Four Past Midnight Read online

  "Fuck it!" he said out loud. "If you don't want the goddam money, stick it in the Library Defense Fund, or something."

  He laid the note with the twenty paper-clipped to it on the desk. He had no intention of presenting it in person so she could get shirty on him. He would bind the two volumes together with a couple of rubber bands after laying the note and the money into one of them so it stuck out. Then he would simply dump the whole shebang into the book-drop. He had spent six years in Junction City without making Ardelia Lortz's acquaintance; with any luck, it would be six years before he saw her again.

  Now all he had to do was find the books.

  They were not on his study desk, that was for sure. Sam went out into the dining room and looked on the table. It was where he usually stacked things which needed to be returned. There were two VHS tapes ready to go back to Bruce's Video Stop, an envelope with Paperboy written across the front, two folders with insurance policies in them ... but no Speaker's Companion. No Best Loved Poems of the American People, either.

  "Crap," Sam said, and scratched his head. "Where the belt--?"

  He went out into the kitchen. Nothing on the kitchen table but the morning paper; he'd put it down there when he came in. He tossed it absently in the cardboard carton by the woodstove as he checked the counter. Nothing on the counter but the box from which he had taken last night's frozen dinner.

  He went slowly upstairs to check the rooms on the second story, but he was already starting to get a very bad feeling.

  3

  By three o'clock that afternoon, the bad feeling was a lot worse. Sam Peebles was, in fact, fuming. After going through the house twice from top to bottom (on the second pass he even checked the cellar), he had gone down to the office, even though he was pretty sure he had brought the two books home with him when he left work late last Monday afternoon. Sure enough, he had found nothing there. And here he was, most of a beautiful spring Saturday shot in a fruitless search for two library books, no further ahead.

  He kept thinking of her arch tone--remember the Library Policeman, Sam--and how happy she would feel if she knew just how far under his skin she had gotten. If there really were Library Police, Sam had no doubt at all that the woman would be happy to sic one on him. The more he thought about it, the madder he got.

  He went back into his study. His note to Ardelia Lortz, with the twenty attached, stared at him blandly from the desk.

  "Balls!" he cried, and was almost off on another whirlwind search of the house before he caught himself and stopped. That would accomplish nothing.

  Suddenly he heard the voice of his long-dead mother. It was soft and sweetly reasonable. When you can't find a thing, Samuel, tearing around and looking for it usually does no good. Sit down and think things over instead. Use your head and save your feet.

  It had been good advice when he was ten; he guessed it was just as good now that he was forty. Sam sat down behind his desk, closed his eyes, and set out to trace the progress of those goddamned library books from the moment Ms. Lortz had handed them to him until ... whenever.

  From the Library he had taken them back to the office, stopping at Sam's House of Pizza on the way for a pepperoni-and-double-mushroom pie, which he had eaten at his desk while he looked through The Speaker's Companion for two things: good jokes and how to use them. He remembered how careful he'd been not to get even the smallest dollop of pizza sauce on the book--which was sort of ironic, considering the fact that he couldn't find either of them now.

  He had spent most of the afternoon on the speech, working in the jokes, then rewriting the whole last part so the poem would fit better. When he went home late Friday afternoon, he'd taken the finished speech but not the books. He was sure of that. Craig Jones had picked him up when it was time for the Rotary Club dinner, and Craig had dropped him off later on--just in time for Sam to baptize the WELCOME mat.

  Saturday morning had been spent nursing his minor but annoying hangover; for the rest of the weekend he had just stayed around the house, reading, watching TV, and--let's face it, gang--basking in his triumph. He hadn't gone near the office all weekend. He was sure of it.

  Okay, he thought. Here comes the hard part. Now concentrate. But he didn't need to concentrate all that hard after all, he discovered.

  He had started out of the office around quarter to five on Monday afternoon, and then the phone had rung, calling him back. It had been Stu Youngman, wanting him to write a large homeowner's policy. That had been the start of this week's shower of bucks. While he was talking with Stu, his eye had happened on the two library books, still sitting on the corner of his desk. When he left the second time, he'd had his briefcase in one hand and the books in the other. He was positive of that much.

  He had intended to return them to the Library that evening, but then Frank Stephens had called, wanting him to come out to dinner with him and his wife and their niece, who was visiting from Omaha (when you were a bachelor in a small town, Sam had discovered, even your casual acquaintances became relentless matchmakers). They had gone to Brady's Ribs, had returned late--around eleven, late for a week-night--and by the time he got home again, he had forgotten all about the library books.

  After that, he lost sight of them completely. He hadn't thought of returning them--his unexpectedly brisk business had taken up most of his thinking time--until the Lortz woman's call.

  Okay--I probably haven't moved them since then. They must be right where I left them when I got home late Monday afternoon.

  For a moment he felt a burst of hope--maybe they were still in the car! Then, just as he was getting up to check, he remembered how he'd shifted his briefcase to the hand holding the books when he'd arrived home on Monday. He'd done that so he could get his housekey out of his right front pocket. He hadn't left them in the car at all.

  So what did you do when you got in?

  He saw himself unlocking the kitchen door, stepping in, putting his briefcase on a kitchen chair, turning with the books in his hand--

  "Oh no," Sam muttered. The bad feeling returned in a rush.

  There was a fair-sized cardboard carton sitting on the shelf by his little kitchen woodstove, the kind of carton you could pick up at the liquor store. It had been there for a couple of years now. People sometimes packed their smaller belongings into such cartons when they were moving house, but the cartons also made great hold-alls. Sam used the one by the stove for newspaper storage. He put each day's paper into the box after he had finished reading it; he had tossed today's paper in only a short time before. And, once every month or so--

  "Dirty Dave!" Sam muttered.

  He got up from behind his desk and hurried into the kitchen.

  4

  The box, with Johnnie Walker's monocled ain't-I-hip image on the side, was almost empty. Sam thumbed through the thin sheaf of newspapers, knowing he would find nothing but looking anyway, the way people do when they are so exasperated they half-believe that just wanting a thing badly enough will make it be there. He found the Saturday Gazette--the one he had so recently disposed of--and the Friday paper. No books between or beneath them, of course. Sam stood there for a moment, thinking black thoughts, then went to the telephone to call Mary Vasser, who cleaned house for him every Thursday morning.

  "Hello?" a faintly worried voice answered.

  "Hi, Mary. This is Sam Peebles."

  "Sam?" The worry deepened. "Is something wrong?"

  Yes! By Monday afternoon the bitch who runs the local Library is going to be after me! Probably with a cross and a number of very long nails!

  But of course he couldn't say anything like that, not to Mary; she was one of those unfortunate human beings who have been born under a bad sign and live in their own dark cloud of doomish premonition. The Mary Vassers of the world believe that there are a great many large black safes dangling three stories above a great many sidewalks, held by fraying cables, waiting for a destiny to carry the doom-fated into the drop zone. If not a safe, then a drunk driver;
if not a drunk driver, a tidal wave (in Iowa? yes, in Iowa); if not a tidal wave, a meteorite. Mary Vasser was one of those afflicted folks who always want to know if something is wrong when you call them on the phone.

  "Nothing," Sam said. "Nothing wrong at all. I just wondered if you saw Dave on Thursday." The question wasn't much more than a formality; the papers, after all, were gone, and Dirty Dave was the only Newspaper Fairy in Junction City.

  "Yes," Mary agreed. Sam's hearty assurance that nothing was wrong seemed to have put her wind up even higher. Now barely concealed terror positively vibrated in her voice. "He came to get the papers. Was I wrong to let him? He's been coming for years, and I thought--"

  "Not at all," Sam said with insane cheerfulness. "I just saw they were gone and thought I'd check that--"

  "You never checked before." Her voice caught. "Is he all right? Has something happened to Dave?"

  "No," Sam said. "I mean, I don't know. I just--" An idea flashed into his mind. "The coupons!" he cried wildly. "I forgot to clip the coupons on Thursday, so--"

  "Oh!" she said. "You can have mine, if you want."

  "No, I couldn't do th--"

  "I'll bring them next Thursday," she overrode him. "I have thousands." So many I'll never get a chance to use them all, her voice implied. After all, somewhere out there a safe is waiting for me to walk under it, or a tree is waiting to fall over in a windstorm and squash me, or in some North Dakota motel a hair-dryer is waiting to fall off the shelf and into the bathtub. I'm living on borrowed time, so what do I need a bunch of fucking Folger's Crystals coupons for?

  "All right," Sam said. "That would be great. Thanks, Mary, you're a peach."

  "And you're sure nothing else is wrong?"

  "Not a thing," Sam replied, speaking more heartily than ever. To himself he sounded like a lunatic top-sergeant urging his few remaining men to mount a final fruitless frontal assault on a fortified machine-gun nest. Come on, men, I think they might be asleep!

  "All right," Mary said doubtfully, and Sam was finally permitted to escape.

  He sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs and regarded the almost empty Johnnie Walker box with a bitter eye. Dirty Dave had come to collect the newspapers, as he did during the first week of every month, but this time he had unknowingly taken along a little bonus: The Speaker's Companion and Best Loved Poems of the American People. And Sam had a very good idea of what they were now.

  Pulp. Recycled pulp.

  Dirty Dave was one of Junction City's functioning alcoholics. Unable to hold down a steady job, he eked out a living on the discards of others, and in that way he was a fairly useful citizen. He collected returnable bottles, and, like twelve-year-old Keith Jordan, he had a paper route. The only difference was that Keith delivered the Junction City Gazette every day, and Dirty Dave Duncan collected it--from Sam and God knew how many other homeowners in the Kelton Avenue section of town--once a month. Sam had seen him many times, trundling his shopping cart full of green plastic garbage bags across town toward the Recycling Center which stood between the old train depot and the small homeless shelter where Dirty Dave and a dozen or so of his compadres spent most of their nights.

  He sat where he was for a moment longer, drumming his fingers on the kitchen table, then got up, pulled on a jacket, and went out to the car.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ANGLE STREET(1)

  1

  The intentions of the sign-maker had undoubtedly been the best, but his spelling had been poor. The sign was nailed to one of the porch uprights of the old house by the railroad tracks, and it read: ANGLE STREET

  Since there were no angles on Railroad Avenue that Sam could see--like most Iowa streets and roads, it was as straight as a string--he reckoned the sign-maker had meant Angel Street. Well, so what? Sam thought that, while the road of good intentions might end in hell, the people who tried to fill the potholes along the way deserved at least some credit.

  Angle Street was a big building which, Sam guessed, had housed railroad-company offices back in the days when Junction City really had been a railway junction point. Now there were just two sets of working tracks, both going east-west. All the others were rusty and overgrown with weeds. Most of the cross-ties were gone, appropriated for fires by the same homeless people Angle Street was here to serve.

  Sam arrived at quarter to five. The sun cast a mournful, failing light over the empty fields which took over here at the edge of town. A seemingly endless freight was rumbling by behind the few buildings which stood out here. A breeze had sprung up, and as he stopped his car and got out, he could hear the rusty squeak of the old JUNCTION CITY sign swinging back and forth above the deserted platform where people had once boarded passenger trains for St. Louis and Chicago--even the old Sunnyland Express, which had made its only Iowa stop in Junction City on its way west to the fabulous kingdoms of Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

  The homeless shelter had once been white; now it was a paintless gray. The curtains in the windows were clean but tired and limp. Weeds were trying to grow in the cindery yard. Sam thought they might gain a foothold by June, but right now they were making a bad job of it. A rusty barrel had been placed by the splintery steps leading up to the porch. Opposite the Angle Street sign, nailed to another porch support, was this message: NO DRINKING ALOWED AT THIS SHELTER! IF YOU HAVE A BOTTLE, IT MUST GO HERE BEFORE YOU ENTER!

  His luck was in. Although Saturday night had almost arrived and the ginmills and beerjoints of Junction City awaited, Dirty Dave was here, and he was sober. He was, in fact, sitting on the porch with two other winos. They were engaged in making posters on large rectangles of white cardboard, and enjoying varying degrees of success. The fellow sitting on the floor at the far end of the porch was holding his right wrist with his left hand in an effort to offset a bad case of the shakes. The one in the middle worked with his tongue peeking from the comer of his mouth, and looked like a very old nursery child trying his level best to draw a tree which would earn him a gold star to show Mommy. Dirty Dave, sitting in a splintered rocking chair near the porch steps, was easily in the best shape, but all three of them looked folded, stapled, and mutilated.

  "Hello, Dave," Sam said, mounting the steps.

  Dave looked up, squinted, and then offered a tentative smile. All of his remaining teeth were in front. The smile revealed all five of them.

  "Mr. Peebles?"

  "Yes," he said. "How you doing, Dave?"

  "Oh, purty fair, I guess. Purty fair." He looked around. "Say, you guys! Say hello to Mr. Peebles! He's a lawyer!"

  The fellow with the tip of his tongue sticking out looked up, nodded briefly, and went back to his poster. A long runner of snot depended from his left nostril.

  "Actually," Sam said, "real estate's my game, Dave. Real estate and insur--"

  "You got me my Slim Jim?" the man with the shakes asked abruptly. He did not look up at all, but his frown of concentration deepened. Sam could see his poster from where he stood; it was covered with long orange squiggles which vaguely resembled words.

  "Pardon?" Sam asked.

  "That's Lukey," Dave said in a low voice. "He ain't havin one of his better days, Mr. Peebles."

  "Got me my Slim Jim, got me my Slim Jim, got me my Slim Fuckin Slim Jim?" Lukey chanted without looking up.

  "Uh, I'm sorry--" Sam began.

  "He ain't got no Slim Jims!" Dirty Dave yelled. "Shut up and do your poster, Lukey! Sarah wants em by six! She's comin out special!"

  "I'll get me a fuckin Slim Jim," Lukey said in a low intense voice. "If I don't, I guess I'll eat rat-turds."

  "Don't mind him, Mr. Peebles," Dave said. "What's up?"

  "Well, I was just wondering if you might have found a couple of books when you picked up the newspapers last Thursday. I've misplaced them, and I thought I'd check. They're overdue at the Library."

  "You got a quarter?" the man with the tip of his tongue sticking out asked abruptly. "What's the word? Thunderbird!"

  Sam reached auto
matically into his pocket. Dave reached out and touched his wrist, almost apologetically.

  "Don't give him any money, Mr. Peebles," he said. "That's Rudolph. He don't need no Thunderbird. Him and the Bird don't agree no more. He just needs a night's sleep."

  "I'm sorry," Sam said. "I'm tapped, Rudolph."

  "Yeah, you and everybody else," Rudolph said. As he went back to his poster he muttered: "What's the price? Fifty twice."

  "I didn't see any books," Dirty Dave said. "I'm sorry. I just got the papers, like usual. Missus V. was there, and she can tell you. I didn't do nothing wrong." But his rheumy, unhappy eyes said he did not expect Sam to believe this. Unlike Mary, Dirty Dave Duncan did not live in a world where doom lay just up the road or around the comer; his surrounded him. He lived in it with what little dignity he could muster.

  "I believe you." Sam laid a hand on Dave's shoulder. "I just dumped your box of papers into one of my bags, like always," Dave said.

  "If I had a thousand Slim Jims, I'd eat them all," Lukey said abruptly. "I would snark those suckers right down! That's chow! That's chow! That's chow-de-dow!"

  "I believe you," Sam repeated, and patted Dave's horribly bony shoulder. He found himself wondering, God help him, if Dave had fleas. On the heels of this uncharitable thought came another: he wondered if any of the other Rotarians, those hale and hearty fellows with whom he had made such a hit a week ago, had been down to this end of town lately. He wondered if they even knew about Angle Street. And he wondered if Spencer Michael Free had been thinking about such men as Lukey and Rudolph and Dirty Dave when he wrote that it was the human touch in this world that counted--the touch of your hand and mine. Sam felt a sudden burst of shame at the recollection of his speech, so full of innocent boosterism and approval for the simple pleasures of small-town life.