Cornell Woolrich
The Drugstore Cowboy
There were more drugstores in that certain town than one would care to count, but one and one only that has to do with this story. It had two huge crystal urns in the window tilled with colored water, one magenta and the other green, both backed by nickel reflectors that made them flash gloriously. Inside they sold novels, electric waffle-irons, chocolate sundaes, glass beads, face powders, tooth powders, headache powders and roach powders.
Out in front of the store they had an upright chiclet machine with an oval mirror, and not far away there was always a certain young man. Sometimes he was with two or three of his friends. As a rule, though, he was all by himself. He was always standing there; never seemed to have any other place to go. Even when it rained he was there with his coat collar turned up around his neck and his back against the brightly lighted window. He seemed to have been burn with a cigaret between his lips. It was just as much a part of his face as anything could be. There were brief intervals, matters of seconds only, when one had burned down dangerously close to the gums, that he would take it out and put a fresh one in.
One peculiar thing about him, though, he was always singing under his breath. It wasn’t through happiness, but because it was in him to sing that he did it. He couldn’t have stopped himself even if he had wanted to. He had tried one job after another and somehow he couldn’t make good at any of them. In a town like that there wasn’t much variety. You could be clerk in a shoestore, in a grocery store, or in a hardware store. Or else you could be usher in a theater or counterman in a lunchroom, or you could deliver the mail, or you could clean windows. He had tried all of these things. There weren’t any vacancies at the bank, as a rule. You had to have pull to get in there. So there didn’t seem to be anything else to do but stand out in front of a drugstore and whistle your time away.
Every night from eight until twelve he stood there by the mahogany chiclet machine and knew all the girls by sight as they strolled in for an ice-cream soda. And of all the girls in town the one he admired most was Betty Reeves. Her people were very wealthy, and she lived in a great, big expensive house. But that wasn’t the reason. It was because once, while she was passing the corner he was standing on, a dime had dropped out of her handbag and rolled over toward him. And when he had picked it up and handed it back to her, she had given him a friendlier smile than any one had ever given him before, and just said, “Thank you.”
Other girls were very careful not to be seen talking to him, they purposely looked the other way when they went by.
Now Betty had a little blue car her father had given her on her birthday with strict injunctions to watch out for cops, and she knew nothing whatever of what people were saying about the kind of young men that stand in front of drugstores. What she really liked was to take long runs through the open country and feel the wind through her hair like a knife. Her father had forbidden her to be out alone in the car after dark. That was why she did it, anyhow.
And this is what happened.
She ran out of gas on the loneliest road in three counties, where there wasn’t a light to be seen. She signaled for help with her horn until it went out of commission from overexertion; then she slumped down and waited. When she saw by her watch that it was already half-past ten and getting later all the time, she abandoned the car to its fate and started the long walk back.
And that very same night for the first time in months there was no one standing in front of the drugstore. No one but the chiclet machine. The cowboy had finally gone. He had left the lights of the town behind him and was already several miles away, walking along in the dark, when all at once he made out something white across the road like a cotton bush in full bloom, only there weren’t any cotton bushes around there. It began moving away and he ran after it shouting, “Hey, there!” at the top of his voice. It stopped, bent down and then straightened op again and a childish voice threatened, excitedly: “I’ll hit you with this if you come near me!”
He stopped a short distance away, not knowing what to do.
“I mean it!” the voice insisted.
He lit a match. It was a girl. Then he recognized her. It was Betty Reeves. She had on a white dress with shiny little things sewn all over it, “jiggers” he called them, and they caught the rays of the match and blazed.
“Leave me alone,” she repeated. “Go on away.”
The first match had gone out by now, so he lit another and still another and finally another. Her arm was still up over her shoulder all this time ready to hit him with a stick that wouldn’t have hurt a bird.
“Put your hand down,” he laughed. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“No, I suppose not,” she said finally. She dropped the piece of dead wood and brushed her hands.
“I ran out of gas about three-quarters of a mile back,” she told him. “I was afraid to stay there alone, so I thought I’d better foot it the rest of the way in.”
He gave her a look of supreme disgust.
“Nine chances out of ten you’ve lost your car.”
“The car’s the least,” she said.
“Car’s the least? You must be Chevrolet’s daughter,” he remarked.
“Hardly. What brought you ’way out here?” she asked.
“I was leaving town.”
“Leaving town? What for?” she asked curiously.
“Forget it,” he said. “I’ll walk back with you.”
They walked the whole way in silence, his coat around her shoulders. By the time they had gotten to the outskirts of the town the moon was out, clear as a diamond. They came to the most gorgeous dwelling he had ever seen, in an outlying section that was comparatively new to him. There were two stone griffins at the entrance and a great, wide lawn smooth as velvet. She handed him back his coat.
“My tip to you,” he said, “is not to go out there any more with a teaspoonful of gas in your tank and expect it to do a thirty-mile stretch for you.”
She laughed, “Good night,” she said finally, “and much obliged.”
“Good night,” he answered with a touch of sadness. “Don’t mention it.”
When she had gotten as far as the front porch she turned around and called back, “I forgot to tell you my name is Reeves.”
“And I forgot to tell you mine is Jerry Jones,” he answered from where he stood.
Tired as he was and late as it was, he walked all the way back to where he had met her and even beyond that, and just when he was beginning to give up hope he met a vegetable truck coming his way towing a smart-looking roadster at the end of a piece of rope. He stepped out into the glare of the headlights and flagged them.
“I ran short on gas,” he lied cheerfully. “I’ve been trying to get help for over two hours.”
“You the owner?” growled the truckman. “What was the idea of leaving this baby-carriage out in the middle of the road?”
He climbed in without a word and took the wheel the rest of the way in to town. They dropped him off in front of the drugstore, which was dark and deserted by that time. He let the car stand there in the open all night, and in the morning looked for her number in the telephone book and called up.
“Miss Reeves there?”
“Who is it, please?”
“Uh, Mr. Jones,” he said, embarrassed.
She got on the wire. “Been doing any more hiking?” was the first thing she wanted to know.
“No, but I got your car for you,” he said, vain as a peacock.
“You what?”
“It’s standing right outside. Want to come down and take a look at it?”
“The car’s been back in the garage since twelve o’clock last night!”
“You’re kidding!” he said, trying to get back some of his breath.