An American Tragedy Page 19

  “Of course I do,” she announced. “But just the same, that don’t mean that you can treat me any old way, either. You don’t seem to understand that a girl can’t do everything you want her to do just when you want her to do it.”

  “Just what do you mean by that?” asked Clyde, not quite sensing just what she did mean. “I don’t get you.”

  “Oh, yes, you do, too.” She could not believe that he did not know.

  “Oh, I guess I know what you’re talkin’ about. I know what you’re going to say now,” he went on disappointedly. “That’s that old stuff they all pull. I know.”

  He was reciting almost verbatim the words and intonations even of the other boys at the hotel—Higby, Ratterer, Eddie Doyle—who, having narrated the nature of such situations to him, and how girls occasionally lied out of pressing dilemmas in this way, had made perfectly clear to him what was meant. And Hortense knew now that he did know.

  “Gee, but you’re mean,” she said in an assumed hurt way. “A person can never tell you anything or expect you to believe it. Just the same, it’s true, whether you believe it or not.”

  “Oh, I know how you are,” he replied, sadly yet a little loftily, as though this were an old situation to him. “you don’t like me, that’s all. I see that now, all right.”

  “Gee, but you’re mean,” she persisted, affecting an injured air. “It’s the God’s truth. Believe me or not, I swear it. Honest it is.”

  Clyde stood there. In the face of this small trick there was really nothing much to say as he saw it. He could not force her to do anything. If she wanted to lie and pretend, he would have to pretend to believe her. And yet a great sadness settled down upon him. He was not to win her after all—that was plain. He turned, and she, being convinced that he felt that she was lying now, felt it incumbent upon herself to do something about it—to win him around to her again.

  “Please, Clyde, please,” she began now, most artfully, “I mean that. Really, I do. Won’t you believe that? I meant everything I said when I said it. Honest, I did. I do like you—a lot. Won’t you believe that, too—please?”

  And Clyde, thrilled from head to toe by this latest phase of her artistry, agreed that he would. And once more he began to smile and recover his gayety. And by the time they reached the car, to which they were all called a few minutes after by Hegglund, because of the time, and he had held her hand and kissed her often, he was quite convinced that the dream he had been dreaming was as certain of fulfillment as anything could be. Oh, the glory of it when it should come true!

  Chapter 19

  FOR the major portion of the return trip to Kansas City, there was nothing to mar the very agreeable illusion under which Clyde rested. He sat beside Hortense, who leaned her head against his shoulder. And although Sparser, who had waited for the others to step in before taking the wheel, had squeezed her arm and received an answering and promising look, Clyde had not seen that.

  But the hour being late and the admonitions of Hegglund, Ratterer and Higby being all for speed, and the mood of Sparser, because of the looks bestowed upon him by Hortense, being the gayest and most drunken, it was not long before the outlying lamps of the environs began to show. For the car was rushed along the road at break-neck speed. At one point, however, where one of the eastern trunk lines approached the city, there was along and unexpected and disturbing wait at a grade crossing where two freight trains met and passed. Farther in, at North Kansas City, it began to snow, great soft slushy flakes, feathering down and coating the road surface with a slippery layer of mud which required more caution than had been thus far displayed. It was then half past five. Ordinarily, an additional eight minutes at high speed would have served to bring the car within a block or two of the hotel. But now, with another delay near Hannibal Bridge owing to grade crossing, it was twenty minutes to six before the bridge was crossed and Wyandotte Street reached. And already all four of these youths had lost all sense of the delight of the trip and the pleasure of the companionship of these girls had given them. For already they were worrying as to the probability of their reaching the hotel in time. The smug and martinetish figure of Mr. Squires loomed before them all.

  “Gee, if we don’t do better than this,” observed Ratterer to Higby, who was nervously fumbling with his watch, “we’re not goin’ to make it. We’ll hardly have time, as it is, to change.”

  Clyde, hearing him, exclaimed: “Oh, crickets! I wish we could hurry a little. Gee, I wish now we hadn’t come to-day. It’ll be tough if we don’t get there on time.”

  And Hortense, noting his sudden tenseness and unrest, added: “Don’t you think you’ll make it all right?”

  “Not this way,” he said. But Hegglund, who had been studying the flaked air outside, a world that seemed dotted with falling bits of cotton, called: “Eh, dere Willard. We certainly gotta do better dan dis. It means de razoo for us if we don’t get dere on time.”

  And Higby, for once stirred out of a gambler-like effrontery and calm, added: “We’ll walk the plank all right unless we can put up some good yarn. Can’t anybody think of anything?” As for Clyde, he merely sighed nervously.

  And then, as though to torture them the more, an unexpected crush of vehicles appeared at nearly every intersection. And Sparser, who was irritated by this particular predicament, was contemplating with impatience the warning hand of a traffic policeman, which, at the intersection of Ninth and Wyandotte, had been raised against him. “There goes his mit again,” he exclaimed. “What can I do about that! I might turn over to Washington, but I don’t know whether we’ll save any time by going over there.”

  A full minute passed before he was signaled to go forward. Then swiftly he swung the car to the right and three blocks over into Washington Street.

  But here the conditions were no better. Two heavy lines of traffic moved in opposite directions. And at each succeeding corner several precious moments were lost as the cross-traffic went by. Then the car would tear on to the next corner, weaving its way in and out as best it could.

  At Fifteenth and Washington, Clyde exclaimed to Ratterer: “How would it do if we got out at Seventeenth and walked over?”

  “You won’t save any time if I can turn over there,” called Sparser. “I can get over there quicker than you can.”

  He crowded other cars for every inch of available space. At Sixteenth and Washington, seeing what he considered a fairly clear block to the left, he turned the car and tore along that thoroughfare to as far as Wyandotte once more. Just as he neared the corner and was about to turn at high speed, swinging in close to the curb to do so, a little girl of about nine, who was running toward the crossing, jumped directly in front of the moving machine. And because there was no opportunity given him to turn and avoid her, she was struck and dragged a number of feet before the machine could be halted. At the same time, there arose piercing screams from at least half a dozen women, and shouts from as many men who had witnessed the accident.

  Instantly they all rushed toward the child, who had been thrown under and passed over by the wheels. And Sparser, looking out and seeing them gathering about the fallen figure, was seized with an uninterpretable mental panic which conjured up the police, jail, his father, the owner of the car, severe punishment in many forms. And though by now all the others in the car were up and giving vent to anguished exclamations such as “Oh, God! He hit a little girl”; “Oh, gee, he’s killed a kid!” “Oh, mercy! “Oh, Lord!” “Oh, heavens, what’ll we do now?” he turned and exclaimed: “Jesus, the cops! I gotta get outa this with this car.”

  And, without consulting the others, who were still half standing, but almost speechless with fear, he shot the lever into first, second and then high, and giving the engine all the gas it would endure, sped with it to the next corner beyond.

  But there, as at the other corners in this vicinity, a policeman was stationed, and having already seen some commotion at the corner west of him, had already started to leave his post in order to asce
rtain what it was. As he did so, cries of “Stop that car”—“Stop that car”—reached his ears. And a man, running toward the sedan from the scene of the accident, pointed to it, and called: “Stop that car, stop that car. They’ve killed a child.”

  Then gathering what was meant, he turned toward the car, putting his police whistle to his mouth as he did so. But Sparser, having by this time heard the cries and seen the policeman leaving, dashed swiftly past him into Seventeenth Street, along which he sped at almost forty miles an hour, grazing the hub of a truck in one instance, scraping the fender of an automobile in another, and missing by inches and quarter inches vehicles or pedestrians, while those behind him in the car were for the most part sitting bolt upright and tense, their eyes wide, their hands clenched, their faces and lips set—or, as in the case of Hortense and Lucille Nickolas and Tina Kogel, giving voice to repeated, “Oh, Gods!” “Oh, what’s going to happen now?”

  But the police and those who had started to pursue were not to be outdone so quickly. Unable to make out the license plate number and seeing from the first motions of the car that it had no intention of stopping, the officer blew a loud and long blast on his police whistle. And the policeman at the next corner seeing the car speed by and realizing what it meant, blew on his whistle, then stopped, and springing on the running board of a passing touring car ordered it to give chase. And at this, seeing what was amiss or awind, three other cars, driven by adventurous spirits, joined in the chase, all honking loudly as they came.

  But the Packard had far more speed in it than any of its pursuers, and although for the first few blocks of the pursuit there were cries of “Stop that car!” “Stop that car!” still, owing to the much greater speed of the car, these soon died away giving place to the long wild shrieks of distant horns in full cry.

  Sparser by now having won a fair lead and realizing that a straight course was the least baffling to pursue, turned swiftly into McGee, a comparatively quiet thoroughfare along which he tore for a few blocks to the wide and winding Gillham Parkway, whose course was southward. But having followed that at terrific speed for a short distance, he again—at Thirty-first—decided to turn—the houses in the distance confusing him and the suburban country to the north seeming to offer the best opportunity for evading his pursuers. And so now he swung the car to the left into that thoroughfare, his thought here being that amid these comparatively quiet streets it was possible to wind in and out and so shake off pursuit—at least long enough to drop his passengers somewhere and return the car to the garage.

  And this he would have been able to do had it not been for the fact that in turning into one of the more outlying streets of this region, where there were scarcely any houses and no pedestrians visible, he decided to turn off his lights, the better to conceal the whereabouts of the car. Then, still speeding east, north, and east and south by turns, he finally dashed into one street where, after a few hundred feet, the pavement suddenly ended. But because another cross street was visible a hundred feet or so further on, and he imagined that by turning into that he might find a paved thoroughfare again, he sped on and then swung sharply to the left, only to crash roughly into a pile of paving stones left by a contractor who was preparing to pave the way. In the absence of lights he had failed to distinguish this. And diagonally opposite to these, lengthwise of a prospective sidewalk, had been laid a pile of lumber of a house.

  Striking the edge of the paving stones at high speed, he caromed, and all but upsetting the car, made directly for the lumber pile opposite, into which he crashed. Only instead of striking it head on, the car struck one end, causing it to give way and spread out, but only sufficiently to permit the right wheels to mount high upon it and so throw the car completely over onto its left side in the grass and snow beyond the walk. Then there, amid a crash of glass and the impacts of their own bodies, the occupants were thrown down in a heap, forward and to the left.

  What happened afterwards is more or less of a mystery and a matter of confusion, not only to Clyde, but to all the others. For Sparser and Laura Sipe, being in front, were dashed against the windshield and the roof and knocked senseless. Sparser, having his shoulder, hip and left knee wrenched in such a say as to make it necessary to let him lie in the car as he was until an ambulance arrived. He could not possibly be lifted out through the door, which was in the roof as the car now lay. And in the second seat, Clyde, being nearest the door to the left and next to him Hortense, Lucille Nickolas and Ratterer, was pinioned under and yet not crushed by their combined weights. For Hortense in falling had been thrown completely over him on her side against the roof, which was now the left wall. And Lucille, next above her, fell in such a way as to lie across Clyde’s shoulders only, while Ratterer, now topmost of the four, had, in falling, been thrown over the seat in front of him. But grasping the steering wheel in front of him as he fell, the same having been wrenched from Sparser’s hands, he had broken his fall in part by clinging to it. But even so, his face and hands were cut and bruised and his shoulder, arm and hip slightly wrenched, yet not sufficiently to prevent his being of assistance to the others. For at once, realizing the plight of the others as well as his own, and stirred by their screams, Ratterer was moved to draw himself up and out through the top or side door which he now succeeded in opening, scrambling over the others to reach it.

  Once out, he climbed upon the chassis beam of the toppled car, and reaching down, caught hold of the struggling and moaning Lucille, who like the others was trying to climb up but could not. And exerting all his strength and exclaiming, “Be still, now, honey, I gotcha. You’re all right, I’ll getcha out,” he lifted her to a sitting position on the side of the door, then down in the snow, where he placed her and where she sat crying and feeling her arms and her head. And after her he helped Hortense, her left cheek and forehead and both hands badly bruised and bleeding, but not seriously, although she did not know that at the time. She was whimpering and shivering and shaking—a nervous chill having succeeded the dazed and almost unconscious state which had followed the first crash.

  At that moment, Clyde, lifting his bewildered head above the side door of the car, his left cheek, shoulder and arm bruised, but not otherwise injured, was thinking that he too must get out of this as quickly as possible. A child had been killed; a car stolen and wrecked; his job was most certainly lost; the police were in pursuit and might even find them there at any minute. And below him in the car was Sparser, prone where he fell, but already being looked to by Ratterer. And beside him Laura Sipe, also unconscious. He felt called upon to do something—to assist Ratterer, who was reaching down and trying to lay hold of Laura Sipe without injuring her. But so confused were his thoughts that he would have stood there without helping any one had it not been for Ratterer, who called most irritably, “Give us a hand here, Clyde, will you? Let’s see if we can get her out. She’s fainted.” And Clyde, turning now instead of trying to climb out, began to seek to lift her from within, standing on the broken glass window of the side beneath his feet and attempting to draw her body back and up off the body of Sparser. But this was not possible. She was too limp—too heavy. He could only draw her back—off the body of Sparser—and then let her rest there, between the second and first seats on the car’s side.

  But, meanwhile, at the back Hegglund, being nearest the top and only slightly stunned, had managed to reach the door nearest him and throw it back. Thus, by reason of his athletic body, he was able to draw himself up and out, saying as he did so: “Oh, Jesus, what a finish! Oh, Christ, dis is de limit! Oh, Jesus, we better beat it outa dis before de cops git here.”

  At the same time, however, seeing the others below him and hearing their cries, he could not contemplate anything so desperate as desertion. Instead, once out, he turned and making out Maida below him, exclaimed: “Here, for Christ’s sake, gimme your hand. We gotta get outa dis and dam quick, I tell ya.” Then turning from Maida, who for the moment was feeling her wounded and aching head, he mounted the top cha
ssis beam again and, reaching down, caught hold of Tina Kogel, who, only stunned, was trying to push herself to a sitting position while resting heavily on top of Higby. But he, relieved of the weight of the others, was already kneeling, and feeling his head and face with his hands.

  “Gimme your hand, Dave,” called Hegglund. “Hurry! For Christ’s sake! We ain’t got no time to lose around here. Are ya hurt? Christ, we gotta git outa here, I tellya. I see a guy comin’ acrost dere now an’ I doughno wedder he’s a cop or not.” He started to lay hold of Higby’s left hand, but as he did so Higby repulsed him.

  “Huh, uh,” he exclaimed. “Don’t pull. I’m all right. I’ll get out by myself. Help the others.” And standing up, his head above the level of the door, he began to look about within the car for something on which to place his foot. The back cushion having fallen out and forward, he got his foot on that and raised himself up to the door level on which he sat and drew out his leg. Then looking about, and seeing Hegglund attempting to assist Ratterer and Clyde with Sparser, he went to their aid.

  Outside, some odd and confusing incidents had already occurred. For Hortense, who had been lifted out before Clyde, and had suddenly begun to feel her face, had as suddenly realized that her left cheek and forehead were not only scraped but bleeding. And being seized by the notion that her beauty might have been permanently marred by this accident, she was at once thrown into a state of selfish panic which caused her to become completely oblivious, not only to the misery and injury of the others, but to the danger of discovery by the police, the injury to the child, the wreck of this expensive car—in fact everything but herself and the probability or possibility that her beauty had been destroyed. She began to whimper on the instant and wave her hands up and down. “Oh, goodness, goodness, goodness!” she exclaimed desperately. “Oh, how dreadful! Oh, how terrible! Oh, my face is all cut.” And feeling an urgent compulsion to do something about it, she suddenly set off (and without a word to any one and while Clyde was still inside helping Ratterer) south along 3th Street, toward the city where were lights and more populated streets. Her one thought was to reach her own home as speedily as possible in order that she might do something for herself.