The Traveler

by John Katzenbach

  She reached for the pen and notebook, but her hands were shaking again and the words on the pages were blurred and unreadable.

  He hit her then, swiftly, the flat of his hand hardly seeming to move from the rim of the wheel. She gasped, dropped the pen, and using every ounce of presence of mind, instantly reached down and seized the pen again. The pain barely registered.

  “I’m ready now,” she said.

  “You’ve got to stop being so stupid,” he said.

  “I’m trying.”

  “Try harder.”

  “I promise. I promise I will.”

  “Good. There’s still hope for you.”

  “Thank you. It’s just, just . . .”

  She couldn’t form the words and she gave in to the quiet that took over. She listened to the engine sounds mingling with the slap, slap of the wipers and wondered what it would feel like when it happened.

  “Dumb Boswell,” Jeffers said after a few moments had passed by. He thought idly of reassuring her, letting her know that he still had plans for her. But then he thought better of it. Better to have the occasional tears than to have her gain any confidence. “You should think less on the longevity of life and more on the quality.”

  She nodded.

  “Get that down,” he said. “Aphorisms. The world according to Jeffers. Poor Douglas Jeffers’ Almanac. The sayings of Douglas Jeffers. That’s your job.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  They drove on and she felt inundated by the rain, the darkness and fear.

  “You know where we’re going, Boswell?” Jeffers asked. Then he answered his own question. “We’re going to visit an old friend. Don’t you think sometimes that memories are like old friends? You can summon them up much as you would reach for a telephone. They come into your consciousness and comfort you.”

  “What if they’re bad memories?” Anne Hampton asked.

  “Good question,” he replied. “But I think, in their own way, bad memories are as helpful as the good. You measure these things on an internal scale, your own set of weights and balances. The nice thing about bad memories is that, well, they’re memories, aren’t they? You’re past them. On to something new . . .

  “In a way, I suppose, I don’t rate memories. I see them all as part of an overall picture. Like taking a long time-exposure, like one of those fancy National Geographic shots, you know, where the camera records the blooming of a flower or the hatching of an egg.”

  She wrote that down.

  Jeffers laughed coldly.

  “We’re heading toward where the new Douglas Jeffers hatched.” He craned forward in his seat, peering up into the enveloping gray sky. “One of the dark places on earth,” he said. He glanced over at Anne Hampton. “You know who wrote that?”

  She shook her head.

  “Actually someone wrote it, but a character said it. Who?”

  He snorted, almost with humor.

  “You’re an English lit major, c’mon. Can’t let some battered old news­hound outquote you. Think!”

  She raced through her memory.

  “Shakespeare?”

  He laughed. “Too obvious. Modern.”

  “Melville?”

  “Good guess. Closer.”

  “Faulkner? No, too short . . . uh, Hemingway?”

  “Think of the sea.”

  “Conrad!”

  Jeffers laughed and she joined him.

  After a minute she asked, “Why are we going to one of the dark places on earth?”

  “Because,” Jeffers said, matter-of-factly, “that’s where I discovered my heart.”

  They drove on in quiet. Anne Hampton saw Jeffers’ eyes glint when he spotted an exit sign for a rural route. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “That’s the road.” He swung the car from the highway and suddenly she realized they were on a narrow secondary road, lined with large trees that seemed to block the sky and that parted in the wind to let sheets of rain spatter down. They swooped around one twist in the highway and she felt the car slide slightly, the back tires spinning momentarily, squealing for purchase on the rain-slicked highway, an unsettling feeling, reminding her that they were careening down the roadway, just barely under control.

  “Love is pain,” Jeffers said.

  He waited a moment.

  “When I was little, I used to hear my mother’s men. They would stumble and clomp about making more noise trying to be careful than they would have if they’d just acted normally. It would be late at night and she would assume I was asleep. I would keep my eyes closed tight. There was a little red light in the room, so I could just crack my lids apart and see. I remember how she would groan and complain and finally cry out in pain. I never forgot . . .

  “It seems very simple, doesn’t it? The more love. The more hurt. Sounds like some doo-wop song from the fifties, huh?” He crooned, “You always love the one you hurt . . .”

  He looked over at Anne Hampton.

  Then he sang again: “You always kill the one you love . . .”

  Then he turned away and concentrated on the road.

  “We’re getting closer,” he said.

  But she could hardly hear him, she was suddenly so wrapped in fear.

  They continued cutting between the stands of trees, heading farther into the swampy darkness. She could see no signs of life save the occasional modest roadside home standing white against the increasing gray of the day. As they drove, she could see more of the sky, filling with even darker clouds, and she knew they were approaching the coast. Jeffers remained silent, concentrating, she hoped, on the highway, staring ahead in a sullen, fixed fashion. She could see great strikes of lightning in the distance, flashes that were flung across the sky, followed by cannon rumbles of thunder that penetrated the car. The rain had increased in volume, pelting the car, flooding the windshield between swipes of the wipers. She prayed they would not have to get out of the car, but knew they would. And then she thought it would probably make no difference, getting wet. Still, she had the odd idea that she didn’t want to shiver from the rain onslaught, to seem wet, bedraggled, and pathetic when it happened.

  Jeffers turned the car again, and they were on an even smaller road, even more deserted.

  She stayed silent, trying to think of home, of her mother, her father, her friends, of the sun and the summer that seemed to have disappeared in the gray flood of rain and wind.

  Jeffers turned again, and the road became bumpy. It was unpaved. He swore. “We’ll get stuck if we go down there. Hell, it’s only a half mile or so . . .”

  He pulled to a grassy spot and stopped the car.

  She hated the sudden disappearance of the engine noise. The silence seemed to envelop her.

  “Douglas Jeffers thinks of everything,” he said. He reached into the back seat and pulled out a small duffle bag. He unzipped it swiftly, then shoved a bright yellow poncho at her. Then he pulled out a dark-green set of rain pants and coat. “The best from L. L. Bean,” he said. “A big part of photography is anticipating future discomfort. I hope that fits. Use the hood.”

  He helped her pull the poncho on. Then he slid into the rainsuit. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  There was a clap of thunder and a new sheet of rain hit the car. Jeffers smiled and flung himself through the door. In a second Anne Hampton’s door was pulled open. She knew better than to hesitate.

  The force of the rain seemed to snatch her breath, and for an instant she stood, disoriented, stunned by the strength of the wind. She felt Jeffers’ hand grip her arm with familiar strength, and she let herself be pulled along. The road was sandy and infirm, and she slid in her sneakers, half-pushed by Jeffers. For an instant she wished that she could at least die somewhere dry and familiar, that this was especially unfair. She could not se
e him, it seemed to her that one instant he stood behind her, the next he was at her side, the next pulling her along from in front. She tried to formulate theorems and conclusions in her mind: Why would he give me a poncho and then kill me? she thought. But what frightened her most was the rain-drenched realization that assigning logic to anything that was happening to her was a mistake. She closed her eyes against the lightning and rain and started to mumble snatches of prayers to herself, as each foot hit the ground, trying to find some comfort in long-forgotten rhythms: “Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name . . .” Then: “Forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive those who trespass against us . . .” Jeffers pushed her a bit harder and she gasped. “Yea, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death I shall fear no evil . . .”

  “Come on!” Jeffers said. “Should be right ahead.”

  “Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed be the fruit of your womb. Hail Mary, full of grace, Hail Mary, full of grace, Hail Mary, full of grace . . .”

  “Come on, dammit! Let’s go!”

  “Hail Mary, hail Mary, hail Mary, fullofgrace, fullofgrace, fullofgrace, Hail Mary . . .” She shut her eyes as she walked forward, trying to think about anything other than the rain, the wind, and the pressure of Douglas Jeffers’ grip on her arm. She wondered if he would give her a blindfold and a cigarette like some military execution. Her tears mingled freely with the rain striking her face.

  Then, suddenly, she put her right foot down and the sandy soil beneath it gave way, and she slipped forward, falling. She let out an involuntary “Ouch!” as she fell, more a sound of some odd indignation than any pain. Then she turned back toward Jeffers, who was standing, shading his eyes as if against the sun, peering about him.

  “Damn!” he said.

  He kicked the sandy dirt.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

  He stomped about in a small circle, peering into the distance. He punched the air angrily. “Damn! Damn! Damn!”

  She dared not say anything.

  Then he turned and looked at her.

  She thought she could not breathe.

  Then he laughed. His laughter grew, rising up in the wind currents and seeming to mix with the wind and thunder.

  He stood above her, laughing for several moments.

  “Well,” he said finally, after rubbing his eyes. “Well, what a screw-up. We’re in the wrong place. I told you it’s been years . . . There ought to be a big, I mean really big, willow down there and there isn’t. I must have taken the wrong road.”

  He helped her to her feet.

  “Back to the car,” he said.

  “That’s all?” she asked. She regretted it instantly.

  But Jeffers seemed not to notice. “That’s it,” he said. He threw an arm around her shoulders and helped walk her back to the vehicle.

  The closeness of the car cockpit seemed comforting to her. Jeffers gave her a small towel and both of them tried to dry themselves as best as possible. Jeffers continued laughing, mildly, as if terribly amused. He started the car and they headed back to the highway.

  “You wouldn’t think a person like me would screw up, would you?”

  “No,” she replied.

  “I mean,” he said, grinning, “I pride myself on thinking of just about every damn thing. Don’t leave anything to chance. Just goes to show, the best-laid plans . . .”

  He smiled. “What’s funny is that this place is really important to me. At least the memory of it is.”

  He smiled and drove the car slowly.

  “Well, too many years, I guess. Too many other roads.”

  “I still don’t know what we were looking for,” she said.

  He hesitated, then shrugged. “My first date,” he said. “My first real love.”

  “A girl?”

  “Of course.”

  He paused again.

  “Down one of these damn dirt roads that all look the same,” he said, “there’s a shady willow tree, set back aways in some scrub brush . . .”

  She nodded.

  “And that’s where I buried her.”

  He spoke these words with a sudden, unexpected, total harshness. They plunged into Anne Hampton’s heart.

  She felt a torrent of nausea overcome her and she clenched her teeth and waved wildly at Jeffers. He stopped the car, understanding instantly, threw open his door, and suddenly dragged her across the center console, across his lap, holding her head in the rain, where she was completely, violently sick.

  Night closed around them as they drove back toward New Orleans. They had spent the remainder of the afternoon in damp silence, but Jeffers’ mind had filled with memories. He was trying to remember the girl’s name. He knew it was Southern, like Billie Jo or Bobbi Jo, and he remembered her silver-spangled dress, cut too short and too tight, and which left little doubt as to what her profession was. He’d picked her up, trying to contain himself, knowing what he was going to do, acting nonchalant and flashing a wad of cash. She had complained, at first, when he started driving toward the outskirts of the city, but he remembered taking the extra twenty-dollar bill and tucking it into her cleavage and telling her he’d make it worth her effort. She had babbled on, the singsong accent and vapidity of her words disrupting the essence of his thoughts, and so, at the first available deserted location, he’d stopped the car, turned to her, and, as she lay back, closing her eyes, cold-cocked her. And then he had headed toward the location picked from a map, with its bastardized French name: the good earth. It had been easy to drive into the swampy darkness alone with his thoughts. It made no difference to him whether she was awake or not. It was the act that intrigued him.

  “She was a prostitute,” he said.

  Anne Hampton nodded glumly.

  “What life had she that she needed so badly?” he asked angrily.

  She didn’t respond.

  “You’re filled with silly antiquated ideas about right and wrong and morality,” he said.

  “You don’t understand,” he continued after a momentary silence. “She was born to die. I was born to kill. It was simply a matter of finding one another.”

  She turned toward him and started to say something but stopped.

  He spoke for her: “You want to say it’s wrong to take a life, right?”

  She nodded.

  “So maybe it is. What difference does it make?”

  She couldn’t reply.

  “I’ll tell you: it makes none.”

  He looked at her again.

  “Governments kill for policy. I kill for pleasure. We’re not all that goddamn different.”

  “It’s not that easy,” she said. “It can’t be.”

  “No? You think it’s hard to kill? You think it’s so damn hard? Okay,” he said. “Okay, goddammit. Okay.”

  The rain had lessened to a drizzle, but it made the headlights from the car streak through the night blackness. New Orleans glowed in front of them, and Jeffers accelerated the car toward the lights. He said nothing as they slid into the city, letting the late-night shadows from the high-intensity vapor lamps crease the darkness. She felt no comfort in the city, no more than she felt in the swamps, and she suddenly realized that to a person like Jeffers they were the same. She looked at Jeffers, at the set to his face and jaw, and felt her stomach churn.

  They meandered up and down the city streets. Jeffers peered through the windows, apparently looking for something, but she was unaware what. Suddenly he punched the brakes and steered to the sidewalk.

  “You think it’s so damn hard,” he said angrily. “It isn’t.”

  He searched up and down the street, then reached down into his weapon bag and came up with the short-barreled revolver. He pushed it under her nose. “Hard? Watch. Roll down your window.” She complied and the car imme
diately filled with damp, sticky humidity. She shivered. She did not know what was happening. Jeffers exited the car and walked around to her side. He bent down to the window. “Watch carefully,” he said. She nodded.

  He stepped away from the curb and she looked and saw a shape huddled in a dark building entranceway. She saw Jeffers look up and down the street again, then stride across the sidewalk.

  Jeffers poked at the derelict with his foot.

  “Wake up, old-timer,” he said.

  The man raised a grizzled head, still stuporous.

  Jeffers turned and looked back at Anne Hampton. She saw that the man was bearded, with a benign hoary curiosity, not angry at being awakened, only surprised. Her eyes met Jeffers’ and he looked hard at her. She felt as if she was caught in an inexplicable downdraft, and that she was tumbling wildly through the air, driven down by some great invisible force. She saw Jeffers turn back to the derelict, who seemed to be trying to find some words from his lost past to form into a question.

  “Good night, old fellow. Sorry it had to be like this,” Jeffers said.

  He leaned down abruptly and in a single fluid motion stuck the gun barrel into the man’s slightly gaping mouth. Jeffers raised his left hand to shield himself from any blowback.

  Then he pulled the trigger.

  There was a single muffled crack and the man seemed to jump, just once, then slump back as if returning to sleep.

  Anne Hampton opened her mouth to scream, but could not.

  Jeffers stepped away, glanced down the street again, and returned swiftly to the car. They pulled away from the curb slowly, turning at the corner, then again, and again, and again, weaving their way through the darkness in complete solitude.

  “Roll up your window,” Jeffers said.

  Her hand shook on the handle. Her breath came in short spasmodic bursts. She let small whimpering noises emerge instead of words.

  “You see how easy it is,” Jeffers said.

  He looked over at her.

  “It’s your fault,” he said.

  He paused.

  “If you hadn’t challenged me, then I wouldn’t have had to do such a despicable thing.”