Job: A Comedy of Justice (33 page)

“There’s paper out on you there.”

“Really? What charges?”

“Seduction under promise of marriage. A female crewman of that ship.” He had the grace to look apologetically at Margrethe. “Sorry, Mrs. Graham. But your husband asked me.”

“Quite all right,” she answered crisply.

“I do get around, don’t I? What does she look like? Is she pretty? What’s her name?”

“I never saw her; she wasn’t there. Her name? Some Swede name. Let me think. Gunderson, that was it. Margaret S. Gunderson.”

Margrethe, bless her heart, never let out a peep—not even at being called a Swede. I said in wonderment, “I’m accused of seducing this woman…aboard a foreign-flag vessel, somewhere in the South Seas. So there’s a warrant out for me in Portland, Oregon. Sam, what kind of a lawyer are you? To let a client have paper slapped on him on that sort of charge.”

“I’m a smart lawyer, that’s the kind I am. Just as you said, no telling what a Federal attorney will do; they take their brains out when they appoint em. It simply wasn’t important enough to talk about, you being dead, or so we all thought. I’m just looking out for your interests, letting you know about it before you step in it. Gimme some time, I’ll get it quashed—
then
you go to Portland.”

“Sounds reasonable. There aren’t any charges outstanding on me here, are there?”

“No. Well, yes and no. You know the deal; we assured them that you would not be coming back, so they turned the blind eye when you left. But here you are, back. Alec, you can’t afford to be seen here. Or elsewhere in Texas. Or anywhere in the States, actually. Word gets around, and they’ll dig up those old charges.”

“I was innocent!”

He shrugged. “Alec, all my clients are innocent. I’m talking like a father, in your own interest. Get out of Dallas. If you go as far as Paraguay, so much the better.”

“How? I’m broke. Sam, I’ve
got
to have some dough.”

“Have I ever let you down?” He got out his wallet, counted out five one-hundred-dollar bills, laid them in front of me.

I looked at them. “What’s that? A tip?” I picked them up, pocketed them. “That much won’t get us to Brownsville. Now let’s see some money.”

“See me tomorrow.”

“Don’t play games, Sam. Open that safe and get me some real money. Or I don’t come here tomorrow; I go see the Federal man and sing like the birdies. After I get square with him—and I will; the Feds love a state’s witness, it’s the only way they ever win a case—then I go to Oregon and pick up that hundred grand.”

“Alec, are you threatening me?”

“You play games, I play games. Sam, I need a car and I don’t mean a beat-up Ford. A Cadillac. Doesn’t have to be new, but a cream puff, clean, and a good engine. A Cadillac and a few grand and we’ll be in Laredo by midnight, and in Monterrey by morning. I’ll call you from Mexico City and give you an address. If you really want me to go to Paraguay and stay there, you send the money to D.F. for me to do it.”

It did not work out quite that way, but I settled for a used Pontiac and left with six thousand dollars in cash, and instructions to go to a particular used-car lot and accept the deal offered me—Sam would call and set it up. He agreed also to call the Hyatt and get us the bridal suite, and would see that they held it. Then I was to come back at ten the next morning.

I refused to get up that early. “Make that eleven. We’re still on our honeymoon.”

Sam chuckled, slapped me on the back, and agreed.

Out in the corridor we headed toward the elevators but went ten feet farther and I opened the door to the fire-escape trunk. Margrethe followed me without comment but once inside the staircase trunk and out of earshot of others she said, “Alec, that man is not your friend.”

“No, he’s not.”

“I am afraid for you.”

“I’m afraid for me, too.”

“Terribly afraid. I fear for your life.”

“My love, I fear for my life, too. And for yours. You are in danger as long as you are with me.”

“I will
not
leave you!”

“I know. Whatever this is, we are in it together.”

“Yes. What are our plans now?”

“Now we go to Kansas.”

“Oh, good! Then we are not driving to Mexico?”

“Hon, I don’t even know how to drive a car.”

We came out in a basement garage and walked up a ramp to a side street. There we walked several blocks away from the Smith Building, picked up a cruising taxi, rode it to the Texas & Pacific Station, there picked up a taxi at the taxi rank, and rode it to Fort Worth, twenty-five miles west. Margrethe was very quiet on the trip. I did not ask her what she was thinking about because I knew: It can’t be happy-making to discover that a person you fell in love with was mixed up in some shenanigan that smelled of gangsters and rackets. I made myself a solemn promise never to mention the matter to her.

In Fort Worth I had the hackie drop us on its most stylish shopping street, letting him pick it. Then I said to Marga, “Darling, I’m about to buy you a heavy gold chain.”

“Goodness, darling! I don’t need a gold chain.”

“We need it. Marga, the first time I was in this world—with you, in
Konge Knut
—I learned that here the dollar was soft, not backed by gold, and every price I have seen today confirms that. So, if change comes again and we never know—even the hard money of this world, quarters and half dollars and dimes, won’t be worth anything because they’re not really silver. As for the paper money I got from Crumpacker—waste paper!

“Unless I change it into something else. We’ll start with that gold chain and from here on you wear it to bed, you even wear it to bathe—unless you hang it around my neck.”

“I see. Yes.”

“We’ll buy some heavy gold jewelry for each of us, then I’m going to try to find a coin dealer—buy some silver cartwheels, maybe some gold coins. But my purpose is to get rid of most of this paper money in the next hour—all but the price of two bus tickets to Wichita, Kansas, three-hundred and fifty miles north of here. Could you stand to ride a bus all night tonight? I want to get us out of Texas.”

“Certainly! Oh, dear, I do want to get out of Texas! Truly, I’m still frightened.”

“Truly, you are not alone.”

“But—”

“‘But’ what, dear? And quit looking sad.”

“Alec, I haven’t had a bath for
four days.
”

We found the jewelry shop, we found the coin shop; I spent about half that fiat money and saved the rest for bus fare and other purposes in this world—such as dinner, which we ate as soon as the shops started to close. A hamburger we had eaten in Gainesville seemed an awfully long way off in time and space. Then I determined that there was a bus going north—Oklahoma City, Wichita, Salina—at ten o’clock that evening. I bought tickets and paid an extra dollar on each ticket to reserve seats. Then I threw money away like a drunken sailor—took a room in a hotel across from the bus station, knowing that we would be checking out in less than two hours.

It was worth it. Hot baths for each of us, taking turns, each of us remaining fully dressed and carrying the other’s clothing, jewelry, and all the money while the other was naked and wet. And carrying my razor, which had become a talisman of how to outwit Loki’s playful tricks.

And new, clean underwear for each of us, purchased in passing while we were converting paper money into valuta.

I had hoped for time enough for love—but no; by the time I was clean and dry we had to dress and check out to catch that bus. Never mind, there would be other times. We climbed into the bus, put the backrests back, put Marga’s head on my shoulder. As the bus headed north we fell asleep.

I woke up sometime later because the road was so rough. We were seated right behind the driver, so I leaned forward and asked, “Is this a detour?” I could not recall a rough stretch when we had ridden south on this same road about twelve hours earlier.

“No,” he said. “We’ve crossed into Oklahoma, that’s all. Not much pavement in Oklahoma. Some near Oke City and a little between there and Guthrie.”

The talk had wakened Margrethe; she straightened up. “What is it, dear?”

“Nothing. Just Loki having fun with us. Go back to sleep.”

I was driving a horse and buggy and not enjoying it. The day was hot, the dust kicked up by horse’s hooves stuck to sweaty skin, flies were bad, there was no breeze. We were somewhere near the corner of Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma, but I was not sure where. I had not seen a map for days and the roads were no longer marked with highway signs for the guidance of automobilists—there were no automobiles.

The last two weeks (more or less—I had lost track of the days) had been endless torments of Sisyphus, one ridiculous frustration after another. Sell silver dollars to a local dealer in exchange for that world’s paper?—no trouble; I did it several times. But it didn’t always help. Once I had sold silver for local paper money and we had ordered dinner—when, boom, another world change and we went hungry. Another time I was cheated outrageously and when I complained, I was told: “Neighbor, possession of that coin is illegal and you know it. I’ve offered you a price anyhow because I like you. Will you take it? Or shall I do my plain duty as a citizen?”

I took it. The paper money he gave us for five ounces of silver would not buy dinner for Marga and me at a backwoods gourmet spot called “Mom’s Diner.”

That was in a charming community called (by a sign at its outskirts):

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
A Clean Community
Blackamoors, Kikes, Papists
Keep Moving!

We kept moving. That whole two weeks had been spent trying to travel the two hundred miles from Oklahoma City to Joplin, Missouri. I had been forced to give up the notion of avoiding Kansas City. I still had no intention of staying in or near Kansas City, not when a sudden change of worlds could land us in Abigail’s lap. But I had learned in Oklahoma City that the fastest and indeed the only practical route to Wichita was a long detour through Kansas City. We had retrogressed to the horse-and-buggy era.

When you consider the total age of the earth, from Creation in 4004 B.C. to the year of Our Lord 1994, or 5998 years—call it 6000—in a period of 6000 years, 80 or 90 years is nothing much. And that is how short a time it has been since the horse-and-buggy day in my world. My father was born in that day (1909) and my paternal grandfather not only never owned an automobile but refused to ride in one. He claimed that they were spawn of the Devil, and used to quote passages from Ezekiel to prove it. Perhaps he was right.

But the horse-and-buggy era does have shortcomings. There are obvious ones such as no inside plumbing, no air conditioning, no modern medicine. But for us there was an unobvious but major one; where there are no trucks and no cars there is effectively no hitchhiking. Oh, it is sometimes possible to hitch rides on farm wagons—but the difference in speed between a human’s walk and a horse’s walk is not great. We rode when we could but, either way, fifteen miles was a good day’s progress—too good; it left no time to work for meals and a place to sleep.

There is an old paradox, Achilles and the Tortoise, in which the remaining distance to your goal is halved at each step. The question is: How long does it take to reach your goal? The answer is: You can’t get there from here.

That is the way we “progressed” from Oklahoma City to Joplin.

Something else compounded my frustration: I became increasingly persuaded that we were indeed in the latter days, and we could expect the return of Jesus and the Final Judgment at any moment—and my darling, my necessary one, was not yet back in the arms of Jesus. I refrained from nagging her about it, although it took all my will power to respect her wish to handle it alone. I began to sleep badly through worrying about her.

I became a bit crazy, too (in addition to my paranoid belief that these world changes were aimed at me personally)—crazy in that I acquired an unfounded but compelling belief that finishing this journey was essential to the safety of my darling’s immortal soul. Just let us get as far as Kansas, dear Lord, and I will pray without ceasing until I have converted her and brought her to grace. O Lord God of Israel, grant me this boon!

I continued to look for dishwashing jobs (or anything) even while we still had silver and gold to trade for local money. But motels disappeared entirely; hotels became scarce and restaurants decreased in numbers and size to fit an economy in which travel was rare and almost all meals were eaten at home.

It became easier to find jobs cleaning stalls in livery stables. I preferred dishwashing to shoveling horse manure—especially as I had only one pair of shoes. But I stuck to the rule of take any honest work but
keep moving!

You may wonder why we did not shift to hitching rides on freight trains. In the first place I did not know how, never having done it. Still more important, I could not guarantee Marga’s safety. There were the hazards of mounting a moving freight car. But worse were dangers from people: railroad bulls and road kids—hobos, tramps, bindlestiffs, bums. No need to discuss those grisly dangers, as I kept her away from rail lines and hobo jungles.

And I worried. While abiding strictly by her request not to be pressured, I did take to praying aloud every night and in her presence, on my knees. And at last, to my great joy, my darling joined me, on her knees. She did not pray aloud and I stopped vocalizing myself, save for a final: “In Jesus’ name, Amen.” We still did not talk about it.

I wound up driving this horse and buggy (goodness, what a hot day!—“Cyclone weather,” my grandmother Hergensheimer would have called it) as a result of a job cleaning stalls in a livery stable. As usual I had quit after one day, telling my temporary employer that my wife and I had to move on to Joplin; her mother was ill.