Read Online Clay Hand by Dorothy Salisbury Davis - Free Book Online

was, and walked the block to McNamara’s. It was a hell of a time to get involved in a feeling of guilt himself. But there it was: he couldn’t think of Dick Coffee, dead or alive, when Margaret entered into it. “How is a widow supposed to behave?” He could hear himself saying the words. The sweat broke out on him with the thought.
    Randy Nichols was at the bar alone with McNamara. They nodded to him as he came in, but continued their conversation. It was McNamara talking: “‘Whee, look at me,’ everybody’s saying. ‘I’m going to hell on a bicycle.’”
    Nichols interrupted him. “Listen to this, McGovern. It’s Coffee talking with a mine inspector here one night. Go on, Mac.”
    “‘Then why don’t you get off, you damn fool?’ … ‘I can’t. Nobody showed me how’ … ‘How did you get on then?’ … ‘I was just sitting, getting the feel of it and somebody gave me a push.’” McNamara leaned across the bar. “They were both on the leeward side of sobriety by then, and the inspector gives him a poke in the ribs. ‘Wouldn’t you like to get hold of the bastard giving him the push?’ he says. ‘Hell, no,’ says Coffee. ‘The guy I’d like to get is the little one riding the bicycle, the one doesn’t take himself seriously, the one doesn’t know his own worth, and the world depending on it.’”
    “There,” Nichols said as the barkeep straightened up. “Doesn’t that sound more like the man you knew, McGovern? They were talking about the state inspector at Naperville: a good man, incorruptible. He reported every safety violation, nearly got himself fired for refusing to go along on state election-fund-raising from the operators. But the explosion occurred all the same. Coffee said he felt cleansed, confessed, having written his report. He didn’t know his own strength, his own worth.”
    “I read the article,” Phil said. He ordered a drink. He remembered then Dick’s notes which the sheriff had shown him. Dick had intended to do no writing while there. Why? Out of this same reasoning—that setting it down on paper might dull his conscience? Phil found it all too subtle for the confusion now upon him. He emptied the glass as soon as McNamara set it before him, and shoved it across the bar for a refill.
    “If you’re going in for that kind of drinking,” Nichols said, “save some of the capacity for the other side of town. That’s where Coffee and Clauson went from here Friday night. I’ve an ulcer, myself, but I’d like to go in the company of a drinking man, at least.”
    “Okay,” Phil said. “Let’s go.”
    He finished his drink and laid fifty cents on the bar. Nichols took his overcoat from the piano stool where he had dumped it. “See you later, Mac.”
    The barkeep nodded, and set the bottle on the backbar.
    “Do you know that guy’s story?” Nichols said while they were walking, “He was in the I.R.A. in the old country. Escaped over here after Easter Week, and then went back. He still had a price on his head. Somebody informed on him, and the whole family he was staying with was massacred. He ran down the informer himself and shot him, then got out of the country…. Now what I want to know is how a guy like that winds up in Winston, running a pub.”
    “I’m not going to say he was lucky,” Phil said.
    “Furthermore, he has a soft spot in his heart for Mrs. O’Grady. That’s where Coffee stayed, isn’t it?”
    “It is. I’m staying there now.”
    “Do you know where I’ve found a room? In the loft over the fire station. Wait till I put that in on the expense sheet.” Nichols rambled on. “The constable’s rounding up a jury for the coroner’s inquest in the morning, by the way. They’re going to make a real show of it, by all the signs. The coroner collared me a few minutes ago. He as much as told me to keep my nose clean. And when somebody says that to me, I’ve got a damn good notion to stick it where they don’t want it. All right,