and drifted with the crowds, watching with rising impatience for the afternoon papers. At the second corner a truck was unloading them at a stand and I bought one and ducked into the nearest bar. It was cool inside, and dim, and I sat down on a stool at the end of the bar, ordered a bottle of beer and opened the paper.
It was a short item, less than a third of a column, on an inside page:
OFFICER MISSING
J. B. Marshall, 27, deputy sheriff of Devers County, was reported this morning to have been missing since early yesterday in the vicinity of Stowe Lake, where he had gone to arrest a man believed to be an escaped convict. According to Wayne Buford, Devers County sheriff, Marshall left the boathouse at the south end of the lake yesterday morning in a rented boat.
I read it through twice to be sure I had missed nothing, then threw the paper aside. There wasn’t much; just about what I had expected for the first break on the story. The general tone of it seemed to be that, so far, at least, they believed I had just got lost in the swamp. There’ll be more in the later editions, I thought.
Impatience and restlessness had got hold of me again, and I wanted to get back to her, and get on the bus and start for the Coast. I wasn’t scared now, I thought; the most dangerous part of it was over. That had ended when I had got out of the swamp and down here without being seen by anyone. By anyone but Dinah, I thought, correcting myself. But she wouldn’t say anything. I was sure of it now. I wondered if she were still here in town or if she had gone home. She might even be shopping right alongside Doris at this moment, I thought, and was glad again I had got out of the stores. She was sure I was meeting somebody down here, and I wondered if she would suspect anything if any of the news stories mentioned Shevlin’s having been married. Probably not, I thought. Why should she?
I couldn’t sit still any longer and went back out into the street. How much longer would she be? Time away from her was wasted; why didn’t she hurry and get back to the hotel? Then the ridiculous illogic of the struck me; I was the one who had insisted she go shopping in the first place, and now I was impatient because she was gone. And as far as being back at the hotel was concerned, I wasn’t there either. Was it time to go now? No, I thought. She wouldn’t be back for an hour or more and I’d go crazy waiting.
I was passing a jeweler’s and suddenly realized she didn’t have a watch. That was one thing I could get for her myself. The clerk sized up my clothes and began bringing out the $37.50 and $49.95 stock. I waved them away impatiently, feeling angry again, and would have walked out and gone to another store but my eye was caught by an exquisite timepiece in yellow gold with a matching strap of golden cord, very beautiful in its simplicity, and costing $275. “Wrap it as a gift,” I said, and waited, restless in the heat.
There was a later edition of the paper on the street and I bought it, but there was only a different headline on the Korean war. The story was still in its original location on the inside page, unchanged, with nothing new. No mention had been made of the grand jury at all. It’ll be out later tonight, I thought, and then I’ll know how they’re taking it. I won’t quit worrying until I know what they’re going to believe. But I’m not worrying, I reminded myself. It’s all right now.
I went into another bar and sat down at a table in the air-conditioned cool dimness in the rear. I ordered a bottle of beer, but when it came it had no taste and I let it die in the glass, forgotten. Taking the jeweler’s box out of my pocket, I thought of looking at the watch again, but decided not to open it because it was gift-wrapped so well. She doesn’t really want this, I thought. She doesn’t want the clothes I insisted that she buy—at least, not so many of them—and she doesn’t care whether they’re expensive or not. All she wants is