CHAPTER XX

It was late the next afternoon when Coverly finally made his way from Chicago back to Talifer. He went to Cameron’s office at once but he was kept waiting nearly an hour. Now and then he could hear the old man’s voice, through the closed door, raised in anger. “You’ll never get a Goddamned man on the Goddamned moon,” he was shouting. When Coverly was finally let in, Cameron was alone. “I’ve lost your briefcase,” Coverly said.

“Oh, yes,” the doctor said. He smiled his unfortunate smile. Then it was a toothbrush and some pajamas, Coverly thought. It was nothing, after all!

“There was a robbery on the plane coming West,” Coverly said.

“I don’t understand,” Cameron said. The light of his smile was undiminished.

“I have a newspaper here,” Coverly said. He showed Cameron the paper he had bought in West Franklin. “They took everything. Our watches, wallets, your briefcase.”

“Who took it?” Cameron asked. His smile seemed to brighten.

“The thieves, the robbers. I suppose you might call them pirates.”

“Where did they take it?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Cameron left his desk and went to the window, putting his back to Coverly. Was he laughing? Coverly thought so. He had duped the enemy. The briefcase had been empty! Then Coverly saw that he was not laughing at all. These were the painful convulsions of bewilderment and misery; but what did he cry for? His reputation, his absent-mindedness, his position; for the world itself that he could see outside his window, the ruined farm and the gantry line? Coverly had no means of consoling him and stood in a keen agony of his own, watching Cameron, who seemed then small and old, racked by these uncontrollable muscular spasms. “I’m sorry, sir,” Coverly said. “Get the hell out of here,” Cameron muttered and Coverly left.

It was closing time and the bus he took home was crowded. He tried to judge himself along traditional lines. Had he refused to yield up the briefcase he might have wrecked the plane and killed them all; but mightn’t this have been for the best? What could he anticipate or what could he look back upon with any calm? When he went back to work in the morning what office would he report to? What had Cameron wanted of him in the first place? What sense could he make of the old man sobbing at his window? Would Betsey, when he got home, be watching TV? Would his little son be in tears? Would there be any supper? Some vision of St. Botolphs in the light of a summer evening appeared to him. It was that hour when the housewives called their children in for supper with those small bells that used to be used for summoning servants to the table. Silver or not, they all had a silvery note and Coverly recalled this silvery ringing now from all the back stoops of Boat Street and River Street, calling children in from the banks of the river.

His own place was brightly lighted. Betsey ran into his arms when he entered the house. “I just been hoping and praying, sweetie, that you’d get home for supper,” she said, “and now my prayers are answered, my prayers are answered. We’ve been asked out to dinner!” Coverly could not work this in with anything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours and he settled for a mode of emotional and intellectual improvisation. He was tired but it would have been cruel to frustrate Betsey’s only invitation. He kissed his son, tossed him into the air a few times and made a strong drink. “This nice woman,” Betsey said, “her name is Winifred Brinkley, well, she came to the house collecting money for the Heart Drive and I told her, I just told her that I thought this was the lonesomest place on the face of the earth. I just didn’t care who knew it. She then told me she thought it was lonesome too and that wouldn’t we like to come to a little dinner party at her house tonight. So then I told her you were in Atlantic City and I didn’t know when you would return but I just prayed and prayed that you’d get back in time and here you are!”

Coverly took a bath and changed while Betsey transported a high school boy who was going to stay with Binxey. The Brinkleys lived in the neighborhood and they walked there, arm in arm. Now and then Coverly bent his long neck and gave Betsey a kiss. Mrs. Brinkley was a thin, spritely woman, brilliantly made up and loaded down with beads. She kept saying “Crap.” Mr. Brinkley had an uncommonly receding forehead, a lack or infirmity that was accentuated by the fact that his gray, curly hair was arranged in loops over this receding feature like the curtains in some parlor. He seemed gallantly to be combating an air of fatigue and inconsequence by wearing a gold collar pin, a gold tie clip, a large bloodstone ring and a pair of blue-enamel cuff links that flashed like semaphores when he poured the sherry. Sherry was what they drank but they drank it like water. There were two other guests—the Cranstons from the neighboring city of Waterford. “I just had to ask somebody from out of town,” Mrs. Brinkley said, “so we wouldn’t have to listen to all that crap about Talifer.”

“One thing I know, one thing I’ve learned,” Mr. Cranston said, “and that is that you’ve got to have balls. That’s what matters in the end. Balls.” He wore a crimson hunting shirt and had yellow curls and a face that seemed both cherubic and menacing. His gray-haired wife seemed much older and more intelligent than he and in spite of his talk it was easiest to imagine him, not in the bouncing act of love, but in some attitude of bewilderment and despair while his wife stroked his curls and said: “You’ll find another job, honey. Don’t worry. Something better is bound to come along.” Mrs. Brinkley’s youngest child had just returned from a tonsillitis operation at the government hospital and during sherry they all talked about their tonsils and adenoids. Betsey positively shone. Coverly had never had his tonsils or adenoids removed and he was a little out of things until he brought up appendicitis. This carried them to the dinner table, where they then talked about dentistry. The dinner was the usual, washed down with sparkling Burgundy. After dinner Mr. Cranston told a dirty story and then got up to leave. “I hate to rush,” he said, “but you know it takes us an hour and a half to get back and I have to work in the morning.”

“Well, it shouldn’t take you an hour and a half,” Mr. Brinkley said. “How do you go?”

“We take the Speedway,” Mr. Cranston said.

“Well, if you get outside Talifer before you take the Speedway,” Mr. Brinkley said, “you’ll save about fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. You go back to the shopping center and turn right at the second traffic light.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do it that way,” Mrs. Brinkley said. “I’d go straight out past the computation center and take the clover leaf just before you get to the restricted area.”

“Oh, you would, would you,” said Mr. Brinkley. “That way you’d run right into a lot of construction. Just do what I say. Go back to the shopping center and turn right at the second traffic light.”

“If they go back to the shopping center,” Mrs. Brinkley said, “they’ll get stuck in all that traffic at Fermi Circle. If they don’t want to go out by the computation center, they could head straight for the gantries and then turn right at the road block.”

“My God, woman,” Mr. Brinkley said, “will you shut your big damned mouth?”

“Aw, crap,” said Mrs. Brinkley.

“Well, thanks a lot,” said the Cranstons, heading for the door. “I guess we’ll just take the Speedway the way we used to.” They were gone.

“Now you got them all mixed up,” Mr. Brinkley said. “I don’t know what makes you think you can give directions. You can’t even find your way around the house.”

“If they’d gone the way I told them in the beginning,” Mrs. Brinkley said fiercely, “they would have been perfectly all right. There isn’t any construction out by the restricted area. You just made that up.”

“I did not,” Mr. Brinkley said. “I was out there Thursday. That whole place is torn up.”

“You were in bed with a cold on Thursday,” Mrs. Brinkley said. “I had to keep bringing you trays.”

“Well, I guess we’d better go,” Coverly said. “It was awfully nice and thank you very much.”

“If you would just learn to shut your mouth,” Mr. Brinkley shouted at his wife, “the whole world would be very grateful. You shouldn’t be allowed to drive a car, let alone give people directions.”

“Thank you,” said Betsey shyly at the door.

“Who smashed up the car last year?” Mrs. Brinkley screamed. “Who was the one who smashed up the car? Please tell me that.”

They walked home, stopping now and then to exchange a kiss, and that journey ended like any other.