Mike killed a man when he was fourteen years old! He spent seven years in a reformatory and the kids there were never young. Joe will be just one of those kids to Mike …
Her fear kept growing.
You couldn’t fight men like Mike. Mike was strong in too many different ways. When you ran a tavern with an upstairs room for special customers you had to be tough, strong. You sat in an office and when people came to you begging for favors you just laughed. Ten grand isn’t hay, buddy! My wheels aren’t rigged. If you think they are get out. It’s your funeral.
It’s your funeral, Mike would say, laughing until tears came into his eyes.
You couldn’t fight that kind of strength. Mike could push his knuckles hard into the faces of people who owed him money, and he’d never even be arrested.
Mike could take money crisp and new out of his wallet, spread it out like a fan, say to any girl crazy enough to give him a second glance: “I’m interested in you, honey! Get rid of him and come over to my table!”
He could say worse things to girls too decent and self-respecting to look at him at all.
You could be so cold and hard nothing could ever hurt you. You could be Mike Galante …
How could she have loved such a man? And dragged Joe into it, a good kid who had made only one really bad mistake in his life—the mistake of asking her to marry him.
She shivered with a chill of self-loathing and turned her eyes hesitantly toward the big man in bathing trunks who sat alone by the door.
For a moment she met the big man’s eyes and her fears seemed to fade away! She stared at him … sunburned almost black. Muscles like a lifeguard. All alone and not on the make. When he returned her stare his eyes sparkled with friendly interest, but no suggestive, flirtatious intent.
He was too rugged to be really handsome, she thought, but he wouldn’t have to start digging in his wallet to get a girl to change tables, either.
Guiltily she remembered Joe, now it could only be Joe.
Then she saw Joe enter the room. He was deathly pale and he was coming straight toward her between the tables. Without pausing to weigh his chances of staying alive he passed a man and a woman who relished Mike’s company enough to make them eager to act ugly for a daily handout. They did not look up at Joe as he passed but the man’s lips curled in a sneer and the woman whispered something that appeared to fan the flames of her companion’s malice.
Mike had friends—friends who would never rat on him while their police records remained in Mike’s safe and they could count on him for protection.
She started to rise, to go to Joe and warn him that Mike would be coming back. But despair flooded her and the impulse died. The way Joe felt about her was a thing too big to stop …
Joe saw her slim against the light, and his thoughts were like the sea surge, wild, unruly.
Maybe Mike will get me. Maybe I’ll be dead by this time tomorrow. Maybe I’m crazy to love her the way I do …
Her hair against the light, a tumbled mass of spun gold.
Always a woman bothering me for as long as I can remember. Molly, Anne, Janice … Some were good for me and some were bad.
You see a woman on the street walking ahead of you, hips swaying, and you think: I don’t even know her name but I’d like to crush her in my arms!
I guess every guy feels like that about every pretty woman he sees. Even about some that aren’t so pretty. But then you get to know and like a woman, and you don’t feel that way so much. You respect her and you don’t let yourself feel that way.
Then something happens. You love her so much it’s like the first time again but with a whole lot added. You love her so much you’d die to make her happy.
Joe was shaking when he slipped into the chair left vacant by Mike and reached out for both her hands.
“I’m taking you away tonight,” he said. “You’re coming with me.”
Joe was scared, she knew. But he didn’t want her to know. His hands were like ice and his fear blended with her own fear as their hands met.
“He’ll kill you, Joe! You’ve got to forget me!” she sobbed.
“I’m not afraid of him. I’m stronger than you think. He won’t dare come at me with a gun, not here before all these people. If he comes at me with his fists I’ll hook a solid left to his jaw that will stretch him out cold!”
She knew he wasn’t deceiving himself. Joe didn’t want to die any more than she did.
The Man from Time had an impulse to get up, walk over to the two frightened children and comfort them with a reassuring smile. He sat watching, feeling their fear beating in tumultuous waves into his brain. Fear in the minds of a boy and a girl because they desperately wanted one another!
He looked steadily at them and his eyes spoke to them …
Life is greater than you know. If you could travel in Time, and see how great is man’s courage—if you could see all of his triumphs over despair and grief and pain—you would know that there is nothing to fear! Nothing at all!
Joe rose from the table, suddenly calm, quiet.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “We’re getting out of here right now. My car’s outside and if Mike tries to stop us I’ll fix him!”
The boy and the girl walked toward the door together, a young and extremely pretty girl and a boy grown suddenly to the full stature of a man.
Rather regretfully Moonson watched them go. As they reached the door the girl turned
