ONE

A steady April rain was soaking the earth. It hadn't been bad to drive

through until dusk came. In the half-light it was hard to see the road.

The rain was heavy enough to reflect my headlights back against the

wind-shield. My mileage on the speedometer told me I couldn't be very

far from Hillston.

When I saw the motel sign ahead on the right I slowed down. It looked

fairly new. I turned in. The parking area was paved with those round

brown pebbles that crunch under the tires. I parked as close to the

office as I could get and ran from the car into the office. A woman

with the bright cold eyes and thin sharp movements of a water bird

rented me a room far back from the highway sound. She said the place

was just four miles from the Hillston city limits.

Once I saw the room I decided that it would do. It would be a good

place to stay while I did what had to be done in Hillston. I stretched

out on the bed and wondered if I had been smart to use my right name on

the motel register. But if I could find the money, there would be no

one to say that I was the one who had taken it. And using my right name

wouldn't make any difference at all.

When at last the rain eased up I went and found a small roadside

restaurant. The girl behind the counter told me where I could buy a

bottle of liquor. She seemed open to any invitation to help me drink it

up, but though she was reasonably pretty I was not interested. I had

this other thing on my mind and I wanted to go back alone and have

some drinks and think about it and wonder how I could do it.

Maybe you saw pictures of us, the ones who were really bad off when the

prisoners were exchanged. I was one of the litter cases. My stomach had

stopped digesting the slop they fed us, and I was down to ninety-three

pounds. One more week and I would have been buried up there beyond the

river like so many others were. I was in bad shape. Not only physically

but mentally. I was too sick to be flown back. Memory was all shot. I

went right into hospital and they started feeding me through a tube.

It was during the months in the military hospital back in this country

that I began to sort things out and began to remember more of the

details about Timmy Warden of Hillston. When the intelligence people

had interrogated me I had told them how Timmy died but nothing more

than that. I didn't tell them any of the stuff Timmy had told me.

We were both captured at the same time in that action near the

reservoir. I'd known him casually. He was in a different platoon. We

were together most of the time after we were captured. Enough has

already been written about how it was. It wasn't good.

That prison camp experience can change your attitude toward life and

toward yourself. It did that to Timmy Warden. His one thought was to

survive. It was that way with all of us, but Timmy seemed more of a

fanatic than anybody else. He had to get back.

He told me about it one night. That was after he'd gotten pretty weak.

I was still in fair shape. He told me about it in the dark, whispering

to me. I couldn't see his face.

"Tal, I've got to get back and straighten something out. I've got to.

Every time I think about it I'm ashamed. I thought I was being smart. I

thought I was getting what I wanted. Maybe I've grown up now. I've got

to get it straightened out."

"What was it you wanted?"

"I wanted it and I got it, but I can't use it now. I wanted her too,

and had her, but she's no good to me now."

"I'm not following this so good, Timmy."

He told me the story then. He had been in business with his brother

George Warden. George was older by six years. George took him in as a

partner. George had a flair for salesmanship and promotion. Timmy was

good on the books, as he had a natural knack for figure work. They had

a building supply business, a retail hardware outlet, a lumberyard, and

several concrete trucks.

And George had a lush, petulant, amoral, discontented young wife named

Eloise.

"I didn't make any play for her, Tal. It just seemed to happen. She was

my brother's wife and I knew it was bad, but I couldn't stop. We had to

sneak around behind his back. Hillston isn't a very big city. We had to

be very careful. I guess I knew all the time what she was. But George

thought she was the best thing that ever walked. She was the one who

talked me into running away with her, Tal. She was the one who said

we'd have to have money. So I started to steal."

He told me how he did it. A lot of the gimmicks didn't make much sense

to me. He did all the ordering, handled the bank accounts and deposits.

It was a big and profitable operation. He took a little bit here, a

little bit there, always in cash. All the time he was doing it he was

carrying on the affair with Eloise. He said it took nearly two years to

squirrel away almost sixty thousand dollars. The auditors didn't catch

it.

"I couldn't open a bank account with the money, and I knew better

than to put it in a safety-deposit box. I put the money in those

old-fashioned jars. The kind with the red rubber washer and the wire

that clamps the top on. I'd fill them and bury them. George kept

worrying about why we weren't making more money. I kept lying to him.

Eloise was getting more restless all the time and more careless. I was

afraid George would find out, and I didn't know what he'd do. She had

me sort of hypnotized. We finally set the date when we were going to

run away. Everything was planned. And then they called me up. I was

reserve. There wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I told Eloise

that when I got out we'd go through with it the way we planned. But now

I'm stuck here. And now I don't want to go through with it. I want to

get back there and give the money back to George and tell him the whole

thing. I've had too much chance to think it over."

"How do you know she hasn't taken the money and left?"

"I didn't tell her where I put it. It's still there. Nobody can find

it."

His story gave me a lot to think about. Timmy Warden sank lower and

lower. By that time those of us who were left alive had become expert

on how long the dying would last. And I knew that Timmy was one of the

dying. I knew he'd never leave there alive. I tried to find out where

the money was buried. But I'd waited a little too long. He was out of

his head. I listened to him rave. I listened to every word he said.

But in his raving he never gave away the hiding place. It was in a

moment of relative lucidity that he told me. It was afternoon and he

caught my wrist with his wasted hand. "I'm not going to make it, Tal."

"You'll make it."

"No. You go back there and straighten it out. You can do that. Tell

George. Give him the money. Tell him everything."

"Sure. Where is the money?"

"Tell him everything."

"Where's the money hidden?"

"Cindy would know," he said, suddenly breathless with weak, crazy

laughter. "Cindy would know." And that's all I could get out of him. I

was still strong enough then to use a shovel. I helped dig the hole for

Timmy Warden that night.

Back in the stateside hospital I thought about that sixty thousand

dollars. I could see those fruit jars with the tight rolls of bills

inside the glass. I would dig them out and rub the dirt off and see the

green gleam of the money. It helped pass the time in the hospital.

Finally they let me out. The thought of the money was no longer on

the surface of my mind. It was hidden down underneath. I would think

about it, but not very often. I went back to my job. It seemed pretty

tasteless to me. I felt restless and out of place. I'd used up a lot of

emotional energy in order to stay alive and come back to this, back to

my job and back to Charlotte, the girl I had planned to marry. Now that

I was back neither job nor girl seemed enough.

Two weeks ago they let me go. I don't blame them. I'd been doing my

job in a listless way. I told Charlotte I was going away for a while.

Her tears left me completely untouched. She was just a girl crying, a

stranger. I told her I didn't know where I was going. But I knew I was

going to Hillston. The money was there. And somebody named Cindy who

would know how to find it.

I had started the long trip with an entirely unrealistic anticipation

of success. Now I was not so confident. It seemed that I was searching

for more than the sixty thousand dollars. It seemed to me that I was

looking for some meaning or significance to my life. I had a thousand

dollars in traveler's checks and everything I owned with me. Everything

I owned filled two suitcases.

Charlotte had wept, and it hadn't touched me. I had accepted being

fired without any special interest. Ever since the repatriation, since

the hospital, I had felt like half a man. It was as though the other

half of me had been buried and I was coming to look for it--here in

Hillston, a small city I had never seen. Somehow I had to begin to live

again. I had stopped living in a prison camp. And never come completely

to life again.

I drank in the motel room until my lips felt numb. There was a pay

phone in the motel office. The bird woman looked at me with obvious

disapproval but condescended to change three ones into change for the

phone.

I had forgotten the time difference. Charlotte was having dinner with

her people. Her mother answered the phone. I heard the coldness in her

mother's voice. She called Charlotte.

"Tal? Tal, where are you?"

"A place called Hillston."

"Are you all right? You sound so strange."

"I'm okay."

"What are you doing? Are you looking for a job?"

"Not yet."

She lowered her voice so I could barely hear her. "Do you want me to

come there? I would, you know, if you want me. And no--no strings, Tal

darling."

"No. I just called so you'd know I'm all right."

"Thank you for calling, darling."

"Well ... good-by."

"Please write to me."

I promised and hung up and went back to my room. I wanted things to

be the way they had once been between us. I did not want to hurt her.

I did not want to hurt myself. But I felt as if a whole area in my

mind was dead and numb. The part where she had once been. She had been

loyal while I had been gone. She was the one who had the faith I would

return. She did not deserve this.

* * * * *

On the following morning, Thursday morning, Hillston lay clean and

washed by the night rains, bright and glowing in the April sunshine.

Timmy had often talked about the city.

"It's more town than city. There isn't much of a transient population.

Everybody seems to know everybody. It's a pretty good place, Tal."

It lay amid gentle hills, and the town stretched north-south, following

the line of Harts River. I drove up the main street, Delaware Street.

Traffic had outgrown the narrowness of the street. Standardization had

given most of our small cities the same look. Plastic and glass brick

store fronts. Woolworth's and J. C. Penney and Liggett and Timely and

the chain grocery. The essential character of Hillston had been watered

down by this standardization and yet there was more individuality

left than in many other cities. Here was a flavor of leisure, of mild

manners and quiet pleasures. No major highway touched the city. It was

in an eddy apart from the great current.

Doubtless there were many who complained acidly about the town

being dead on its feet, about the young people leaving for greater

opportunities. But such human irritants did not change the rather smug

complacency of the city. The population was twenty-five thousand and

Timmy had told me that it had not changed very much in the past twenty

years. There was the pipe mill and a small electronics industry and a

plant that made cheap hand tools. But the money in town was the result

of its being a shopping center for all the surrounding farmland.

I had crossed the country as fast as I could, taking it out on the car,

anxious to get to this place. The car kept stalling as I stopped for

the lights on Delaware Street. When I spotted a repair garage I turned

in.

A man came up to me as I got out of the car. "I think I need a tune-up.

It keeps stalling. And a grease job and oil change."