impossible burden for his numb, gloveless hand. He had not meant to come to this place, but he had run short of cash in Kentucky, and there had been no helping it. He was on his way to New York, where he could live in anonymity for months unbothered, and where he knew his rudeness would go unnoticed if he happened to snub someone on the street or if he greeted someone who had forgotten him.
But New York was still hundreds of miles away, and it might have been millions on this January night. He saw a sign: BAR. He forced himself forward toward the sputtering neon; he wasn’t ordinarily a drinker, but he needed the warmth of alcohol inside him now, and perhaps the barkeep would need a man to help out, or could at least rent him a room for what little he had in his pockets.
There were five men in the bar when he reached it. They looked like truck drivers. Niles dropped his valise to the left of the door, rubbed his stiff hands together, exhaled a white cloud. The bartender grinned jovially at him.
“Cold enough for you out there?”
Niles managed a grin. “I wasn’t sweating much. Let me have something warming. Double shot of bourbon, maybe.”
That would be ninety cents. He had $7.34.
He nursed the drink when it came, sipped it slowly, let it roll down his gullet. He thought of the summer he had been stranded for a week in Washington, a solid week of 97-degree temperature and 97-percent humidity, and the vivid memory helped to ease away some of the psychological effects of the coldness.
He relaxed; he warmed. Behind him came the penetrating sound of argument.
“—I tell you Joe Louis beat Schmeling to a pulp the second time! Kayoed him in the first round!”
“You’re nuts! Louis just barely got him down in a fifteen-round decision, the second bout.”
“Seems to me—”
“I’ll put money on it. Ten bucks says it was a decision in fifteen, mac.”
Sounds of confident chuckles. “I wouldn’t want to take your money so easy, pal. Everyone knows it was a knockout in one.”
“Ten bucks, I said.”
Niles turned to see what was happening. Two of the truck drivers, burly men in dark pea jackets, stood nose to nose. Automatically the thought came:
He watched detachedly as the bigger of the two truck drivers angrily slapped a ten-dollar bill down on the bar; the other matched it. Then the first glanced up at the barkeep and said, “Okay, bud. You’re a shrewd guy. Who’s right about the second Louis-Schmeling fight?”
The barkeep was a blank-faced cipher of a man, middle-aged, balding, with mild, empty eyes. He chewed at his lip a moment, shrugged, fidgeted, finally said, “Kinda hard for me to remember. That musta been twenty-five years ago.”
Twenty, Niles thought.
“Lessee now,” the bartender went on. “Seems to me I remember—yeah, sure. It went the full fifteen, and the judges gave it to Louis. I seem to remember a big stink being made over it; the papers said Joe should’ve killed him a lot faster’n that.”
A triumphant grin appeared on the bigger driver’s face. He deftly pocketed both bills.
The other man grimaced and howled, “Hey! You two fixed this thing up beforehand! I know damn well that Louis kayoed the German in one.”
“You heard what the man said. The money’s mine.”
“No,” Niles said suddenly, in a quiet voice that seemed to carry halfway across the bar. Keep your mouth shut, he told himself frantically. This is none of your business. Stay out of it!
But it was too late.
“What you say?” asked the one who’d dropped the ten-spot.
“I say you’re being rooked. Louis won the fight in one round, like you say. June 22, 1938, Yankee Stadium. The barkeep’s thinking of the Arturo Godoy fight. That went the full fifteen in 1940. February 9.”
“There—told you! Gimme back my money!”
But the other driver ignored the cry and turned to face Niles. He was a cold-faced, heavy-set man, and his fists were starting to clench. “Smart man, eh? Boxing expert?”
“I just didn’t want to see anybody get cheated,” Niles said stubbornly. He knew what was coming now. The truck driver was weaving drunkenly toward him; the barkeep was yelling, the other patrons backing away.
The first punch caught Niles in the ribs; he grunted and staggered back, only to be grabbed by the throat and slapped three times. Dimly he heard a voice saying, “Hey, let go the guy! He didn’t mean anything! You want to kill him?”
A volley of blows doubled him up; a knuckle swelled his right eyelid, a fist crashed stunningly into his left shoulder. He spun, wobbled uncertainly, knowing that his mind would permanently record every moment of this agony.
Through half-closed eyes he saw them pulling the enraged driver off him; the man writhed in the grip of three others, aimed a last desperate kick at Niles’ stomach and grazed a rib, and finally was subdued.
Niles stood alone in the middle of the floor, forcing himself to stay upright, trying to shake off the sudden pain that drilled through him in a dozen places.
“You all right?” a solicitous voice asked. “Hell, those guys play rough. You oughtn’t mix up with them.”
“I’m all right,” Niles said hollowly. “Just… let me … catch my breath.”
“Here. Sit down. Have a drink. It’ll fix you up.”
“No,” Niles said.
He got fifteen feet before the pain became unbearable. He crumpled suddenly and fell forward on his face in the dark, feeling the cold ironhard frozen turf against his cheek, and struggled unsuccessfully to get up. He lay there, remembering all the various pains of his life, the beatings, the cruelty, and when the weight of memory became too much to bear he blanked out.
The bed was warm, the sheets clean and fresh and soft. Niles woke slowly, feeling a temporary sensation of disorientation, and then his infallible memory supplied the data on his blackout in the snow and he realized he was in a hospital.
He tried to open his eyes; one was swollen shut, but he managed to get the other’s lids apart. He was in a small hospital room—no shining metropolitan hospital pavillion, but a small country clinic with gingerbread molding on the walls and homey lace curtains, through which afternoon sunlight was entering.
So he had been found and brought to a hospital. That was good. He could have easily died out there in the snow; but someone had stumbled over him and brought him in. That was a novelty, that someone had bothered to help him; the treatment he had received in the bar last night—was it last night?—was more typical of the world’s attitude toward him.
In twenty-nine years he had somehow failed to learn adequate concealment, camouflage and every day he suffered the consequences. It was so hard for him to remember, he who remembered everything else, that the other people were not like him, and hated him for what he was.
Gingerly he felt his side. There didn’t seem to be any broken ribs—just bruises. A day or so of rest and they would probably discharge him and let him move on.
A cheerful voice said, “Oh, you’re awake, Mr. Niles. Feeling better now? I’ll brew some tea for you.”
He looked up and felt a sudden sharp pang. She was a nurse—twenty-two, twenty-three, new at the job perhaps, with a flowing tumble of curling blond hair and wide, clear blue eyes. She was smiling, and it seemed to Niles it was not merely a professional smile. “I’m Miss Carroll, your day nurse. Everything okay?”
“Fine,” Niles said hesitantly. “Where am I?”
“Central County General Hospital. You were brought in late last night—apparently you’d been beaten up and left by the road out on Route 32. It’s a lucky thing Mark McKenzie was walking his dog, Mr. Niles.” She looked at
