Michael Malone

by Dingley Falls

  Did what to Mrs. Haig? Strange that she came into his thoughts, as well as his speech, so formally, as "Mrs. Haig," though she came there a constant and intimate visitor.

  And then Mrs. MacDermott told him what had been done to Mrs. Haig. And then after he lied, claiming to be the patient's legal counsel, they let him see her for a minute. Rape. The vestal skin bruised. Eyelids swollen, specks of dried blood in the smooth, muted hair. Yes, sexual assault and battery, confirmed the young woman doctor, a Dr. Deeds. Rape. He backed away from the foot of the bed, back into the hall. Then by rote he began to ask the physician where, and when, and who, and how ask why? And as they spoke he sensed as if against his skin the heat of Dr. Deeds's growing hostility.

  Certainly he imagined it, for how could Dr. Deeds read and diagnose and judge his yet uncharted response?

  The friend, Mrs. MacDermott, sat on the couch, legs crossed, cigarette in hand, Kleenex to her nose. She had said she thought it was Maynard Henry! Had Henry done it? That bitter young man suddenly connected to his life; that man who had brought Judith Haig to him, and whom she had sent him to defend. That hard, innocent, threatened, and threatening man whom he had defended already to A.A. Hayes. Had he been wrong? Had Henry done it? No!

  Impossible he had so misjudged the man.

  Through a sudden burst of rain, Abernathy hurried back to the tiny yellow roadster. As he drove, dangerously skidding on the wet highway, driving by faith for the most part, for the thundering rain made it impossible to see, he tried with a sense of its vital urgency to analyze his response before he reached the Madder trailer park and Maynard Henry. First shock, denial, nausea, and fury too quickly mixed for analysis. Then, with the whole force of his consciousness, the want to will it away. He did not want her to be raped. No other fact in his life had been as simple, as absolute, as that, as uncluttered and unmodified by qualifications and compromises and recognitions of ambivalences; not even his abrupt desire to marry Beanie. No fact but the will not to let go of that broken beam hanging above the Pacific. And how easy holding to that beam had been compared to what Judith must have felt. Water streaked down Abernathy's face.

  He put his hand to the canvas top, then to his eye. "Know what you feel, Winslow!" Beanie had told him. Yes, they were tears. Had Henry raped her?

  It would be better to think. He should think. It hadn't been Henry, but the other man. Limus Barnum, had the doctor said? Or perhaps there had been no other man involved but her husband (there was no way to know, she had made no statement yet). But would it be easier or worse if it had been her husband? But why hadn't her husband stopped the man then? Incontrovertible proof that Haig was unworthy. Good God, thought Winslow, what kind of man am I? Gloating at the failure when Haig had probably died in her defense. Gloating at the death? No, no. Intolerable that any man, enemy or not, should die so. Was it intolerable? Not Haig, but what of the man who did that to her? Could he bear not to murder such a man? Not to crush his head to bleeding broken bone and pulp? Had Henry done it?

  Yes, but that's why there was law, impersonal, impassionate, above revenge—or should be, or could be. But what about the blood in her hair?

  And she, she, damn it, why? Just when his soul had seen her, to lose her! Lose her? How was she his? How had he lost her? Wasn't she alive? Abernathy envisioned an illumination, white and leaf gold. Hideously from behind the parchment red stain bubbled the vision. Why hadn't she stopped it? Why had she let the vision be ruined? Could she not be vestal guardian of her own temple? Mustn't she have in some way (titillation, fear, kindness, hostility) encouraged the rapist? Nothing like that could ever have happened to Beanie! Or Tracy. Or Priss. Impossible. Perhaps Evelyn.

  He caught himself and fought back his anger at her. Weren't even strong athletic women raped, too? And old decrepit women, and girl children? Must there be something in every female psyche that solicited rape? And if that something were their fear, had they not every right to be afraid? Were victims to be charged not only as accomplices, but as sole perpetuators of the crime, as if the victims of theft should be condemned for being robbed? If even he, mildly, obediently marshaled through life by women, if even a male like himself felt males to be so irredeemably impelled by lust that law itself was not strong enough to contain them, then surely women were right, and only their instinct to create life must keep them from withdrawing into Amazonian fortresses of civilization, from which they would emerge merely long enough to be impregnated among the savages.

  But, no, it wasn't that bad. Who were all these rapists? He didn't know any. How many men could there be under such compulsion, such unbearable hatred of women? Or fear. It must be fear really. The disenfranchised preying on those more disenfranchised than they. In his office (days, weeks, years ago) he had pledged himself to take up her quest, to help Maynard Henry. Dear God, now he himself may have helped the animal who had ravaged her to escape its cage. Had Henry done it? Had he? But he had believed Henry about Treeca and about Haig! What if Haig had been right? Why, damn it, had she ever gotten herself involved in this? If only the Vietnamese girl hadn't come and asked. Oh, "if only," absurd! If only America had never gone to Vietnam so that Chin Lam would have never been evacuated, so Henry never would have married her and Treeca would never and I would never and Judith Haig would never!

  He had thought his life's work would be in defense of the disenfranchised. Instead he had defended money. His wife's. But could he ever have defended, anyhow, anyone who claimed an "irresistible" impulse to defile another human being? He who had difficulty believing in madness. He who had always responded to his son Lance's claims that he could not help his outbursts against his mother or his brother with disbelief: "Are you so weak that you cannot command your own will? Society will not tolerate this kind of indulgence in barbarism. I certainly will not tolerate such behavior toward your mother." Always Beanie had said, "Oh, Winslow, he doesn't mean it." Always Lance had thrown up his hands and soon enough flown off to war where they tolerated barbarism perfectly well. Could Lance have raped someone? Could any of Winslow's own peers, Hayes, Ransom?

  No. He didn't know any rapists. No, not even in war. Of course, all the stories about the Germans, Japanese, Italians. Terrible stories about the Russians as they advanced on Berlin. Even rumors about some few Americans, no doubt true. But he had honestly known no one. There had been brothels at shore leave, of course. He himself had gone only once; it was not worth it to him. But clearly it had been to many other men. Could he rape? He honestly did not think it possible. Had he ever once in his life imagined raping? But surely that sole fantasy did not inscribe him in his heart of hearts a rapist, any more than a woman who fantasized being raped secretly wished really to be assaulted.

  Of course, he had never asked Beanie if she fantasized rape. He had never asked her if she feared the possibility of actual rape. It just didn't seem likely; she was so unafraid of anything physical, so much less afraid than he. But how could he know? He had never asked Beanie how she felt about much of anything, or heard kindly her inquiries about his feelings, or cared to hear about the intensity of hers. Yes, and he had missed the births of his sons, and done too few dishes, and shared in too few "real conversations," and no doubt did wish the sexes separate in soul as well as body, did wish women to feel and believe and soothe and bless and nourish and be without need to prove, did wish them to stop the rape of the world with all the hundred graces of the soul that women now announced they were unwilling to feel alone. And if he did wish women to keep safe for men (and despite them) that temple of grace, no doubt this desire for segregation was as sexist as racial segregations more beneficial to one race than the other were racist. And no doubt he proselytized with himself on women's rights while slipping off a beam above the churning sea only because there was this fact that he could not get around. Someone raped her. Terrorized her, violated her, violated her, violated…and the noise of the windshield wipers brought Abernathy back.

  Rain in a torrent as loud as hail on the hood
flooded the highway. Blinking their lights, other cars had pulled onto the shoulders to wait. But he found that by sticking his head out the window he could gauge the road well enough to stay on it. As he bounced over the peak of Cromwell Hill Road, he glimpsed still going on in the northern sky the hissing battle of fire and rain. The MG fishtailed when the lawyer, accustomed to power steering, jerked to the right onto Goff Street. His heart still in a thud, he drove straight into the muddy field of the trailer park. Here, as throughout Dingley Falls, lights blazed despite the hour, for many of the citizenry were still up on Route 3 with the fire. Mrs. MacDermott had given him lengthy instructions. Nevertheless he wandered through the mud for a while among the trailers before he identified Maynard Henry's. And more time went by as he waited, beaten by the rain, on the steps before he saw the lights come on in response to his pounding against the metallic door. Abernathy planned to be judicious.

  "Stop that! What do you want?" snapped a voice.

  "It's Winslow Abernathy. Let me in!" Henry's belligerence had outraged him, and when the door opened, Abernathy pushed inside, already yelling, "Tell me! Judith Haig! Yes or no! Did you rape her?"

  His voice astonished him, and he tried to lower it. "Just yes or no!"

  Finally, he had not prepared what he would do if the man confessed, or lied, but he was sure he would know a lie from Maynard Henry. Careful not to blink, he waited, watching, noting without thought that Henry, barefoot, shirtless, had hurried into pants to answer the door, that on his upper arm was a thick bandage; noting that Henry was thinner and not as tall but far more muscular and, of course, younger, better-trained. When Henry started to turn away, Abernathy jerked him by the shoulder, then raised his fist. "Did you?!"

  "Hey, man, no way! Okay?" Henry cupped his palm over the fist and moved it aside. "The answer's no. No, I didn't rape nobody.

  Okay? Now, got any more questions? Then when you get around to it, you can tell me what you're doing busting in here laying rape on me! I oughta knock you through the wall!"

  Slowly the lawyer nodded. Bands loosened around his heart.

  Henry was telling the truth. But he also already knew about Mrs. Haig. His voice was strained, his eyes restive. He was not a man to manage deception with ease.

  Gradually now the trailer came into focus in Abernathy's consciousness. Its furnishings were as sparingly and as carefully arranged as the contents of a teepee or a Kansas sod house. On hooks and shelves and cabinets the few items (like a row of cooking utensils or a stack of a half-dozen tape cassettes) sat immaculate and symmetrically positioned. But there were also rush mats on the floor and bright colored pillows on the drab couch. There was a lavishly whorled and sinuous white dragon on a Parsons table beside a vase of dried pussy willows.

  Next to the couch near a ball of ivory was propped a photograph of Henry and his wife, Chin Lam, standing stiffly side by side, he in a dark suit slightly too short, she in a cheap American dress. His eyes suspicious of the photographer, her fingers tight around his arm.

  Abernathy looked at the closed door. "Your wife is sleeping?"

  "Yeah."

  "You found her at Pru Lattice's."

  "What business is it of yours? You know what I wish? I wish people would leave my wife alone!"

  "Miss Lattice mentioned that you were bleeding." Abernathy pointed at the bandage.

  "Yeah. I was. Look, you want a towel or something? You're dripping on my floor."

  Abernathy stepped back onto a doormat. "Understand. I've got an investment in you. I don't want you in trouble that's not yours."

  Henry snorted. "Meaning I got enough of my own to hang me."

  "I don't know. A Mrs. MacDermott told me she advised you to go to Mrs. Haig's earlier tonight to look for your wife. I'm now giving you the information that two homicides took place there sometime before midnight. Two men were shot to death; one or them was Police Chief Haig. Mrs. Haig suffered assault." Abernathy could see no change in Henry's face; indifference masked it.

  "Mrs. MacDermott told me—"

  "You know what's the problem with women? They talk too much."

  "Told me she hasn't made known your conversation with her, not even to her husband. She realizes, as I'm sure you will, that if possible, it's best left quiet. Given your upcoming trial and your quarrel with Mr. Haig, which seems to be fairly common knowledge, I quite honestly would hate to have to take your case to a jury if there were any hard circumstantial evidence to tie you to this crime."

  Henry, hugging his hurt arm, sat down in a black cloth director's chair beside the dragon. He put his hand on it, then looked up at the lawyer with a derisive grin. "No shit," he said. "They'll fry my ass."

  "Look here, you're going to have to talk to someone sooner or later, so why don't you talk to me? If you like, hire me for a dollar right now. Everything you say will be privileged. How involved are you in this? Because let's not waste time pretending you don't know what I'm talking about. What happened out there?"

  Henry's eyes whirred up at the tall, thin man whose pajama cuffs clung to his hands beneath the soaked summer jacket, water dripping from his glasses and from the gray strands of hair matted on his forehead. "What does she say?" he asked Abernathy.

  "Who? Mrs. Haig?"

  "Yeah. What does she say happened?"

  "She hasn't said. She's under sedation."

  "You ask her. Tell her I said ask her first."

  Abernathy shook his head. "Good God, man! Help me out. I'm asking you! What happened to your arm? Is there a bullet in it?"

  "You think I'd sit around and leave it in there to gangrene if it was, after how I've seen them sawing arms off? Look, I know you think I'm dumber than shit, but maybe I'm not that dumb."

  "What happened to your arm?"

  "Why don't we just say my dog got out of hand and bit me? How's that?"

  "For what? A reasonable statement? All right. The truth? I don't know yet." He could see that the younger man's eyes were scared, though the mouth was hard and the voice angry. "You going to tell me?"

  "No way. You talk to the lady first. Then you come back, talk to me. I'm still around, I'll talk. That's it, only offer. Look, mister."

  "My name's Abernathy."

  "You guys can't force me to play your game anymore. Why should I play if I can't win? Nothing personal, just fact."

  Abernathy stared back at him, his hand in his pocket feeling the pipe. "I'll tell you what's fact. I can get them to have you picked up right now as a suspect, or at the least material witness. Or I can wait.

  I'll wait on one condition; no, two. One, you're still here tomorrow.

  Two, do you have a gun? If so, give it to me. Joe MacDermott could show up here any minute with a warrant."

  Henry shook his head, but slowly pulled himself to his feet, went over to his closet, and reached for something. It was a .45 government issue service revolver. Abernathy took it, surprised by the familiarity of the weight, parenthetically noting that the design had changed since 1944. He sniffed the barrel and after a fumble, let Henry pull the clip for him.

  "Hasn't been fired. Okay?"

  "Do you have a license for this?"

  "How about my enlistment papers! Naw, okay, I brought it home in my bag. Hey, what the fuck? Did that gun just get to be yours? You don't take a man's gun. Come on, give it back."

  Abernathy turned angrily at the door. "Look here. This is not Da Nang and it's not Dodge City."

  "Don't kid yourself."

  "Listen to me, Maynard. Don't you kid yourself. The law has no interest in your sense of injury or in your righteousness. And it has no tolerance for the sort of personal violence you appear to have resorted to all your life."

  "Is that so? I thought it really got off on my violence. You know, like, let's hear it for the Green Berets."

  "Something else you better understand. It can slam you in jail for life, even if you're right. Even if! So you don't kid yourself, Maynard, and if you don't want people to think you're stupid, don't be
have as if you were. Because you're not. If MacDermott comes, go with him, keep your mouth shut, and call me." Abernathy pushed against the wind until the trailer door flung open.

  "Okay, okay," yelled Henry after him, annoyed at how the lawyer made him feel that maybe he had some slight chance. "Fuck it," he reminded himself, and pulled the door shut.

  The little wheels of the MG roadster spun furiously, and futilely, in the mud of the swampy lot. Abernathy found in a trash bin a pizza box to wedge under the back tires. Gears screeching, he managed to rock the car out of the mud hole, only to have it stall in Ransom Circle. When an effort to restart it flooded the engine, the lawyer, drenched, mud-splattered, walked home. There from his window he noticed lights still burning on all floors of the Victorian mansion across the circle. So before changing, he telephoned.

  "Sammy? Winslow. It looked as if you were up. I thought you'd want to know. There was an incident. Unconnected to the fire. Mrs. Haig was assaulted. They've taken her to the hospital. She'll be all right. Haig and another man, it appears to be Limus Barnum, were killed. You know, the man with the appliance store. Sammy?

  Sammy?"

  "Yes. I'm here, sorry. To the hospital. Sorry. Winslow, can you—"

  "She'll be all right. I saw her. I'm afraid your car stalled; it's locked on Ransom Circle."

  "Winslow, can you come over here? I wasn't going to call until morning but since…Ramona's been asking for you, about whether her will's been finalized. I know the time. But she caught a very bad chill. I found her on the floor of her widow's walk, soaked through.

  Otto's here now. For some reason I went up there to check." Smalter spoke quietly and from far away, as if he spoke in a dream.