slow down when I left the highway, but I was crowding it all the way across the sandhills and through the river bottom. I went up over the second ridge bucking along like a madman in the uneven ruts, and when I hit the clearing I drove right up in his yard. And he wasn’t home.
The car was gone, and in the beams of the headlights I could see the cabin door was closed. I sat there cursing for two or three minutes before I remembered it was Saturday night. A big sport like Sutton would be in town, or even in the county seat. He had to spend all that easy money some way.
There was no use going back and looking for him around the beer joints and pool halls. The only thing to do was wait. I looked at my watch. It was a little after eleven.
I waited until twelve. And then it was one a.m. Somewhere far off a train whistled for a crossing, and once in a while a little night breeze would rustle through the oaks around the clearing. What was the use of hanging around any longer? He was probably bedded down somewhere by this time and wasn’t coming back.
I gave it up finally at two-thirty and went back to town. I took a shower and lay down in the darkness with an all-night pass on the merry-go-round. The ash-tray on the floor beside the bed filled up and overflowed, and the sheets stuck to me every time I’d turn. I’d think of him, not satisfied with squeezing her dry with blackmail but having to dress it up with that crawling joke of his and humiliate her for his own particular brand of laughs, and the anger would come boiling up and choke me.
When was it going to end, and where? If I got him stopped, how about Dolores Harshaw? The whole thing was changed now. I wanted to stay here, and I wanted to marry Gloria. So then she’d just wish us luck, and that Sheriff would get off my back and take up raising orchids? There wasn’t any way to guess what she was going to do.
I must have dropped off to sleep sometime towards dawn, for the next thing I knew it was ten-thirty and I could hear church-bells ringing. Sutton was back in my mind with the opening of my eyes, as if he’d never been gone, and even while I was looking at my watch I was rolling out of bed. I dressed and went downtown. Sunlight was brassy in the streets, stabbing at my eyes. Only a few people were in the restaurant. I ordered orange juice and coffee, and while I sat drinking it a man in a white hat came in and sat down at the second stool on my left. It was Tate. He nodded.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“All right, I guess.”
“Anything new in the bank deal?”
“No,” he said. “We’re still waiting.” He looked at me, the level gaze devoid of any expression at all, and then went back to the newspaper, “just waiting.”
I finished the coffee and put some change on the counter. “See you around,” I said, and went out. I could feel him there behind me. Waiting, I thought. They’d wait a long time. I threw my cigarette savagely into the street and headed for the car, forgetting them. He ought to be home by now.
When I crossed the bridge over the river I thought of last night, and of her telling me, and began to ride the accelerator. And then when I hit the clearing I could see the car parked near the porch. He was home. I rolled to a stop in the front yard, grabbed the leather gloves off the seat, and got out.
I went up on the front porch and in the door without knocking. He wasn’t there. I stood in the middle of the room, looking around, feeling the wicked proddings of impatience and baffled rage. It looked about the same as it had that other time, when I’d come out here with Gloria, the bed unmade and dirty dishes sitting on the table by the rear door. Maybe he’d gone hunting. I turned, looking along the walls. The .22 rifle was lying in a rack near the front door and just above it was a pump shotgun. He couldn’t have gone far. A sudden thought occurred to me and I went over and checked the guns.