes; the short man returned, leading the six-year-old. The child was crying.

  “Stop that crying,” she said. She dropped the muzzle of the gun, and the bartender sighed and lowered the glass he was polishing. She took the child’s hand. “Stop that crying,” she said again. Together, they went out.

  When she came to the newspaper shop, the fat man and the doctor were already there and waiting. She let the shotgun fall to the floor, dropped into a chair, and gathered the six-year-old in her arms. The doctor picked up the shotgun; the fat man stared at her, a curious expression on his face.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered, “the gun’s not loaded.”

  “They took the kid,” the fat man said.

  “They took him.”

  “My God,” the fat man whispered, “my God.”

  She rocked the child back and forth, pressed her face to his until he had stopped crying. The fat man went into the back room and returned with a handful of lump sugar, which he divided among the three children.

  “My God,” he said again.

  The doctor stood there, still holding the shotgun. Outside, the sun was setting. The shadows were longer, blurred. The doctor said:

  “I feel young. Young and crazy. I feel like going out there—”

  “You’re not afraid,” the fat man said. “You’ll tell me who he was.”

  “I’ll tell you,” she nodded, and then she went on to describe the man who had sh
ot her husband.

  “That’s Rockly. The little one’s Krane. God, I’ll make something of this. I’ll go to the governor. I’ll go to Washington, if I have to. I’ll plaster the Clover City Expresss all over the country. This place is hell, but hell’s been changed before. This will start the break. I’ll get the extra out tonight.”

  “They won’t let you,” the doctor said. “They’ll come here.”

  “Then we’ll fight them. It might as well come to that.”

  “Who? They’re all afraid. You’re no fighting man. Neither am I. I wish to God I was. I feel young—young and crazy.”

  “Get them here, Jones, Frisbee, Anlee, Forster. Maybe you can get Clemens and Angus. Get someone to ride for Kenly and Stevens. Get Mat Wythe, Gil Smith. That’ll be enough.”

  “I tell you, they’re afraid.”

  “So am I. She’ll talk to them. Get them here and let them look at her. Meanwhile, I’ll set type.”

  “All right,” the doctor whispered, “all right.”

  She sat with her children around her, while the fat man set type furiously. She sat there while the shadows grew longer, disappeared in the haze of dusk. She sat there while armed, serious-faced men entered the shop, spoke in whispers to the fat man, leaned against the wall, holding their rifles.

  When they were all there, she spoke to them, and they looked into her wide, mild blue eyes. When she had finished speaking, the doctor took her hand and said:

  “Better go to my house now, with the kids. Some of the women are there. Maybe you can help them.” He walked with her to his house, leading the team. At the house, he stood a moment, looking at her.

  “Good night,” he said. “Your husband will be all right.” He hesitated, holding her hand. “Funny place, this town. I’d like to see it ten, fifteen years from now. Sometimes, I wish I was younger, sometimes, I don’t.” Then he turned away, and she looked after him until he had vanished in the night.

  She entered the house. As she closed the door behind her, she heard the first shot—after that, many others. That was the beginning of a long, hot tense night—a night that seemed to last forever.

  It was early morning. On the seat of the wagon, as it drove out of the little town, were a man and a woman, and a child of six. The man, one arm bandaged to his side, drove two jaded horses; the child, sitting between them, twisted his head from left to right with never flagging interest. The woman, who was small, sat primly in the seat, as if she knew what a poor impression the wagon made, and desired to counteract it.

  Almost at the end of the long single street of the town, they passed a fat man standing in front of a print shop. He waved to them. The child stared, wide-eyed, curious. The woman moved slightly, and it seemed that she would wave back; then her folded hands relaxed in her lap, as if she realized that her prim, motionless figure was the only way she could tell the world that the tattered wagon was not the beginning and the end of their life.

  The fat man watched the wagon until it became a speck on the brown and yellow plain, until it disappeared.

  The Shore Route

  WHEN GAXTON GOT himself seated in chair twelve, car one-o-six on the two o’clock train to Boston, he experienced the lighthearted and pleasurable anticipation of someone who is going away on a vacation long overdue. He would get into Boston in four hours and forty-five minutes, all of it on a pleasant, air-conditioned train, and Dick Haley would be waiting for him there, and they would drive out to the Cape together. The Haleys had a comfortable place at Eastham, and for two weeks he would have nothing to do but swim, lie on the sand and get sunburned, and play a little golf if he wanted to.

  Even the awkward device of going all the way to Boston to meet Dick Haley, who had some business there, could be construed as an advantage; for the two of them would be in the car for a few hours, and it would enable them to get acquainted again. He had not seen Dick Haley since 1942, and in that time Haley had married and had two children, which makes a difference in any man. Gaxton himself had been married and divorced in that time, except that in between the marriage and divorce were three and a half years in the army. This was his first vacation since he was back, unless you could consider as a vacation those seven weeks after his separation, weeks of getting up the courage to leave his wife and to go back to his old job at Sandrow and Jackson, as a copy writer at six thousand a year.

  As a matter of fact, he had looked forward to this vacation all during the latter part of the winter. It wasn’t that he was tired or overworked, but rather always expectant of some change that never came. He would have denied that he was lonely or depressed and pointed out, truthfully enough, that he was both optimistic and expectant. Only he was never quite certain about what he was optimistic. After the divorce, he went along from day to day, working—if you called it that—drinking a little, averaging two or three dates with girls during a week, reading a good deal in his little apartment, and dividing the rest of the time between the theater and the movies.

  It was a commonplace enough New York existence, and he had often said to himself that he was a commonplace enough New York person, thirty-three years old, rather slim, and not too different from hundreds of others you would see at noon or in the afternoon on Madison or Vanderbilt Avenue. At first, it did not seem possible to him that someone who had been in the infantry through Africa, Sicily and most of Italy could come back to such a commonplace day-to-day existence, but after a while he stopped thinking like that and everything during the war became like a dream. The weeks and months slipped away, and he became expectant. As early as February, he began to think of his vacation, and when Dick Haley wrote to him at the agency asking him to come up to the Cape for the last two weeks of July, he accepted eagerly, and from then on thought about it a great deal.

  For all of that, he was rather surprised at his excitement today. Getting on the train, with his golf bag and two-suiter, he felt like a boy off to summer camp, and back of his mind was the foolish refrain that anything could happen during these two weeks.

  What the anything would be, he didn’t know. In the ordinary sense of the word, he had no ambition, neither about his work nor about women. His wife had been a very pretty and intelligent girl, and since he had never fully understood why she had married him, he was not too surprised or shaken when it became someone else in the time he was gone. Gaxton held no real resentment, and once a month or so he would meet his wife for a cocktail, and they would talk very pleasantly about this and that. But he fell in love with no one else—if he had actually ever been in love with her—though he knew enough girls. He was quite good-looking too, but as his wife said to him over one of those cocktails:

  “If you would get excited about something—”

  He remembered that, because he was excited now at the thought of his vacation. He was excited and expectant and full of anticipation, and the deliciously cool air of the chair car put an edge on his mood. He sat down in number twelve, comfortable and at ease in his seersucker, read his paper until the train started, and then looked around him at his fellow passengers. There were a few old women, the kind you always see on the New Haven, a few businessmen, a family with children, out to vacation, and some young people. One or two of them were nice looking girls, and he considered that after he had his lunch, he might get into a conversation with someone and pass a few hours that way.

  His car was the first, directly behind the baggage car, and he had to walk back through two other chair cars to reach the diner. In the diner, the steward put him at a little table by himself. The war was not yet so far past that he could not derive a special kind of enjoyment from a diner, and he lingered over his meal, watching the green, comfortable suburban countryside, and then the endless succession of bays and inlets on the Connecticut coast. He supposed that some day, if he had a family, he would live out here and commute, and he thought idly that it would be nice to have a boat in one of these bays.

  He ordered a second pot of coffee, and altogether passed a full hour at the
table, and then walked back to his car, stuffing his pipe. But the No Smoking sign caught his eye, and he stood for a moment, irresolute, and trying to decide whether or not to turn back to the club car. Then he recalled that the baggage car was directly in front. He walked through to it. It was almost empty, a dozen suitcases or so, several trunks, and a mass of fresh flowers. At first, he saw the flowers as casually as he saw the suitcases and the trunks, paying them no special heed, except to register in back of his mind somewhere that mostly they seemed to consist of carnations and gladioli, the carnations white and red and the gladioli pink, white, red and lavender.

  Striking a match, he puffed his pipe up to a red glow, leaning against the side of the rattling car, savoring the taste of the smoke and feeling very nearly content. Then, a moment later, he realized that the oblong gray box under the flowers was a coffin, and that his companion in the baggage car was some dead person en route to Boston or Providence for burial.

  Gaxton was not superstitious, and while in the army his acquaintance with the dead had become rather extensive and more or less intimate. But somehow, he had never seen anything that depressed him so quickly and completely as this nameless coffin. Holding his pipe hard in his teeth, he walked over and looked down at it, feeling that awful curiosity that so many people partake of when they see a closed coffin. He stood there for about five minutes, while pleasure and contentment drained out of him, and then he knocked out his pipe and went back to his seat in the chair car.

  But the expectancy was gone. He could see Dick Haley saying to his wife, “You don’t mind if I invite Gaxton up for a few weeks. The poor devil’s wife walked out on him. You know how it is with some of the men who were in the service.”

  It was only four o’clock. The two hours and forty-five minutes left before Boston would stretch out forever.