Rock Island Line David Rhodes (ereader iphone .txt) 📖

“If that’s what you want,” Earl said, nearly shouting in excitement, “then I’ll take him myself. We’ll get him back in there and you two can just stand back and I’ll take him myself.”

“Come on—” said Marty, but was cut off before he could continue.

“All I want you guys for is to drag me off him. When I fight, something snaps out in me and I can’t control myself. I nearly killed a kid several weeks ago over in Fairmount. I just snap out.”

Al and Marty looked away from the eyes again and back to each other. Naturally, they weren’t about to say anything about the only time they had seen Earl in a fight, which had been maybe a year ago and it had been more like him being snapped instead of snapping out—though clearly the other guy had been bigger. The hatred was a little frightening to them, and they were hesitant about saying something to draw it toward themselves.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Al.

“You’re both chicken,” said Earl. “You’re yellow.”

This taunt, which by itself has probably been responsible for more misdeeds among young people than any other, cut them to the quick. It’s a wicked threat, one which almost anyone canwield with the same weight, one which is secretly used against oneself with terrible consequences. Its seriousness can never be overlooked—the weapon of self-destruction, yet the foundation of noble action.

“He should have to go out and get his own corner,” said Marty.

“We won’t hurt his cat,” said Al, as though complimenting their higher motives.

The next morning at the pickup place, July in his usual morning grogginess didn’t have any reason to expect that it would be different from any other Tuesday. There was a heavy overcast, and with melted snow on the street, his cat had gone back down beneath the platform. The sun was just beginning to come up and the streets and buildings were either gray or blue. He carried his bundles off a little way from the rest, cut one open with his knife and stuffed the papers into his carrier bag. Then, picking up the other by the strings, he set off for Pine Street, every once in a while taking a paper in to a shop owner just opening up.

It was a good morning. The paper he carried made it seem like any minute the secret Communists in the country would make their play. “Commies arrested,” shouted July, and stood back, making change as fast as he could with both hands while they grabbed papers from the stack on the sidewalk and talked quietly, seriously among themselves—not wanting to jolt the lull of the morning. He went two blocks more, over to 14th Street, and sold all the papers from the first bundle. Then he hurried up to Broad Street in case Billy Casey wouldn’t have come out today. He hadn’t, and July rushed over and stood where Billy would have stood if he hadn’t been drinking and sleeping through the alarm clock, on a corner where he could go out into the street if need be and hit everyone for four blocks west of City Hall who was heading over there to get on the L or the Crosstown or the Frankford.

When, about nine thirty, he’d sold all but a dozen papers he went to breakfast. In the diner he sold two more to Mac Shempt and Morris Walter, the two policemen who had longago carried the angry girl from the open diner on 15th Street. As he chewed his toast he saw Earl Schmidt across the street, but thought nothing of it.

“Hello, July,” said a voice beside him and he turned back to the counter just as a man he recognized sat down. He wore a suit, and clean, pressed white cuffs reached out over his thick wrists. The wedding ring on his left hand was studded with jewels. His smart overcoat hung next to the door. With a quick second-thought movement as natural as blinking, he reached down with a paper napkin from the dispenser and rubbed away a spot of soiled water on his pants leg and tossed it on the floor just as the waiter arrived. The slight fragrance of the cologne added just that final touch to the almost too pure smell of cleanliness. It was in this man’s character to be completely at home in a diner of the kind July frequented to save money, without compromising either his opinion of himself or his mannerisms. His hair was thin and beginning to gray, yet his face was clearly too heavy and firm to be very far into its fifties. His eyes were solemn, but his large hands, which seemed always to be moving and gesturing as he talked, could only be remembered as jovial.

“Scrambled eggs,” he said. “Three of them, mixed with cream, four pieces of toast, sausage, a large glass of orange juice, tea with lemon, and while I wait I’ll have a roll—that one there, in fact,” and he pointed inside the display case to a jam-filled pastry which made July’s mouth water though he’d already finished eating his full meal. “Oh, yes, and get this fellow anything he wants.”

Behind the counter, Dwane Burt was pulling out a roll and at the same time trying to gather up the old plates, napkins, water glasses and ketchup bottles that the big man kept shoving over to clear everything away from the counter in front of him.

“Nothing for me, Dwane,” said July.

The man frowned and looked petulantly at the roll, then at July. “Give that one to July,” he said. “It looks a little pale outside the case. I’ll have the one in the corner. No—the other one.”

“Thanks,” said July.

“People have to eat,” he said, and in an aside to the waiter added a half-portion of hash browns and ketchup to be set beside the scrambled eggs.

“OK, Mr. Carroll,” said Dwane, and went away into the kitchen.

“Your cat . . .