One-Way Ticket by Bert Hitchens

Author:Bert Hitchens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

It was a wicker affair with three wheels. Where the fourth wheel had once supported the frame, the fat man had propped it with a beer can. The canopy hung askew. The fat man stood back, disdainful. “Ain’t it awful?”

Willy went close and looked inside. The interior was deep and roomy. On a litter of paper, a mother cat and two kittens lay curled together, their yellow fur soft in the light, the sound of purring rising like incense. “It’s not too bad.”

The mother cat stretched and opened an eye. She thrust out a paw, the claws suddenly extended. The claws became entangled in the tatters of old brown corduroy which lined the inside of the carriage. She pulled free with a faint quarrelsome sound that brought the kittens’ heads up.

“You’d buy that for a baby?” the fat man demanded as if outraged.

“I’ll fix it up. How much?”

“Three dollars.”

Willy looked into the cunning stare and knew he was being robbed. This thing belonged on a junk heap. He licked his lips. “Two and a half.”

“My cats got to sleep somewhere and I’ll have to buy me a wastebasket,” the fat man informed him. “Three dollars, take it or leave it.”

Willy had no intention of letting the man see the bills Fay had given him. He counted out three dollars in nickels, dimes, and quarters. Plus sales tax. The fat man removed the cats. Willy went out with the three-wheeled carriage wabbling before him. He ducked into a nearby bar, and when the bartender demanded to see the contents of the buggy, lest minors be invading the premises, Willy in glee displayed the empty, tattered interior. He suddenly saw that fun could be had with the thing before taking it home to Fay.

Some time later, at the HighBoy Room, he found the stool next to his occupied by a tired blonde in a strapless pink satin dress. Willy thought she looked a trifle familiar, and remembering David’s warnings, this made him nervous. He found himself staring anxiously at her in the mirror behind the bar. She noticed it, too.

“The buggy’s something new for you,” she offered.

Willy nodded jerkily, watching himself and the girl in the mirror.

“If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you might have become a father.”

He swiveled his head to take a direct look at her. “You know me?”

“Sure.” She was smoking; through the haze her eyes had a pinched, off-center look about them, as if she were looking through Willy and out the back of his head. “You’re Byron. Byron U. Davidson.”

Willy laughed; he couldn’t help it. “Oh no. Gosh, no.”

“Well, you’re okay, even if you aren’t Bryon U. Davidson,” she said amiably. “I guess I got you mixed up with somebody else.”

He forgave her. “Buy you a drink?”

“Don’t mind if you do.”

“You come here often?”

“Any night. You can call me Boots.”

Ordinarily he had nothing to do with the girls who hung around the gin mills. Willy was a drinker. That other business was David’s line. Willy neither envied nor regretted.

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