Hot Spot by Charles Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

Nation’ at the movie. Why don’t we go see it?”
    “It isn’t really that bad, is it?” she asked. “But I’d love to go.” Her smile was something to see; and I noticed I was beginning to look for it when I was around her.
    I picked her up around seven. The picture wasn’t too bad, but we ran out on the second feature. As we were walking back up the street to the car she stopped and bought a pencil from the old blind Negro, the one who had come into the bank. He had a little stand there on the sidewalk.
    “How are you tonight, Uncle Mort?” she asked.
    “Jes’ fine, Miss Gloahia,” he said. “Thank you.”
    He’d recognized her by her voice. “Who is he?” I asked as we went on and got in the car.
    “Just Mort. He’s been there in that spot fifteen hours a day six days a week since I was in rompers. Maybe he’s been there forever,” she said.
    “Did you need a pencil?”
    She blushed. “Well, you can always use one.”
    We drove around for a while and when I took her home the house was dark. The Robinsons were gone somewhere. We stood by the gate for a moment in the moonlight. I was conscious of thinking she wasn’t merely pretty; she was one of the loveliest girls I had ever seen in my life. For a moment I was like an awkward kid; I wanted to kiss her and I was afraid to.
    “Well, good night,” I said.
    “Good night,” she said. “And thank you. I enjoyed the picture very much.”
    Well, if you’re not a silly bastard, I thought. Why didn’t you ask her to go to the church supper?
    I shoved off around ten the next morning, but I didn’t go to Houston. I drove over to a fair-sized town about a hundred miles away, a place I’d never been before. I got a room at a tourist court and then went shopping.
    At a drugstore I picked up a hand-wound alarm clock. Then I bought two rolls of surgical cotton at another one, and went around to two or three five-and-ten-cent stores for the rest. I got a cheap soldering-iron, a little solder, a pair of pliers, a short piece of heavy copper wire, and some big sheets of of sandpaper. I mentally checked it off the list. That was about all except some thread and a small flashlight. After I bought those I dropped into a market and bought a carton of canned beer and a box of big kitchen matches and got the clerk to give me a cardboard box about a foot wide and eighteen inches long. I went back to the motel, put the beer in the little refrigerator to keep cold, drew the blinds, and went to work on the clock.
    I took the bell cover off, exposing the clapper or striker. After plugging in the soldering-iron, I cut off two pieces of the copper wire just a little shorter than the thickness of the clock from front to back. When the iron was hot enough, I soldered them side by side on top of the clapper, putting on lots of solder and making it as rigid as I could. Then I wound the clock, set the alarm, and tried it out. The wire cross-arm vibrated nicely and held together all right.
    Going out to the kitchenette, I opened a can of beer and came back to look at what I’d done so far. I’d know in a few minutes whether I could depend on it or not. I took a drink of the beer, lighted a cigarette, and went on with the job. First, I wrapped a sheet of sandpaper around each of the two rolls of cotton and made it fast with some of the thread. Then I took four of the big kitchen matches, laid them together with two pointing each way and overlapping a little in the centre, and placed them on the cross-arm I’d soldered on to the bell clapper. I secured them with several turns of the thread, letting them stick out about a half inch over the clock in front and back. After winding and setting the alarm, I placed the clock upright in the bottom of the box the market clerk had given me, and put in the two sandpaper covered rolls, one on each side. It didn’t fit right; the rolls were too large and tended to bind the clapper cross-arm so it couldn’t move freely. It had to have