Whom Gods Destroy

by Clifton Adams

  I snapped the set off and sat woodenly, listening to the pounding in my chest. Damn her! Goddamn her! But Lola was out of reach. There wasn't a thing I could do.

  But the thing I dreaded now was telling Vida. I went back into the cabin and stood looking down at her, and I think at that moment I loved her more than I had ever loved before. I touched her hair—it was damp with perspiration—and she opened her eyes. Pale, tired eyes.

  “Roy!” She put her hands to her breasts. “I didn't know at first where we were,” she said at last. “What time is it?”

  “Almost one o'clock. We'll have to start driving soon.”

  Suddenly I took Vida in my arms and crushed her. I felt a dampness as I kissed her. They were my tears, not hers. “Vida—I've got to tell you something. I've got to try to explain, and I don't know where to start.”

  Finally she spoke. “Is it about Sid?” She worked her fingers into my hair and slowly brought my face down to her breasts and held me close. Then her arms went lax and she lay back, her eyes closed.

  “You killed Sid,” she said flatly. “I think I've known it all the time. But I wouldn't let myself believe it.”

  I took her shoulders in my hands. “Vida, you've got to believe me! I didn't kill him, he killed himself. He left a note for you, but I found it and destroyed it.”

  “Because of Seaward?”

  The right words just wouldn't come. I said, “All right, I made a deal with Seaward, and Keating was in on it too. But what the hell, Sid did the same thing, didn't he? But I didn't kill him, it was suicide.”

  She laughed suddenly, and the unexpected sound shocked me. “We make a nice pair, don't we, Roy? We both killed Sid, just as though we had put knives into him, and whether or not it was legally suicide is not important. We've broken every commandment. What else is left for us?”

  She started laughing again, but it sounded like no laughter I had ever heard before. I squeezed her shoulders viciously. “Stop it! I say stop it!”

  The laughter broke off, hung uneasily in the silence of the room. “I did it for you, Vida. Anything I may have done was for you and because I loved you.”

  “And Lola,” she said.

  I felt myself cringing. She went on, evenly now. Lifelessly. “Remember when you broke your hand, Roy? I told you that she was hurtproof, that the harder you hit her the more you would hurt yourself.” She gazed vacantly at the shabby room. “Was it worth it, Roy?”

  I had a sudden dazzling vision of Lola as she had looked that night in the crib. I remembered the enormous oath I had taken beside the highway, as I had walked madly through the darkness. I sat there, the white-hot anger bottled up inside me, compressed and hard in my brain. An anger that I knew would be with me always, sealed with hopelessness. Still, there was the savage satisfaction of that night, and—Yes, by God, it was worth it!

  Vida could see the answer in my face. She made a small, hopeless sound as she lay back on the bed.

  And, at last, I told her. Everything. I heard my voice going on—and on—and on—I listened abstractedly as the sordidness unrolled. And when it was over I fell across her, there on the bed, and held her hard in my arms.

  After a while, she said wearily, “The police must know by now. We'd better go.”

  We heard on the radio that the police had found the Buick in Dallas, and that scared me. The Texas troopers would be sure to have a pickup on the Ford, and every minute we stayed in it added to the danger.

  When we got to the next town I parked it on a side street, then went to a service station and used the telephone to find out when we could catch a bus for Houston. When I got back to the car, Vida was sitting quietly, exactly the way I had left her.

  “We'll have to leave the car here,” I said. “We can get a bus for Houston, but not for almost three hours. We'll just have to wait.”

  “Where?”

  “I don't know. There's a little hotel about two blocks from here that ought to do. We could use some rest.”

  Vida looked at herself in the rear-view mirror. “When they find the car,” she said, “they're sure to start watching le bus stations. We'll have to do something to change the way we look.”

  I rubbed the thick stubble on my face. “I can shave and leave my mustache; that may change my appearance some.”

  Vida thought about it. “Get some hair dye,” she said after a moment. “We'll see what we can do after we get the hotel.”

  The hotel was a wooden two-story building about two blocks from the center of town. Vida had taken off her lipstick, darkened her eyebrows with an eyebrow pencil, and put a scarf over her head to hide her almost-white lair. We brought two suitcases and there was no trouble checking in—then I went down to a drugstore and bought two packages of dark brown hair tint.

  “This ought to do,” Vida said. There was no enthusiasm in her voice. She studied herself in the dresser mirror, then said, “See if you can find a razor blade.”

  I got a package of razor blades out of one of the suitcases, gave her one and she began whacking ruthlessly at her long hair. While she did that I shaved, leaving the mustache, and by the time I had finished, Vida had hacked away almost half of her hair. “Mine will take longer,” she said. “I'll do it first.”

  She mixed the tint in the wash basin in the corner of the room and began applying it to her hair with a toothbrush. The change was amazing, almost unbelievable. When she finished, she looked like a dark-haired boy who had just been swimming. She went to the mirror, studying herself again, then she began rolling up the ends of her hair, securing the tight curls close to her scalp until her head bristled with hairpins.

  “When it dries,” she said almost to herself, “it will be all right. Bend over the basin. I'll darken your hair now; later you can go over your mustache with my eyebrow pencil.”

  It took about an hour. We flushed away that blonde, glistening mass of hair that Vida had chopped off, we cleaned the dye out of the basin, and then we flushed away the paper packages the dye had come in. Vida sat in front of the window, saying nothing, letting the hot breeze dry her hair. I sat on the bed, looking at her, aching to hold her.

  Around three o'clock she took the hairpins out and combed her hair and brushed it, and the ends snapped up briskly, boyishly.

  I darkened the tips of my mustache and it looked all right to me. It changed the way I looked.

  “Hadn't we better go?” Vida said.

  I looked at my watch. “Yes, I guess so.” We put everything back in the suitcase and went out of the room.

  20

  I DON'T REMEMBER THE NAME OF THE next town. It was a squat, rambling little place, slow-baking in that South-Texas sun, and the bus pulled in there for a fifteen-minute rest stop.

  “What are we going to do when we get to Houston?” Vida asked flatly.

  “I don't know yet,” I said. “But it's a big place and it's easy to get lost in a place like that.”

  “What if the police have found that Ford?” She was gazing out the window.

  “The odds are against it,” I said. “We don't have to worry about that.” We had the suitcases in the baggage rack over our heads, and I got one of them down and opened it. My mouth tasted sour and dry, so I got out the toothpaste and a toothbrush, and while I was fumbling for them I found the pistol.

  Vida made a small sound in her throat when she saw it. “What are you going to do?”

  “Clean up a little and brush my teeth and see if it won't make me feel better.” But that wasn't what she meant. I was holding the gun between two shirts; the butt was cool, deadly in my palm. Somehow, there was comfort in the feel of that hard, cool steel. I slipped the gun out of the suitcase and pushed it into my pocket. We went into the bus station where wrinkled, grimy travelers began lining up at a soda fountain. I went into the men's room, a steaming, concrete-floored box. I splashed cool water on my face, and brushed my teeth furiously. Combing my hair, I was startled to see the leathery, haunted face looking at me in the mirror. A heavy-set bu
s driver came in and used the next wash basin.

  “South-bound bus ready to load,” he said. “All right. I'll be there.”

  He kept looking at me. What is it, you sonofabitch? I thought grimly. What are you looking at? After a while he tramped out, frowning.

  Had he recognized me? Had they broadcast my description—? Probably, but I looked a lot like a million other guys, and unless he had a reason to be suspicious.... I felt of the gun in my pocket. There was nobody else in the men's room now; I took the gun out, held it, somehow getting a savage strength out of touching it. Suddenly I froze. There was a whiplike sound, whack!, of the men's room door slamming shut. I wheeled as though somebody had put a knife into me. Nobody was there.

  I snatched the door open, but he was gone now, whoever it had been.

  I went back to the front of the bus station, by the soda fountain, but everything looked exactly the way it had been before. Except for that heavy-set driver. He was in a phone booth, his face red, sweating as he talked.

  You sonofabitch! I almost yelled.

  But that wasn't going to help. I was almost sick with anger at myself. In a few minutes they'll be after you, Foley, every farmer in town who owns a gun!

  I looked for Vida then, and she was nowhere. Blind panic seized me then. The bus driver came out of the telephone booth and I started running toward the side exit where the buses were parked. I forgot about Vida, I forgot about everything, I just ran.

  “Say, you!” The driver hollered.

  I burst through the doors and sprinted headlong up the sidewalk toward the center of town. I could hear them pounding after me, yelling at me. I leaped off a high curb at an intersection and almost ran into the car.

  I don't know where it came from. I didn't see it until I heard the sickening squeal of tramped brakes, and then the big chrome front end was crashing down on top of me, looking as big as a tank. I seemed to freeze in the middle of the street. Somehow he missed me, and the car came to a shuddering stop against the curb.

  Somehow, that gun came out of my pocket and jumped into my hand. Before the driver knew what was happening, I was in the front seat with him, the muzzle of the .38 almost in his mouth.

  “Get out!” I cried.

  He was a little bald-headed guy with weak blue eyes and a startled mouth. I whipped the pistol barrel across his face and he fell back against the door, looking as though he wanted to cry. The fat bus driver and three or four others were less than half a block away, and the sound of their shouting almost drove me insane.

  I jerked the door open on the driver's side. I shoved him out into the street; then I got under the wheel. The bus driver's posse was only a few steps away when I got the car started, spurted into the street.

  It was a Chrysler, with plenty of guts under the hood. I slammed into a corner, and screamed around it.

  About a block down I hit a red light, almost crashed into a stream of traffic. I twisted the Chrysler to the right, fell into the stream, then spurted ahead again. Almost immediately the bus station loomed up in front of me.

  I was right back where I had started! Then I thought, That's all right. Let them chase their tails for a few minutes. I had been so intent on getting away that I hadn't thought of anything else, not even Vida, until I saw her in the street waving frantically.

  I slammed to a stop and people began pouring out of the bus station, yelling, as Vida jerked the car door open and got in.

  “Roy!”

  “Just keep looking behind us,” I said, “and tell me if we're being followed.”

  She looked back, her eyes big, her face even paler than usual. I spotted a state-highway sign up ahead, turned the Chrysler wide open and headed south. Abruptly, we were on the prairie and the town was behind us.

  We blazed over the highway with the speedometer rocking on 90, then 95, and I thought wildly: Catch me! Catch me, if you can! The excitement of speed, the roar, the flash of nameless objects darting by, filled me with a crazy exhilaration.

  “Roy!” Vida was shouting in my ear. “Won't they call ahead to the next town and tell them to stop us?”

  God, yes! I thought.

  “What are you going to do, Roy!”

  “I'll think of something.”

  The answer came as we roared down a gentle slope, past a blue convertible. I began easing my foot off the accelerator and the speedometer dropped down to 90, 80, 70, and finally I saw what I was looking for, a country road winding off into the prairie brush, off into nowhere.

  “Just do as I say,” I said, looking back at the convertible. We rocked to a stop and I got out and began waving the convertible down. The tires squealed as he slowed down, then he pulled off the highway, onto the shoulder and rolled along in second gear, stopping behind the Chrysler.

  “Car trouble, mister?” he called. “There's a garage about five miles down the highway. Jump in, I'll be glad to give you a lift.”

  I tossed the keys to the Chrysler in Vida's lap and said, “Follow us.” Then without waiting for an answer, I went back to the convertible and said, “Move over.”

  He was a youngish guy with a wide grin and straw colored hair. His hair was cut close to his skull. There was a sticker on the windshield of the convertible that said: Rice Institute. A college kid.

  “Move over,” I said again, and this time I opened the door on the driver's side and shoved the muzzle of the revolver against his belly.

  “What the hell!” He didn't seem particularly scared. He looked at me, then at the gun, grinning faintly, as though he thought it might be some kind of a joke.

  “Just keep quiet and you won't get hurt.” I got the convertible started and turned onto the, country road, motioning for Vida to follow in the Chrysler. The kid didn't say a thing. He kept looking at me, blinking his eyes.

  The dirt road wound around in the brush and probably went on to a farmhouse or a ranch somewhere. We were several hundred yards from the highway by now and that was far enough for what I wanted. I stopped the convertible and Vida pulled up beside us in the Chrysler.

  “This is where we change cars,” I said. Vida got out of the Chrysler and I gave her the keys to the convertible and said, “Look in the back and see if there's something we can tie him with.”

  She didn't say a thing. I heard her opening the trunk and I sat up front with the kid.

  “There's nothing but a suitcase,” Vida called.

  “Bring it out.”

  There wasn't anything in it but some shirts, ties and a few changes-of underwear and socks. I selected two silk ties and decided that they would do.

  “You can't tie me up and leave me out here like this,” the kid said nervously.

  “Would you rather be shot?”

  I got his hands behind his back and he didn't put up any more argument. Then I made him get out of the convertible and get in the back seat of the Chrysler, and I tied his feet. I gagged him, then rolled all the windows up on the Chrysler and locked the doors and threw the key as far as I could throw it out the window.

  We rode back to the highway in silence—Vida, her head dropped, staring down at the floorboards. I thought, Vida, Vida, what has happened to us?

  When we hit the highway I turned and began putting the gas to that light convertible. We hadn't gone more than a hundred yards when I heard the sudden blaring of an auto horn in the distance. It was a faint sound, rising and falling in volume as the wind moved it lazily across the prairie. It was a monotonous sound, going on —and on—and on. I slammed on the brakes, and cursed.

  Startled, Vida almost went through the windshield. “Roy, what is it?”

  “It's that kid! That smart bastard of a kid!”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I'm going back. When I get through with him he'll! be sorry he was so goddamn smart!” I turned the convertible around in the middle of the highway and we streaked back for the dirt road.

  The horn was still blaring, forlorn sounding, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhe
re. If I don't get him off that horn, I thought, somebody sure as hell will be curious enough to see where the sound is coming from. They'd have roadblocks thrown up for that convertible before we could get out of the county.

  We crashed over that dirt road at almost sixty miles an hour. I put on the brakes and was out of the convertible almost before it stopped skidding.

  I don't know how he got from the back seat to the front seat with his hands and feet tied, but he had managed somehow. He was lying half across the steering wheel, his chest on the horn button. He seemed frozen there—maybe frozen with fear, now that I was back.

  I grabbed for the door but it wouldn't give, and then I remembered that I had locked it and thrown the key away. “Get away from that horn!” I yelled.

  He didn't move. He looked as though he wanted to get off that horn more than anything in the world, but his body just wouldn't answer the command of his brain.

  “Goddamn you!” I yelled. Raging, I began pounding on the rolled-up window. I didn't even know I had the revolver in my hand until I heard the explosion.

  The horn blared on for maybe another five seconds.

  Then I saw the kid's eyes roll up, as if in amazement, and slowly he began to slump away from the wheel. The abrupt silence seemed enormous when the horn finally stopped. I stood there dumbly as the kid went all the way down to the floorboard in a huddled, lifeless heap.

  I found myself thinking, I didn't want to kill him.

  When I turned back to the convertible, Vida was sitting there screaming without making a sound.

  21

  “ROY—I CAN'T GO ON any longer.”

  “Have you got any choice?” I said. “You're in this thing just as deep as I am, and don't forget it.”

  Almost an hour had passed since the convertible blew a tire, slamming into a barditch and ruining the right front wheel. We had been walking ever since, getting as far away from that convertible as possible. We had traveled cross country, through brush, up and down hill.