Dark Passage (2 page)

Hate walked in and floated at the side of
fear. Hate for the bump in the road that had caused the two barrels
to slide back. Hate for the two barrels. Hate for the truck. Hate
for the prosecuting attorney. Hate for Mrs. Parry. Hate for Mrs.
Parry’s friend who had entered the apartment that winter afternoon
and found the body. Her name was Madge Rapf. Her name was Pest. She
had been the Pest from the first moment Parry had known her. She
was always in the apartment, butting in. Getting herself invited to
dinner and staying late and trying to make time with Parry. Once
she had made a certain amount of time with him and he remembered it
was on a night when he and Mrs. Parry had engaged in a vicious
quarrel. Mrs. Parry had gone into her room and slammed the door.
Madge went into the room and stayed there for about twenty minutes.
When she came out she asked Parry if he would take her home. He
took her home and when she got him inside she started in on him. He
didn't want to do anything. She didn't really attract him. She was
nothing very special. But he was sick and tired of Mrs. Parry and
he didn't particularly care what happened. So he began seeing her
and one night it got to a certain point and then he told Madge to
lay off, he was going home. She began to pester him. She told him
that Mrs. Parry was bored with him but she wouldn't be bored with
him. She told him he should split with Mrs. Parry. He told her to
mind her own business. But her nature made that impossible and
every time she got the chance she told him to split with his wife
and pitch in with her. She had been separated from her husband for
six years and during all that time he had been trying to get a
divorce. She wouldn't give Rapf a divorce because she knew every
now and then he had another girl he wanted to marry. She had
nobody. She had nothing except the hundred and fifty a month she
got from her husband. Now the hundred and fifty a month didn't
satisfy her and she wanted somebody. She was miserable and the only
thing that eased her misery was to see other people miserable. If
they weren't miserable she pestered them until they became
miserable. Parry had a feeling that one of the happiest moments in
Madge Rapf's life was when the foreman stood up and said that he
was guilty.

It was getting awful in the barrel. Parry
pushed the hate aside and replaced it with energy. He pushed at the
side of the barrel. He made an inch. He made another inch and he
had air again. The truck was traveling very fast and he wondered
where it was going. He kept pushing at the side of the barrel. The
truck hit another bump, hit a second bump, hit a third and a
fourth. Parry figured there might be a fifth bump and he advised
himself to be ready for it. The four bumps had pushed the two
barrels back the way he wanted them to go back. He had about five
inches up there. When the fifth bump came he was prepared for it
and he heaved hard, going along with the bump, getting the two
barrels over to the side, increasing the gap to what he measured as
nine inches. He thrust his arms up, pushed at the two barrels, made
four more inches. And that was plenty.

Parry pulled himself out of the barrel. He
saw the road going away from him, a dark grey stream sliding back
between level pale green meadow, sliding toward the yellow horizon.
On the left, bordering the pale green, he could see shaggy hills,
not too high. He decided to make the hills.

Keeping his head low he weaved his way
through the barrels. Then he was at the edge of the truck, figuring
its speed at about fifty. It was going to be a rough fall and
probably he would get hurt. But if he fell facing the truck,
running with the truck, he would be playing along with the momentum
and that would be something of a benefit.

He did it that way. He was running before
he reached the road. He made a few yards and then went down flat on
his face. Knowing he was hurt but not knowing where and not caring,
he picked himself up quickly and raced for the side of the road.
The pale green grass was fairly high and he threw himself at it and
rested there, breathing hard, too frightened to look at the road.
But he could hear the truck motor going away from him and he knew
that he was all right as far as the truck was concerned. When he
raised his head from the grass he saw an automobile passing by. He
saw the people in the automobile and their faces were turned toward
him and he waited for the automobile to stop.

The automobile didn’t stop. Parry stayed
there another minute. Before he stood up he took off the grey
shirt, the white undershirt. Stripped to the waist he felt the heat
of the sun, the thick moisture of deep summer. It felt good. But
something else felt bad and it was the pain in both arms, in the
elbows. He had fallen on his elbows and the skin was ripped and
there was considerable blood. He pulled at grass, kept digging at
earth until there was something of a hole, a semblance of mud. He
rubbed mud on his elbows and that stopped the blood and formed a
protective cake. Then he put the shirt and the undershirt in the
hole. He replaced the clods of grass, covering the hole
smoothly.

The sun was high, and Parry watched it as
he started toward the hills. He guessed the time as somewhere
around eleven, and it meant he had been on the truck for almost an
hour. It also meant San Quentin had taken a long time to discover
his exit. Again he was telling himself it had been too easy and it
couldn’t last and then he heard the sound of
motorcycles.

He threw himself at the grass, tried to
insert himself in the ground. As yet he couldn’t see the
motorcycles, although his eyes made a wide sweep of the road. That
was all right. Probably they couldn't see him either. They were
coming around a gradual bend in the road. They made a lot of noise,
a raging noise as they came nearer. Then he could see them,
whizzing past. Two and three and five of them. Just as they passed
him they began using sirens and he knew they were going after the
truck.

He could picture it. The truck was say
three miles down the road. Give them five minutes to search the
barrels, to question the driver and helper. Give them another six
minutes to come back here, because they would be going slowly,
studying the road and the meadow at the sides of the road. All
right, wait one more minute and let them make a mile and a third.
Let it be two minutes, then take three or four minutes to get to
those hills, and pray there wouldn’t be any more motorcycles
tearing down the road.

CHAPTER 2

When he was in the hills he sat down for a
rest. He wondered if it would be feasible to stay here in the
hills, give himself a few days here while the search radiated. But
if the police couldn’t get any leads elsewhere, they'd come back to
the road and chances were they'd sift the hills. The more he
thought about it the more he understood the necessity for keeping
on the move. And moving fast. That was it. Fast. Everything
fast.

He got up and started moving in the
direction he had first taken. The hills seemed to move along with
him. After a while he was tired again but he was thinking in terms
of speed and he refused to take another rest. The weariness went
away for a time but after some minutes it came back and it was
accompanied by thirst and a desire for a cigarette. He couldn’t do
anything about the thirst but there was an almost empty pack of
cigarettes in his trousers pocket. He put a cigarette between his
lips and then he searched for a match. He didn't have a match. He
looked around, as if he thought there might be a place where he
could buy a book of matches. He puffed at the cigarette, trying to
imagine that it was lit and he was drawing smoke. He didn't have
any matches. He began to think of the things he didn't
have.

He didn’t have clothes. He didn't have
money. He didn't have friends. No, he was wrong there. He had a few
friends and one friend in particular. And it was a cinch that
Fellsinger would go to bat for him. But Fellsinger was in Frisco
and Frisco was going to be a very hot place aside from the heat of
August. Nevertheless it was practical for him to see Fellsinger.
The next move was Frisco. The police wouldn't watch Fellsinger. Or
maybe they would. Or wouldn't.

As an hour passed the hills gave way to
another stretch of pale green. There were no roads, there were no
houses, nothing. Parry negotiated the pale green, moved toward dark
green. It was heavily wooded area and he tried to guess what was on
the other side. He looked back, knowing that the division of
terrain would be a decent sort of guide, preventing him from
traveling in a circle. He entered the woods.

He was in the woods for more than an hour.
He was moving fast. Then he could see a lot of bright yellow
breaking through the dark green. It meant that he was about to come
out on the other side of the woods. Already he could see a band of
white-yellow out there and he knew it was a road.

At the side of the road he leaned against
a tree, waiting. He wanted to see a truck or an automobile and at
the same time he was afraid to see anything of that sort. He kept
sucking at the unlighted cigarette. He looked at the other side of
the road and saw a continuation of the woods. All right, let an
automobile come by. Let something happen.

Nothing happened for about forty minutes.
Then Parry heard a sound coming down the road and it belonged to an
automobile. There was an instant of animal fright and he was
turning to dart back into the woods. A spurt of gambling spirit
pushed aside the fright and Parry ran out to the center of the
road. He saw the automobile coming toward him. It was a Nash, a 36
or 37, he wasn’t sure but he didn't particularly care either. It
was something that might take him to Frisco, if it was going to
Frisco. He was out there in the center of the road, waving his arms
beseechingly. The Nash was going rather fast and it didn't look as
if it was going to stop. It increased speed as it closed in on
Parry. There was only one person in the car and it was a man. It
was a very pleasant man who was using this method to tell Parry
that he would either get out of the way or get hit.

Parry got out of the way and the Nash went
ripping down the road. Another fifteen minutes came in and went out
again. Parry was leaning against the same tree. He wanted a match
badly. He wanted water badly. He wanted a lift badly. He wished it
wasn’t August. He wished he had been born somewhere up in the
Arctic Circle where these things didn't happen to a man. He heard
another automobile.

This was a Studebaker. It was from way
back. It was doing about thirty and Parry had an idea it couldn’t
do any more no matter how hard it tried. Again he was out in the
center of the road, waving his arms.

The Studebaker stopped. Its only occupant
was the driver, a man in old clothes, a man who looked Parry up and
down and finally opened the door.

Parry stepped in. He closed the door and
the man put the car in gear and got it up to thirty again. Parry
had already noticed that the Studebaker was a coupe and the man was
about forty or so and he was about five eight and he didn’t weigh
much. He wore a felt hat that had been dead for years.

For a few minutes there was no talk. Then
the man half looked at Parry and said, “Where you
going?”

“San Francisco.”

The man looked at him directly. Parry
looked straight ahead. He was thinking that approximately four
hours had passed since he had stepped into the barrel. Perhaps by
this time it was already in the papers. Perhaps the man had already
seen a paper. Perhaps the man wasn’t going to San Francisco.
Perhaps anything.

“Whereabouts in Frisco?” the man said. He
pushed the hat back an inch or so.

Parry was about to say Civic Center. Then
he changed his mind. Then he took another look at the man and he
came back to Civic Center. It really didn’t make much difference
what he said, because he was going to get rid of this man and he
was going to take the car.

He said, “Civic Center.”

“I’ll get you there,” the man said. “I'm
taking Van Ness to Market. How come you're using this
road?”

“Fellow gave me a lift. He said it was a
short cut.”

“How come he left you off back
there?”

“We had an argument,” Parry
said.

“What about?”

“Politics.”

“What are you?”

“Well,” Parry said, “I’m non-partisan. But
this fellow seemed to be against everything. He couldn't get me to
agree with him and finally he stopped the car and told me to get
out.”

The man looked at Parry’s bare ribs. The
man said, “What did he do—steal your shirt?”

“No, I always dress this way in summer. I
like to be comfortable. You got a match?”

The man fished in a coat pocket and two
fingers came out holding a book of matches.

“Want a cigarette?” Parry said as he
scratched a match.

“I don’t smoke. Mighty funny looking pants
you got there.”

“I know. But they’re
comfortable.”

“You like to be comfortable,” the man
said, and then he laughed, and he kept on looking at the grey
cotton pants.

“Yes,” Parry said. “I like to be
comfortable.”

“You can keep the matches,” the man said.
He kept on looking at the grey cotton pants. He dragged the
Studebaker back to twenty-five, then to twenty. His eyes went down
to Parry’s heavy shoes.