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Fiction from "The Last Hostage"
Back to The Table of Contents
Tomorrow the Sun Will Shine
By Paul Pekin
It blew up. Right in the middle of nowhere the engine let loose and the oil drained out and the radiator sent up a geyser and that was it. Good-bye! He left it sitting there, half on, half off the highway. Wasn't worth much in the first place.
He was a slender little man, curly hair, wide easy grinning mouth, neat manly ass such as some women like to get their hands upon. He might have been thirty, maybe forty, maybe anything with his ragged clothes and his old canvas suitcase that contained everything he owned.
Stick the thumb up. Be bright. Be cheerful. Tomorrow the sun will shine!
"That's my motto." He settled into the passenger seat. "Tomorrow the sun will--hey? Aren't you afraid? Picking up a hitchhiker?"
She drove the narrow winding road at a crawl. Trucks, cars, took terrifying chances to get around. She was a handsome gray-haired woman all in black, black dress, black gloves, black scarf around the throat. "My life ended when John died. What more is there to be afraid of?"
It was farmland, farmland and forest and they traveled beside a ridge that kept the sinking sun from the road. In lush green pastures cattle moved restlessly toward their barns.
"Pretty country."
"John loved it. At this time of the year he would be getting out his guns. Oh, that man loved to shoot."
The road kept curving and turning and when it finally straightened there were three cars and an old red pickup all trying to pass at once. The driver of the pickup, a stout man in a plaid shirt, waved as he swept by.
"He was a friend of John's," she explained. "Tomorrow he'll bawl me out for picking up a hitchhiker."
"Oh, I ain't no hitchhiker. I'm a motorist in distress. Tell him that."
"What's your name?"
"Stewart. Davey Stewart."
She was Mrs. John Hansen. "Where are you going?"
"Does it make a difference?"
"You had a car. You were going somewhere."
"Not really. Just away."
She seemed concerned, genuinely concerned. A kind hearted country woman.
"I ain't married," he admitted, although he had not planned on admitting anything. "I ain't married one little bit.""You must be lonely. A person needs someone to worry about him, someone to wonder where he's at."
"Better you don't have one like that," Davey Stewart said. "I come and go as I please. I'm like that bird out there--free and in the air."A dove had risen out of a stubbled field and was keeping pace with the car. Momentarily it did well. Then they both very clearly heard the metallic ring of a gunshot, and the dove was a cloud of brown and white feathers drifting toward earth.
"Hunting season," Mrs. John Hansen said. "They started yesterday."It was a pleasant little Wisconsin farm town built by one generation and left as they found it by the next. The homes were of brick and native stone or of good seasoned lumber and meant to house generous families. They stood tall and had bay windows and medieval looking turrets and porches that ran all the way around to the kitchen door. Multi-colored tomcats pretended to sleep on the steps, their slitted eyes alert for mice. * * *
The hardware store was in a building so old tourists regularly leaned from car windows to snap its picture. Processors in Madison and Milwaukee got to know the place. 'Here it is again. Where do you suppose it's at?"The interior was dark and wooden floored and some of the stock went back to the horse and buggy days. There was a pale young man with slicked back hair working behind the counter--you could tell by looking at him he would never leave this job or even ask for a raise. That kind of a young man. It was almost closing time when his boss, the same plaid shirted man who had waved at Mrs. Hansen, came huffing in.
"Don't worry, Howard," he said. 'I ain't kept you late yet. Have I fellows?" He turned to two old gossips who were lounging by the gun rack.
"Come on now," the one in the billed cap said "Tell me what you really think about that stupid steel shot law.
"Why should it worry you? The last gun you shot loaded through the muzzle."Howard slipped into his jacket and came round the counter. "I got the back all locked up. What time do you want me tomorrow?"
"You know when we start. Now get going before you get yourself locked in." The plaid shirted man stood over the cash register reading a secret number. He waited until Howard was almost out the door before turning to the two gossips. "Hey! Guess what I saw down the road?" He answered his own question. "Old Lady Hansen."
Right where he was, pale timid Howard stopped, letting the door close softly back into his face.
"She was out there holding up traffic for miles. And when I passed, guess what she had in the front seat?""She picked up another man?" the fellow in the cap asked.
"You got it. There she was, crawling along at twenty miles an hour, and she had some ragged little guy with her."
"A shame," the second old timer murmured. "She was a fine woman."
"Don't you talk about her!" Timid little Howard had turned a bright crimson. "Just because she gives a fellow a lift!"
"A lift? Is that what she calls it?"
"No one's ever seen her do one thing she ought not do!""Now, Howard," the plaid shirted man said. "You take it easy." Turning to the old timers, he explained, what they already knew. "Howard's kind of fond of Mrs. Hansen."
"Then he ought to go over and say hello to her sometimes," the man in the billed cap suggested. "Seems like she might take to him too."
"Nah. Howard don't do things like that. He just ain't that kind of a fellow."
Red to the ears, Howard dove out the door--but not before the laughter had begun.* * *
The sun sets early in the fall of the year. Summer ended, it seems determined to speed up the pace of life. By six thirty the little town was dark. Streetlights glowed; everyone was in indoors.
It was a grim old house laid out like a crazy quilt with all sorts of meaningless cubbyholes and passages, with staircases winding up and down and full length mirrors leaping out of the shadows, with dark leather chairs and heavy wooden tables and a shrine-like den where a collection of glassed up firearms stood beneath the haunted heads of the beasts they had slain.
Mrs. Hansen was a kindly woman. She reminded Davey of a favorite aunt who could always be counted on for apple pie, who would always take your part in family disagreements--your mother's older sister, slightly sexy, but somehow unmarried, perhaps divorced or deserted and now living alone. No children. This pleased him. Women were never right once they got to having children. It did things to their heads. He watched her move about the kitchen. A fine figure. Thin waist, full breasts, good legs too. Never mind the gray hair--she had a few good years left in her."Do you like liver?" She took a bloody package from the refrigerator. "Mr. Hansen always wanted liver on Wednesdays. Onions? Of course. I never heard of a man not liking fried onions." With a knife that seemed sharper than most razors, she shaved a large red onion into paper thin slices. "Rice? I'll make a brown gravy to go over it."
"Don't believe I ever tried that."
"You'll like it. It was one of Mr. Hansen's favorites."After supper, she brought him a photograph of Mr. Hansen, a sturdy faceless man who seemed to have tied his tie too tight. "When I lost him, I lost everything. I'll never want another man."
"I was just glad for the ride," Davey Stewart said.
* * *
A cold front had drifted down from the north and turned the night as bitter a tomb. It would be a killing frost for sure. On Main Street that poor clerk Howard was in Bill and Jerri's, shooting pool all by himself, savagely slamming the easy shots home. An old man with rolled up sleeves sat all alone at the bar, talking to his empty glass. "How I wish the snow would get here. There ain't a sight prettier than sun on a snow covered field."
Wham! Wham! Wham! Howard kept shooting and you would have thought he was trying to knock the sides out of the pockets. When the table was clear, he threw down his cue and stalked out.
He walked swiftly, almost ran, zipping up his jacket as he went. No one saw him turn off empty Main Street. No one saw him cut through people's yards. No one saw him approach through the garden, his feet slipping in the soft earth. He pressed his face to the kitchen window and saw the table empty. He slipped around to the dining room window and saw that room empty. At last, crouching on the porch, he saw them in the living room.
A domestic scene. Bright. Cheerful. The man lounging in the big leather armchair, the woman in the rocker, knitting with long silver needles. And the worst, the very worst of all--a shimmering ring of smoke rose above the arm chair.The stranger was smoking one of Mr. Hansen's pipes!
Davey Stewart leaned way back in the leather chair. It was built to go back and back until you were staring at the ceiling."Can I get you another drink?" she asked.
"In a moment." He drew deep on the pipe and let the rich dark smoke sink to the bottom of his lungs. Slowly, he allowed the chair to come back up. Her strong white hands, almost disembodied in the shadows, steadily clicked the silver needles.
"It's a sweater," she explained. "I promised it to someone."
"Aha!"
"No. He's just a boy. I told you. There won't be another man.""I was just glad for the ride," Davey said. "Tomorrow I may head on up for Minneapolis. Or maybe Duluth."
"So restless," she said. "Why are men so restless."
The silver needles clicked. In the next room a pendulum clock counted the seconds with melancholy precision. Somewhere beneath their feet, the furnace switched on.
It is amazing what a few good drinks will do for a man. They warm him, expand him, make him want to talk and bare his soul. "Yes, I'm a restless man," he admitted. "I like to be here one day, somewhere else tomorrow. I been in towns I didn't even know the names. I been on highways and never knew where they led." He watched her knit, her white hands almost disembodied in the shadows. "You're a kindly woman," he continued. "But what I really like about you is that you aren't afraid. Some women won't even open a door for a stranger. They shut you out like you were a demon. But you, liver and onions. Rice and brown gravy. It just goes to show. When the old car blew up, I told myself, be bright. Cheerful. And sure enough, you came along."
Cold, cold, cold was the night that brought the killing frost. The pendulum clock marked each hour of it with grave and flutelike tones. At eleven, Mrs. John Hansen put her needles down.
She had a room for him upstairs, in it a double bed with high snowy pillows, a night table with a brass lamp, a massive chest of drawers. Shadows filled the corners and you could feel the frost working its way through the large unshuttered windows.
As soon as he was alone, he tiptoed to the door and pressed his ear against it. Her footsteps moved down the hall. Another door opened, then closed, and what must have been a massive steel bolt slid home with the finality of a shot.
A ride and a meal and a bed for the night. Three out of four wasn't bad.
* * *
There is an hour when daylight is truly on the other side of the world, an hour so late and so dark you cannot imagine it will ever end. You awake to a small sound, perhaps a clock endlessly reiterating the same brittle second, perhaps the floor contracting as the bitter night works in. Perhaps it is a footstep outside your door for this in an hour when imagination gets loose of common sense and you are not at all sure that the sun will ever shine again, and you want, most eagerly, to plunge deep back into that warm soft place where you dream of flying. But it is already too late. The mind races. It asks the inevitable question--where am I?--and you must rise on the elbows until you find the answer.
"Davey Stewart!"The door opened and he saw her shadow, faint and luminescent and colored by the moon. Instinctively, he pulled the covers to his chin. Then she was by the bed and he saw that she had loosened her hair and let it fall upon her shoulders. She was in a black gown that was as delicate and noiseless as a cobweb.
"Davey Stewart. I didn't come here to talk."
She bent down and kissed him on the lips and her hair, soft and smelling of roses, fell against his cheeks. She let her nightgown drop and he could see plain in the moonlight that she had the body of a young woman. "Are you going to keep me out here in the cold?" she said, and it seemed to him that he did not so much pull her in as catch her. The great soft bed drew her down and over him and he felt her icy fingers travel his body, caressing, clutching, hungry, strong, and he had never experienced one like her. She would not let him off his back and but rode down hard as if she were the man and he the woman and he had not done it this way in a very long time and the excitement caught him by surprise. The more he struggled to make a deep and powerful thrust, the more she kept slamming down and working it for herself, and he could not really get where he had to go. They were out of time, out of synch, but what the hell! Be bright! Be cheerful! Her hair smelled like roses and there was nothing he could do but let what was to happen happen and then it was all over and she was still slamming down in the same frantic way until she lost it and fell against the pillow with a despairing cry."Hey, hey," he said. He was warm and happy all the way through. "You kind of took my by surprise there, little lady."
She was making guttural sounds into the pillow. "Are you all right?" When she failed to answer he said, "It's okay. You were just great. What the hell, sometimes it works, sometimes it don't, but there's always another time---right? What the hell, tomorrow the sun will shine."
He kept talking and even he wondered why he could not shut up. She drew away, feeling the coldness between her legs, the emptiness. Always it is the woman who lies cheated while the man babbles on. You were just great! And she can take that and hold it in her and see what good it does.
He was still talking when she slipped out of bed and found her gown. "Lie still," she whispered. "I'll be right back."
He really meant to stay awake. But it had been a long day and there had been that trouble with the car and of course the drinks. More than anything, there was that easy relaxed feeling that comes after a roll in the hay. It gets to you. You sink down, down, and down in that deep feather bed and soon you are adrift on a great warm sea where the waves steadily rock back and forth, back and forth, and the song of the sirens comes secretly out of a mist that lies on every side.
He was snoring when she returned; his chest rose and sank with the swell of the tide. Already he dreamed of flying.
She had a knitting needle in her hand. The cold and incorruptible moon make it tremble like a living thing. Stealthily, she pulled down the blankets. In the moonlight his chest was white and naked, unforgivably vulnerable.
There is where the heart lies, where it beats confidently year after year, warm and bloody.
The pendulum clock chimed a small hour. With one hand she held the needle straight, with the palm of the other she pushed down, and he awoke just in time to say something about tomorrow and the sun. Then the needle was plunging down and his hands. grasping, only helped keep it in place. He made a sound no one would ever care to hear a second time. After that she could step back and admire the expression on his face.
So the little town in Wisconsin sleeps as the cold and killing frost descends upon the land. An occasional motorist, his windshield fogging over, passes down Main street where all is closed and silent. This is the end of the season, the very end of summer. One by one the stars blink out, smothered by clouds, and the moon itself is threatened.
Mrs. Hansen came into the kitchen and opened the back door. There stood poor frozen Howard, his lips blue, tears streaking his cheeks.
"Come in," she said. 'I'll make hot chocolate." While he sat at the table rubbing his hands together, she poured milk into a saucepan, mixed in the chocolate, and served it in a steaming mug. He drank slowly, not once taking his eyes from her. At last he spoke.
"I looked through the window. I saw him smoking Mr. Hansen's pipe."
She nodded"They said things about you in town," he continued. "Someone saw you driving with him."
"Well, Howard. He was just a drifter. Nobody at all."
'I said you weren't that kind of a woman."
"And I'm not. You know that as well as anyone."She poured him another cup of chocolate and prepared one for herself. They sat together drinking and growing warm and if you had seen them you would have thought they were mother and son. At last she stood. "It'll be daylight soon," she said. "You'll find the shovel in the shed."
He waited expectantly until she smiled, a bitter tight smile, but a smile all the same.
"Dig it right next to the others," she said. "Since they're all alike, they might as well all be together."
the end
copyright 1998 Paul Pekin. Storyarts is a registered service mark of Storyarts Associates, Chicago, Illinois, and may not be used without written permission. If you have comments or suggestions, email me at Paul Pekin ppekin@megsinet.net
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