The Traveler

by John Katzenbach

  She smiled. “How much do I owe you?” Then, suddenly, she almost choked. She had no money. She turned quickly, searching for Jeffers.

  “Hell, it’s on me. Don’t get to buy nothing for no pretty gals too much no more. Make the boy jealous, too.” He laughed and she joined him, her breath bursting from inside her in relief.

  “I appreciate it.” She put the can in her purse.

  “No matter. Where you heading?”

  She choked again. Where? she asked herself. What does he want me to say?

  “Louisiana,” she said. “Just taking a little holiday.”

  “Right time of year,” the attendant said. “Even if a tad bit warm. We get a lot of folks traveling through. People ought to stay, though. Got a right fine beach and there’s fine fishing. Not so famous though, as some other spots. That’s the problem. It all boils down to publicity nowadays. You got to get the word out. No two ways about it.”

  “Get the word out,” she said. “That’s right.”

  “Got to be the right word, though.”

  “True enough.”

  “Like take this place,” he said. “The boy’s a right fine mechanic. Better’n his old man, for sure, though I don’t let on noways. Give him a swelled head and all. But got no way to let folks know. They end up taking their cars to those fancy big places near the shopping malls, when, hell, we’d do a better job for half the price.”

  “I bet you would.”

  He laughed. “Feeling better?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Got to get the word out. Don’t make no matter what you’re doing in life, fixing cars or selling burgers or fixing to fly to the moon. Publicity is what makes this nation work. Yes, ma’am. You got to tell folks what it is you got and what it is they’re gonna get. You just gotta get the word out.”

  He handed her the bathroom key.

  “Just cleaned up this morning. Fresh soap and towels on the back of the door. You need something else, just holler.”

  She nodded and started out the door. She turned and pointed in a quizzical way and he nodded to her and waved her around the corner.

  It was cool inside the rest room, but close, and the air seemed old and tired. She quickly used the toilet, then went to the sink and splashed water on her face. She looked up in the mirror and saw herself pale and drawn. I’ve seen this scene a hundred times, she thought, picking up the soap bar. It’s in every movie on television. She remembered Jimmy Cagney and Edmund O’Brien. “White Heat,” she said out loud. He writes on the mirror in the gas station. She thought of Jeffers and pictured him speaking: I’m on top of the world, Ma! She wrote the word help on the mirror. Then she wrote, i’ve been . . . what? She rubbed that out. She felt hot and her hand was shaking. Got to get the word out, she thought, mimicking in her mind the slow Southern accent of the old man. call police she scrawled, then rubbed that out when she realized she’d written it too swiftly and it was illegible. And tell them what? She felt nauseated and gripped the sink to control herself. She looked down at her hands and pleaded with them, as if they weren’t attached to her body. Be still, she prayed. Be steady.

  She looked back up. This is where the heroine gets saved, she thought. The attendant comes in and calls the handsome young policeman, who saves her. It always worked that way. Every time. She rubbed the mirror clean, using quick, panicked strokes. What if it doesn’t work that way? she thought. She suddenly felt angry and impatient, and she smeared soap across the mirror. The soap bar had gotten wet, and streaks of white ran down the surface. Like tears, she thought. It never happens like in, what? Fairy tales. The movies. The stories her father used to tell her when she was a child. She looked at her reflection between the soap streaks. She could see redness rimming her eyes. She shook her head in dismay and impotence and clenched her fists in anger and helplessness. No handsome prince through that door. It’ll be him. He’ll come in. He’ll see it. He’ll kill me. And George. And the boy who fixes the cars. He’ll kill all of us. One right after the other.

  And then maybe the word will get out.

  She heard a scraping noise outside.

  Bile rose in her throat. Oh, God, she thought. He’s there.

  The door rattled.

  It’s the wind, she said to herself. But she frantically wiped at the soapy residue on the mirror.

  What am I doing? she asked herself. Do you want to die?

  Do nothing. Go along. He hasn’t hurt you yet.

  That was a lie and she knew it. She argued with herself quickly. He will. He has. He’s going to use you and kill you, he said it himself.

  The door rattled again.

  He’s everywhere, she thought suddenly. The room was windowless, and she spun about, looking at the whitewashed walls. He can see! she said. He knows. He knows. He knows.

  Just walk out calmly and apologize, she thought.

  She checked herself in the now-clean mirror as if she would see signs of betrayal on her face that he would notice. Then she turned and walked slowly back outside, thinking: I am blank inside. She returned the key to the hook by the door and turned to the gas pumps and froze in sudden and complete terror.

  Jeffers was standing next to the car, talking with a state trooper. Both men were wearing large sunglasses and she couldn’t see their eyes. She stopped, as if suddenly rooted.

  She saw Jeffers look up and smile at her. He gave her a wave.

  She couldn’t move.

  Jeffers waved again.

  She screamed commands to her body: Walk! But she was still frozen. She forced herself to push and pull at every muscle and managed to take a step, then another. The walk across the sunlit macadam surface seemed interminable. The heat seemed to build around her, and she had the odd thought that it was burning her. We’re all going to die, she thought. She saw Jeffers reach under his shirt and the black revolver jump into his hand. She heard the gun’s report. She saw the trooper falling back, dying, but in his own hand was his weapon and it was spitting bullets and fire. She saw the teenager and George the attendant diving for cover as the pumps suddenly exploded into flame.

  She took another step and realized none of it was happening.

  Jeffers waved again. “Jump in, Annie, I just want to get these directions straight.” He turned toward the trooper. “Now, as I get into New Orleans, the road splits and six-ten takes me downtown and four-ten heads to the coastal parks?”

  “You got it,” said the trooper. He smiled at Anne Hampton and touched his hat brim. The little motion of politeness seared her insides.

  “Great,” said Jeffers. “Always like to double-check. You’ve been a big help.”

  “My pleasure,” said the trooper. “Have a nice day.”

  He turned toward his own car and Jeffers slid down behind the wheel. At first he was quiet as he slowly accelerated out of the station past the trooper’s cruiser. Then he asked in a flat, harsh voice, “What were you and the old man jawing about?”

  “I’m going to be sick,” Anne Hampton said.

  “If you’re sick,” Jeffers replied, his glance narrowing, but his voice taking on a flat tone better suited to a discussion of the weather or rising prices, “everyone dies.”

  She clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut.

  She gulped in air.

  “We were talking about publicity,” she said. “About telling the world when you’ve got something to sell. Like his boy’s mechanical ability.”

  “Publicity fuels the world,” Jeffers said. “Just as much as Arab oil.” He looked quickly at her. She turned away and saw the roadway stretch in front of them. He was steering the car up the ramp, back toward the interstate.

  “I’m okay,” she said, and she thought: I must be.

  She looked over at Jeffers and saw that he seemed to have relaxed. He was smili
ng faintly.

  “Good Boswell,” he said. “When you feel good enough, write it all down in the notebook. Exciting, no? Especially the bit with the trooper, huh? Gets the adrenaline flowing.”

  Jeffers hummed and gunned the engine. Again, she did not recognize the tune, but she hated it nonetheless.

  As Douglas Jeffers drove, he daydreamed halfheartedly. Anne Hampton had grown silent beside him, staring out the window with what he thought was a desirable vacancy. He did not want her imagination moving too swiftly. She was still vulnerable to the strengths she had inside her. That she was unaware of them was typical, he thought. She could still break the spell and make some move for freedom, or perform some act that would jeopardize the trip, but her ability to do this would diminish, he knew. It already had been halved, perhaps quartered. Within a day or so, he considered, it will have evaporated save for a dangerous residue which he must always be aware of. Even the most domesticated, cowed, and docile beast will sometimes, when least expected, slash back at the threat of extinction. He resolved to be on his guard for signs of this. Whether they would ever surface he knew was problematical. For a moment he wondered whether she was aware of any of the literature of possession. Certainly, he thought, she’s read John Fowles. Did she remember Rubashov and his interrogators? Should he tell her about the Stockholm Syndrome? He thought he would, perhaps a little later. Knowledge, when wielded properly and dangerously, he considered, can be used to further confuse and obfuscate the truth. It would increasingly underscore her helplessness if he told her that psychologically she was caught in a web from which she was not equipped to free herself. Deepen her despair. He looked over at her, examining her profile as she steadily searched the horizon from the car seat. He tried to see a glow of independence, smell a whiff of resolve. No, he thought, not her.

  I’ve taken it. As I knew I would.

  She has given in.

  I can do with her what I please.

  He almost laughed out loud, stifling the sound before it erupted, like some schoolboy who had been passed a dirty picture behind the teacher’s back.

  She is like clay now. I can form whatever I want. He wondered idly whether she had any inkling that her life had changed completely, that she would never be the same, nor ever be able to return to what she had once envisioned for herself.

  To himself he said: No one’s going home again.

  He thought of the stricken look on her face when she’d spotted the trooper. It had terrified her, he thought. By tomorrow she will be so wrapped up that she will be more frightened of the police than I am. And I’m not frightened at all.

  He smiled, inwardly, but with just a trace on his lips.

  She’s mine.

  Or at least she will be within twenty-four hours.

  His mind danced with possibilities. What an education she’s about to get, he thought.

  No harder than my own.

  A memory picture crept quickly into his mind, aggressively, uninvited. He saw himself at age six, being led through the night by the druggist and his wife. He remembered how surprised he’d been at the sight of the house. It seemed to his child’s eyes to be huge, imposing, and dominating. He’d been afraid, and remembered how important it had been not to let Marty see how scared he was. It was not at all like the hotel rooms and trailer parks that his mother had dragged them through. His first mother, he thought. For a moment he thought he could smell the battling odors of perfume and alcohol that came back to him whenever she entered his memory. He reached down and cracked the window, letting some air into the car, fearing that he would sicken with all the hatred that churned in his stomach.

  The air cleared the memory smell away and he thought of the first look up the flight of stairs to their room. He recalled how tightly Marty had gripped his hand. It had been dark and the few lights the druggist had switched on threw odd shapes on the walls. He could not actually recall climbing the stairs, though they had. But what he remembered next was being half-led, half-pushed into the tiny room. The walls were whitewashed and there were two army cots unfolded. There was a single lamp, which had no shade. There was a single window which was open, letting cold air pour into the room.

  It had been bleak and sterile, he thought.

  He forced himself a smile. It was not a response to pleasure, but an allowance of irony. That had been the first battleground, he thought. Marty had been exhausted and fallen instantly into sleep. But I stared at the walls. In his memory he saw the morning confrontation:

  Can we put something on the walls?

  No.

  Why not?

  You’ll make a mess.

  We won’t. We’ll be careful.

  No.

  Please.

  Stop whining! I said no! That’s it. No!

  It’s not like a room. It’s like a prison.

  I will teach you now that you’re not to talk to me that way.

  It had been his first beating. First of many. He thought it odd that he felt an absence of emotion when he remembered the flailing fists and staggering blows that this new father poured down on him. His mind filled with hatred, though, when he thought of how this new mother sat by so quietly. Damn her eyes! he thought abruptly. She did nothing! She sat and watched. She always sat and watched. She said nothing, did nothing.

  He hesitated, as if catching a mental breath.

  Damn her eyes to hell!

  His memory filled again, like holding a cup beneath a spigot. He’d been shunted off to a new, strange school for the remainder of the day. That had been a horror in itself. But what he remembered best was the morning art class, where he’d seized the biggest sheet of white paper they’d had and quickly, deliberately, smeared great bands of blue and orange, red, yellow, and green across it, swiftly making a great glowing rainbow. Then he’d grabbed another paper and fashioned a steamship tossing on a wild gray sea. Then a third, and a pirate captain, with a red sash, black beard, and Jolly Roger in his hands. He’d left the paintings drying and returned that afternoon to ask the teacher if he might take them. When she approved, he took them and ran to the bathroom. Locking himself in a stall, he dropped his pants and carefully wrapped the paintings around his leg.

  He remembered the stiff walk home. Why are you limping, asked his new mother. I fell at school, he said. It’s nothing. Feels better already. He’d hopped up the stairs to their room, where he found Marty trying to play on the floor with an empty shoe box. He remembered his brother’s smile when he’d pulled out the paintings and stuck them, with stolen school tacks, on the druggist’s careful white walls. He remembered Marty’s sudden wide smile and it made him grin in pleasure: A boat, his brother had cried, to take us back to Mommy!

  That’s been a long voyage, Jeffers thought.

  One that we’re still on.

  He eased the car past a large truck with an engine that roared deafeningly, penetrating the silence of the car’s cockpit. He saw Anne Hampton flinch at the sudden assault of sound. He swung the car back into the right lane easily as the truck disappeared behind them and continued down the roadway, forcing his mind back to an easy nothingness, as if, he thought, he could make his own mind as blank and horrible as those damned white walls, vacant, forgetting that which he’d seen, that which he’d done, and that which he still planned to do.

  They swept past the outskirts of New Orleans as the early-­afternoon sky started to darken and Anne Hampton saw great gray storm clouds fill the horizon. She noticed that Jeffers seemed to accelerate as the weather worsened, and when the first large raindrops splattered against the windshield, he reached for the wipers switch with a muffled curse of irritation.

  She said nothing, having learned that he would speak when he wanted to. After a moment he broke the silence, proving her prudence justified.

  “Damn,” he said. “This fucking rain’s going to make thi
ngs difficult.”

  “Why?”

  “Harder to find landmarks in the rain. It’s been a long time since I was here.”

  “Can you tell me where we’re going?”

  “Yes.”

  He was silent.

  “Will you? But only if you want . . .”

  “No,” he said, “I’ll tell you. We’re heading toward a place called Terrebonne, which is a coastal parish. A little ways past a little town called Ashland. I haven’t been here, since, well, since August eight, nineteen seventy-four. This is why anything, like the weather changing, or a new road, and God knows all the roads seem damn new, can screw me up.”

  Anne Hampton looked out the car windows at the swampy marshland interspersed with pine stands and an occasional willow tree. It seemed to be a place of prehistoric terrors, and she shivered.

  “It looks really wild.”

  “It is. It’s a fantastic place. Like another planet. Lonely. Forgotten. Isolated. I really liked it when I was here.”

  For a moment then she thought that her heart stopped. Her throat closed as if someone had wrapped his hands around her neck. Her mouth went completely dry.

  It’s where he means to kill me, she thought.

  She tried to open her lips to speak but could not.

  She knew she had to fill the sudden silence, and she raced through her mind, trying to think of something to say that would fill the cockpit when all she wanted was to scream. Finally she spoke, instantly regretting the weakness and the vapidity of her words.

  “Do we have to go there?” she asked.

  She thought she sounded like a whining child.

  “Why not?” he replied.

  “I don’t know, it just seems, I don’t know, out of the way.”

  “That’s why I selected it.”

  She saw him glance over at her.

  “You’re not taking this down,” he said irritatedly.