Day of Wrath Read Online Free PDF Page B

central air and a stylish veneer as thin as the chrome foil on a windshield
wiper knob. Only the ones who couldn't afford to choose lived here now.
The ones who lived on fixed incomes and couldn't move if they wanted to.
The ones stepping up from poverty, for whom lower Eastlawn Drive was a
first taste of respectability. And the ones like Pastor C. Caldwell, who
were just hiding out.
    I found him midway down the block, on the first floor
of one of those big yellow nondescript buildings. Pastor C Caldwell, 1-D.
Scribbled in pencil on a scrap of paper stuck in a pitted mailbox. The
long entry hall smelled of dry-rot. The overhead lights flickered with
the current, casting irregular shadows on the patched plaster walls. It
didn't look like anyone's idea of paradise—not even a confused and angry
teenager's.
    There was a peephole buzzer set in the door to I-D. I
pressed the button and a moment later he answered. He was wearing a fresh
T-shirt and slacks. No shoes. He held a section of newspaper in his right
hand.
    " Yes?" he said nervously. "Could I do something for you?"
    There was a bit of the Kentucky hills in his voice and
a good deal more of that Midwestern prairie. But the predominant note wasn't
regional, unless you wanted to call hopelessness an exclusively urban sound.
Pastor C. Caldwell spoke with the tired, shiftless, slightly servile voice
of a man who had nothing left to lose. No pride. No property. No dreams.
It was a voice that said "I just want to get by."
    The face fit the voice. Crew-cut gray hair, diving, in
front to a widow's peak. Tan, weathered skin. Cheeks hollow where the back
teeth had been pulled out. Puckered mouth. Great tufted brows. Puffy eyelids
that narrowed to slits and just the gleam of restless blue eyes behind
them. There was a day's growth of beard on his chin and neck. He looked
to be in his mid-fifties, but given the kind of life he'd probably led,
he could have been thirty-nine.
    "Could I do something for you?" he said again.
    He'd been taking me in, and I could tell from his eyes
and his voice that he hadn't quite figured me out yet—whether I could
do him any harm. I decided to keep him guessing until I located his son,
Bobby, because I had the feeling that he wasn't going to do me any unpaid
favors. His world was one of strict and fierce economy—you took what
you could get and you took what went with it and you didn't take or give
anything else to anyone.
    "Is your name Caldwell?" I said in a tough voice.
    " Yessir," he said and shuffled his feet.
    "You have a son named Bobby?"
    "Yessir."
    "I'd like to speak to him."
    " What about?"
    "That's between him and me."
    "Bobby ain't in no trouble, is he?" he said.
    "No. I just want to ask him a few questions."
    "Well, he ain't here. Matter of fact, he stepped out a
few hours ago and won't be back till supper time."
    "I'll wait," I said and pushed past him into the room.
There was a television going in one corner, with a green vinyl recliner
parked in front of it and an ashtray full of butts beside the chair. The
rest of that newspaper he was holding was scattered around the room. A
piece on the couch—a hideous stained wood and plaid cloth number with
a matching coffee table in front of it stained the same tarry black. A
piece on the red, oval rug. A piece on the radiator jutting out from the
wall. And what wasn't covered with paper was littered with dirty clothes.
In fact there was a trail of them leading across the floor to an open closet.
The room was exactly what Mildred Segal had said it was. And, like Mildred,
I couldn't understand what the pretty blonde girl in the snapshot could
have found there to interest her.
    I sat down on the sofa and the man went over to the green
recliner. He sat down, put his left hand to his mouth, and sucked on it
nervously. "Sometimes it still hurts me," he said. He pulled the hand away
from his mouth and held it up. There was a bump of bone where the thumb
should have been. "Lost it over to Gibson Cards"