The White Widow: A Novel Read online

  Copyright © 1996 by Jim Lehrer

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: PolyGram Music Publishing: Excerpt from “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. Copyright © 1927 by PolyGram International Publishing, Inc. Copyright renewed. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc.: Excerpt from “Love on a Greyhound Bus” by Ralph Blane, Kay Thompson, and George Stoll. Copyright © 1945 (renewed) by EMI Robbins Catalog Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lehrer, James.

  White Widow / Jim Lehrer.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-82446-2

  I. Title.

  PS3562.E4419M37 1996 813′.54—dc20 96-1877

  Random House website address: http://www.randomhouse.com/

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  Jack saw immediately that she was a White Widow. He knew even before she was right there in front of him, when she was still in line with seven or eight other passengers ahead of her. It was the hair that first made her stand out. It was dark brown and long and it fell down across both shoulders like an expensive shawl. She was also tall for a woman, maybe five eight. But she was thin tall.

  Why was she so thin? Was she sick? Was she dying of something? Oh, no, no. She wasn’t that thin. She was perfect thin. Thin perfect. Her face was perfect too, perfectly tanned. Had she been to the beach at Padre Island, Jack’s favorite place in the world? Had she just come from being in a movie with Clark Gable?

  “All the way to Corpus today, I see,” he said as he took her ticket.

  “That’s right,” she replied.

  All the way to Corpus today, I see.

  That’s right.

  She looked right at him for just a blink and then cut her eyes to her left toward the step that led up into the bus. He saw those eyes long enough to see they were the most gorgeous blue eyes he had ever seen. They reminded him of the sky over the Gulf at Padre on sunny clear days in April and May.

  He had never seen a woman like her. Not in the flesh. He had the sudden desire to grab her right hand, bow forward, kiss that hand ever so gently and say, “Welcome to my chariot, White Widow of My Dreams.”

  Now wouldn’t that be a great way to end his career with Great Western Trailways! Not even the union would defend him. It was surely against company policy for bus drivers to grab women passengers’ hands and kiss them, even those of White Widows. But he could probably get away with it because nobody with the company would believe he had done such a thing. Not him. Not Jack T. Oliver, the best they had behind the wheel.

  He inserted her ticket into the slot in his silver ticket punch and gave it three punches. He felt a slight quiver in his right hand as he punched. Look at that hand, he thought. What is this White Widow doing to me? He slipped the punch’s ring over his right ring finger and used both hands to tear the ticket across the perforation. He handed her back the portion marked Identification Check, keeping the main section, which showed that it was a one-way ticket from Victoria, Texas, to Corpus Christi, Texas.

  Why only one way? Are you never coming back?

  He nodded and stepped aside and took hold of her right elbow with his right hand to guide her up into his bus.

  She was wearing a cream-colored blouse that had sleeves down to just above the elbow. So he felt her skin. Only a tiny bit and only for the count of one-two. But it was like touching velvet, the kind big hotels put on lobby couches.

  “Have a nice trip,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  Have a nice trip.

  Thank you.

  And she disappeared up into the bus. His bus. He watched her turn left down the aisle to find a seat. He saw her bottom move under her skirt, a dark brown checked skirt that went just below her knees. Was it silk? He didn’t know cloth that well. Most everything looked like cotton to him.

  Her legs, tanned as her face, were perfectly proportioned. She was not wearing stockings. It was too hot for anybody to wear stockings. Even a White Widow.

  Was that a bump there on the calf of her right leg? A bite? Had a mosquito bitten this beautiful woman’s leg? Or was it more serious? Would it have to come off? Would she lose her leg?

  He punched and took the tickets of the last six passengers, got them aboard and closed the bus door behind them. Twenty-six passengers in all, a good load these days. Twelve of the twenty-six were thrus from Houston. Not bad for an early September afternoon on this run, Schedule 726. Except on holidays and some summer weekends he seldom had every seat filled anymore. Only on the days before and after Christmas and Thanksgiving did he leave Houston or anywhere else with people standing in the aisle or, when the equipment was available, a second section, called a double, right behind him. Business had been slowly declining since the war ended and everybody could afford to buy a car. Some of the drivers were worried that it would eventually dry up altogether and the bus would go the way of the horse and buggy. Jack doubted that would ever happen.

  He went into the bus depot to get a last call, sort out the tickets by destinations and do the paperwork.

  He also hadn’t said anything yet to Mr. Abernathy, who was now standing at the ticket counter with his suitcase. He was talking to Johnny Merriweather, the ticket agent on duty.

  “A round-trip to Charlottesville, Virginia, please,” said Mr. Abernathy. “Monticello is there and that is the home of Thomas Jefferson, the third and best president of the United States.”

  “Better than Ike, the one we have now?” said Johnny, playing along as everyone always did with Mr. Abernathy.

  “I think General Eisenhower is making a wonderful president,” Mr. Abernathy said. “I fully expect him to be reelected.”

  Johnny said, “I read in the Houston Press that some are saying he’s a Communist. So’s his brother.”

  “Please do not say things like that, please, please. I have never heard of anything like that before and I do not want to start hearing it now.” Jack had never heard of anything like that before either, but he wasn’t political. He simply voted Democrat like all of the other drivers and most everyone else he knew.

  Johnny said, “The three o’clock to Houston that connects to Charlottesville just left, Mr. Abernathy.”

  “Oh, my, well, I missed it. What about the one to Mount Rushmore?”

  “You missed it, too, Mr. Abernathy.”

  Mr. Abernathy was a small man, neatly groomed in a suit and tie. He looked to Jack to be somewhere around thirty-five, maybe forty, but it was hard to tell.

  “I’m about to head off for Corpus and the Valley,” Jack said. “I’m always going your way, Mr. Abernathy, and I’ve always got a seat for you.” Always Going Your Way was one of the national Trailways advertising lines.

  Mr. Abernathy’s face turned Trailways
red—crimson, they called it in company brochures. Ride in the Crimson and Cream of a Trailways Thruliner.

  “Oh, now, I couldn’t go down there. I don’t have the right clothes packed. I’m ready for Mr. Jefferson in Virginia or at Mount Rushmore.”

  “Well, fine,” said Jack. “Whenever, just remember I always have a seat for you, Mr. Abernathy.”

  “Yes, well, thank you. Thank you.” He smiled slightly, picked up his brown leather suitcase and walked toward the main depot door.

  Mr. Abernathy, a man everybody knew but nobody knew anything about, had been coming into the depot with that suitcase every month or so for years. Sometimes he just sat down and listened to the agent announce the towns on the public address system. Sometimes he just exchanged friendly words with the drivers, the agents, the porters and the others around. But occasionally he inquired about the fare to some distant and unusual place, Mount Rushmore being his usual fallback destination. A few times he even went as far as buying a ticket, but he never ever set foot on a bus. His visits were as much a part of the life in the Victoria bus depot as the tickets and the PA system.

  Johnny Merriweather was a young and eager ticket agent, but his voice was all wrong for making the PA announcements. He sounded like a scared girl when he said: “All aboard for Great Western Trailways three-fifteen P.M. Silversides Air-Conditioned Thruliner to Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande Valley, now leaving from lane one … next to the building … for Inairi, Vidauri, Refugio, Woodsboro, Sinton, Odem, Calallen and Corpus Christi … connecting in Corpus for Robstown, Kingsville, Alice, Falfurrias, Raymondville, Harlingen, Brownsville, McAllen, Monterrey and Mexico City … All aboard … Don’t forget your baggage, please.”

  There had been a kid working behind the ticket counter before the war who could make those bus calls sound like they were the most important announcements in the world. A San Antonio turnaround driver, Jack’s friend Paul Madison, used to say that kid’s announcements were worth coming downtown to hear, just like Mr. Abernathy did sometimes. Paul Madison said they could make most anybody want to get on a bus for anywhere. The kid was on his way to being a terminal manager, and maybe someday even a district passenger agent or higher. But he went down with his ship, a minesweeper of some kind, during the Battle of Okinawa. They had a memorial service for him at the First Baptist Church in Victoria, but without his body. They never found it.

  Jack did not serve in the military in either World War II or Korea because he was 4-F. An induction physical showed him not only to be overweight, which he already knew, but also to have feet and back problems that would have made him a poor soldier. The 4-F classification was a source of great embarrassment to Jack and he never spoke of it to anybody except Paul, who had been too old to go to either war.

  Jack figured poor Johnny Merriweather would never get to the top at Great Western unless he did something about his voice. Which meant he had had it, because whatever voice God gave you was pretty much the voice you were stuck with all of your life.

  Although Jack himself had proved it was possible to change things pretty dramatically. Just look at what had happened to him in the twelve years and four months since he became an intercity bus driver and lost seventy-two pounds. He was about to become a Master Operator, for one thing. And for another, there was that White Widow in the fifth-row left-side window seat. Until recently he could not have let his superlative imagination loose about someone like her, as he was doing now as he reboarded his bus.

  There she sat, looking out the window to her left. There he stood, up in the front of the bus, facing her and the other passengers. He was ready to make his welcome-aboard announcement.

  A sour splash of his vegetable-soup-with-saltines lunch rushed into his mouth. His right leg started shaking uncontrollably and he felt sweat on his face and on the top of his head under his uniform cap.

  It was the White Widow. She wasn’t even looking at him. But there she was.

  Forget the announcement, Jack. Just go over and sit down behind the steering wheel and drive this thing away from here before you throw up or pass out or do something else really awful.

  But what if there’s a company checker on here? Not giving a welcome-aboard announcement at a major terminal is a Master Operator mark-down. This was no time for something like that.

  He was due to get his Master Operator badge in four weeks, and he had already imagined with Kodak clarity what it would look like on the front of his uniform cap, how passengers and other people would react when they saw it up there. He was great at imagining things before they happened. It was one of the reasons he was such a good bus driver, because it helped him anticipate traffic, weather and other hazards of the road in time to avoid tragedies and other problems.

  “Good afternoon, folks,” he said. The words came out cleanly and that stopped the nausea. He had always liked his voice; he thought it had a nice deep Master Operator kind of tone to it. He hoped it sounded that way to her.

  She was still looking out of the window, not at him.

  His leg stopped shaking.

  “Our travel time to Corpus Christi this afternoon will be two hours and five minutes. My name is Jack. Jack Oliver. Jack T. Oliver. If I can assist you in any way or do anything to make your trip more comfortable, please give me a holler. We are glad you have chosen to ride with us today on Great Western Trailways. We call ourselves The Easiest Travel on Earth and that’s what we are. Thanks. Now let’s hit the road for Corpus, the Valley and points south.”

  He gave a smart salute to the bill of his uniform cap, performed a half-military about-face and lunged in two strides into the driver’s seat. He gunned the motor, released with his left hand the emergency brake lever that came up from the floor on the left side of his seat, double-clutched and with his right hand put the bus in first gear by gently shoving the round black knob of the from-the-floor stick shift forward and to the left.

  Safety regulations required that he look into the inside rearview mirror to make sure all passengers were seated before leaving a terminal. Unless there were standees, which there were not today. Only twenty-six of the forty-one passenger seats were occupied.

  She moved her head to the front, toward him. He caught her eyes. Was that a smile? Did she smile at me?

  Yes, I think she did. She did. I swear she did.

  He let out the clutch, eased the bus up to the sidewalk at the edge of the driveway, made sure no pedestrians or cars were coming and turned the steering wheel steadily and powerfully to the left. The bus glided onto the street, Main Street. It was a maneuver he had made hundreds of times but this time he felt a special sense of power and accomplishment, as if his extraordinary skills were on display on a stage. That was because of her. He wondered if she was watching him now. Did she see how he handled this big machine?

  He peeked up into the mirror. She was looking out the window again. But he had the feeling she did so just then, just a whiff of a second before he looked at her. She did not want him to know she was watching him.

  He was sure of it.

  He had to make another left turn in two blocks at Commercial Street to head back to the west to Moody Street, which was U.S. Highway 59-77 through town. This time he would try to keep a good eye on her.

  Now that was really stupid, Jack. Why in the world would a beautiful, sophisticated woman like this, a White Widow, want to watch a simple, dumb bus driver make a simple, dumb turn to the left?

  But maybe she does realize how hard it is to turn one of these wheels, particularly this one. Bus #4101 had always had a stiff steering mechanism. He had written it up on the Trip Report several times, but it was still there. The easiest turner was #4207, which he often drove the other way, coming northeast out of Corpus.

  There was no way to account for the differences in buses. They could come out of the same factory one right after the other and be completely different to handle, not only in the way they steered but in their braking, pickup, steadiness on the road and several other th
ings. On the steering, they were talking about putting power steering on the new buses, but that was probably still years away. For Great Western, at least. Greyhound already had a few of their new Supercoaches with air-assisted power steering on them. Turning one of these Great Western ACF-Brills required perfect coordination between speed and power. He knew several guys who never made it out of probation onto the extra board because they simply could not get the hang of it. They had to give up on being an intercity bus driver.

  She must know this. She must know she is in the hands of somebody special, somebody who is also trim and firm and sharp and polished in his uniform.

  Oh, don’t be stupid, Jack T. Oliver. Even if you’re not fat anymore, you’re still only a bus driver. Nobody but their mothers and wives and little boys see bus drivers as anybody special.

  But she had smiled. He was sure she had smiled.

  It Happened One Night came back to him like it was showing on a large screen with full sound right there in front of him. It was a movie he saw when he was a kid that made him realize for the first time that there was a lot more to buses than he thought. Claudette Colbert, an heiress on the outs with her rich father, ran away on a Greyhound bus. She met up with Clark Gable, a newspaper reporter who had just been fired, and love bloomed, despite their very different backgrounds and stations in life. That was all great, but what also caught Jack’s attention was the way the bus driver, played by Ward Bond, tells Gable to shape up or get a sock in the nose.

  The light was green at the intersection at Main and Commercial and there was no oncoming traffic. But a black Ford had stopped and was now waiting at the red light to cross on Commercial from the west, to Jack’s left. This meant Jack had to judge the turning distance exactly right or he would either take off the front of the Ford or run the right front tires of the bus over the curb on the far right side.

  Watch this, White Widow! What is your name? You know mine now. I told you, along with the others, just a minute ago. Were you listening? I am Jack T. Oliver. Who are you?