Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (2 page)

Byers poked his head inside. ‘Come on!’ he shouted at me.

I spread my hands helplessly. He hauled himself through the door and stomped to me. This was his favorite part of the job as a guard. I knew what was coming, but I had to take it in order to set up the escape.

‘You heard me!’ he bellowed. ‘Get off there!’

‘I’m sick,’ I said, putting agony into my face. ‘I’m sick as hell, Mister Byers. I got the runners.…’

He slapped me hard across the face with the palm of his horny hand.

‘Please, Mister Byers. I’m sick.…’

He hit me with the back of his hand, knocking-sweeping me off the stool.

‘Fall in!’ he roared.

‘Yes sir, my liege, my master,’ I said.

I picked myself up off the floor and started out, pulling up my pants as I went, with him stomping along behind, banging me in the rump with his Winchester at every step.

Oh, yes, indeed, there’ll be a bit of shooting, I was thinking…

I fell in line directly behind Toko and when Harris right-faced us and started us for the cantaloupe patch we were then side by side. There were six guards on horseback, and fifty prisoners in this detail. The path we took was through a dry-wash to the irrigation ditch, across the bridge of the irrigation ditch, and then northward towards the mountains to the patch. The patch was only half a mile from the barracks, a short half mile in the morning, but a very long half mile in the late afternoon. That I didn’t have to worry about any more – I hoped. I had dragged my butt down this long endless half mile for the very last time – I hoped.

The short limbs of my favorite eucalyptus tree bowed goodbye to me as I marched by. It’s been nice knowing you too, I thought. Well, good-bye and good luck. I won’t be coming this way again I hope. And wait a little while before you let your children out to play. I wouldn’t want any of them getting hurt. It’s just possible, just barely possible that there
might
be a bit of shooting.…

We swung out of the wash, up the back into the open, into the old alfalfa field we worked in season. The sun was coming up now, bright and brassy, an honest sun, not throwing out a lot of beautiful colors to fool you into thinking the day would be beautiful too, but hanging there, with no color at all, for everybody to look upon and realize that its only mission was to burn and scorch. It was not quite five-thirty, but already a lot of automobiles were rolling along Highway 67. You could see a few and hear more, so stethosopic was the quality of that fragile morning air that you could hear every beat of the motors. Those people were in a hurry, trying to get where they were going before the sun really levelled off; by ten-thirty or eleven the valley would be a furnace.

Harris started dropping back, and I knew we were coming to the bridge across the irrigation ditch. He was always the last one over because he was in charge of this detail.

I rubbed elbows with Toko on the bridge.

‘Keep an eye open for that rock,’ I whispered.

He did not say anything. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. His upper lip was twitching.

Oh, God, I thought, he’s going to screw this up for sure. ‘Take it easy,’ I whispered. ‘The bus will be along pretty soon.…’

That part of the plan also was my idea. Since we did not have watches, and since perfect timing was absolutely necessary, I had suggested to Holiday that we use the air horn of the Greyhound bus as the signal for the break. The mountain highway was full of dangerous curves, and the driver of the northbound bus always sounded the horn at these spots. The bus came along the highway early every morning around seven-fifteen; it hit the grades, its diesel purring the way Satchmo blows his trumpet, until the first close turn, the bottom of a tight S, when it cut loose its horn in two blasts that rocked every living thing in the valley. In a few more minutes it made the turn at the top of the S, cutting loose with that horn again. This blast, the third one, was the signal for the kick-off. It would mean that Holiday and Jinx would be waiting on the dirt road, half a mile from the highway, beside a thicket of eucalypti. It was up to Toko and me to have the guns by then and when the third blast was heard we were to make a run for the thicket, a hundred yards from the cantaloupe patch. Once in there we would be safe, for the trees were so close together the guards couldn’t get through on horseback. These were not the eucalypti with the thick trunks, these were the small ones, with trunks no bigger than your leg, and so numerous that you had to walk through them sidewise.

After we had finally crossed the bridge and were strung out northward again I kept my eyes on the irrigation ditch, looking for the rock Holiday had said would be daubed with white paint. Toko was on my left, between me and the ditch, but he was no help at all.

He kept his face and his eyes straight to the front. We were only a few feet apart, but it was too far for me to say anything without being overheard, too far for me to try to close the space without attracting attention, which would have been highly suspicious: these bastards would sell a guy out for an extra spoon of sugar, and I was too busy looking for the rock to waste time trying to catch his eye. We were getting closer and closer to the patch where we would be broken up and put to work, and I had to locate that rock before then. No rock, no break and we would have to start all over. I had set my heart on crashing out of here today. Jesus, I didn’t want to have to go through the waiting again. This was what came of dealing with a senile old bastard like Cobbett, this was what came of not having any money. Jesus, that was the answer – money. You got just what you paid for – be it a handkerchief or a prison-farm guard. Money. That was the answer to Nelson’s success, and the success of all the other bums – money. Jesus, would I
ever
have any money? Get me out of here, God, I thought, and I’ll get the money. I’ll endow a church.…

‘… Halt’ Harris shouted.

The detail stopped.

‘The first eight men with Burton!’

Burton was another guard. He counted off eight men and started leading them off across the field.

‘Forward march!’ Harris yelled at the rest of us.

We started moving again and I glanced at Toko and saw that his face was paling beneath the tan, and that began to worry me all the more. Jesus, didn’t he have sense enough to know that if the rock wasn’t there, it just wasn’t there and there was nothing we could do about it but start all over! I winked at him a few times and looked away and then I saw it.

The rock.

It was the size of a baby’s head and it had a daub of white paint on the top. The corners of my heart were caught and pinched with joy. The rock was only about twenty feet from the iron-wheeled chemical privy that always rolled with us to the different fields we worked. Holiday had put the guns as close to the privy as she could. A hell of a girl, that Holiday. A hell of a buy, that Cobbett. She really must have given him something to remember her by. I looked at Toko. He hadn’t even seen it…

‘…Halt!’ Harris yelled.

The detail stopped.

‘You next ten men with Byers!’

Byers came up on his horse and counted off ten of us and we started following him across the patch.

‘Forward march!’ Harris yelled at the others, and what remained of the detail moved off behind us.

Still side by side. Toko and I picked our way carefully across the patch so as not to bruise the melons or the vines. The cantaloupe patch, like the other fields we worked, was leased to a civilian contractor and he was very particular about his melons and vines. They must not be bruised. It was a very serious offence. But so far as anybody knew, he had never complained about the guards riding their horses through the patch.

‘I didn’t see it.…’ Toko whispered.

‘Did you look?’

‘Sure. Whaddya suppose happened?’

‘Take it easy.’

‘I got to make it, I got to …’ he whispered tensely.

‘I saw it,’ I whispered.

‘You did?’

‘Relax…’

‘It had me worried….’

Your worries are not over by a long shot, I was thinking.…

T
HE PART OF THE
field where we were working was halfway between the irrigation ditch and the eucalypti thicket we were to head for when we had heard the signal. We were picking the cantaloupes, stacking them in little pyramids for the contractor’s trucks to collect later, working towards the thicket. Byers had tied his horse to a small oak tree near by and was standing in the shade, a corn-cob pipe in his mouth, watching his squad like a padrone. The only difference was that Byers had the Winchester cradled across his stomach.

Toko and I were working close together, a little apart from the others, which included Budlong. This was delightful. This was a happy augury. Now I would not have to worry about my marksmanship. Now I had him at almost pointblank range.

‘It’s getting late, ain’t it?’ Toko said to me.

‘We’ve got plenty of time,’ I said. I was not nervous any more. I had all the confidence in the world. I had the feel of this thing now.

‘Seems pretty late to me’

‘Sun fools you this time of the year,’ I said. ‘Climbs fast. It’s only seven.…’

I picked another armful of melons and stacked them, and took another look at the sun. You would think that at seven o’clock in the morning the sun would hardly be above the horizon, but here it was well up in the sky. When I got back to Toko, I said, ‘Well, here I go. And for God’s sake, relax. You hear?’

‘I’m relaxed,’ he said.

‘Stay that way,’ I said. ‘Falling out!’ I yelled at Byers.

‘Falling out, second squad!’ Byers yelled, warning the guard of the next squad that he would be absent for a few minutes. He came over to me and stopped. ‘You?’ he asked.

‘Feels like I got the runners again,’ I said.

‘He oughtn’t to be working,’ Toko said. ‘He’s sick.’

Byers smiled at him lewdly. ‘If he could only cook, heh?’

‘He’s got the runners,’ Toko said.

‘Something I ate, no doubt,’ I said.

‘All right, go ahead.’ Byers said, gesturing with the Winchester.

I started across the patch to the chemical privy, careful not to step on any of the vines, knowing that Byers was watching me, a pace behind.

‘I’m sorry about this, Imperator,’ I said over my shoulder.

‘You know what I think?’ he said. ‘I don’t think you got the runners. I don’t think that’s your trouble. I think you’re constipated, be damned if I don’t.’

He kicked me hard in the rump, almost knocking me down.

‘I wish you wouldn’t do that, Majesty,’ I said.

‘That’s the trouble. Sure,’ he said. ‘You’re constipated. You need loosening up.’

He kicked me again. I fell against the wagon.

‘Now, you make it snappy,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir, Mister Byers,’ I said, going inside the wagon, behind the canvas flap.

I quickly slipped my pants down and sat on the hole looking through the crack at Byers. He was standing at the side of the wagon, fifteen or twenty feet away, and I knew that it was now or never. I got up off the seat and buttoned my pants and dropped to the floor, crawling to the opening, to the canvas flap. I looked out. Everything was just as it should be. I crawled out on the ground and lay motionless, face down and inert, the side of my face pressed flat against the earth, smelling the richness of the loam and the dampness of the dew that had now retreated from the sun to the sheltered side of the furrow, child-bound again for a moment, remembering the smell of earth and dew from a lifetime ago, but remembering in scraps and not the whole, remembering from the outside inward instead of from the inside outward… I started crawling up the furrow to the irrigation ditch, having no sense of motion at all. The only way I could tell I was moving was in the feel of the earth scraping against my belly. I finally reached the mass of cantaloupe vines where three days ago Toko and I had been plucking, and which was now dried-brown and brittle-dead. This gave me good concealment, allowing me to raise myself a little on my hands and knees and crawl instead of wiggle. When I reached the end of the furrow near the rock marker I hurtled for the edge of the ditch, wanting to get those guns as quickly as possible. The ditch was wide but not deep, not more than two feet, and was used principally by the truck farms farther down the valley. I reached into the water, feeling for the package, groping for it with both hands. Then I touched it and yanked it up. It was a red inner tube that had been doubled and redoubled and then vulcanized, and tied to it was a pocket knife. I opened the knife and hacked at the tube and finally split it. There were two loaded pistols and two boxes of ammunition. The pistols were thirty-eight caliber revolvers, not my favorite gun, but favorite enough for right now. I stuck the guns and the boxes of ammunition inside my denim jumper and turned around and started crawling back.

How much time had elapsed, I did not know; not much, perhaps two minutes, but certainly no more than three. This part of the plan there had never been any doubt about; I knew that I could bring this off, but from now on every passing second increased the danger and pulled tauter and tauter the thread of risk. Still, I had no impulse of panic I had the feel of this thing now; I had myself under perfect control. This was what I had been waiting for. I had told myself a thousand times that if the pistols were there I would no longer worry about Toko … I crawled back down the furrow and reached the canvas curtain of the wagon and crawled inside, dropping my pants and sitting down again, trying to make a noise with my bowels to prove that I had been there all the time. I looked through the crack at Byers. He was still standing there, but he was staring at the wagon impatiently. There was no uneasiness in his manner, just impatience. I grunted and groaned a few times and then reached for a piece of newspaper on the stack, and tore it noisily, but did not dispel any of his impatience. He was still glaring at the wagon. I stood up and brushed myself off, using another piece of newspaper to dry my forearms and rub off some of the mud, and adjusted the guns and boxes of ammunition inside my jumper so they would not be noticed, buttoned my pants and stepped out.