Sacrifice

by Farris, John

  Caroline showed up ten minutes later, escorted by Fog Hatley, one of the Ovenbird's owners.

  "How're you, Fog?" I asked him.

  He was a slow-talking man, who squinted judiciously in consideration of every question put to him. "Still payin' top dollar for my sins. How 'bout them Dawgs?" Fog is such a big fan of UGA football that he travels to intrasquad scrimmages. The college football season wouldn't begin for another three weeks.

  "Heck of a recruiting year," I said, as if I hadn't said it a dozen times already. "Two high-school All-Americans. How's Casey handling that switch to running back?" Casey was one of Fog's numerous nephews.

  "Blows through the line like salts through a widow woman." He seated Caroline ostentatiously and batted his eyelashes at her. "What can I do you for, darlin'?"

  "Coke and four aspirin," Caroline said with a husky sigh.

  "Gonna pull old Claude through this time around?"

  "It'll be a squeaker," Caroline said, and added cautiously, "you didn't hear it from me."

  "Gotcha," Fog said, with a wise squint of one eye, and he went away. We heard him say, "How 'bout them Dawgs?" from across the room. Caroline and I smiled at each other, and the tension of a day on the run began to leave her body. She'd lost at least ten pounds in the past couple of weeks, which was to her advantage; but her cheeks looked sunken as a result, and the lines around her mouth had deepened.

  "You're coming straight home with me tonight," I said. "I'm unplugging the telephone and locking up your typewriter."

  She smiled again, gratefully. "I just keep telling myself, Tuesday week, Caroline, it'll be over in ten more days. Then we're home. November'll be a breeze."

  "Love you," I said.

  Caroline reached for my hand on the table.

  "I know I've been impossible these last couple of months. But if it wasn't for politics, well—"

  "We don't have to talk about it. Your income's important. Sorry I gave you such a bad scare."

  "Scare?" She squeezed my hand; I felt her nails digging in. "That's the understatement of the century. But we're not going to talk about that, either. We're good people. We deserve to be blessed."

  "Not another word," I agreed.

  "Pardon me," the madwoman said. "This man is my husband, and I need to talk to him."

  Caroline and I looked up simultaneously.

  She was standing a little behind me, a large woman with permed white hair. Her eyebrows were newly plucked and penciled; in fact she looked as if she'd just paid for the works at Lauralee's downtown. But she had on too much rouge and a purple eye shadow that was not becoming. Her upper lip was pleated like a boudoir lampshade. The sunlight splashed our way by the fountain in the Ovenbird's garden revealed liver spots through her vivid peach makeup base. She wore a purple silk suit, a frilly blouse, and a big gold locket on a thin gold chain.

  The woman was staring at Caroline. We were still holding hands across the table. Then the woman smiled, revealing goldlined teeth that didn't appear to have been worth saving in the first place.

  "Let go of him," she said, still smiling, but ominously. "He don't belong to you. I staked a prior claim, honey, and believe me it'll hold up in any court of law."

  Caroline blinked; she's a quick-witted woman and almost never at a loss for words. Her hand, covering mine, twitched a little, the baguettes in her wedding band reflecting a dancing light over the enameled rose in the bud vase.

  "Excuse me," I said. "This is our table and my wife and I are having a private conversation. Whoever you are—" The woman looked at me. She had a strong beaked nose and cheekbones bold as a squaw's. I could see that, much younger, she would have been a roughhewn beauty. But longing was weighty in her, and toxic as a tumor. I was rapidly becoming more concerned than indignant.

  "Stuff it, Frederick," she said. "It's been a long time, but the giveaway is, see, you haven't changed a bit. Always been the problem with you, hasn't it?"

  She laughed. Her voice hadn't carried, but the laughter—coarse, uninhibited—attracted attention. It was almost impossible to detect that she was putting on an act. But blue veins showed on each white knuckle of the hands that gripped her purse. And something—a long-held sorrow, remorse—ghosted the dense black pupils of her eyes.

  "Greg—"

  The woman turned her head sharply when Caroline spoke.

  "Not Greg. Not Walker. That's all hooey, sweetheart. His name is Frederick Sullivan. I'm Mrs. Roxanne Sullivan. We were married September 3, 1954, in New Lost River, British Columbia. Married eighteen years. Until—until—" It was then her voice cracked, pathetically. She sniffed. "Do you want to tell me what happened, Frederick? I sure as God deserve . . . an explanation, don't you think?"

  I looked at Caroline, furrowing my brow significantly. She got the message and stood up at once.

  "Excuse me," she said, and left the table. The woman turned to watch her as I unobtrusively moved my chair so that I was not sitting trapped sideways between her and the garden windows.

  "Didn't do so bad for yourself, huh, Frederick? Of course she's beginning to show her age some. I guess I did too. Was that it? Was that all there was to it—" And now she looked at me with one of those disconcertingly quick turns of her head, "—you bastard?"

  "I don't know you. I don't know what you're talking about. I'd advise you—Mrs. Sullivan—"

  "Got a proper Southern accent, 'n everything," she sneered. "But I'm not fooled. As for your advice, hooey. You can stuff that too. You're coming back with me. To New Lost River. Nothing's left. The house, the lounge—gone. But we can start over. I've got some good years left, Frederick. I knew as soon as I saw your picture in the Vancouver paper I was willing to forgive you. All you need to do is tell me—"

  Caroline was coming back, with Fog Hatley behind her. Fog is six-five and stopped weighing himself when he hit three hundred pounds. I relaxed at the sight of him. I didn't know if there was any real danger in her, but Fog would have the woman out of his restaurant in a matter of seconds.

  Possibly she sensed, from my eye movements, what was going on. She moved quickly for her size and age, slipping into Caroline's vacated chair. At the same time she drew a small nickel-plated automatic from her purse. Her eyes flickered to Caroline and Fog.

  When they were ten feet from the table I waved them off.

  "Tell that tub of guts to stay put," the woman said. "Or I'll put one through your eye, and we'll see how quick you get up and walk away from that! Remember how good a shot I was, Frederick? Maybe you don't think I've still got what it takes."

  "This is really—not very smart of you."

  "I'm smart, all right. I'm very smart. It was me made such a big success of the lounge, remember? All you ever did was tend bar and fool around with the strippers. Couple of those young slimhipped cowpokes, too, as I recall. Never mind. It's all bygones with me. Got myself all fixed up for you this afternoon." She preened, her smile striking gold again. "I still love you, Frederick, or I wouldn't be here."

  Her gaze swarmed on me, like a cluster of bees around a honeyed fingertip. Quite obviously, in my own eyes she saw nothing but disgust.

  She stopped smiling. There was a quirk of malevolence to her pleated lips. She made an odd clucking sound.

  "What happened to Bonnie? You know where she is? She never came to visit me even one time, after they locked me away."

  "I don't know anybody named Bonnie," I said, looking at the muzzle of the pistol and ready to explode from frustration.

  "Don't know your own daughter?" She clucked again, out of the side of her mouth. "Fat chance. Well, you're crafty, Fred, I'll hand you that. But I've got the goods, lover. Tell those two to get over here toot sweet, and let's get this show on the road."

  "What show?"

  "Don't try my patience! No more bum steers. What's her name?"

  "My wife?"

  "I'm your wife! She's—she—doesn't count."

  The woman faltered then; there were flecks of saliva at the corner of
her overly colorful mouth, the side that tended to fly out of control when she made the clucking noise. She had the slick, devoted expression of one who is listening, suspensefully, for her heart to start pumping after a hiatus. But her grip on the automatic was still solid.

  The tables on either side of us were empty; so far, the madwoman hadn't attracted much attention. The fist with the little automatic in it was on the table in front of her, the muzzle angled up at my face. I thought, with a dread that was beginning to freeze at the edges, not again.

  A waiter approached, and Fog Hatley sent him off with a curt motion of his head. We looked at each other. I tried to smile, but it was a poor effort. Fog backed off a step but Mrs. Roxanne Sullivan caught the movement out of the corner of her eye and said, "Stay standing where you are right now, fat stuff. You—Mrs. Bogus—come on over here."

  Caroline advanced slowly to the table. I could tell, by the tightness of her eyes, how frightened she was. I knew I'd better do something, and quickly. I could shove the table toward the Sullivan woman, knocking her off balance, maybe out of the chair. But if there was a possibility that the stubby automatic would go off . . .

  "If you've convinced yourself that I somehow mean something to you," I said to the madwoman, "why threaten to kill me?"

  She looked vague for a few seconds. She licked her lips.

  "That's a bugi steer," she said finally. I didn't know what she meant. But I wasn't particularly skilled at talking to, trying to reason with, the mentally disoriented. To Caroline she repeated, "Open my purse. Take out the envelope. Like I said, it's all there. Marriage license. Pictures of me and Frederick together. Have a real gander. Then tell me if you still think your claim's any good."

  "Please—I wish you wouldn't do this—please, he's been hurt already, put your gun away."

  "Fat chance, Mrs. Bogus. I said, open the envelope. And get set to piss in your pants." A tremor of excitement agitated her garishly painted features. I was, for the most part, keeping an eye on the pistol. I wasn't all that afraid now. I just felt very, very tired, and a little depressed.

  Caroline did as she was told. There was a large packet of photos secured with a thick rubber band. A newspaper clipping fell to the table and I carefully reached for it. The familiar photo of Ricky Gene and myself in the hospital room, reprinted in a Vancouver newspaper. I was wearing my postoperative turban. My face was still a little swollen.

  The quality of the photograph wasn't exceptional. How Mrs. Roxanne Sullivan could have decided I was her long-missing husband was beyond my ability to comprehend. I have strong features—a Roman nose, high cheekbones, heavy eyebrows, rather penetrating brown eyes. So do a great many men.

  Caroline passed me a black-and-white photograph. This one showed a far younger, busty Roxanne standing in front of an ordinary-looking corner bar with glass block on either side of the padded doors, her arm around the sought-after Frederick.

  He resembled me, superficially. I didn't care for the way he grinned at the camera. The cocky, lady-killer type. I could read a history of a knock-about life in his face.

  There was a row of B-girls behind them, bartenders, kitchen help. The cocktail lounge was called the Pigalle. A hand-lettered GRAND OPENING banner hung from a tacky marquee. Snow-covered mountains were visible in the background.

  I laid the photo and the newspaper clipping down. Caroline was shaking her head slowly, unnerved by the deadly threat in this ludicrous situation.

  "When did the Pigalle open for business?" I said to the madwoman, keeping my voice low and matter-of-fact.

  "September 1954. As you very well know."

  "How old was—Frederick then?" I asked her, seeking a chink in the hard fortress of her self-deception, a means to yank the entire edifice down.

  "You were thirty-four, lover."

  "Then I—I mean Frederick—would now be nearly seventy-three years old. Don't you ever stop to think about—"

  "Sure I thought about it! Being as you never aged a day in the eighteen years we were married, I didn't see any special reason why you would have aged since then."

  My mouth was dry; I reached for a glass of water. The muzzle of the pistol snapped up alertly. The madwoman clucked, and clucked again; some spit flew from the corner of her twitching mouth. Her eyes looked different to me. They seemed to be peering backward, past old ecstasies into the darkness of her pathetic soul.

  I glanced at Caroline, who, I was afraid, might do something reckless out of sheer frustration. But she hadn't moved. A tear ran down one cheek. Fog Hatley loomed behind her, close enough to grab and hurl her aside if Mrs. Roxanne Sullivan aimed the pistol her way.

  The madwoman's eyes flicked back to the here and now.

  "Time for the pièce de résistance," she said. She pronounced it correctly. "Nobody believes their own eyes, hey? Okay, Frederick. Remember how you earned your living at the sawmill before you cozied up to me and got your hands on my nest egg? You had an accident that almost cut your arm off. Left a wicked scar midway of your left forearm, didn't it?"

  I heard Caroline react, a sharp intake of breath.

  And I heard, from the madwoman, "Peel back your sleeve. Here comes proof positive you're who I say."

  I unbuttoned the left cuff slowly, and rolled it back. She clucked again, triumphantly.

  "That's how you always did it, just before you tended bar! Peeled back those cuffs in such a dandified manner. Still keep your hands nice, don't you, Frederick, the nails all buffed and—"

  I suddenly pulled the sleeve back as far as my elbow. Of course there was no scar.

  She stared at my unblemished forearm, then reached quickly with her free hand and clutched at me, her recently manicured nails digging in. I could have disarmed her then with little potential danger, but as she touched me I looked deeply into her eyes and saw her mind fall apart, almost like a slow-motion study of a calving glacier. A momentary churning, then nothing was left behind her eyes but a great white void. Her fingers on my forearm lost their strength.

  I easily took the little automatic from her other hand. She was leaning forward against the table. Her mouth had sagged open, and she'd begun to drool. She didn't make a sound.

  The Ovenbird's patrons scarcely had been disturbed by the drama taking place in our alcove. Fog Hatley had a screen set up around the table. The police came in the back door, and carried Mrs. Roxanne Sullivan away, still seated in the chair. She was completely rigid, in some kind of terrifying—but oddly funny—psychologically paralyzed state. Even so, I was glad to see they took the precaution of handcuffing her.

  After Detective Sergeant Butterbaugh finished looking through the photographs and documents that Roxanne Sullivan had brought with her from British Columbia, he picked up the car keys from her purse and said, "Let's go see what else we can find. Unless you want to finish your dinner."

  "We never got started," I said. "And right now I still have a hard time swallowing."

  He nodded sympathetically. "So would I."

  We left Fog Halley's office and went out to the parking lot. Fog was with Caroline in the Ovenbird's bar, diverting her with bourbon and gossip. I was sure she didn't feel much like eating, either.

  A police car was parked in front of the high-profile old Pontiac I had seen earlier in the day.

  "Looks like about a '50, '51 model," Butterbaugh said. "I recall my Uncle Chase, from Hahira, Georgia. He had one of those V-8s, only in blue, with whitewall tires. He had whitewalls before anybody else in Hahira had them. What time did you say you first noticed Mrs. Sullivan driving around the square?"

  "I think it was about eleven-fifteen, eleven-thirty."

  "How many passes did she make by your store?"

  "Four that I counted. I wonder how she knew where we were having dinner tonight?"

  "She was in the bank, asking about you? She might have asked all over town. Didn't notice her anywhere around your neighborhood, did you?"

  "No. But it wouldn't have been any trouble to find out where
we live. I'm in the book."

  "Let me have your flashlight, Lanier," Sergeant Butterbaugh said to the uniformed policeman who was keeping watch over the old Pontiac.

  "What do you think will happen to the woman?" I asked him as he unlocked the dirt-encrusted front door of the car.

  "Tonight? She'll be locked up in the mental ward at the hospital, probably in one of the padded detox or suicide cells, with somebody keeping an eye on her all the time. If she remains in the condition she apparently was in when she left here, then I'd expect the court will send her straight to North Georgia Mental Health Center for a thirty-day-mandatory. After that, it's anybody's guess. If she proves to be competent, then we'll take her back and the District Attorney's office probably will bring charges. Pointing a pistol at someone is aggravated assault. But there may be priors back home, an outstanding warrant or two."

  Butterbaugh flashed his light on the front seat of the car, which smelled rancid from the smoke of many cigarettes. There was a half-smoked carton of unfiltered Camels on the seat, along with wrappers and foam coffee cups from fast-food restaurants, and an empty one-pound box of Godiva chocolates. A large rabbit's foot dangled on a chain from the rearview mirror. The knob of the gear-shift lever was a plastic skull with ruby eyes rimmed in black—a bizarre touch, I thought. Since the danger had passed, I'd fought the disconsolate urge to laugh and laugh and laugh at the oddity, the surreal nature of the Sullivan woman's intrusion into our lives. I recognized the urge for what it was: aftershock, combined with a distant early warning of hysteria.

  The gray felt seat upholstery was worn to the springs in places, and there were several cigarette burns where her right hand might have rested on the seat as she drove south from Canada, drowsy at night on the lonely roads of the high plains.

  In the glove compartment Butterbaugh found a box of cartridges for the .25 caliber automatic.

  When I saw those I said, "What I really want to know is, what are the chances she'll just be let loose and turn up on my doorstep?"