Deadline at Dawn

Her hand was shaking a little, so she dropped it below the table. “What street is it where the iron foot-bridge crosses the railroad tracks — you know, to get from one side to the other of the ditch they run in?”

Only those who were from there, who’d lived there half their lives, could have answered that.

“Why, it doesn’t cross it at any street,” he answered simply. “It’s in an awkward place, midway between two streets, Maple and Simpson, and if you want to cross it you’ve got to go along a cat-walk till you get to it. People’ve been kicking for years, you know that yourself—”

Yes, she knew that herself. But the point was he did.

He said, “Gee, you ought to see your own face, it’s getting all white too. That’s how I felt before, myself.”

So it was true, and this freak number had come up.

She sat down, arms stiff against the chair-arms, and when she could speak again, she whispered: “Do you know where I lived? Do you want to know where I lived? On Emmet Road! You know where that is, don’t you? Why, that’s the next street over, after Anderson Avenue. It isn’t cut all the way through. Why, the backs of our two houses must have been facing one another, even if they weren’t directly opposite! Did you ever hear of such a thing?” Then she stopped and wondered, “How is it we never knew one another back there?”

“I came here a year ago,” he computed.

“And I came here five.”

“We didn’t move into the Anderson Avenue house until after my Dad died, and that’s a little over two years ago now. Before then we were on a farm we had out around Marbury—”

She nodded quickly, happy the enchantment hadn’t been shattered by cold cartography. “That’s what it was then. I’d already come away by the time you moved into town. But maybe right now, at this very minute, my folks already know your folks back there. Sort of backfence neighbors.”

“They must,” he said, “they must. I can see them now. Mom was always a great one for—” Then he stopped, and remarked with more immediate relevancy: “You haven’t told me what your name is yet. I’ve already given you mine.”

“Oh, haven’t I? It already seems like backing up a long way, doesn’t it? I’m Bricky Coleman. My real name’s Ruth, but everyone calls me Bricky, even the family. Gee, I hated it as a kid, but now — I sort of miss it. They started it—”

“I know, on account of your hair,” he finished it for her.

His arm crept out along the tabletop toward her, palm extended upward; a little hesitantly, as though ready to withdraw again if it were ignored. Hers started out from her side, equally hesitantly. The two met, clasped hands, shook, disengaged themselves again. They smiled at one another embarrassedly across the table, the little act completed.

“Hello,” he murmured diffidently.

“Hello,” she acknowledged in a small voice.

Then the brief glazing of formality evaporated again, and they were both fused once more by common interest in the bond they’d found between them.

“I think they must have met by now — back there — don’t you?” he suggested.

“Wait a minute — Williams, that’s a common name — but have you got a brother with a lot of freckles?”

“Yeah, my younger brother, Johnny. He’s only a kid. He’s eighteen.”

“I bet he’s the very one been going around with my niece, Millie. She’s only sixteen or seventeen herself. She’s been writing me off and on about some new heart-throb of hers, a boy named Williams, everything perfect about him but the freckles and she’s hoping they’ll wear off.”

“Hockey?”

“On the Jefferson High team!” She squealed the answer.

“That’s Johnny. That’s him all right.”

They could only shake their heads together, rapt with amazement.

“It’s a small world!”

“It sure is!”

Now she was the one doing the looking at him, boy how she was looking at him, studying him, learning him by heart, seeing him for the first time. Just a boy, a dime-a-dozen boy, plain as calico, nothing fancy about him. Just a boy from next door. The boy next door. There was one in every small-town girl’s life. And this was he. Here was hers now. The one who should have been hers; who would have been, if she’d stayed, waited a little longer.

Nothing to him. There never was anything to the boy next door. He was too close to you to see him clearly. Nothing dashing, nothing romantic. That always came from a distance. But he was clean-cut, that was the point. How had she missed seeing that at the mill, even when he first walked in, even before she knew? Well, when they were just a ticket to you, and a pair of feet, how were you going to see anything?