Girl Out Back - Charles Williams(1)

One
“Barney.”
Maybe if I pretended to be asleep she’d stop. She didn’t.
“Barney?”
“What?” I asked.
My name is Barney Godwin. I’ve been around for thirty
years, one day at a time. I have an utterly useless
education, a happy and industrious set of endocrine
glands, good reflexes, and a wife who’s worth two hundred
thousand dollars. It’s a living.

“I just wondered if you were asleep,” she said.
Her name is Jessica Roberts McCarran Godwin. She is
thirty-four years old and is a prime mover in the Wardlow
Women’s Club, Save-the-Trees-on-Minden-Street Division.
She is currently an ash blonde, has very lovely, big, blue
eyes, and her figure hovers somewhere between
voluptuous and overblown, though she can still make
voluptuous in ten days on Ry-Krisp and lettuce when she
wants. She wears a thin gold chain around her left ankle.
This may not blend too well with that Save-the-Trees kick,
but it does have an exciting look under sheer nylon.
“Have you cleared it up?” I asked.
“What up?”
“Whether I’m asleep or not.”
Girl Out Back— 2
“Well! You don’t have to get nasty about it.”
I didn’t say anything. She was probably right; I didn’t
have to get nasty about it. I was on the payroll, wasn’t I?
“Isn’t the moonlight pretty?” she asked.
Moonlight slanted in under the honeysuckle about the
second floor bedroom window and fell across her bare left
leg from pelvis to toe as she elevated it slightly and rotated
the ankle into the high-heeled-shoe position or the positionfor-
taking-cheesecake-photographs. The chain was a thin
tracery of gold against gleaming silver. Not bad, I thought.
This was Percy Bysshe Godwin, drunk with beauty.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
I told her, in my best drunk-with-beauty manner, what I
was thinking about. You don’t have to keep hitting Godwin
with the cue.
* * *
Violence was gone from the night. She lay with her cheek
against the pillow watching me with the languorous wellbeing
of a relaxed cat. Her eyes were quite soft and
dreamy in the shadow.
Then she laughed.
“Who do you think you’re kidding?” she asked.
“Kidding?” I reached out on the night table beside the
bed for a cigarette.
“You and that little priss.”
So we were going to have one of those what-movie-wereyou-
seeing? routines. I lighted the cigarette and dropped
the match in the tray.
“What little priss?”
“You know who I mean.”
“No,” I said. “But don’t tell me. Let me guess. Maxine?
Francine? Maurine? Corinne?”
“You make me sick.”
“Chlorine? Fluorine? Gangrene?”
“Aren’t we cute? A rhyming tom-cat.”
Sometimes a change-up pitch will work. “Shove it,” I
said. I’d like to get some sleep.”
Girl Out Back— 3
“Well . . . !”
“In case it’s escaped your attention I go to work in the
mornings. You can lie around in the nest till noon if you
want to.”
“Fat chance. That cotton-pickin’ Reba comes tomorrow.
She can make more noise . . .”
“Well, cheer up. Everybody has a certain amount of
tragedy in his life.”
”Let’s don’t get sarcastic”
“Fine with me. Let’s just log a little sack time.”
“You weren’t really thinking about her, were you?
I sighed. “Who?”
“That angel-faced little hypocrite. I know the type; if she
thinks she . . .”
“I knew I’d guess it in a minute,” I said. “Just give me a
few clues, that’s all. You mean Barbara Renfrew. Am I
right?”
“You’re damn right you are.”
“Knock it off, will you?” I said. “You should know, if
anybody does, that she’s not even there any more. You
made it so tough for her she finally quit and went to work
in the bank. Or don’t you remember?”
“And isn’t that too bad? So now you never see her more
than three or four times a day.”
“Twice,” I said. “That’s as often as they’ll rent us the
vault. You should see the way they fixed it up, though.
Mirrors, and black sheets . . .”
“Oh, shut up!”
“They just have to be careful, that’s all. Banking is a very
sensitive business, and just one hint of commercialized
vice. . .”
“Will you, for the love of God, stop it?”
“Why?” I asked. “I thought you wanted to talk about
Barbara Renfrew. I’ll tell you what—let’s barbecue some
spare-ribs and bring ‘em up here to bed with us and have a
picnic while we kick it around for the rest of the night.
Would you say her eyes were really blue, or violet?”
“You think it’s funny, do you?”
Girl Out Back— 4
“No,” I said. At two o”clock in the morning when I was
trying to sleep I didn’t think anything was funny.
“Well, no cheap tom-cat is going to make a fool of me in
this town. If you think I’m going to have people laughing at
me behind my back . . .”
“Show ‘em your real estate,” I said. “Nobody ever laughs
at real estate.”
“Laugh! Go ahead! Why don’t you just admit you have
nothing but contempt for me? Tell me I’m older than you
are, and that I’m fat and stupid . . .”
I was tired of it. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut up and go to
sleep.”
“Don’t you talk to me that way!”
“Well, stop talking like a fool.”
“A fool, am I? Well, maybe you’re right, at that. I didn’t
have any better sense than to marry a cheap tom-cat that
was just out for what he could get. . . .”
“All right,” I said. “So you did. So what are you crying
about?”
“Oh! So you admit it?”
At that stage of the brain-washing I would have admitted
to being a coloratura soprano for an hour’s sleep. “Yes.
Just type out the confession and I’ll sign it.”
“You hate me, don’t you?
“If you say so.”
“No! I want to hear what you think.”
“I’m not paid to think,” I said. “I’m a gadget. I’m the
Little Gem Home Companion, the do-it-himself household
appliance with ears. It makes love, and listens to seven
hours of crap without rewinding. . . .”
She sat up in fury and swung a hand at my face. I caught
her wrist and held it while she struggled, her body a futile
writhing of silver and velvet shadow in the moonlight.
We’re probably an inspiring sight, I thought. I put my feet
on the floor and stood up, pushing her back and away from
me. She sprawled on the bed with her face down in the
pillow. Neither of us had uttered a word. I stood for a
moment feeling the difficulty in breathing because of the
Girl Out Back— 5
tight band across my chest, and then I turned and went out
and down the stairs.
I padded barefoot through the hot darkness of the livingroom.
Going on back to the kitchen, I yanked open the door
of the refrigerator, feeling the cold air pour out against my
legs and feet as I took out a can of beer. I was dressed only
in pajama bottoms, and in the light from the refrigerator I
could see the shine of sweat on my arms and torso. The
hell with her. She could take her jealous tantrums and her
gourd-headed suspicions and erratic emotional pattern and
her satin-upholstered bedroom talents and her late
husband’s real estate and nuke a package of them. . . .
I slammed the fridge door shut and hit the kitchen light
switch to locate the beer opener, savagely punched the
can, took a drink of the beer, and then carried it down the
short stairway at the back of the room beside the washing
machine.
The big basement room, a sort of combination workshop
and study, was mine; she rarely came near it except once
or twice a month to supervise Reba’s cavalry-charge
version of sweeping and tidying up. I clicked on the light.
The room ran the full length of the basement. This end was
finished in natural mahogany paneling I had put up myself;
on the left were the recessed bookshelves with their rows
of books, while the two glass-fronted cases on the right
held the fly-rods and the three shotguns I owned. A heavy,
leather-upholstered chair stood under a reading lamp near
the bookshelves, and beyond it was an old couch retired
from the living-room during the last redecorating
cataclysm.
I was fed up. The old cynical detachment that had
carried me through so many of these tirades was beginning
to crack, for some reason, and I was losing my temper like
a chump. I didn’t understand it. This was Barney Godwin?
Being needled by a corn-fed blonde? Why didn’t I just pack
and get out? It wasn’t worth it. I finished the beer, turned
out the light, and lay down on the couch, staring moodily at
the silvery sheen of moonlight beyond the basement
windows. It was a long time before I went to sleep.
I awoke to coolness and the faint, gray beginnings of
dawn. Even before my eyes opened I was aware that it was
Girl Out Back— 6
someone’s moving inside the room that had waked me, and
then something settled softly over my body on the couch. I
turned my head drowsily and looked up. She was leaning
over me in a sheer nightgown, tucking the sheet about me.
Still half asleep and without conscious thought I reached
up and put my hand gently against her check. She dropped
to her knees beside me.
“Barney,” she whispered wildly. “Barney, why do I do it?”
My arms tightened around her and for an instant I was
caught up again in that old, wonderful, eternal woman-feel
of her, the way it had been at first. I held her roughly,
almost fiercely, and then I was fully awake and it was gone.
Clumsy, clumsy, I thought mockingly. There is no room in
the higher echelons of industry for impetuous high-school
boys. Move over, son; you’re not even on the payroll. I
stood a little way apart and watched myself with
professional detachment as I went about consolidating the
advance position, reflecting at the same time that in
courtship the male could suffer no greater handicap than
sincerity.
When I left to go downtown at seven thirty she was
sleeping peacefully beside the cool freshness of the open
bedroom window while a mockingbird erupted with the
glittering and showy repertoire of a concert violinist in the
magnolia just outside. I whistled as I backed the station
wagon out of the drive under the big oaks.
* * *
Wardlow’s business district consisted of one street three
blocks long. The highway traffic ran through it, slowed by
twenty-five mile-an-hour speed limit signs at the city limits
and one traffic light in the center of town where the bank,
Headley’s Drug Store, Woolworth’s, and Joey’s Cafe stood
on the four corners athwart the intersection of Main and
Minden Streets. Most of the residential area lay to the
north and west, largely on this end of Minden Street.
There were few cars about this early in the morning. I
crossed Main when the light changed and drove on to the
store. It was two blocks farther east on Minden, near the
railroad tracks. There was little else over here—a fruitpacking
shed, Homer Jolinson’s body-and-fender shop, and
Girl Out Back— 7
a used car lot. The store was a long brick building in the
center of an otherwise vacant lot that took up most of the
block. Around the sides and in front the lot had been
covered with white pea gravel for a parking area. I drove
around to the right side and parked.
The building had originally housed an automobile
showroom and garage. The dealer had given up the ghost
during the war years when there were no cars to be had.
McCarran bought it for a low figure just before his death of
a heart attack in 1952. He was already retired then, having
sold his hardware store and farm implement agency the
year before because of bad health, but the inactivity bored
him so he had opened the small tackle shop in the front of
this old building, more for a hobby than anything else. He
was fond of hunting and fishing, and the place made a good
spot for old cronies to hang out and second-guess the shots
they’d missed and the bass that got away. He’d been
shrewd enough to see the growing boom in small boats and
outboards that had started right after the war, but his
health and the fact he already had it made had prevented
his doing much about it. He sold a few motors, and that
was about it. In two years I’d built it up to where it cleared
seven thousand a year.
There were big plate glass windows in front on either
side of the door. I unlocked the door and went in. There
were no partitions inside except that enclosing the small
office on the right about a third of the way back and the
motor repair shop at the extreme rear of the building. Up
front, next to the windows, were the glass showcases that
held fishing tackle and miscellaneous skin-diving
equipment. At the left, opposite the showcases, was a
counter behind which were the guns, rods, and water-skis.
From there on back to the doorway leading into the repair
shop the whole floor area was taken up with boats and
trailers and the stock of outboard motors we kept on hand.
We didn’t open until eight thirty. I closed the door behind
me, leaving it on the spring lock, and went into the office.
It was partitioned off from the rest of the floor by
varnished plywood panels seven feet high, and there was a
window I’d had cut through the outer wall for ventilation. I
opened it now, switched on a light because the whole
interior was somewhat dim until the big sliding doors on
Girl Out Back— 8
each side had been opened, and sat down at the desk to
get out some letters.
I was just signing the last one when I heard tires crunch
on the gravel outside. I looked at my watch. It was five
minutes to eight, a little early for Otis to be showing up. I
shrugged and started pawing through the drawers of the
desk for a stamp. Now where was it Barbara used to keep
them? Maybe I d had sense enough to leave them in the
same place. . . . I stopped and looked up. Somebody had
rattled the front door.
It couldn’t be Otis. He had a key. I stepped out into the
showroom. An old station wagon was parked in front of the
near show window and a tall girl with tawny hair was just
turning away from the door. She walked out to the car and
started to get in.
I stepped up front and opened the door. “Hello,” I said.
“What can I do for you?”
She turned. I didn’t know her. “Are you open?” she
asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “But if it’s important . . .?
“I was supposed to pick up some motors,” she said. It
was a nice, throaty voice, down in that end of the contralto
range actresses sometimes use for a burlesque sexiness,
but there was none of that in it. There was nothing in it, in
fact, except indifference, faintly tinged with sullenness.
She was supposed to pick up some motors, but if she didn’t
it was all right with her.
“Sure,” I said. “What were they? Repairs?”
She nodded slightly. “Nunn. George Nunn.”
“Oh. Then you’re Mrs. Nunn?”
“That’s right,” she said with the same indifference. If it
turned out I was Mrs. Nunn she wasn’t going to raise a
stink about it.
“I think they’re ready to go,” I said. “Come on in.”
I pushed the door back and stood aside. She stepped up
on the concrete walk and went past me. She was quite tall.
I’m six feet two, so in the scuffed spectator pumps she was
wearing she must have been close to five eight. Her legs
were bare. The predominantly blue cotton dress she had on
was just another number off the rack, well worn and often
Girl Out Back— 9
laundered, and while it was somewhat tight across the
chest for a couple of somewhat obvious reasons I noted it
only in passing. Now that bust-line architecture has
become a basic industry, like steel and heavy construction,
all the old pleasant conjectures are a waste of time and you
never believe anything until the returns are in from the
precincts. The cascade of tawny hair fell to her shoulders,
bobbing a little as she walked and framing a dead-white
face on which there was no expression at all, unless utter
stillness is an expression. The eyes were a smoky gray,
fringed with dark lashes that were almost startling against
the milk-white skin, and the mouth had been good to begin
with but she’d overpainted it into a sullen smear with too
much of the wrong shade of lipstick. Well, it was her
mouth, wasn’t it?
I indicated an aluminum frame chair in the front of the
showroom near the showcases. “Sit down. I’ll get the
motors.”
It was dim inside the shop. I clicked on a switch and a
bank of fluorescent tubes over the lone work-bench came
on and an electric fan began whirring. There were a halfdozen
dismantled motors scattered around on the bench in
various stages of repair, but I walked on over to the end of
the room where the completed jobs were clamped to
individual dollies. They were both there, 3-h.p. motors with
tags that read “Nunn” on one side and “Tested OK” on the
other.
George Nunn ran a fishing camp on Javier Lake, about
thirty miles away in another county. It was an enormous,
marshy body of water in a wild area, accessible by road
most of the year only at his place on the lower end. I’d
been over there a few times duck hunting, but it was
before he’d taken over the camp. He’d been in the store
two or three times, and still owed me around fifty dollars
on a motor he’d bought from me. I lifted the repaired ones
on to the bench and started wiping them down with a piece
of waste. In a moment I heard a clicking of high heels on
the concrete floor of the showroom. She came in and stood
watching me after an indifferent glance around at the
bench and the shelves of tools and spare parts.
“How’s the fishing on Javier?” I asked.
Girl Out Back— 10
She shrugged. “All right, I suppose.”
She set her purse on the bench and took out a cigarette
and a folder of matches. The breeze from the oscillating
fan riffled the mane of tawny hair and blew out the match
before she could get the cigarette going. She threw it on
the floor, in spite of the fact there was an ash-tray right in
front of her. She struck another that went out. It went to
the floor also. I held a lighter for her.
“Have you got a telephone out there?” I asked.
She blew out smoke and looked up at me with eyes as
expressionless as nailheads. “Why?”
Business,” I said. “Advertising. If your husband will call
me when he has some good catches over there I may be
able to get them in the Sanport papers. You know, the
outdoors columns in the Call and the Herald. Blake and
Carstairs both check here twice a week by long distance.”
“We’ve got a phone,” she said. “Party line. Sometimes it
even works.”
“You’d be surprised how good it is for business,” I went
on, “to get the name of your place in those columns now
and then. I pick up a lot of free advertising that way.”
“That s nice,” she said.
I started to give her a wheeze about how to phone in the
information, to be sure to get the fishermen’s names right,
and the type of gear used, and so on, but when I glanced
around I saw she wasn’t even plugged in. She was still
watching me, but she hadn’t heard anything I said. I
finished wiping down the motors, nodded for her to
precede me, and carried them out front.
“How much?” she asked.
”Just a minute,” I said. I went into the office and lifted
Otis’s work order off the spike, added up the labor and
material charges, and then found the amount of the old
balance.
“Seventy-four thirty-five,” I said when I came back. “That
includes the old balance of forty-eight dollars, plus twentysix
thirty-five for repairs.”
She came around opposite the cash register and put
down her purse. Taking out a billfold, she counted out
three twenties, a ten, and a five. I was inwardly
Girl Out Back— 11
congratulating myself on getting the whole amount, and it
was only half-consciously I noticed two of the twenties
were crisp, brand-new ones. I counted out her change, put
the bills into their respective compartments in the register
drawer, and closed it. I tossed a “Thank you” into the
bottomless void of her disinterest, and carried the motors
out to the station wagon. She got in, and I closed the door
for her. It struck me then, for the first time, that it was odd
she was here so early. It was a long drive, part of it over
back-country roads.
“You must have left very early,” I said.
She switched on the ignition and I thought for an instant
she wasn’t going to answer. Then she turned her head just
briefly and trained that flat stare on my face. “I spent the
night in town,” she said. “I’m a trusty.”
Girl Out Back— 12
Two
She backed the station wagon around and took off with a
scattering of loose gravel under the tires. I stood looking
after her for a moment, and then shrugged and went back
inside. Whatever was eating her was none of my business; I
was in outboard motors. Go home, Moddom. Go back to the
little home and the faithful husband.
In the office I resumed the search for the stamp box and
finally ran it to earth in one of the bottom desk drawers.
There were only a half-dozen threes in it. I probably hadn’t
remembered to buy any since Barbara left. I stamped the
letters and made out a petty cash slip for twenty dollars.
Might as well get a supply while I was at it. And make the
bank deposit while I was out, I thought; this was Monday
morning, and we still had Friday’s and Saturday’s receipts
in the safe.
I opened the safe, stamped and initialed the checks, and
counted the currency and silver. After adding it all up on
the machine, I remembered the money Mrs. Nunn had paid
me. I should break up at least a couple of those twenties
for change to start the day with. Counting out forty dollars
in fives, singles, and coin, I carried it out to the register
and rang up NO SALE to open the drawer. As I was sliding
the twenties from under the roller in the right-hand
compartment I was again idly aware of the crisp freshness
of the two on top. I didn’t really know why, because in any
Girl Out Back— 13
kind of business where you handle much currency you run
across new bills all the time. Perhaps it was because there
were two of them back-to-back and because they had
curled a little under the roller with their ends sticking up.
One of them had what appeared to be a brown stain of
some kind along the edge for about half the width of the
bill.
I set them aside, put the petty cash receipt in the drawer,
and distributed the change into the proper compartments.
I slid one of the twenties into my wallet for the stamps and
was just closing the drawer when I heard the rasp of a
shoe on the pavement outside. I glanced up. It was Otis. He
unlocked the door and came on in as I was putting the
wallet in my pocket and gathering up the other two
twenties for the bank deposit. He lighted a cigarette and
looked sadly at the register.
“Tapping the till again, boss?”
His full name is Otis Olin Shaw. He’s around forty-five,
and looks a little like the pictures of Lincoln at that age
except the black hair is thinning and is gone altogether
from a small round spot on his crown. His unvarying facial
expression is that of an undertaker who’s just learned his
best friend has been cremated by a rival establishment
while owing him three hundred dollars. This bleak sadness,
however, covers a gall-and-wormwood sense of humor, a
lot of intelligence, and something verging on genius when
it comes to internal combustion engines.
“Good morning, Herr Schopenhauer,” I said. “What’s the
cheery word?”
He shook his head and followed me into the office like an
aging Great Dane, sitting down at the desk and watching
mournfully as I stuffed the currency and checks into the
white bag I used for the deposit. “I was just telling the old
lady this morning,” he said, “that there was a chance you
might raise me to fourteen a week now that heroin is
getting cheaper. . . .”
I added the twenties to the currency and clipped the
adding machine tally to the deposit slip. “Don’t count on
it,” I said. “That cheap stuff is cut, and I need more of it.”
He raised a hand. “Oh, I don’t begrudge you a nickel of it
myself. It’s just—well, the old lady’s always after me. Going
Girl Out Back— 14
around town, she keeps seeing all these women wearing
shoes. You know how it is, stooped over that way picking
up cigarette butts. . . .”
”Belt her one,” I said, “and keep her at home. What kind
of a man are you, anyway?”
“I just haven’t got the heart, boss. She’s usually carrying
around one of the kids that’s too weak to walk. . . .”
He had one child, a boy of around fourteen who already
looked like something out of the back-field of the Los
Angeles Rams. They owned their own home and Otis
cleared around a hundred a week with salary,
commissions, and overtime, now that he’d got a raise when
Barbara was purged and we both had to double part time
as clerks.
He went back to the shop. I wrote out checks for a bunch
of bills that were due on the tenth, and then opened the big
sliding doors at the sides of the building. It was growing
hot now at eight thirty of a still and cloudless morning in
August. I swept down the showroom around the boats and
trailers. We had over a dozen models on the floor, running
all the way from a car-top duck boat to a sixteen-foot
inboard runabout that sold for close to two thousand.
As soon as the bank opened I called out to Otis to watch
the front, took the deposit from the safe, picked up the
outgoing mail, and walked over to Main. Brassy sunlight
beat on my bare head and I could feel beads of perspiration
under the thin sports shirt. I crossed with the light and
entered.
It was a small place, a branch of the Mid-South Bank &
Trust of Sanport, with only a couple of tellers’ windows and
Warren Bennett’s desk behind a railing at the right. I got in
line at Arthur Pressler’s window, feeling almost chill in the
sudden transition from the outside heat to air-conditioning.
At the far end, behind a counter, I saw Barbara Renfrew
seated at an automatic book-keeping machine, her smooth
dark head bent over her work. She looked up in a moment,
saw me, and smiled in that shy, quiet way she did. It
occurred to me that now she was no longer working for me
making a pass at her would be permissible under the
revised ground rules without a loss of face on both sides,
and that I really should, since I’d been accused of it so
Girl Out Back— 15
many times. It was an attractive thought, but I shrugged it
off, hardly knowing why. Maybe it was because I didn’t
share Jessica’s staunch faith in her accessibility. Clod, I
thought. Godwin, you lack scope and vision. . . .
“Good morning, Barney.”
The line ahead of me had disappeared and I was facing
Arthur Pressler through the bars of his window. “Good
morning,” I said, passing over the cloth bag. He pulled it
open and began adding checks on the machine with the
precise and economical movements of some super-robot
out of the twenty-second century. He was a rather coldfaced
man in his early thirties, with sandy hair, rimless
glasses, and a no-nonsense set to his mouth. As far as I
knew he had no existence outside this cubicle of his, as if
he’d been bought from I.B.M. and bolted to the floor, but
he could handle money faster than anyone I’d ever seen.
He did it almost in a blur, and he was infallible.
I lit a cigarette and watched him now. He finished the
checks and tossed them aside, and then tore into the
bundle of currency, dropping it into neat and separate
bunches of singles, fives, tens, and twenties. Then he did
something I’d never seen him do before. He was counting
the twenties. The fifth or sixth was one of those new ones
Mrs. Nunn had paid me. It dropped, and the next one
started to come down on it, and then he broke his rhythm.
He paused. With an almost imperceptible shake of his head
he picked them all up and started over. He’d lost count. It
was odd, I thought; maybe they hadn’t been oiling him
properly. He passed me the duplicate of the deposit slip
and I went out and down the street to the post-office.
* * *
Business was brisk for Monday. Besides incidental items of
tackle we sold one complete rig: fourteen-foot plywood
boat, 7-h.p. motor, trailer, and all the incidentals such as a
spare gasoline can, kapok seat cushions, and icebox. After
the customer had taken delivery and driven off I sent Otis
out for a couple of cans of beer to celebrate the deal. I took
out my wallet to hand him a dollar, and as I did I noticed I
still had that new twenty dollar bill. That was odd. Hadn’t I
bought those stamps with it? apparently I’d paid for them
Girl Out Back— 16
with my own money, which I usually tried to keep separate
on the other side of the divider. It didn’t matter, though;
there was no change involved to foul up the register and
the books.
Otis went out. I was transferring the twenty to the other
compartment of the wallet when I saw it was the one that
had the odd brownish stain at one end, along the edge. I
looked at it, and then turned it over. It was on both sides
for about half the width of the bill, and extended up along
the paper for perhaps an eighth of an inch or less. I
wondered idly what it was. It seemed odd there’d be a
stain on a bill this fresh from the Federal Reserve vaults,
unless they were using taxpayers’ blood for ink now in the
printing office.
At four thirty in the afternoon I was up front alone
looking for the boat manufacturer’s ad in this month’s
Field & Stream when a car pulled in and stopped in front
of the window. I saw with a glance at its front license plate
it was from Sanport, but when the driver got out he didn’t
look much like a potential customer. At least he wasn’t on
a fishing trip at the moment. He was dressed in a blue
summer-weight suit, white shirt, pale blue tie, and a
Panama with a gray band. Salesman, I thought.
He lifted a briefcase out of the seat and came in, a man
somewhere around fifty with dark hair that was graying at
the temples, composed brown eyes, and a quiet, efficient
look about him.
“Good afternoon,” I said, “what can I do for you?”
“Mr. Godwin?” he asked pleasantly.
“That’s right,” I said.
He put the briefcase on the counter and held his wallet in
front of me, opened to an identification card. “Ramsey,” he
said. “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
I suppose everybody has that same sinking feeling in the
first fraction of a second, wondering what crime he’s
committed to get the F.B.I, after him. Then it’s gone, of
course, as soon as you realize it’s just a routine security
check. Your old friend Julius Bananas has applied for a job
balancing a teacup for the State Department and they want
to know if he was ever a Communist and how he stood on
some of the fundamental issues like girls.
Girl Out Back— 17
I grinned at him. “Don’t tell me I’ve made the list.”
He smiled, but he didn’t get carried away with it. He’d
probably heard all those feeble gags a thousand times.
“Are you busy?” he asked. “I’d like to talk to you for a
minute, if I could.”
“Sure,” I said. “Fire away. Or, wait; let’s go in the office.
There’s a fan.” The whole day had been still, and now in
the late afternoon the dead, humid air was stifling.
We walked back to the office and I switched on the fan.
He sat down in the straight chair in front of the desk with
the briefcase in his lap. I pushed the typewriter stand out
of the way and sat down in the swivel chair. Taking out
cigarettes, I offered him one, which he refused with a smile
and a shake of his head. I lit mine and leaned back.
“What’s it about, Mr. Ramsey?” I asked.
He unstrapped the briefcase and took out an oblong
Manila envelope. It seemed to me to be rather small to
contain much of a file on the aspiring Mr. Bananas, but
then maybe they’d just started and hadn’t come up with
much yet in the matter of his political aberrations and
mating habits.
“I wanted to ask you about this,” Ramsey said. He slid
something out of the envelope and dropped it on the desk
between us. I stared at it.
It was a crisp, new twenty-dollar bill. It was, in fact, the
same twenty-dollar bill I had in my wallet.
I wondered if I’d gone crazy. It had to be the same one;
there was that narrow brown stain in exactly the same
place, Then I got it. It was obvious, of course. This was the
one I’d deposited in the bank. They’d both had that stain,
but I just hadn’t noticed it. When I looked at them in the
cash drawer, they’d probably been turned end for end.
“It’s familiar?” he asked quietly.
So that explained Pressler’s hesitation when he came to
it as he was counting. He’d spotted something phony about
it, or it had rung a bell of some kind in his mind, just
enough to throw him off stride.
“Yes,” I said. “I think I deposited it in the bank this
morning.”
Girl Out Back— 18
This morning; It must be hot, whatever it is. That was
only seven hours ago, and it took three to drive here from
Sanport. “You’re sure?” he asked.
“Reasonably so,” I said. “It’s new. And there’s that
hairline discoloration at the bottom. I’m pretty sure I
remember seeing it.”
He leaned forward a little. “When?” he asked. “I mean,
do you remember where you got it?”
“Then it is the same one?” I asked. “It came from the
bank?”
He nodded. “I picked it up over there just a few minutes
ago. Presumably somebody spent it here at your store. Do
you remember who it was?”
I was just about to reply when the phone rang. It was up
front on the showcase next to the cash register.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I went out and picked up the receiver. “Boat Supply.
Godwin speaking.”
“My, you sound businesslike.” It was Jessica’s voice,
teasing and faintly provocative. “Mrs. Godwin speaking,”
she went on, imitating me. “Look, honey, would you be a
real cute lamb and run over here for a minute?”
“Where?” I asked.
“Mr. Selby’s office. We need your signature on a thing.”
We. We need your signature. Oh, what the hell, I
thought; cut it out. You’re developing rabbit ears.
“Sure,” I said. “I’m busy right now, but I should be able
to make it in fifteen or twenty minutes.”
”But, Barney, he wants to go home. It’ll only take a
minute.”
I regarded the enormity of it. I was keeping Mr. Selby
from the bosom of his happy little family. I was not only an
annoying by-product of the community property laws, I was
a churl who would inconvenience Mr. Selby.
“Jessie, I’m tied up at the moment. I’ll get there as soon
as I can. Or why don’t you drop by here with it?”
“It has to be notarized,” she explained, with just a touch
of exasperation. It wasn’t necessary, of course, to explain
what the paper was. “Look, Barney, for Heaven’s sake,
Girl Out Back— 19
there isn’t anything so important about selling bass plugs
that you can’t get away for five minutes.”
“I told you I’d be there as soon as I could.”
“You’re just keeping us waiting for no reason at all. Mr.
Selby . . .”
“And how is dear Mr. Selby? Don’t forget to keep your
skirt pulled down.”
“Barney. are you coming over here?”
“I told you. When I could get away. Did it ever occur to
you I might be busy?”
“I notice you never seem to have any trouble getting
away for those stupid fishing trips you go on. . . .”
“I’m sorry,” I said. Next time I’ll clear through channels.”
“Do you have to do this?”
I could feel that tight band across my chest again. Selby
was probably listening to her, Ramsey to me. “No,” I said.
“And, anyway, why don’t we wait till we can buy radio time
and get on the air with it?”
She hung up.
I put the receiver back on the cradle with a hand that
shook. I was raging inside. She could stuff Selby and her
lousy real estate—I stopped. What was happening to me,
anyway? I was beginning to act like a sucker. What had
ever become of Godwin the smooth operator?
I suddenly remembered Ramsey back in the office. I
rubbed a hand harshly across my face, trying to wring the
emotion out of myself so I could think. So what about
Ramsey? The thing that stuck out was that he was after
something, and that it was big. You could feel it. Look at
the way it had happened. It was only seven hours ago I’d
deposited that money in the bank, and now. . . It was like
throwing a match in spilled gasoline.
The questions began coming from every direction. What
was it? Why was it so hot? Where did Mrs. Nunn fit in? And
how had she happened to have two of them? In that
backwoods fishing camp? It was impossible, but there it
was. And why the F.B.I.? I stopped suddenly.
Haig. Wild Bill Haig. I brushed it irritably aside. Why
Haig? The F.B.I, must have a few other men it wanted; it
Girl Out Back— 20
didn’t exist for the sole purpose of trying to run down a
man who had simply evaporated eighteen months ago.
I turned and went back to the office. Ramsey had got up
and was looking out the window. We both sat down again
and I picked up the cigarette I had left in the tray.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Now, where were we?”
“Do you remember when you took it in?” he asked.
I drew on the cigarette and frowned. “Let’s see—that
deposit was Saturday’s receipts. No, wait. Friday’s and
Saturday’s. I didn’t go to the bank Saturday at all.”
He nodded. “Well, that pins it down to two days. Try to
think back. There should be a pretty good chance you can
isolate the sale.”
I was thinking, but not about that. I was regarding the
haphazard operations of Chance. I could have deposited
both those bills. I should have bought the stamps with the
other. It could still be out there in the register, where he
was certain to look before he left. Instead, it was in my
pocket. One could have been a fluke, lost in the shuffle; but
not two. If he’d traced two of them to this place he’d know
damn well I should remember the circumstances. It would
mean either one sale that necessarily had to be more than
twenty dollars, or a repeater who came in twice and paid
for something with identical, new, fresh twenty-dollar bills.
“Is it counterfeit?” I asked. I didn’t think the F.B.I, had
anything to do with that, but I wasn’t sure.
He shook his head. “No. It’s perfectly good.”
“It’s just hot, then?”
He smiled faintly. “You might call it that.”
Kidnap pay-off? I thought. Transportation of stolen
property across a state line? What else? Bank robbery? I
was back to Wild Bill Haig again.
“Can you place it?” he asked quietly.
I shook my head, frowning. “No-o. It beats me.” I was
conscious this was the first deliberate lie. The others had
all been evasions.
“But it has to be within those two days? Friday or
Saturday?”
That’s right I made a deposit Friday morning.”
Girl Out Back— 21
“There’s no chance it could have been left over in the
register or in the safe from previous receipts? I mean, as
change, or an oversight, or something like that?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “We leave change, sure; but
nothing larger than tens.”
“How about this morning? Before the bank opened?”
I shook my head. “No-o.”
Otis. Otis had come in while I was taking Mrs. Nunn’s
payment out of the register. He would know those motors
had been picked up. And also that the charges had been
over twenty dollars. Careful, pal. Careful.
“Well, we’ve got something to start with, anyway,”
Ramsey said. “We’ve isolated it to two days’ receipts. Now
—what is your approximate volume of business?”
“About forty thousand last year.”
“That breaks down to around—hmmmmm—,” he said,
frowning. “Say between a hundred and hundred-and-fifty a
day.”
I didn’t say anything; I merely nodded. That was an oversimplification,
and it was badly booby-trapped. But if he
didn’t see it I wasn’t going to tell him.
He went on. “But along with tackle you sell boats and
motors. Items of two hundred to a thousand and more. So a
lot of your business must be in large individual sales, paid
by check.”
It was no wonder criminals didn’t like to tangle with
them, I thought. Still, there was a certain pleasure in
watching an incisive and well-honed mind at work, even if
you were watching it from the other side of the fence.
“That’s right,” I said. “But on the other hand, in the
course of a day we sell a hell of a lot of small items. Flies,
leaders, plugs, lines, spinning lures, and so on. We make
change for a lot of twenties.”
He nodded. “Most of your business is local? That is, with
people you know, at least by sight?”
“A good part of it, yes. Say within a fifty-mile radius. But
fishermen can come from anywhere. We even get a lot of
trade from Sanport.”
Girl Out Back— 22
I was still thinking about Otis. I had to find out, before I
went too far with this.
“It’s just possible the shop man may know something
about it,” I said. He covers the front when I’m out.”
“I was just coming to that,” Ramsey said. “Is he here
now?”
“Yes,” I said. “Just a moment.”
I went out in the showroom and called him. He came in a
moment later, wiping his hands on a piece of waste, which
he shoved in the pocket of his overalls.
I performed the introductions, and let Ramsey take it
from there. Otis looked at the note, frowning, and then
shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I don’t place it.”
I sat down and lit another cigarette.
“It came from here,” I said. “There’s not much doubt of
that; it was in that bank deposit this morning. You were
here when I was making it up—remember, you came in
while I was putting the change in the register. Do you
recall seeing it while I was doing all that?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “But, hell, you could look right
at it and not see it. It’s just another twenty-dollar bill. I
could have taken it in myself.”
He hadn’t noticed. I was shuffling money and he was
making sardonic wisecracks about it, but that was as far as
it went. He didn’t know I’d taken two twenties out of the
register while putting the change in.
He went back to the shop.
I sighed and spread my hands. “Otis just about named
it,” I said. “You look at money, but you never see it.
Nothing but the figures in the corners.”
He nodded. “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep trying,
though. There are a number of angles in a thing of this
sort. If the man comes back, for instance, you may
remember waiting on him Friday or Saturday. When you
sell a particular piece of merchandise, try to remember the
last time you sold the same thing and how it was paid for.”
“Okay,” I said. “Now, what about if another one shows
up? You want me to call the bank? Or you?”
Girl Out Back— 23
“Call our office in Sanport. We would appreciate it.”
“Any new twenty?” I asked. “Or does it have to have that
mark?”
“The mark is not significant,” he said thoughtfully.
“Though it may have it. The things to watch for are the
year, and then the number.”
“Is it all right if I write this one down?”
“Yes.”
I pulled over a pad and drew the bill toward me. While I
was copying the number I studied the stain intently. I was
beginning to have an idea about that, and I was pretty sure
he did too. I tried to memorize the exact form of it.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“If another one comes in with very close to the same
number, call us immediately. If you know the person
passing it, give us his name and address. If he’s a stranger,
try to get the license number of his car and a good
description of him. Unobtrusively, of course.”
“Any others beside the twenties to watch for?”
“No. That’s all,” he said. “Except . . .” He opened the
briefcase again and came out with about a dozen
photographs which he handed across to me. “Have you
ever seen any of these men?”
There were no names on them, but I didn’t need a tag to
recognize the seventh one I turned up. It was Bill Haig.
Girl Out Back— 24
Three
There was no doubt of it; I had seen his picture in the
papers several times, and it was even displayed in the postoffice
on a “wanted” notice right now unless it had been
taken down in the last week.
I leaned back in the chair and shook my head after I had
looked at all the mug shots. “I’ve never seen any of them
around here,” I said. “But doesn’t it strike you as odd that
hot money would show up in a sporting goods shop.
Doesn’t fit, somehow.”
The brown eyes and the lean, alert face were thoughtful.
“You never know,” he said. “And, of course, the chances
are it was through several hands before it got here.”
“In other words, the person passing it wouldn’t know
there was anything wrong with it?”
“That’s right. You didn’t, did you?”
“I suppose you’re not allowed to say what it’s all about?”
I said.