Читать книгу Fri Nov 22 00:00:00 CST 2019 - Bryan Woolley - Страница 11

The First Hour

JAKE

BYRON HAYES UNFOLDED THE PAPER and handed it across the table. Jake had seen the pictures in Time, but not arranged as they were now in the full-face and profile of a post office poster, nor with WANTED FOR TREASON in heavy black across the top. He refolded the leaflet and handed it back.

“You didn’t read it,” Hayes said.

“Does it say something new?”

“No. A guy in front of the Baker Hotel handed it to me at lunchtime. Real class, huh? On the day before he’s coming?”

“Probably one of Colonel Byrd’s men.” Jake reached for the brown bag containing their bottle and pored bourbon over what remained of his ice. There was too little left to cool the liquor, but he was beyond the need of ice anyway.

“Maybe,” Hayes said. “Or one of Bruce Alger’s men, or Barry Goldwater’s men, or a Bircher. Maybe he belonged to them all. What does it matter?” He set his glass as precisely as he could on the wet ring it had made on the table and waved the bottle toward him. Jake poured him another. Donnie, the bartender, saw it.

“Hey! It’s closing time!” he said. “You want the cops on me?”

“Fuck you,” Jake said. He corked the bottle and twisted the brown bag around its neck. “Sick,” he said. “Fucking sick town. Why do we stay here, Byron? Why don’t we go someplace healthy? Some part of the United States?”

Hayes lifted his horn-rimmed specs to his forehead, a sign he was drunk. His pale eyes were sentimental. “I’ve always been here,” he said. “I was raised in Oak Cliff, went to SMU, went to work for the paper and never left. I’d be scared, going out there at my age. What’s different, anyway?”

Jake shrugged. “Better papers. Less sickness. Something to make you write better…”

“Yeah, tell me about it, Jake. Tell me how you went to Little Rock and became Scott Fitzgerald, and how Tulsa made you Ernest Hemingway, and how you went to Korea and turned into Ernie Pyle, and then came to Dallas and became Jake fucking Callison.”

Hayes had raised his voice, and in the corner of his eye Jake saw a stool swivel away from the bar and Tim Higgins gather his beer bottle and glass and cigarettes and matches.

“Oh, shit,” Jakes said. “A broadcast prick.”

Higgins loomed over the table. “Mind if I join you? I wouldn’t ask, but there’s nobody else.”

“We’re about to leave,” Jake said.

“Just till you finish your drink.” Higgins laid his belongings on the table and eased his heavy body into a chair. He grinned. “Big assignment tomorrow, Jake?”

“The courthouse, as usual.”

Higgins frowned. “Not covering the visit? Who is?”

“Everybody else, I guess. The Washington Bureau people will be here. The Austin people. General assignments. Fuck, I don’t know.”

“I made the press pool,” Higgins said.

Hayes snorted. “Made the press pool! That ain’t exactly winning the Pulitzer.”

Higgins raised his glass in a mock toast. “To ink-stained wretches everywhere,” he said. “Hey, that was a pretty good editorial, Byron. ‘We hope the president will learn that what he may have heard isn’t true. Dallas is not a city of hate.’ Did you write that?”

“I’m not supposed to say,” Hayes said. “It’s the newspaper’s opinion, not mine. That’s why they don’t put by-lines on editorials.”

“Well, give me your opinion, then. Will he learn that? Is Dallas a city of hate?”

“Oh, shut up,” Hayes said.

“Actually, I hope there’s a little action,” Higgins said. “Something like that Stevenson thing, you know? Jesus, I could make the net with that.”

“Shut up, goddamn it,” Jakes said. “Christ, you’re as sick as they are. Jesus! Wishing for it!”

Higgins nudged Jake with his elbow. “Losing the old journalistic instincts, Callison?”

“What do you know about journalism?” Hayes asked. “You wouldn’t make a pimple on a newspaperman’s ass.”

This was an old recital, and Jake wasn’t in the mood.

“Donnie’s getting pissed,” he said. “Let’s drink up.”

They drank and banged their glasses on the table with an air of finality. Jake rose and had to touch the table to keep his balance. The neon beer signs over the bar weren’t double yet, but they were fuzzy. He couldn’t make out the features of the bathing beauty on the bright front of the pinball machine.

They stood in the doorway, assessing the rain. Not bad. Just a drizzle. The bar’s sign cast eerie pink reflections on the sidewalk and the small puddles in the street. The damp, cool air felt good, meeting the whisky in Jake’s skin. He wished he could walk home.

“Need a ride?” Higgins asked.

“No, thanks, we’ve got machines,” Hayes said. “Machines” was a favorite word of his when he was drunk and feeling old. Jake had read it…where? Fitzgerald? Dashiell Hammett? He loved its quaintness. He wished he had lived when automobiles were “machines.” He loved Hayes when he said it.

Higgins dashed across the narrow street and disappeared into the dark parking lot that served the newspaper and the radio and television stations that the paper owned. “You need a ride, Jake?” Hayes asked.

“No, I’ve got my machine.”

Hayes smiled wearily and laid his hand on Jake’s shoulder.

“Why don’t you come by for a nightcap?”

“No, it’s late.”

“Jean wouldn’t mind. We could talk.”

“I’ll take a rain check.”

Hayes’s hand dropped. They stepped onto the sidewalk and strolled up the street toward the newspaper end of the parking lot. The rain was heavier, wetter than it looked, but still felt good after the smoky, dead air of the bar. They crossed the street and stopped at the edge of the lot. Only a few cars remained, shining wetly in the shadows. “If this keeps up, maybe they’ll cancel the motorcade,” Hayes said.

“Not likely.”

“I wish he weren’t coming. What’s he got to gain here, Jake?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he wants to prove he’s not afraid.”

“Come with me,” Hayes said. “Let’s talk.”

“No, thanks, Byron. I’d be lousy company.”

“Well…” Hayes extended the bag with the bottle in it. “Go find somebody better, then, you bastard.”