"I'm sorry. My name is Howard. Tal Howard. I'm staying at the Sunset
Motel. You could leave a message there for me."
"Why are you so interested in finding this Cindy?"
I could at least be consistent. "I'm writing a book. I need all the
information about Timmy that I can get."
"Put in the book that he was kind. Put that in."
"In what way, Mrs. Rorick?"
She shifted uneasily. "I used to have dreadful buck teeth. My people
could never afford to have them fixed. One day--that's when I was in
John L. Davis School, that's the grade school where Timmy went, too,
and it was before they built the junior high, I was in the sixth grade
and Timmy was in the eighth. A boy came with some funny teeth that
stuck way out like mine. He put them in his mouth in assembly and he
was making faces at me. I was trying not to cry. A lot of them were
laughing. Timmy took the teeth away from the boy and dropped them on
the floor and smashed them under his heel. I never forgot that. I
started working while I was in high school and saving money. I had
enough after I was out to go to get my teeth straightened. But it was
too late to straighten them then. So I had them taken out. I wanted
marriage and I wanted children, and the way I was no man would even
take me out." She straightened her shoulders a little. "I guess it
worked," she said.
"I guess it did."
"So put that in the book. It belongs in the book."
"I will."
"And if I can remember that other, I'll phone you, Mr. Howard."
I thanked her and left. I drove back toward the center of town. I began
to think of Fitz again. Ruth was right when she used the word creepy.
But it was more than that. You sensed that Fitz was a man who would
not be restrained by the things that restrain the rest of us. He had
proved in the camp that he didn't give a damn what people thought of
him. He depended on himself to an almost psychopathic extent. It made
you feel helpless in trying to deal with him. You could think of no
appeal that would work. He couldn't be scared or reasoned with. He was
as primitive and functional as the design of an ax. He could not even
be anticipated, because his logic was not of normal pattern. And then,
too, there was the startling physical strength.
In camp I had seen several minor exhibitions of that power, but only
one that showed the true extent of it. Those of us who saw it talked
about it a long time. The guards who saw it treated Fitz with uneasy
respect after that. One of the supply trucks became mired inside the
compound, rear duals down to the hubs. They broke a towline trying to
snake it out. Then they rounded up a bunch of us to unload the supply
truck. The cases aboard had obviously been loaded on with a winch. We
got all the stuff off except one big wooden packing case. We never did
learn what was in it. We only knew it was heavy. We were trying to get
a crude dolly under it, but when we tilted it, we couldn't get the
dolly far enough back. Every guard was yelling incomprehensible orders.
I imagine Fitz lost patience. He jumped up into the bed of the truck,
put his back against the case, squatted and got his fingers under
the edge. Then he came up with it, his face a mask of effort, cords
standing out on his throat. He lifted it high enough so the dolly could
be put under it. He lowered it again and jumped down off the truck,
oddly pale and perspiring heavily.
Once it was rolled to the tail gate on the dolly, enough men could
get hold of it to ease it down. When it was on the ground one of the
biggest of the guards swaggered up, grinning at his friends, and tried
to do what Fitz had done. He couldn't budge it. He and one of his
friends got it up a few inches, but not as high as Fitz had. They were
humiliated and they took it out on the rest of us, but not on Fitz. He
was left alone.
Back in town I decided I would have a drink at the Inn and a solitary
meal and try to think of what the next step should be. I was picked up
in front of the Inn, ten steps from my car.