“That’s Rob Hughes,” they said. “I know him by that tooth with the gold cap, on the side there. See it wink when you pass the torch close over his face. He was always showing it around last year when he first got it put in. I used to see it glint like that when he’d open his mouth to puff out a match after lighting up his pipe. Do it again, move it past his face.”The mouth was wide open already, in an arrested death scream; there was no need to pry it wider. “See it glimmer? Catch it?”
Other heads nodded. “Yeah, that’s Hughes.”
“That’s enough,” Molloy said. “Cut it out.” They wanted to keep on doing it indefinitely.
They made up a party to go and break the news to his wife. Molloy went along, for purely professional reasons. At this end, there wasn’t enough left of the man to tell very much about him; there was bound to be more at the other end, there couldn’t very well be less.
“They’ve been fighting like cats and dogs for ten years,” somebody said on the way over.
“The quiet kind of fighting, behind closed doors,” somebody else added.
“Then how did anybody else know about it?” Molloy asked not unreasonably.
“You could see the marks on her afterwards, each time. She was always having ‘accidents’ around the house. Never saw a woman have more things fall on her, or trip over more buckets and get lamed—”
“Sh-h,” somebody cautioned softly. Not out of respect for the dead, but out of proximity to the living. There was a light in the window.
She came to the door, and the four of them—there were three others besides Molloy—pushed into the room, took off and swiveled their hats, and suffered a momentary attack of group tongue-tiedness. Not Molloy, perhaps; he wasn’t trying to talk, he was just trying to watch.
She was past fifty, and tall and thin and steely-looking. As though she’d been fused in a crucible of hate, and all the soft parts smelted away.
She had to speak first, as women often do in tragedies. “Something’s happened,” she said impassively. They nodded.
“To Rob,” she said. She bit off a thread she’d been working into some cloth when the summons at the door interrupted her. Then she added, “I reckon. Or else you wouldn’t be here in a parcel like this. Without him with you.” She berthed the needle in a scrap of chamois or felt that already held several others, and waited.
“That lion, that lion that escaped, got him,” they said falteringly.
She took it with strange calm. She didn’t scream or cry, and several of them that were at the ready to hold her up if she started to go down found they didn’t have to. She stayed up.
“Did’t get him pretty bad?” she said.
“He’s dead, Hannah.”
“I know,” she said, as if that wasn’t what she’d asked. “But did it get him pretty bad?”
“It got him pretty bad, Hannah. Pretty bad.”
Some of them said—said afterwards—she smiled at that; bitterly. Some of them said she couldn’t have, the others must have just imagined it, it was a trick of the light. But some of them still said, even after that, they were pretty sure they’d seen her smile. Molloy didn’t say whether he had one way or the other.
Presently she reseated herself in the rocker she had been occupying when they first knocked. But not from weakness or from grief, apparently more as an indication that the interview was about over. To do so, she displaced a mass of material, a dress of flowered pattern, white upon a blue ground, that she had been working upon, and placed this on her lap once more in readiness to continue.
Molloy’s eyes hadn’t left it the whole time he’d been in the room. He’d brought the scrap of bloodied goods along with him. He took it out and unpapered it now, in full sight of her. There was scarcely enough of it left unbloodied to indicate what the original pattern or colors had been. It was oblong in shape, however, and a faulty oblong, growing narrower at one end than at the other.
She glanced at it with perfect unblinking composure; even, one might say, with lukewarm interest. “That’s from this dress I’m working on now,” she said. “My Sunday dress. I found a piece scissored out of it. I wasn’t aiming to wear it tonight, but I just happened to take it down and look at it. Then I decided to stay home and fix it.” She held open the folds to expose a mutilation. Oblong in shape, a faulty oblong, growing narrower at one end than at the other. “I was just patching it up, with the closest match I could get.”
No one said anything. She answered the unheard question. “Early today I killed a chicken for supper. He might have used that to mop up after me—kind of messy, you know—and then kept it with him.”
Some of their faces were a little white. She went on sewing. She was the only one doing any talking. The only one able to.
“He was going to take me down to see that tent show tonight. He’d been in town this afternoon and seemed to think I’d like it. I didn’t want to go, but he coaxed me real bad. Seemed to have his heart set on it.” She smoothed her work tidily. “But then he got fidgety, said he’d go down ahead, and I could follow. He told me where to find him. He told me to meet him by the lions’ cage. Said there’d be a lot of folks there, and I should wait for him right smack in that one place, and not stir away.” One of the men began to reach backhand for the doorknob, as though he wanted to get out of the room, didn’t like it in there any more.
She went on talking. Dutifully taking stitches, and talking.
“I saw him take something from the tool chest before he left this afternoon. We got a tool chest, you know, out in back. Didn’t see what it was, but I went out and looked after he left. There was a pair of pliers missing and a rasp. Guess that must have been what he took. Dunno what he’d want them for, I’m sure. Especially to take down to town with him.”
And those that said she’d smiled the first time said that now she smiled again. But those that said she hadn’t then still said she hadn’t now.
“Let’s go,” one of the men said thickly, as though he were gagging.
“But then he did curious things every now and then. About six months ago I found an ax lying on the floor under our bed one night. I picked it up and handed it to him handle first, told him he must have mislaid it. He allowed he must have, and took and put it back where it belonged. I never found it out of place from that day on.”
Molloy spoke for the first time since he’d been in the place. “Did you own the farm, Mrs. Hughes?”
“Yep,” she snapped. “I certainly did. It was in my name. I saw to that years ago.”
“You’re a very brave woman,” he remarked half under his breath.
“It’s not that most womenfolks are so brave,” she contradicted. “It’s just that most menfolks are such cowards.”
That was about all she said.
“Good night,” she concluded as they were filing out. “Thanks for coming around to tell me. I’ll ask you to excuse me now. I’ve got to finish mending this dress he took a chunk out of. Then I’ve got to get it dyed soon’s I can. It’s the only thing I’ve got fit to wear to the funeral.”
17
The Wait:
Moments Before Eternity
THE ROOM DOOR WAS LOCKED now, on the inside. The key had been withdrawn from the lock.
(11:46) Reid was huddled in a big overstuffed chair; so thin, so shriveled, he resembled one of those elongated rag dolls, left propped there in a sitting position by someone, head to chair back, feet to floor. He was staring wide-eyed at nothing. His eyes gave out no impression of life, took back none. They were like inserts of agate peering out through almond-shaped ridges of hard, corrugated flesh. A hand could have sliced past them an inch away, and they would not have flickered.
The chest rose and fell; if you looked intently you could see it. That was the only indication of life in the whole stringy frame.
Shawn was perched slantwise on the broad rounded arm of that same chair, making a protective screen for its occupant on that side. Reid was gripping his near arm tightly
with both hands, fingers lashed in a tourniquet just above the elbow; as if in that one arm lay his whole salvation. Shawn’s other arm, the outside one to the chair, ended within the tautly stretched outside pocket of his coat. But the impression that came through the cloth was not the rounded one of a hand but the semi-squared one of a sharply defined, angular piece of metal.
She was across the room, her back to the two of them, head inclined to a small table on which had been placed a basin of water. There was a slight rippling sound, cautiously checked as though she was not anxious to attract attention to what she was doing; then she turned and came back toward the chair, holding extended between her hands a freshly steeped bandage or application, made of a man’s flat-folded handkerchief.
(11:47) She bent over Reid. His eyes never moved, even at the imminence of the bandage.
“Here, cover them awhile,” she pleaded.
She placed it gently across his burning rock-hard eyes, smoothing it, softly pressing it down with her finger tips. Over and over stroking it, shutting out horror.
Then cautiously she withdrew her hands at last, allowing it to remain adhered of its own wetness.
His head moved weakly, as though he were only now becoming belatedly aware that sight had been shut off. He tried to shake it in refusal. “No, no—” he protested. One hand relinquished Shawn’s arm, tried to go up to it and peel it off. She caught it gently and stopped it, led it back to where it had been. “Rest them, just for a while. Don’t look at it. Stop looking for a minute.”
“It goes faster when I can’t see it. It cheats on me.”
“I’m here beside you, he’s here beside you.” She perched on the opposite arm of the chair to Shawn, that presumably she had already been occupying until a moment or two before.
Reid was now walled in on both sides. Their upper bodies, inclining somewhat toward each other, even formed a sheltering arch above him, though not quite a closed one. It was to Shawn’s arm, however, he continued to cling tenaciously, and not to hers. Her hand stroked his hair soothingly, over and over. Until the gossamer sweeps became lighter and lighter, then stopped altogether.
(11:48) They watched him cautiously for a moment, both looking down on him from above in mutually conspiring silence.
Then their eyes sought each other, by common accord. She pointed toward the clock. Then made a twisting motion with her hand, counterclockwise. Meaning, turning it back.
He pointed downward, using his head for indicator, to the tight grip on his arm that held him immovable.
She nodded slightly, turned a finger toward herself in alternative, meaning she would be the one to go.
He withdrew his hand from the gun-weighted pocket, stayed her with a slight cutting motion, pointed toward himself after all. Then he started to withdraw his body little by little across the chair back, first to the strictly perpendicular, then outward to gain the clear floor space beyond the chair, upon which to arise.
Reid felt him stir, instantly clove to him with redoubled intensity, that almost held a shudder in it.
“My foot’s asleep. Just let me change it a minute.”
He unlocked the terror-welded hands, pried them off one at a time, passed them to her to take into her keeping. She had to hold them back against their almost reflex attempt to swing back to where they had been.
Shawn was already erect and free of the chair.
(11:49) “No—don’t get up,” the blindfolded face grimaced.
“I’m standing here right beside you.” He gave a heavy stamp to the floor, in feigned attempt to restore his circulation. “Just let me stand up on it a minute.”
She gave her head a sideward cast toward the clock, telling him to be quick.
He moved fast but carefully, elongating his strides but picking his way so that his steps fell soundlessly, moving wide around objects of furniture to avoid the risk of brushing against them. When he reached the clock he placed hands to it, while continuing to stare watchfully back over his shoulder, to make sure Reid had not detected his withdrawal.
The half-blanked-out face remained immobile. It was hers that was aquiver with agonizing expectancy.
He turned his head to what he was doing. He covered the latch controlling the rimmed face pane with his palm, trying to smother the sound it would make, even while he tweaked it open with his other hand. The click came through blurred but hollowly audible.
Reid didn’t move.
He had the circular glass casing standing out at right angles now. There was a wire-thin squeak from the recalcitrant hinges, at the very instant the motion of opening had already stopped.
Suddenly Reid began to writhe violently in the chair. One of his hands escaped her, flew up to his face, clawed off the hampering blind. His eyes suddenly appeared, not as though they had been covered over until now, but as though they had only just that moment emerged into his face again, after some freakish physiological disappearance beneath its surface.
(11:50) Shawn’s hand was at the nub of the two indicators on the clock face, about to stretch them into a wider angle. He dropped it as though their touch had burned him.
They were silent, all three of them. Even from Reid there were no outcries. There didn’t need to be; his dilated, accusing eyes spoke for him.
“Come back, Shawn,” she sighed at last in resignation. “Come back.”
Shawn moved slowly away from the clock, back toward the chair. He sank back onto the arm of it which he’d originally occupied.
Reid’s eyes were burning questioningly up toward him, unseen behind the turn of his shoulder. “You didn’t do it yet? You didn’t touch it?”
“I didn’t do it,” Shawn said listlessly.
“Swear you didn’t. Swear.”
“He didn’t, father. I watched.”
Reid’s fingers wriggled around the curve of Shawn’s forearm, like white worms. “Have you still got the key there? The key to this room?”
“It’s still there.”
(11:51) “Show me, make it sound. Let me hear it.”
Shawn touched his pocket, and something jangled restlessly.
Five more white worms crept up the other side of the arm, to commingle with the first five. “Is your gun still loaded? Are you sure it’s loaded?”
“I showed you only a couple of minutes ago.”
“Break it, look again, make sure.”
Shawn took it out, held it with both hands, wrenched it open. Vacantly, without looking at it himself. The worms crept over it and gropingly felt of the chambers one by one.
Shawn forced it closed again, still without looking at it himself. “The room around us is locked,” he said tonelessly. “The house around the room is locked. The grounds around the house are being watched.” His eyes contracted into a squint at something that he alone was staring at and he alone could see; some thought, some emotion. “Nothing; nothing can get through.”
(11:52) Reid took a deep breath. “You hate me, son. You hated me just then for a minute. I could feel it go through you just then. I could feel your body harden for a minute.”
Shawn said, with no emotion in his voice whatever, “Don’t call me son, sir. I had a father of my own. He wasn’t afraid to die.”
“But, then, he didn’t know when it would be.”
“My mother, then. She wasn’t afraid to, either. She did know. She had cancer. And they couldn’t use anesthetics, because her heart was weak. She smiled feebly up at me, at the end. The last thing she said was, ‘I’m sorry, Tom, to be giving so much trouble.’” He fell silent.
The wriggling fingers slipped from his arm; they mangled together, in the semblance of an afflicted handclasp. Then they crept up over Reid’s face, covering it for a moment. As if trying to brush the fear off it.
“I’ll try not to give you any more trouble,” he said through them. “I’ll try not to—” He swallowed hard, dropped his hands, folded them manfully one atop the other. “See, Shawn? I’ll sit here very quiet—like this—and I’ll
just wait.”
The detective smiled a little, with a sort of pensive ruefulness. He reached around backhand, and he gripped Reid’s shoulder and pressed it encouragingly for a long moment.
(11:52) “Call me son,” he said softly.
18
Hue and Cry
IT WAS THE TYPE OF lunchroom that stays open all night. It was almost clinically white. The tops of all the tables were white; the walls were faced with white tiling to a point halfway to the ceiling. Their remainder, and the ceiling itself, were daubed with a hasty coat of white, rent and peeling now in places. Down the center of the ceiling from front to back ran a row of milky-white light bowls, alternating with spare-ribbed electric fans, at rest now. Even the jacket of the attendant behind the order counter was white, but this designation was by courtesy only.
On the wall a sign said, “Watch your hat and coat. Not responsible,” and then ran into smaller lettering.
A middle-aged male cashier drowsed behind a desk flanking the entrance. The counterman, back at the rear of the room, pored over a newspaper for lack of other duties.
In between there was nobody. Nobody but one man. He sat slumped at one of the white-topped tables, hat brim low protecting his eyes against the overbearing, two-way play of snowy dazzle, coming down from the light bowls and up from the vitreous tabletops.
He was not in there to eat. He was in there to rest, perhaps. Or perhaps he was in there because he had no other place to be. A long-neglected mug of coffee stood before him. It had cooled to a point where the milk in it had separated from the coffee, drifted to the sides, forming a hollow white ring. In the middle of it the coffee was back almost to its original blackness. A spoon handle thrust up through the center of this like a submerged spar. There was also on the table before him a pasteboard ticket bearing numbers up to 100, with the 5 punched out of it. And nothing else.
He sat there inert, in the somnolent silence of the place, in a sort of comatose consciousness. He had an air of not having moved for a long time past, a full half hour perhaps. Even the cashier moved more than he, though his eyes were closed. His head kept nodding lower, then correcting itself at intervals, remaining erect for a brief while, then beginning its nodding-lower all over again. Even the counterman moved more than he. He turned a newspaper page every now and then, moistening his thumb each time preparatory to doing so. He didn’t move at all. He sat there inert, lost in forgetfulness or reverie, one arm spineless across his lap, the other unstirring at full length drop from his shoulder, as though there were no muscular mechanism in it to lift or bend it. Only his mind, perhaps, was not at a dead halt.
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