But first, there was the former Yellow Card Man to deal with. This time he was going to get the dollar he requested, because I had neglected to put a fifty-cent piece in my pocket. I ducked under the chain and paused long enough to put a dollar bill in my right front pants pocket.
That was where it stayed, because when I came around the corner of the drying shed, I found the Yellow Card Man sprawled on the concrete with his eyes open and a pool of blood spreading around his head. His throat was slashed from ear to ear. In one hand was the jagged shard of green wine bottle he had used to do the job. In the other he held his card, the one that supposedly had something to do with it being double-money day at the greenfront. The card that had once been yellow, then orange, was now dead black.
I crossed the employee parking lot for the third time, not quite running. I once more rapped on the trunk of the white-over-red Plymouth Fury as I went by. For good luck, I guess. In the weeks, months, and years to come, I was going to need all the good luck I could get.
This time I didn’t visit the Kennebec Fruit, and I had no intention of shopping for clothes or a car. Tomorrow or the next day would do for that, but today might be a bad day to be a stranger in The Falls. Very shortly someone was going to find a dead body in the millyard, and a stranger might be questioned. George Amberson’s ID wouldn’t stand up to that, especially when his driver’s license was for a house on Bluebird Lane that hadn’t been built yet.
I made it to the millworkers’ bus stop outside the parking lot just as the bus with LEWISTON EXPRESS in its destination window came snoring along. I got on and handed over the dollar bill I’d meant to give to the Yellow Card Man. The driver clicked a handful of silver out of the chrome change-maker he wore on his belt. I dropped fifteen cents into the fare box and made my way down the swaying aisle to a seat near the back, behind two pimply sailors-probably from the Brunswick Naval Air Station-who were talking about the girls they hoped to see at a strip joint called the Holly. Their conversation was punctuated by an exchange of hefty shoulder-punches and a great deal of snorkeling laughter.
I watched Route 196 unroll almost without seeing it. I kept thinking about the dead man. And the card, which was now dead black. I’d wanted to put distance between myself and that troubling corpse as quickly as possible, but I had paused long enough to touch the card. It wasn’t cardboard, as I had first assumed. Not plastic, either. Celluloid, maybe… except it hadn’t exactly felt like that, either. What it felt like was dead skin-the kind you might pare off a callus. There had been no writing on it, at least none that I could see.
Al had assumed the Yellow Card Man was just a wet-brain who’d been driven crazy by an unlucky combination of booze and proximity to the rabbit-hole. I hadn’t questioned that until the card turned orange. Now I more than questioned it; I flat-out didn’t believe it. What was he, anyway?
Dead, that’s what he is. And that’s all he is. So let it go. You’ve got a lot to do.
When we passed the Lisbon Drive-In, I yanked the stop-cord. The driver pulled over at the next white-painted telephone pole.
“Have a nice day,” I told him as he pulled the lever that flopped the doors open.
“Ain’t nothin nice about this run except a cold beer at quittin time,” he said, and lit a cigarette.
A few seconds later I was standing on the gravel shoulder of the highway with my briefcase dangling from my left hand, watching the bus lumber off toward Lewiston, trailing a cloud of exhaust. On the back was an ad-card showing a housewife who held a gleaming pot in one hand and an S.O.S. Magic Scouring Pad in the other. Her huge blue eyes and toothy red-lipsticked grin suggested a woman who might be only minutes away from a catastrophic mental breakdown.
The sky was cloudless. Crickets sang in the high grass. Somewhere a cow lowed. With the diesel stink of the bus whisked away by a light breeze, the air smelled sweet and fresh and new. I started trudging the quarter mile or so to the Tamarack Motor Court. Just a short walk, but before I got to my destination, two people pulled over and asked me if I wanted a ride. I thanked them and said I was fine. And I was. By the time I reached the Tamarack I was whistling.
September of ’58, United States of America.
Yellow Card Man or no Yellow Card Man, it was good to be back.
