"I'm riding around with you," replied Rosie, with a grim air. "You won't
do anything criminal with me on hand! And if that other you starts
talking to you on the telephone, I'm going to climb that pole and tell
him where he gets off!"
"If anybody could keep me from turning criminal," acknowledged Sam,
"it'd be you, Rosie. But that monkey wrench--what's it for?"
Rosie climbed into the seat beside him.
"You start having criminal ideas," she told him, "and you'll find out!
Now you go on about your business and I and the monkey wrench will look
after your morals!"
This tender exchange happened only an hour or so after the robbery and
there was plenty of excitement around. But Sam went soberly about his
work as telephone lineman. Rosie simply rode with him as a--well, it
wasn't as a bodyguard, but a sort of M.P. escort--Morals Police. Where
he worked on a line, he called the central office to report, and he
heard about the hunt for the bank robbers, and told Rosie.
* * * * *
It was good fortune that he'd been in Dunnsville when the robbery
happened, because his prompt repair of the phone wires had spoiled the
robbers' get-away plans. They hadn't gone ten miles from Dunnsville
before somebody fired a load of buckshot at them as their car roared by
Lemons' Store. They were past before they realized they'd been shot at.
But the buckshot had punctured the radiator, and two miles on, they were
stuck.
They pushed their car off the road behind some bushes and struck out on
foot, and the sheriff ran right past their car without seeing it. Then
rain began to fall and the bank robbers were wet and scared and
desperate. They knew there'd be roadblocks set up everywhere and they
had that bag of money--part bills, but a lot of it silver--and all of
Tidewater was up in arms.
Taking evasive action, they hastily stuffed their pockets with small
bills--there were no big ones--but dared not take too much lest the
pockets bulge. They hid the major part of their loot in a hollow tree.
They separated, going to nearby towns--while rain fell heavily and
covered their trails--and went to bed with chest colds. They felt
miserable. But the rain washed away the scent they had left and
bloodhounds couldn't do a thing.
None of this was known to Sam, of course. Rosie had taken charge of him
and she kept charge. She rode with him all the afternoon of the robbery.
When quitting time came, he took her home and prepared to retire from
the scene.
But she said grimly, "Oh, no, you don't! You're staying right here!
You're going to sleep in my brother's room, and my pa is going to put a
padlock on the door so you don't go roaming off to call up that
no-account other you and get in more trouble!"
"I might mess things up if I don't talk to him," Sam objected.
"He's messed things up enough by talking to you! The idea of repeating
our private affairs! He hadn't ought to know them! And I'm not sure,"
she said ominously, "that you didn't tell him! If you did, Sam Yoder--"
Sam didn't argue that point, for there was no argument to make. He was
practically meek until he discovered after supper that the schedule for
the evening was a game of cribbage played in the living room where
Rosie's mother and father were.
He mentioned unhappily to Rosie that they were acting like old married
people without the fun of getting that way, but he said that only once.
Rosie glared at him. And when bedtime came, she shooed him into her
brother's room and her father padlocked him in.
He did not sleep well.
* * * * *
Next morning, there was Rosie in her blue jeans with a monkey wrench in
her pocket, ready to go riding with him. She did. And the next day. And
the next. Nothing happened. The state banking association put up five
thousand dollars reward for the bank robbers and the insurance company
put up some more, but there wasn't a trace of the criminals.
There wasn't a trace of criminality about Sam, either. Rosie rode with
him, but they exchanged not one single hand-squeeze, nor one melting
glance, nor did they even play footsie while they were eating lunch in
the truck outside a filling station. Their conduct was exemplary and it
wore on Sam. Possibly it wore on Rosie, too.
One day Sam said morosely, as he chewed on a ham sandwich at lunch,
"Rosie, I'm crazy about you, but this feels like I been divorced without
ever even getting married first."
And Rosie snapped, "If I told you how I feel, that other you in the week
after next would laugh his fool head off. So shut up!"
Things were bad, and they got no better. For nearly a week, Rosie rode
everywhere with Sam in his truck. They acted in a manner which Rosie's
parents would in theory have approved, but didn't even begin to believe
in. They did nothing the world could not have watched without their
being embarrassed, and they said very little that all the world would
not have been bored to hear.
It must have been the eleventh of July when they almost snapped at each
other and Rosie said bitterly, "Let me drive a while. I need to put my
mind on something that it don't make me mad to think about!"
"Go ahead," Sam invited gloomily. He stopped the truck and got out the
door. "I don't look for any happiness in this world any more, anyway."
He went around to the other side of the truck while she slid to the
driver's seat.
"Tomorrow's going to be the twelfth," she said. "Do you realize that?"
"I hadn't given it much thought," admitted Sam, "but what's the
difference?"
"That's the day where the other you was when he called you up the first
time."
"That's right," said Sam morbidly. "It is."
"And so far," added Rosie, jamming her foot viciously down on the
accelerator, "I've kept you honest. If you change into a scoundrel
between now and tomorrow--"
She changed to second gear. The truck jerked and bounced.
"Hey!" cried Sam. "Watch your driving!"
"Don't you tell me how to drive!"
"But if I get killed before tomorrow--"
* * * * *
Rosie changed gear again, but too soon. The truck bucked, and she jammed
down the accelerator again, and it almost leaped off the road.
"If you get killed before tomorrow," raged Rosie, "it'll serve you
right! I've been thinking and thinking and thinking. And even if I stop
you from being a crook, there'll always be that--other you--knowing
everything we say and do." She was hitting forty miles an hour and
speeding up. "So there'd still be no use. No hope, anyway."
She sobbed, partly in fury and partly in grief. And the roadway curved
sharply just about there and she swung the truck crazily around it--and
there was a car standing only halfway off the road.
[Illustration]
Sam grabbed for the steering wheel, but there wasn't time. The light
half-truck, still accelerating, hit the parked car with the noise of
dozens of empty oil-drums falling downstairs. The truck slued around,
bounced back, and then it charged forward and slammed into the parked
car a second time. Then it stalled.
[Illustration]
Somebody yelled at Sam. He got out of the truck, looking at the damage
and trying to figure out how it was that neither he nor Rosie had been
killed, and trying worriedly to think how he was going to explain to the
telephone company that he'd let Rosie drive.
The voice yelled louder. Right at the edge of the woodland, there was a
reddish-haired character screaming at him and tugging at his hip pocket.
The words he used were not fit for Rosie's shell-like ears--even if they
probably came near matching the way she felt. The reddish-haired man
said more nasty words at the top of his voice. His hand came out of his
hip pocket with something glittering in it.
Sam was swinging when the glitter began and he connected before the gun
fired. There was a sort of squashy, smacking sound and the
reddish-haired man lay down quietly in the road.
"Migawd!" said Sam blankly. "This was the fella in front of the bank!
He's one of those robbers!"
He stared. There was a loud crashing in the brushwood. The accident had
happened at the edge of some woodland, and Sam did not need a high I.Q.
to know that the friends of the red-haired man must be on the way.
A second later, he saw them. Rosie was just getting out of the car then.
She was very pale and there wasn't time to tell her to get started up if
possible and away from there.
One of the two running men was carrying a canvas bag with the words BANK
OF DUNNSVILLE on it.
* * * * *
The men came at Sam, meanwhile expressing opinions of the state of
things, of Sam, of the Cosmos--of everything but the weather--in terms
even more reprehensible than the first man had used.
They saw the reddish-haired man lying on the ground. One of them--he'd
come out into the road behind the truck and was running toward
Sam--jerked out a pistol. He was about to use it on Sam at a range of
something like six feet when there was a peculiar noise behind him. It
was a sort of hollow _klunk_ which, even at such a time, needed to have
attention paid to it. He jerked his head around to see.
The _klunk_ had been made by Rosie's monkey wrench, falling imperatively
on the head of the second man to come out of the woods. She had carried
it to use on Sam, but she used it instead on a total stranger. He fell
down and lay peacefully still.
Then Sam swung a second time, at the second man to draw a pistol on him.
Then there was only the sweet singing of birds among the trees and the
whirrings and other insect-noises of creatures in the grass and
brushwood.
Presently there were other noises, but they were made by Rosie. She
wept, hanging onto Sam.
He unwound her arms from around his neck and thoughtfully went to the
back of the truck and got out some phone wire and his pliers. He
fastened the three strangers' hands together behind them, and then their
feet, and he piled them in the back of the light truck, along with the
money they had stolen.
They came to, one by one, and Sam explained severely that they must
watch their language in the presence of a lady. The three were so dazed,
though, by what had befallen them that the warning wasn't really
necessary.
Rosie's parents would have been pleased at how completely proper their
behavior was, while they took the three bank robbers into town and
turned them over to the sheriff.
That night, Rosie sat out on the porch with Sam and they discussed the
particular event of the day in some detail. But Rosie was still
concerned about the other Sam. So Sam decided to assert himself.
About half-past nine, he said firmly, "Well, Rosie, I guess I'd better
be getting along home. I've got to try one more time to call myself up
on the telephone and tell me to mind my own business."
"Says who?" demanded Rosie. "You're staying locked up right here tonight
and I'm riding with you tomorrow. If I kept you honest this far, I can
keep it up till sundown tomorrow! Then maybe it'll stick!"
Sam protested, but Rosie was adamant--not only about keeping him from
being a crook, but from having any fun to justify his virtue.
* * * * *
She shooed him into her brother's room and her father locked him in. And
Sam did not sleep very well, because it looked as though virtue wasn't
even its own reward.
He sat up, brooding. It must have been close to dawn when the obvious
hit him. Then he gazed blankly at the wall and said, "Migawd! O'course!"
He grinned, all by himself, practically from head to foot. And at
breakfast, he hummed contentedly as he stuffed himself with pancakes and
syrup, and Rosie's depressed expression changed to a baffled alarm.
He smiled tenderly upon her when she came doggedly out to the truck,
wearing her blue jeans and with the monkey wrench in her pocket. They
started off the same as any other day and he told her amiably, "Rosie,
the sheriff says we get five thousand dollars reward from the bankers'
association, and there's more from the insurance company, and there's
odd bits of change offered for those fellas for past performances. We're
going to be right well off."
Rosie looked at him gloomily. There was still the matter of the other
Sam in the middle of the week after next. And just then, Sam, who had
been watching the telephone lines beside the road as he drove, pulled
off the road and put on his climbing irons.
"What's this?" asked Rosie frightenedly. "You know--"
"You listen," said Sam, completely serene.
He climbed zestfully to the top of the pole. He hooked in the little
gadget that didn't make private conversations possible on a party line,
but did make it possible for a man to talk to himself ten days in the
future.
Or the past.
"Hello!" said Sam, up at the top of the telephone pole. "Sam, this is
you."
A voice he knew perfectly well sounded in the receiver.
"_Huh? Who's that?_"
"This is you," said Sam. "You, Sam Yoder. Don't you recognize your own
voice? This is you, Sam Yoder, calling from the twelfth of July. Don't
hang up!"
He heard Rosie gasp, all the way down there in the banged-up telephone
truck. Sam had seen the self-evident, at last, and now, in the twelfth
of July, he was talking to himself on the telephone. Only instead of
talking to himself in the week after next, he was talking to himself in
the week before last--he being, back there ten days before, working on
this very same telephone line on this very same pole. And it was the
same conversation, word for word.
* * * * *
When he came down the pole, rather expansively, Rosie grabbed him and
wept.
"Oh, Sam!" she sobbed. "It was you all the time!"
"Yeah," said Sam complacently. "I figured it out last night. That me
back there in the second of July, he's cussing me out. And he's going to
tell you about it and you're going to get all wrought up. But I can make
that dumb me back yonder do what has to be done. And you and me, Rosie,
have got a lot of money coming to us. I'm going to carry on through so
he'll earn it for us. But I'm warning you, Rosie, he'll be back at my
house waiting for me to talk to him tonight, and I've got to be home to
tell him to go over to your house. I'm goin' to say 'ha-ha, ha-ha' at
him."
"A-all right," said Rosie, wide-eyed. "You can."
"But I remember that when I call me up tonight, back there ten days ago,
I'm going to be right busy here and now. I'm going to make me mad,
because I don't want to waste time talking to myself back yonder.
Remember? Now what," asked Sam mildly, "would I be doing tonight that
would make me not want to waste time talking to myself ten days ago? You
got any ideas, Rosie?"
"Sam Yoder! I wouldn't! I never heard of such a thing!"
Sam looked at her and shook his head regretfully. "Too bad. If you
won't, I guess I've got to call me up in the week after next and find
out what's cooking."
"You--you _shan't_!" said Rosie fiercely. "I'll get even with you! But
you shan't talk to that--" Then she wailed. "Darn you, Sam! Even if I do
have to marry you so you'll be wanting to talk to me instead of that
dumb you ten days back, you're not going to--you're not--"
Sam grinned. He kissed her. He put her in the truck and they rode off to
Batesville to get married. And they did.
But you're not supposed to believe all this, and if you ask Sam Yoder
about it, he's apt to say it's all a lie. He doesn't want to talk about
private party lines, either. And there are other matters. For instance,
Sam's getting to be a pretty prominent citizen these days. He makes a
lot of money, one way and another. Nobody around home will ever bet with
him on who's going to win at sports and elections, anyhow.