The Thomas Berryman Number

But it was too noisy for Horn to be heard that afternoon in the Farmer’s Market. Smiling black faces mouthed complicated-looking sentences at him, but he just shook their hands and held their hands, and ran his big hands through the fluffy hair of their children.

When he let go of one smiling, hollering boy he found the boy had left him a photograph.

It was of a black family of eighteen or twenty members all dressed in suits and organdy dresses and men’s and women’s felt hats. They were all posed with a cantankerous-looking Marblehead Horn, standing in front of the old man’s run-down grocery.

The back was carefully signed by each family member and then by Jimmie Horn’s own father.

Bert Poole accepted a peppermint-striped straw hat from one of the

Schoolgirls for Jimmie,

and he put it on as he continued to walk sideways through the crowd.

He stopped in front of two young white boys. Each was wearing a battered George Wallace hat. From the looks of their faces, neither had a measurable I.Q.

“Trade you this new hat,” Poole smiled. “For one of those old ones. Just one. You keep the other.”

The boys looked at one another and started laughing.

“Nuh,” the taller one finally answered. “We ain’t jig lovers.”

Bert Poole smiled again. “Ri-ight. ’Course not,” he said. “I’ll give you some money for the hat,”

Once again the boys looked at one another. As if there was only one brain for the two of them. “How much is

some?”

Poole took off the Horn hat and put a dime store wallet inside it. “Take what you think’s fair,” he told the taller boy. “Don’t take any more than that.”

Each boy took two dollars and they ran like hell.

Nearly all the shops along the Plaza were closed and dark, and women were using the blackened windows as mirrors.

Even the airfield hangar of a supermarket—OPEN 24 HOURS, 365 DAYS OF EVERY YEAR—was cleared of all but a few deadfaced shoppers.

A lighter flared in one of the grayish windows. Not the usual gold Carrier, a Gillette Cricket.

Thomas Berryman drew on a cigarillo as he looked on through red FARMER DRUGS lettering.

Berryman was playing a mind-game with himself: he was thinking about all of the jobs he’d completed successfully. He was figuring out exactly how they compared with this one; degree of difficulty they called it in those high-diving contests. The thing he didn’t trust about this plan was that it was so spectacularly different from all the others. Either it was brilliant, or it was foolish; and even though he was ninety-nine percent sure it was the former, he could have done without the latter 1%.

Then the idea of dying, actually dying, powered through his mind. The idea used so much energy that his mind shut off and went blank for a moment.

He focused on the neon FARMER DRUGS lettering. He wondered if Oona had shown up. That would make it easier. A man and his wife wouldn’t be stopped after the shooting. All the better if she was crying.

The red neon and the weak light behind the prescriptions window were the only ones left on in the store. “Closin’ up,” the druggist called from the rear of the store. “Closin’ for the speeches. Open up at four.”

Berryman cradled the magnum revolver in a blue windbreaker over his arm. The rest of his outfit was the pea-green shirt and tie, and the green suit pants. He was silent and pensive. A little nervous now.

He finally flipped the cigar behind the greeting cards rack. Stepped on it. Tightened the garrison belt inside his shirt.

The druggist coughed and Berryman ignored him. Then he stepped out of the cool store and started pushing through the good-natured crowd like somebody important.

Joe Cubbah had gotten a tremendous headache. Moreover, he had the runs.

The sun was white hot, but he had his sunglasses off. He had to make facial distinctions, and he couldn’t do that, or judge depth, through the dark glasses.

The sun was directly in his eyes and pain grew from the bridge of his nose like a small, spreading tree.

He thought he’d found Berryman. But Berryman was walking with his back to the sun. He was extremely hard to look at.

He was pushing his way up through the crowd—being very unsubtle—and Cubbah didn’t get it. He could see the blue windbreaker and thought it concealed a gun. He’d snapped the button on his own holster, Weesner’s; he had his hand on the unfamiliar service revolver. He thought he might shit in his pants.

Berryman was saying something. Saying something, then smiling. People were clearing out of the way for him. He was only about ten rows away, and if it hadn’t been so noisy, Cubbah would have been able to hear whatever he was saying to get through.

He slipped the service revolver nearly all the way out.

He was sweating like he was being cooked, trying to keep track of both Horn and Berryman, trying to control his bowels, squinting very badly, when Berryman stepped all the way into the sun.

The pudgy master of ceremonies laughed and clapped his hands like a seal. “Whutat under yay?” he called down from the podium.