I sat back on my heels and examined the clutch plates. One of them was
cracked. I put the plates in the petrol bath. Then I stood up and walked over
to the work bench to pick up a rag to clean my hands.
He was watching me, but I kept my face dead pan and I could see my
apparent indifference irritated him.
“Where have you come from, friend?” he asked abruptly, “Are you a stranger
in these parts?”
“That’s right.”
“How did you run into Carl?”
“I met him in Little Creek.”
“You did? Looking for work, huh?”
“That’s it.”
“Well . . .” He pushed himself away from the shed door. The dog had been
sitting motionless: now it stood up. It looked expectantly at Ricks. “I mustn’t
take up your time. I just looked in to borrow some tools. I’ve a little job up at
my place that needs fixing. I always borrow what I want from Carl.” He
wandered around the shed, staring at the tool racks. “Now, let me see. What
do I want?”
He took down two screw drivers and a hammer. He was reaching for a drill
when I said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Ricks, but I can’t let you take those tools.”
I saw him stiffen, then he looked sideways at me, his thin face expressionless.
“What was that, friend?”
“I haven’t Mr. Jenson’s permission to let tools go off this place,” I said. “I’m
responsible here while he’s away. If you’ll stick around until he comes back
and he says it’s okay, then it’ll be okay, but no tools go out of here without
his say-so.”
He took the drill out of the rack and then reached for a hand saw.
“Just relax, friend. I’m his brother-in-law. You’re dead right. Anyone else but
me shouldn’t borrow anything from here—but me, that’s different.”
I had had enough of this guy.
I walked over to him.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ricks, no tools go out of here without Mr. Jenson’s say-so.”
He eyed me. I could see a little red glint come into his eyes. The dog, as if
sensing trouble, began to back slowly away.
“Now look, friend,” Ricks said, “you don’t want to lose your job this soon,
do you? If I tell Carl …”
“Go ahead and tell him,” I said. “Those tools stay here. I’m sorry, but that’s
the way it is. If you want them that badly you’ll have to wait until Mr. Jenson
comes back and says you can have them.”
“I see.” There was sweat on his face now. He looked suddenly as mean as h*ell.
The dog slunk out of the shed and headed for the car. “So there are two
of you here now, is that it? You wouldn’t also be after his money—like that
tramp? Maybe she’s letting you into her sack—is that it?”
I felt a rush of blood to my head. I caught hold of his overall and gave him a
shake that nearly snapped his head of his shoulders, then I shoved him away
from me.
“Get out of here!” I said. “Hear me? Beat it!”
He nearly fell over himself backing away. His face had gone yellow-green
under his tan and his eyes popped out of his mean, thin face.
“I’ll fix you for this!” he quavered. “I’ll tell Carl …”
“Get out!”
He turned and walked fast to his car. The dog was already in it Ricks got into
the car, slammed the door and drove off in a cloud of dust.
I was worried. I didn’t know how Jenson would react if Ricks complained. At
least I would get my story in first, but I wasn’t going to tell Jenson what
Ricks had said about his wife. I was pretty sure Jenson wouldn’t like that pan
of it, coming from me.
When they got back around midday and while I was helping Jenson unload
the estate wagon, I told him Ricks had been here and had tried to borrow
tools.
“I had to get a little rough with him, Mr. Jenson. He wouldn’t take no for an
answer. I chased him out. If I did wrong, I’m sorry.”
Jenson grinned at me.
“You did absolutely right. I should have warned you about him. That guy
drives me cr@zy. I won’t let him take a thing off the place.
One time I used to,
but I never got anything back. He’s the biggest scrounger in the district.
When my first wife was alive, he was never off the place. He came in for
every meal, filled his car with my gas, borrowed my tools, borrowed money
from my wife —he drove me nuts.
After I married Lola, she fixed him. I
haven’t seen him now for a couple of months, but he’ll turn up again. Don’t
let him have a thing if I’m not here.”
I was relieved I hadn’t made a mistake so far as Jenson was concerned, but I
had an idea I had made a mistake so far as Ricks was concerned.
I told myself I would have to watch out for him. He could mean trouble for
me.
II
Three weeks can seem a long time.
With the sun coming up behind the distant mountain, turning the desolate
desert into a crimson wasteland, and as I lay in my bed, looking out of the
window, I thought back on the three week I had now been at Point of No Return.
I now had a feeling of security. Farnworth, its stinking bunkhouse and its
brutal guards seemed a remote nightmare: something that had never happened. I no longer felt a twinge of fear every time a car came out of the
heat haze and pulled up beside the gas pumps. I was fairly certain now that I
had become a lost man to the police, and if I continued to stay out here in this
lonely place, I would remain safe.
Although Lola still didn’t speak to me unless she could help it she now
seemed resigned to me. I still found her disturbing and sen.sually attractive,
but that didn’t mean I even thought about doing anything about it.
I had too much respect and too much liking for Jenson. I had known from the
start that he was my kind of people, but as the days went by, and we worked
long hours together, I found he was something a lot more than that. He was a
man you just had to like: a simple guy with a kindness in his heart that made
you react to him unless you were a sonofab.tch like George Ricks.
Jenson and I got along fine together. I soon found that although he was cr@zy
about Lola, he yearned for male company. He liked to play gin rummy in the
evenings while we waited for the late customer. He liked to talk about his
past life and his ambitions, and from what I could see neither of these pastime
interested Lola. I played a good game of gin and I was happy to let him talk.
I soon discovered he was shrewd and smart. He had a surprising talent for
turning rusty scrap into something he could sell at a profit. He had put the
rotary cultivator in order and had sold it to a fanner for a hundred and fifty
dollars.
He was like a kid with excitement when he had pulled off the sale.
“That’s a hundred and thirty bucks profit, Jack,” he said, grinning from ear to
ear. “That’s what I call a deal.”
Then one night when we had finished a game of gin, and Lola bad gone to
bed, and we two were sitting on the veranda of the lunch room, waiting for
some trade, he suddenly got confidential.
“Know what I plan to do in a couple of years, Jack?” he said, stretching out
his massive legs and getting out his pipe. “I plan to go right around the world.
It’ll take three years to do the job properly. When I’m ready, I’m going to sell
this place, then me and Lola are going. Right the way around the world,
missing nothing. First class all the way: the best hotels, everything arranged
and taken care of.”
I stared at him.
“That’s going to cost a whale of a lot of money,” I said.
“Yeah.” He paused to light his pipe, then went on. “I’ve got the price all
worked out. It’s going to hit me for sixty thousand bucks. On top of that
there’s clothes, drinks and spending money. I reckon it’ll cost at least a
hundred thousand. Well, I’ve got it, Jack. I’ve been saving for the past thirty
years, and I’ve got it. I want to put by some capital to make a fresh start when
I come back. I’ll have what I want in a couple of years, then away we go.”
“You mean you’ve really got a hundred thousand dollars, Mr. Jenson?”
“Yes.” He winked broadly at me. “I’ve got a system, Jack. I wouldn’t tell
anyone this, but you and me are pals, and I know it won’t go any further.
For thirty years, I’ve been making nice money out of scrap. It’s just one of those
things. I guess I have a talent for it. It has been cash right down the line, and
with cash, the tax inspector doesn’t come into it. I’ve kept two sets of books
for years. In one of them I’ve logged the gas sales and the lunch room sales:
that’s for the tax inspector. In the other book I’ve kept a record of my scrap
sales, and that’s for me. That book tells me I’ve cleaned up one hundred
thousand bucks.”
“Out of scrap?”
“Yeah. It wouldn’t be anything like that if the money had been taxed, but the
way I’ve worked it, the tax man isn’t smelling a dime of it. It’s for Lola and
me and the world trip.”
I suddenly remembered what Ricks had said about Lola marrying Jenson for
his money.
“Does she know about it?” I asked.
“Sure, she knows about it, but she doesn’t know what I plan to do with it. In
another year, when I’m ready to quit, I’ll tell her. It’ll be a real surprise for
her. Imagine! A trip around the world!”
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