He breathed in the air, the cold made it seem like he was inhaling the edge of a knife. He paused in front of Megan and Duncan’s house and caught a glimpse of the twins as they moved through the living room. He felt a familiar pulse-quickening, and for an instant he allowed himself the fantasy of catching them alone. She says she wants to make them all pay, he thought, and what better way is there? He shivered, but not from the cold, and clenched his hands together. He looked at the house and thought: Maybe we can have a date, huh? Before all this is over.
He wanted to laugh out loud. I don’t hate you, he told himself. I want to love you, because of what you are going to give me. I only hate who you are.
The rich think money is bravery, but it is not. It only buys new fears. They think it buys safety, but it only buys new dangers.
His mind filled with the image of Olivia some ten weeks earlier out in California. She had sat patiently in the front seat of the car, checking the action on the machine pistol, before turning to him and Bill Lewis and saying: “Watch. The pig will open the door. I will knock, and he will look though the peephole and open the door. He will be polite and solicitous and friendly and he will invite me in. I will give you a signal when I get the drop on him. Stay down until then.” He had been filled with fear and admiration; he understood why she wanted to kill the man, he had only wished that she had done it without him. But she had insisted, saying: “This will be our bond. We are all together in this and in all things from now on.” Ramon remembered how confidently she had walked to the front of the car and raised the hood, pretending that the car was disabled. Then she had marched right up to the man’s house and rung the doorbell. He had wondered for only a few seconds whether the man who quickly showed himself in the lighted entranceway had any idea that his death waited outside.
And it had happened exactly as she said it would.
He saw the girls again, and his reverie changed abruptly.
We will have a party, he said to himself. A party you will never forget. One that someday in the future you will be unable to explain to your new husbands.
He smiled to himself. I wish I had my knife.
The headlights of a car pulling out from another house suddenly cut across where he was standing, and he felt a momentary panic. He thrust himself into the shadow of a tree and watched as the vehicle rolled past him.
She is right, Ramon thought. She has been right about everything. This town hasn’t the sense to know fear. We can do anything here.
He looked back at the house. The twins were out of sight.
“Good night, ladies,” he said out loud. “We will see each other soon.”
He walked on, through the night. He thought of money, and wondered how much it would be. Enough to go wherever I want and start over. He wondered whether Bill Lewis would come with him. He doubted it, which made him sad for just an instant. He will trail after Olivia, who will never love him the way I would. She will only use him forever and break his heart over and over. He has her bitch smell in his nostrils and he will never be able to get it out, and someday, it will kill him. He would be much happier with me, in Mexico maybe, where I can pass for a native, and where we would be rich because they have so little. We would live together like kings, down by the ocean, where it is always warm and not ever dark like this night. He does not understand, Ramon decided. There is only pleasure. But he has pleasure all wrapped together with guilt and that makes him sad and vulnerable.
But I am not, he thought proudly. I am free.
He buried his hands in his coat pockets and pushed them against his crotch. He strolled through the night, vaguely aroused, which warmed him against the darkness that surrounded him.
Tommy could feel his grandfather’s hand as it stroked his forehead, but it was like a memory, as if it were not happening right then. He stared up at the attic ceiling and imagined that the roof disappeared, opening up to a great black expanse of space, dotted with diamond stars and washed with soft moonlight. His eyes were fixed open, but his head swirled about in the vision; he had the sense of being lifted up into the night sky and flying free. He could feel the wind on his cheeks and it was warm, comforting, like being wrapped in an old and familiar blanket. As he spun up into the endless darkness, he could hear his mother and father calling to him and he could see his sisters waving, beckoning him to their side. He smiled, laughed, and waved back, then started to swim through the blackness in their direction. But as he tried to steer toward them, he could feel the winds shift, and suddenly he was battling against a hurricane blowing hard in his face, tearing at his clothes, pulling him away from his family. He reached out, but they grew distant, increasingly small, their voices fading, until they disappeared.
He gasped and shivered.
Then he heard his grandfather’s voice:
“Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, I’m right here, right here with you. Everything is going to be okay, I’m here, I’m here.”
He shuddered and turned toward his grandfather.
He saw Bill Lewis’s face, peering over the old man’s shoulder, but this time he wasn’t scared.
“He’s coming back,” Lewis said. “Jesus, that’s scary.”
Tommy reached out and grabbed his grandfather’s hand. But he saw Lewis’s face break into a grin.
“Hey, kid? You feeling okay?”
Tommy nodded.
“You need anything? Hungry? Thirsty, maybe?”
Tommy nodded again.
“I brought your dinner up. It’s right outside.”
Lewis dropped from his sight, and Tommy looked at his grandfather. “I’m okay,” he said. “I’m sorry, Grandfather. It just came over me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” the old man said.
“My hands hurt,” Tommy said.
“You cut them when you pounded on the door.”
“I did?”
The judge nodded.
Tommy lifted them up so that he could see his hands.
“They’re not too bad,” he said. “Just a little sore.”
Bill Lewis walked in, holding a tray.
“I made some stew. It’s out of a can, but it tastes pretty good. I’m sorry, son, I’m not too much of a cook. But I brought you a soda, as well. And a couple of aspirin, in case your hands hurt.”
“Thank you,” Tommy said, sitting up. “I’m hungry now.”
“You too, judge, might as well eat. I’ll stay and help the boy if he has trouble.”
Bill Lewis sat on the edge of the bed, taking Judge Pearson’s spot. The judge watched as Tommy spooned down some of the stew, then started to eat as well. He realized suddenly that he was famished, and he tore into the food.
“Take your time, Tommy,” Bill Lewis said. “There’s bread and butter, too. I put a couple of cookies on the tray for dessert. Chocolate chips okay?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Tommy hesitated. “I don’t know your name,” he said.
“Just call me Bill.”
“Thank you, Bill.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Bill?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know when we can go home?”
The judge stiffened and thought: Not now!
But Bill Lewis just smiled.
“Tired of it up here, huh?”
Tommy nodded.
“I don’t blame you. I had to spend a month, many years ago, inside one room of a house. I didn’t dare go out, didn’t dare do anything. It was pretty terrible.”
“Why?”
“Well . . .” Lewis hesitated, then thought: What the hell. “Well, I was pretty sure the police were after me, and I was waiting for some people to help me. I was underground. Do you know what that means?”
“Like a groundhog?”
Lewis
laughed.
“Not exactly. It means hiding out.”
“Oh,” Tommy said. “Are we underground now?”
“Sort of.”
“Did they ever catch you?” Tommy asked.
Lewis grinned. “No, kid, I always stayed one jump ahead. And after a while, I guess they just stopped looking. At least, it felt that way. So, after a few years, well, it just seemed to slide.”
“When was this?” the judge asked.
“Back in the sixties,” Lewis answered, without thinking.
“Why don’t you just tell him everything?” Olivia Barrow said harshly.
Her voice seemed to break the air in the room, shattering the moment of peace, putting everything back on edge. She stood in the doorway, glaring at Bill Lewis, fingering a revolver.
Lewis jumped to his feet.
“I wasn’t saying anything. Nothing they aren’t going to figure out anyway.”
“Sure,” she replied.
Lewis looked down at Tommy. “Sorry, kid.”
“It’s okay,” Tommy answered. “Thanks for the dinner.”
“Hey, keep the cookies. You can eat them later.”
“Thank you.”
Lewis collected the dishes on the tray and paced past Olivia, who fixed him with a sharp glance. She remained behind, staring at the judge.
“He is an emotional man,” she said after a few moments passed. “Very mercurial. Capable of extreme tenderness one instant”—she paused—“and extreme violence the next. Please consider his instability when you deal with him; I’d hate to see something awkward happen.”
Judge Pearson nodded.
“Maybe I should let Ramon come next time with the food. He loves little children, judge. But not in the kind of way you’d be very comfortable with.”
The judge did not reply.
Olivia walked over and stood above Tommy.
“Boys this age are always disarming,” she said. “They drive you crazy with love or crazy with frustration.”
“Do you have children?” the judge asked quietly. If you did, he thought to himself, you would never do this.
Olivia laughed.
“No, no chances. Prison isn’t the best place for conceiving children. No, the only things conceived in prison are plans and hatred and the need for revenge. Those are my babies.”
“You’re bitter,” he said.
She laughed again. “Of course I’m bitter. I have a perfectly good right to be bitter.”
“Why?”
She smiled. “Now look who’s getting ready to shoot her mouth off.”
The judge didn’t reply.
Olivia shrugged. “Why not?” she said. “Judge, haven’t you wondered why we haven’t taken any pains to conceal ourselves?”
“Yes. It’s bothered me from the start.”
“You must have handled a bunch of kidnapping, extortion trials while you were on the bench.”
“I did. Not like this, though.”
“Right. I said that earlier. You see, there is one single element of genius to all this, judge, one little thing that makes it all work.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s your daughter and son-in-law, judge.”
She hesitated.
“What do you know about them?”
“What do you mean? They’re my—”
“What were they doing eighteen years ago?”
Judge Pearson cast his mind back: 1968. I was younger then, he thought, stronger. My wife was alive and we were worried. We didn’t have any idea what they were up to. They wouldn’t tell us anything. I was too rigid and demanding, and they just left us waiting. For what? There was the war, which we all hated. There were riots and long hair and demonstrations and they were a part of that. I was on the bench and we were part of the system and the system was evil. He remembered a dozen shouting matches with Duncan—arguments that had faded almost entirely from his memory—that dissolved into months of quiet when they moved to the coast. Then everything changed. He pictured Megan and Duncan’s arrival back in Greenfield, unexpected, late at night. Megan was pregnant with the twins. It was magical. They had been so lost, and then they came home so suddenly, and all our fears dissipated overnight. They wanted our help, they wanted to start a new life, a normal life, right in Greenfield. No more mad political rhetoric, no more accusations about the evil system and the rotten society. We never asked, we were so glad to have them back. And then when the twins arrived, it was like everything had started over, we were all a family again, without anger and sharpness.
“What were they doing back in 1968?” Olivia asked again, her voice carrying a tinge of demand.
“I don’t know what you mean. Megan had finished art school and she went out to California to be with Duncan while he finished his master’s at Berkeley. They were living out there . . . that’s all I remember.”
Olivia snorted.
“What about their politics?” she asked sarcastically.
“Well, Duncan was active in the antiwar, antidraft movements. He’d been in SDS as an undergraduate at Columbia, and he took part in the demonstrations there. I think he was connected in some vague way to the Weathermen faction. But he left it all behind. He dropped it when they came back east.”
Olivia interrupted. She snorted.
“Port Huron and the Weathermen came later.”
“I didn’t know. Well, it’s just all titles, anyway—”
“Don’t be so dumb.”
“I didn’t know, dammit. What are you saying?”
“They were more than a little involved in the movements,” Olivia said, her voice an edge of anger. “We all were. And he didn’t just ‘drop it’ like you say. No, sir, not at all.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t be so dumb!”
“I’m not, goddammit. We never asked. We were just glad to have them home.”
“They were running around in the mountains in Marin County with weapons, practicing for the revolution. They were learning to build bombs and propaganda. That’s what they were doing.”
“Well . . .”
Judge Pearson didn’t know what to say. He was suddenly overcome with the sensation that he didn’t want to hear what she was saying.
“That’s where I met them. And things got more intense. We were a band of revolutionaries. We were committed. We were armed. We had split off from all the others, which was perfect, because everyone else ended up surrounded by FBI infiltrators and informants. But not us! We were together and we were ready!”
Olivia had started pacing about the room, gesturing with the revolver. The judge could feel her passions filling the small area.
“We were going to rip the heart out of this rotten country and start anew. And they were part of it, just like me and Bill and Emily and the others. Only they fucked up, judge, they fucked up and ran. They were cowards! In an army, you get shot for battlefield cowardice, for disobeying an order in the face of the enemy. Well, that’s what they did when they panicked and ran. They ran right back to your silly little bourgeois society, where they hid. They had the perfect disguise, too: They became ordinary. They blended in. They became interested in things like mortgages and new cars and PTA meetings and United Way fund drives and getting promotions and making more money, more fucking money all the time. And you helped them to become invisible, judge, anonymous, just like all the other traitors in our generation, except they were a bit worse, wouldn’t you say? I went to jail and Bill went underground and Emily died. And time passed. They liked being anonymous, so they got happy and fat and rich and ordinary, judge, they got so fucking ordinary!”
She spat out: “They were traitors!”
He saw her stop, clenching the pistol so tightly that her knuckles
showed white on the grip.
“But I wasn’t. I never got fat and happy and bourgeois. I just got leaner and tougher and all I did for eighteen years was wait for this time, when I would pay them back for leaving me. I did eighteen years hard time, no slack time, no minimum security easy time. And then I got paroled. That’s the way the system works, you know that, don’t you? They give you a parole officer’s name and a new clothes outfit and one hundred dollars. And then I got out and here is where I came. I knew they would be here, judge. They may have been invisible to everyone—but me!”
She looked at Judge Pearson.
“They owe me eighteen years. And there’s not a damn thing they—or you—can do about it. They were just as guilty as I was, of the same crime.”
She sat down abruptly on the cot next to him and drew her face close to his.
“You think they’re willing to go to prison for eighteen years?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“No?”
“They’ve changed. Everything has changed. They wouldn’t even be charged—”
Olivia drew back.
“No? You don’t think so? You tell me, judge. What’s the statute of limitations on felony murder?”
He swallowed hard. Oh no, he thought. No, not possible. They couldn’t have.
“There is none,” he answered.
She tossed her hair and leaned backward and roared.
“What a fucking sharp legal mind you have, judge.”
Olivia leaned forward then, lowering her voice to a sort of conspiratorial whisper:
“So, now you know something you didn’t know about your darling children. Maybe you suspected something, but the reality is much worse than any fantasy, isn’t it? And you, you cute little boy, now you know something new about your nice mommy and daddy, don’t you?”
Olivia stood up sharply and quick-marched across the floor to the door. She paused before speaking:
“They’re killers. Just like me.”
She slammed the door shut behind her.
Duncan picked up the picture of Tommy with the shattered glass still trapped within the frame. Without thinking, he touched the edge, where one crack ran across his son’s face, slicing his finger open. He did not instantly summon an expletive, as he would have on almost any other occasion. Instead, he simply let this new pain roll together with all the other hurts that had bonded together within him.
Day of Reckoning Page 18
