by Gil Brewer
• • •
I heard a car door slam and tried to see, only I couldn’t see anything.
“He all right?” somebody said through a horrible roaring and roaring. “He all right?” And it seemed to echo and echo and I knew it was inside my head and that I was crazy. The voice went on and on, saying those same words over and over and gradually new words were added to the first. They boomed and roared in my head through awful sounds, gaining faster and faster on me.
“He all right?”
“All right all right all right?”
“He all right alive all right all right alive is he?”
“Give me a hand is he all right alive?”
“All right?”
“Is he dead?”
“Alive or dead?”
“Is he all right can you tell is he alive or dead?”
The echoes and the loud voices became louder and louder until I knew I screamed lying there on the sands, choking and burning. The voices went on and on in my head, and the scream was added to them, the loud pounding echoes, and then laughter was added, and more words, until inside my head words leaped and fought and howled amid screaming and laughter….
“Hahahahahahahahah is he all right is he alive? Give me a hand get him to talk he’s alive he’s all right shall hahahhahaha where’s that money Morgan Morgan Morgan come on sit up and is he all right hahahahaha Morgan Morgan …”
• • •
Far away I heard the faint screaming and the voices howling, very, very faraway as if they were in a canyon many miles from me, in the long, dark canyon of my head, where my head lay long and empty and dark and hollow with the booming back there.
• • •
Whispering, the laughter and screams.
• • •
Silence. The soft wash of water on the sands. Silence and emptiness and exhaustion and nothing and darkness.
My feet gently moved to and fro and up and down. And there was a great empty dark silence.
• • •
My feet moved up and down slowly and there was the soft washing of water on sands and my left arm rose and fell gently, up and down. I began to cough. Pain flashed through me and water rolled into my throat and I coughed again, spewing water and pain and sand into the darkness.
I tried to roll away from it. My whole body lifted and fell and I rolled quickly the other way and kept on rolling and then lay still. I began to feel rain coming down, like millions of pins pointing into my face, peppering me with cool pain and I just lay there in the very blessed silence with the darkness like a wet, hollow shroud.
• • •
There was nobody left in the world but me.
CHAPTER 19
The farmhouse was empty.
I broke in.
I was clothed in strips of torn wet cloth.
I turned on lights—lights everywhere … and saw the man in the mirror.
He laughed at me—he screamed with laughter and then he began to cry and then he laughed again.
He went away.
I could hear him talking, but I could no longer see him.
I could hear him walking through the farmhouse behind me, always just a little behind me, his feet dragging on the rough boards, his footfalls echoing like drumbeats on a big bass drum—boom—boom—boom—he walked.
I knew it was me.
I knew the man was me but I kept hearing him.
• • •
Somebody yelled something. I rolled off the bed and fell to the floor and lay there. I listened, but it was quiet, the room was dim with dawn. I tried to get up, moving stiffly, coughing. I came to my feet and couldn’t remember where I was.
I walked on wooden floors.
I was in a house. I came into the kitchen and then I realized that I was dressed in overalls and a blue denim shirt. There was a large mirror on the kitchen door and I saw myself. My face was bloated and splotched with bruises, but there was no blood on me. I found the bathroom and found traces of blood in the tub and on a towel and my clothes, what was left of them, were piled in a wet stack on the bathroom floor.
I returned to the kitchen and called out. “Hello?”
Nobody answered but the echo.
It began to return to me, and I sat down on a chair by the kitchen table. They had left me out there because they either thought I had died, or gone insane. I guessed I had gone insane. For a time. I vaguely recalled walking through endless fields, along dirt roads. I had no idea where I was, except that I was in a house. My arms and legs moved gratingly and there was dull pain all through me. But I was alive and sane again.
There was a sheet of paper on the table, a paper made from tearing a brown grocery sack apart. Words were written on it. I read them.
To whom it may concern:
This is to notify you that I’ve helped myself to the pick-up truck in your garage. I’ve just been away and come back and now I know your name is Blackwell—I found it in the desk in the living room. Mr. Blackwell, it’s necessary that I borrow your truck truck truck pick-up truck for a time but I will return it and pay for the of use thereof. I have also borrowed overalls, underwear, shirt and a pair of shoes that do not fit and these too shall be paid for.
Yours sincerely,
Tate Morgan.
I had also written my address along the bottom of the paper. I found a pencil and crossed out the repititious words and left the letter there.
Pick-up truck. It must be that I’d never made it.
I glanced once again at the window. It wasn’t getting any lighter out.
I wasn’t hungry.
What I had to do flooded through me and I just sat there staring at the top of the old kitchen table. There was an odor of stale coffee and food in the kitchen.
Janet.
There was only one thing that could save me now. The truth. I stood up, deciding to go to Zachary Halquist first and tell him the truth, because he deserved it first. Perhaps I could get his help somehow, and take the consequences.
I had to find Janet. There was nothing else to do.
• • •
The pick-up truck was in the garage. I crossed the ignition wires and got it started, backed out of the farmyard and started driving on a dirt road. It wasn’t long before I realized that it was night coming on, not morning. I’d been out for many hours.
Pretty soon I began to recognize the country. I headed for the main road and started toward home. It was dark as I drove the truck along U. S. 19 again, and all that had passed was a dark nightmare in my head.
I had lied to everybody and there was nothing left worth lying about now. I knew that it was all done, and that I was done along with it and then very gradually it kept coming to me more and more how I had to find Janet.
There was that and nothing else.
I pushed the truck as fast as it would go. I thought of a lot of things driving through the night like that. It frightened me to dwell on what had happened out there on the beach with Morrell and his two men. I wondered what it had been that had kept me alive?
• • •
“Tate!”
Thelma stood in the doorway. Quickly, she stepped outside and closed the door. She clung to the door, staring at me under the dim saffron glow from the porch light.
“I want to see your husband,” I said.
“No, Tate—don’t go in there. It would be all up with you—you know that. Where have you been? It’s been two days.”
“Two days?”
She nodded. “What’s happened to you?”
“Haven’t you talked with Morrell?”
She shook her head. She was wearing a black housecoat, the cloth shining softly in the porch light, gleaming in her thick ash-blonde hair. She looked just like she always looked, beautiful and composed. There was no fright in her now.
“You turned Morrell loose on me,” I said. “Why did you give him that letter?”
“I don’t know.” She pushed back against the door, looking first at me,
then at the clothes I wore, then at my face again. She swallowed. She wanted to say more about how I looked but she didn’t dare. I knew my head and face were swollen badly and when I tried to grin at her, it was stiff-muscled and very sore. I could imagine what that grin must look like.
She swallowed again and turned her eyes away.
“You—you hadn’t better come in.”
“Why did you give Morrell that letter, Thelma?”
She did not answer.
“You’ve given up on getting the money?” I asked. She said nothing.
“You can’t quit, can you? Only now that I look the way I do, you don’t want me anymore. Right?”
She would not look at me. She turned quickly and opened the door, rushed inside. She tried to close the door, but I leaned against it. She fought, trying vainly to close the door.
“Go away, Tate! You can’t come in! I won’t let you!”
I shoved the door and she fell back.
“Where’s Zachary?”
“What do you want him for?”
“Where is he?”
“You can’t see him, Tate—I won’t let you see him.”
I turned on her there in the hall. I reached over and slammed the door shut, and it was like a gunshot. I looked into those lying eyes of hers and she began to back away from me. I stalked her. She backed until she was over against the wall and I thrust my face close to hers.
“I’m going to tell him the truth, Thelma,” I said.
Her mouth came open and her eyes widened and that was all. Her skin was smooth and very beautiful there in the light in the hallway.
There was no sound in the house. Then I heard him call from upstairs, his voice sounding distant and weak.
“Thelma? Who’s there?”
“He listens now,” she said.
“It’s about time, honey. And he’s going to listen to something else in just a minute. I’m going to tell him all about you. All about everything. But I want you to know something.”
“Yes?” She said it weakly, plastered back against the wall, like that, her red lips forming the word slowly.
“I’m not doing it to get back at you, or at anybody. I’m doing it because I have to. Just remember that. You’re involved and that’s the only reason. I don’t really hate you, Thelma—nobody could ever really hate you—except maybe him—up there.”
She tried to twist away, but I caught her arm and held her tightly. I turned her slowly until she faced me and she half-smiled up at me, but it was a weak attempt at something she had no heart for right then.
She was frightened now.
“Don’t, Tate,” she said. “Please don’t tell him.”
“Do you know where my wife is?” I said.
“No—no, I don’t know anything.”
I turned and started walking toward the stairs. She ran along beside me, pulling at my arm.
“Don’t tell him, Tate. Don’t you see? Then he’ll divorce me. He’ll have perfect grounds for divorce then—don’t you see? I won’t get anything—I won’t get anything at all from him if you tell him.”
I kept walking toward the stairs.
“Tate!” she whispered, her voice frightened and filled with anguish. “Listen Tate—I don’t care how you look. You’re hurt, is all. Johnny thought he killed you. But nobody can kill you. Listen, Tate—if you don’t tell him I’ll go away with you.”
I started up the stairs. She held to my arm, pulling at me. I yanked my arm free of her and she just stood there at the foot of the stairs.
“Don’t you hear me?” she said, whispering it. “Don’t you hear what I said?”
I kept on up the stairs. Then I turned and looked at her and she was huddled on the bottom step, watching me and there was a very curious look in her eyes.
Then slowly her eyes moved along the stairs and I followed where she was looking.
Zachary Halquist stood on the balcony overlooking the hall. He leaned with both hands on the railing, wearing his white pajamas, looking very neat, but a little drunk. He was watching her and nodding.
“I heard,” he said. “I heard what you said, Thelma.”
She collapsed on the stairs, her face in her arms.
I went on up and he had gone to his room. I went into his room and he was just getting into bed again. He did not so much as look at me until he was in bed and under his sheet. He reached across to the night table and picked up a tall glass with a glass straw in it. The glass looked as if it contained red port wine. He sipped once, then looked over at me.
“Sit down,” he said.
I sat down in the same chair I had been sitting in the other day, just before everything started. He kept looking at me and then he looked away and took a sip of the wine.
“Have you been to a doctor?” he said.
“No.” I cleared my throat. “There’s something I’d like to tell you, Mr. Halquist.”
He nodded. “You should go to a doctor as soon as possible. You look pretty bad to me. I’m just a little drunk, you know? My doctor allows me a small glass of port every day. He knows I’m going to die anyway, and I know it. So I take a full bottle every now and then. Tonight is one of those nights when I feel I’m entitled to a full bottle, you see? Not just because you’re here—not really. Mostly because I have a thirst. That’s the real reason. Now, what was it, Morgan?”
I stared at him.
“The money?” he said. “What does money really mean to a dying man, Morgan? Tell me that?”
I just kept on staring.
“Of course, I want to hear your story. I was hoping I would hear it before I died—so go ahead.”
I told him. There was nothing to it. He sat there sipping his wine, listening. He nodded now and again, and that was all. Once he smiled. It was when I told him I was sorry about my part in hurting him. “And now I’ve got to find my wife,” I said. “Can you understand that?”
“Of course I can. You love her, don’t you? You’ve just discovered that fact.” He set his empty glass over on the table and looked at me again. “Of course you want to find her. I don’t blame you, Morgan.”
“And that’s all you have to say?”
“You’ve punished yourself enough for what you’ve done. And if I have any imagination, I believe you’re due for still more punishment.”
I stood up.
“Yes,” he said. “I suppose you have to go.”
“Did you call the police?” I said, glancing toward the telephone, half hidden by a bottle of port wine on the table.
“No. I thought of it, naturally. But I didn’t do it. As I told you, I’m dying. I’d like to know how this all finishes. But I’d like to see it finish right—I don’t want to finish it myself.”
“I see.”
“I don’t really believe you do, Morgan. Not yet. But you will—in time—perhaps even tonight.”
“I really don’t have your money, Mr. Halquist.”
“I believe you. That I do believe.”
“Has my brother been to see you?” I asked.
He nodded. He did not speak.
“What did he have to say?”
“Probably you could figure that out for yourself. He said he was doing everything he could to stop you—he said there was the chance that you had left the country with the money and that we’d never hear of you again. He’s quite a man, your brother is.”
“Yes.”
“Belligerent type.”
“Yes.”
“Slow and methodical,” Halquist said. “Very slow and very methodical. A methodical man. Stolid. Very honest and truthful.”
“Yes. He’s all of those things.”
“True.”
Halquist was grinning. He kept watching me and smiling and grinning and he began to chuckle and suddenly I knew what he was chuckling about. I stood there watching him and it was like being shot.
He was laughing loudly. “You’ve guessed!” he said.
I couldn’t speak.
“Y
ou’ve got it!” he laughed, choking a little now. “You’ve hit on it, Morgan,” he said. “I figured it out yesterday. I’ve waited and waited. And now you’ve got it!”
I turned and left the room. He was choking back there—choking and coughing and laughing.
“You finally figured it out!” he shouted.
I ran down the stairs. Thelma had not moved. I went past her and on out the door into the night.
CHAPTER 20
My brother Sam had a single room over on Bayside Drive in the Cedar Grove Apartments. I went over there and inside, and up to the second floor and stood in front of his door. I had hoped I wasn’t too late. Standing in front of his door, I knew I wasn’t too late. I heard her laugh and then I heard his voice.
I tried the door. It was locked.
I lifted my foot and jacked it with all my might against the panel just beside the knob. The door shuddered and swung inward as the lock cracked.
Sam whirled. He was standing by the bed. Janet was on the bed. She was naked, kneeling, packing clothes in a large suitcase. She turned and saw me standing there, her breasts full and bold, her thick auburn hair swinging across her face, her eyes wide with shock. She had been laughing. It stopped and she just sat there with a shirt in her hands, ready to put it in the suitcase, staring at me.
Sam wore a pair of shorts. They were red and white striped. He whirled now, picked up his gun, grabbing it from the holster where the harness hung over the back of a chair.
“Don’t move, Tate,” he said.
I came into the room and closed the door and looked at them. I looked at Janet mostly. It was pretty awful, what went on inside me. All the way over here in the pick-up truck from Halquist’s I had known they would be here. Or that they would have at least been here—that this was where she had been all the time. But in my mind too, I kept praying that I was wrong. Because at this last moment I had found Janet … and at that same moment I had lost her.
Halquist had figured it out. He would have held me there until I realized.
I looked at Janet and tried to find the woman I loved.
She wasn’t there and she was there.
That sounded foolish, thinking that, but it was true. She wore nothing at all, her lush and very beautiful body still kneeling and abandoned on my brother’s bed. The cream-colored, off-white flesh that is so perfect in some auburn haired women was Janet’s. The full thighs, flushed plumply out now as she knelt on her heels, watching me. She slowly laid the shirt in the suitcase, and I was conscious of both of them breathing. I couldn’t move my eyes away from her gaze. It was as if neither of us could look away, and I saw the slow pulse in her throat, not even beating overtime.
