The Intruder Read online

  Bathing quickly, he returned to the bedroom and put on the one wrinkled but clean shirt that remained. He shook the charcoal flannel trousers and put them on, too.

  He surveyed himself in the mirror. The image thrown back was that of a fairly handsome, masculine young man, the sort you would be likely to encounter in some minor New England college. The hair, dark brown, almost black, was straight. The nose was somewhat bent, though not noticeably, and the lips were rather thick.

  He added a last touch to his hair, smiled at his reflection, and began to unpack his suitcase.

  It contained two pairs of shorts, one undershirt, three extra pairs of socks, a faded brown sports shirt, a plain green cotton tie (rolled neatly) and some handkerchiefs. These he removed and threw into the middle drawer of the dresser. The bag also contained several large brown envelopes, which he treated with greater care. He opened the top envelope and took out some white typing paper and placed the paper neatly on the rickety folding table by the wall.

  There was one other item in the suitcase. A worn 32.20 Police positive pistol. He picked it up and thumbed the cylinder release. The breech fell loose. He reached into the side pocket of the suitcase, removed five copper bullets, slipped them into the pistol and snapped it together.

  He returned to the table and sat down. For several minutes he stared at the paper. Then he uncapped a long blue ballpoint pen and wrote: Dear Professor Blake—

  “No,” he said, beneath his breath, and crumpled the paper.

  Dear Max—

  He wrote until the page was covered. Then he folded the letter into a business-size white envelope carefully, and printed the name Max Blake, printing also the many degrees after the name and the involved address.

  Then he went to the window and pulled up the shade.

  Below, a woman was wheeling a baby buggy across the street, walking heavily and with great effort.

  Men were lounging against cars, smoking and moving their lips in silent conversation. Slow as the blue haze that drifted over the distant mountains, slow as the clouds, they moved, as if they were all waiting. And the air was hot and hushed.

  A little gray town, the color of gunpowder.

  2

  Ella McDaniel glanced at the clock and sighed. She’d felt sure that an hour had passed since the last look, but it was only 4:10, which meant that seventeen small minutes had crept painfully by and no more. She wished that she could turn the clock around to face the wall, but, of course, that wouldn’t do. Mr. Higgins wouldn’t understand.

  She picked up a sponge and, for the fifth time since the last person had come in, proceeded to wipe the black marble counter. She then polished the nozzles of the water dispensers carefully, and wandered over to the magazine rack. There wasn’t anything new, and wouldn’t be until Tuesday, and she’d read everything except the hot-rod journals and Harper’s. She straightened the magazines, lined them all up in their proper places, switched them.

  4:19 p.m.

  She yawned. This was the hardest time of all. From one to three there were customers, and she was kept busy making malted milks and sodas and cokes; and around six-thirty the kids started dropping by and she had someone to talk to. But in between, it was bad. It made her realize just how dull her life really was.

  She wished now that it was Sunday and that she and Hank had made up (somehow) and were down by the river, Hank bare-chested, in his faded blues, and she in the outfit that Daddy didn’t like her to wear in public.

  The wish became real and she stood there quietly, following it as if it were a film.

  Ella was small and compact. Her flesh was firm. Its pigmentation was such that she seemed always to have a slight tan. Whereas the legs of the other schoolgirls were white, straight, with little bruise marks showing at the ankles, hers were almost golden, and the calves tapered downward to squared-off tendons.­ For this reason, she disliked wearing the regulation white socks; but she had to, anyway. Even with grown women, it was considered brazen in Caxton to go about with naked ankles.

  She hid her breasts, usually, in the loose-fitting white silk blouse that was part of the unofficial school uniform; and a plain dark skirt concealed, though with less success, the slender waist and sharp, curving hips. A sexy haircut was about the only allowable concession, and she worked on this continually.

  Sixteen years exactly showed in her face; however, with some effort, and the application of make-up, she was occasionally able to look older.

  She thought of herself as the Doris Day type, as opposed to the Marilyn Monroe type, and she guessed that it was this youthful quality that made Hank so shy around her. It was understandable, of course. Seventeen-year-old boys were almost always shy. Still, she was missing out on an awful lot; she knew that. Cora Dillaway, who wasn’t nearly so pretty, had been practically raped by Jimmy Sorentino one night at the Star-Lite Drive-In, she knew, and Sally Monk was keeping very quiet about the date she had with Thad Denman.

  A sudden anger filled her, as it had so often in the past week; and a certain small sadness. She could have put up with the whole thing, all right, because Hank was certainly the most popular boy at Caxton High. But when she learned that he’d taken Rhoda Simms to Rusty’s and that they hadn’t got back until one in the morning, that ruined everything. Rhoda was loud and the boys whistled at her, but her underwear wasn’t always clean, and she had a habit of spitting pieces of cigarette tobacco out of her mouth. She had other habits, too.

  Well, it only proved one thing. Hank might be big and handsome, but he was still a little boy. He was a little boy and Ella was a woman, and that was the trouble right there.

  Vaguely she wondered if all women had to just stop and wait for boys to catch up with them.

  She wiped the black marble and fell back into the wish. Hank had been talking to her, as he did whenever they were alone; then suddenly, he stopped. The rain had just turned everything silver, and a chill was in the air.

  Hank looked over his shoulder. There was only the field, the thick grasses, the softly singing river. And the two of them, together.

  He moved toward her.

  “Ella,” he said, “I want you to know something. I want you to know that you’re a very beautiful and a very desirable girl.”

  Then he gathered her in his arms and pulled her to him and pressed his lips, roughly, against hers . . .

  She was lying next to him on the wet grass, telling him that she had never been kissed, really kissed, in a grown-up way, in her whole life, when the bell tinkled.

  Ella blinked and looked up.

  A young man in a dark suit stood in the doorway. He was tall, with straight black hair, and his eyes were on her.

  He closed the door, and the bell tinkled again. “Hello,” he said.

  Ella smiled, tentatively. She said “Hi,” but her accent turned the word into something that sounded like “Ha” and she felt embarrassed, because this was a stranger to town. Someone from the East, probably. You could see that.

  He walked over to the counter, close to her, and returned the smile. “I wonder, miss,” he said, “if you could give me some change. I need a whole lot of dimes.”

  “Just a second,” Ella said, “and I’ll see.” She pressed the No Sale button on the cash register. “All right,” she said.

  The stranger had climbed onto a stool. He gave her two one-dollar bills. “Can you spare twenty of them?”

  “I guess so.”

  She dug out a handful of dimes, counted twenty, set them in a pile on the counter. She couldn’t imagine what anyone would want with so many dimes, but she didn’t feel it would be right to inquire. A long-distance call would require a lot of change, but you could use quarters in the coin box.

  “Thanks.”

  It was suddenly very quiet: only the sound of the electric fan, turning lazily, and the tick of the clock, and her own breathing.

  The stranger’s eyes seemed to cover her, but they were warm and friendly. There was nothing to be afraid of, after all.
Mr. Higgins would be back in a few minutes.

  “Would you care for anything else?” she asked.

  “Well,” the young man said, “I think maybe I could use a cup of coffee.” His voice was clear and solid, yet not in the least hard. It was a very nice voice.

  Ella nodded and walked over to the glass coffeemaker. The white drugstore uniform was cinched tight around her waist, it clung to her hips and outlined her figure far better than street clothes ever did. She knew this and made a point of walking lightly, putting her weight on her toes.

  She placed the coffee cup on the counter and asked if he wanted cream; almost no one ever used it in Caxton. He answered, “Please,” and she returned with a small wax carton.

  “I hope you’re not going to ask me if I’m a salesman,” the young man said, finally.

  Ella said, “Huh?”

  “I must look like one, because that’s what everybody has asked since I got into town. ‘You a salesman, fella?’ ”

  “Well, we get quite a few of them in Caxton. They lay over here.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know. They just do.”

  The young man sipped his coffee. They were silent for another moment. Then he said, “You live here in town, don’t you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Go to the high school?”

  She hesitated a second, aware that she was doing exactly the thing her father had warned her about: talking to a strange man.

  “Yes. I’m a junior. Or, I mean, I will be when school starts.”

  “Great,” the young man said, and paused. “You know, I’ve heard a lot about Southern hospitality. I’m just wondering if it exists, actually. Does it?”

  “I guess so; sure.”

  “No, I mean really. See, here’s the way it is: I just moved here, I’m going to stay for quite a while, but I don’t know a darn thing about the town—and I don’t know a soul.”

  Ella’s heart beat a little faster as the stranger continued. He was handsome, in a peculiar kind of way, she thought. And anyone could see that he was a gentleman.

  “Look,” he said, “let me ask you a few questions, would you? You don’t even have to answer them if you don’t want to. Okay?”

  She shrugged noncommittally.

  “Now you’re probably thinking that we ought to be introduced, though, aren’t you? All right. My name is Adam Cramer. I’m twenty-six years old. I’m nice to dogs and cats and other animals and I help old people across streets. Who are you?”

  Ella grinned, though she hadn’t planned to. “I don’t think I’d better—”

  “Oh, come on, now. Southern hospitality. You don’t want a Yankee to get a bad impression, do you? I might go home hating everybody in the South, just because of this. And I know you wouldn’t want that to happen.” His eyes, Ella thought, are certainly blue; and he has a wonderful smile.

  “Well, no, I guess I wouldn’t want that to happen.”

  “Fine!”

  “But I don’t see why you have to know my name.”

  “Because names are important. You’ve got one and I’ve got one, and that gives us something in common right off the bat.”

  “I’m—” She felt a delicious sense of danger. “I’m Ella McDaniel.”

  “Hi, Ella.”

  “Hello.”

  “See, we’re getting along already!”

  They both laughed, and Ella forgot about the clock, she forgot about the dullness and about Hank and about the wish.

  “Next question,” the young man said. “Do they ever let you out of this place? Or are you chained to the wall at night?”

  “That’s silly.”

  “It is not. Where I come from, they have little children working in coal mines. Some of them grow up without ever seeing the light of day.”

  “Where do you come from?” Ella heard herself asking.

  “Northern Rhodesia,” the stranger said, lowering his voice.

  “Really?”

  “Well—almost. Actually, it’s Los Angeles.”

  Ella was rapidly becoming fascinated. At the mention of Los Angeles, a vision of motion picture stars and studios and mansions came into her head.

  “Disappointed?”

  “No. I mean, why should I be?”

  “Then we’re friends?”

  “Well . . . what do you mean?”

  “Friends—you know. Acquaintances. What I’m getting at is, I’d like a date with you. There we are, out in the open. I-would-like-a-date-with-you.”

  “I’m afraid—”

  “Of course you are. Why shouldn’t you be? After all, I’m a stranger. So look, let’s do it this way. I’ll let you say no, now. Absolutely not, you refuse to go out with me and that’s all there is to it! Then I’ll ask you again in three minutes. Having turned me down once already, you wouldn’t have the heart to do it again.”

  Ella shook her head firmly. She said, “I don’t know what you’d want a date with me for.”

  “For a lot of reasons,” the young man said. “One, you’re an attractive girl. Two, I’d like somebody to show me around the town. If I’m going to be living here, it’d be nice to get to see the place.”

  Ella was about to answer, but the bell sounded and a portly woman with a bandage over her eye came in.

  The young stranger grinned. “See you later, Ella,” he whispered. He turned and walked to the telephone booth and began to go through the directory. Ella watched and wondered, briefly, what he was doing. The excitement coursed through her.

  “Is Mr. Higgins in?” the portly woman asked.

  “No, Mrs. Dodge. But he ought to be back in a few minutes.”

  “Well, I don’t see why he can’t stay around more. It ain’t right for you to be left alone in this place, now. I tell you that. It ain’t right.”

  “Oh, I manage, Mrs. Dodge. There isn’t ever much to do this time of day.”

  “That ain’t what I’m talking about, Ella. Rolfe Higgins is making himself I don’t know how much money, and the least it seems he could do is stay around and at least count it.”

  Ella said “Yes’m” and glanced in the direction of the phone booth.

  “That stuff he give me made things worse. This old stuff.” The woman took a bottle from her purse. “My eye is still hurting, and it’s all pooched out, too, just like it was.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, I am too.” She jerked her thumb. “Who’s that in the booth?”

  “I don’t know,” Ella said. “A customer.”

  “That’s what I mean,” the woman said. “He could rob the store and do the Lord can only say what else; a young girl like you all alone! I’ll talk to Rolfe, now, I’ll do that.”

  Her voice went on, droning, and Ella smiled and nodded courteously, but she heard very little.

  Then a deeper voice said, “Mabel, are you here again?”

  “You’re doggone right I’m here again, Rolfe Higgins, and you can take this here ointment and throw it in the garbage. It don’t do no good at all.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Higgins, a surprisingly slight man to own so profound a bass, “I told you to have it lanced.” He clicked his tongue. “Hello, Ella. Everything go all right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And a wonder, too,” the woman said. “I think it’s criminal for you to leave this little girl alone—”

  The two began to argue, and Ella went back behind the counter and turned on the carbonated water dispenser so that she wouldn’t have to listen. Mrs. Dodge was an old grouse, a nasty, crotchety old grouse.

  “—what if one of them niggers off of Simon’s Hill was to go by and see her, what would happen, do you suppose?”

  “Not a thing, Mabel. We’ve got good nigras and you know it. Besides, they don’t ever come into town, and you know that, too.”

  “Well, they’ll be coming down soon enough. You just wait: the minute they let them into the school, they’ll take over this place. You’ll have them sitting ri
ght up at your counter, asking to be served!”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so. I guess you never traveled much, then, that’s all I can say.”

  “All right, Mabel. All right!”

  They wrangled for almost ten minutes, then Mr. Higgins gave the woman a tube of zinc oxide and told her that it wouldn’t make the swelling go down on her eye, but that it would at least keep the germs away.

  Mrs. Dodge remarked that he was a poor excuse for a pharmacist, a poor excuse, and exited.

  Mr. Higgins glared after her. “The weaker sex,” he com­mented.

  Ella nodded. “She certainly does get excited.”

  “Well, that’s the way with ignorant people. She’s got a sty on her eye. Doctor could have lanced it last week, and she’d be feeling fine now. Only she hasn’t got the gumption to do what’s right, because some time somebody told her never to let a doctor operate. So what happens? The sty gets bigger and hurts like the devil. She can’t blame herself, of course. That wouldn’t do. So she hates me because I can’t cure her.”

  Mr. Higgins crushed his cigar in a tray.

  “Well,” he said, “I better get to work, I suppose. If you need anything, I’ll be back in the back.”

  Ella felt sorry for her employer and wondered at the same time how he managed to retain his good humor. People were always complaining that his medicine didn’t work. She watched him put on his white jacket, then she washed the coffee cup and saucer and dried them.

  The stranger called Adam—she couldn’t remember his last name—was still in the telephone booth, talking, hanging up, putting another dime in, talking. She thought of the way he’d gone about asking her for a date—a way that kept her from even realizing what was happening!—and she felt the quickening of her heart again.

  She tried to forget about his presence in the store, but could not. Even as she fussed, aimlessly, joggling things out of order and setting them straight again, she knew that he was there.

  He came out once and, after removing his jacket, asked for a Dr. Pepper. Perspiration had beaded his forehead. His shirt was stained dark below the armpits and around the waist, and for some reason this looked odd. It was odd to think that the stranger perspired the same way everybody else did . . . But then he went back, closing the door after him. Nothing much had changed, except that his face bore a slightly different, slightly more cheerful expression.