by Ted Lewis
PART TWO
THERE IS A SHIVER of wind outside the ranch house causing the window above the sink unit to shudder slightly. I get up from the canvas chair and throw some more wood on the fire and stand in front of the fireplace listening hard to see if I can separate the sound I’m waiting for from the wind. There’s nothing but the sound of the night out there in the canyon, so I go over to the table and press a button on the transistor. Straight away the room is filled with the voice of the six o’clock newscaster, winding up his slot with a roundup of the weather which is something I don’t need to know, so I press the button again and the room is quiet once more.
I go over to the camping stove, put light under it and begin to heat some coffee and while I’m waiting for it to warm, I go back over to the fireplace and pick up the newspaper that’s on top of the heap. Of course it’s the Examiner, and it’s still got the same front page I’ve read a thousand times before. I don’t have to read it; it’s like a printed circuit in my mind. But even though the words are already there, I look at the newsprint anyway, and again for the thousandth time, I have to admit they did a beautiful job. The headline couldn’t be bigger. The picture of my brother in the empty hotel room looking around in disbelief. Murdock’s blood a pattern on the carpet by his feet. Then there are the insets: the rifle, my gun, the one that killed Murdock, a picture of Murdock dead, curled up like a fetus before the room had been cleared, pictures, por-traits of Murdock and myself from the newspaper files. A shot of Mrs. Murdock sobbing, being supported by her brother.
A mug shot of Charlie Bancroft, a small-time hood who must have had something, if not everything, to do with the operation, perhaps inveigled into the deal by missing policeman Roy Boldt now sought by his colleagues as a possible suspect. Of course, on the front page of that particular edition, no mention of Jack Fleming, a private investigator, getting knocked over by a hit-and-run driver as he crossed Weaver Street, and Tony Copeland, unemployed,falling from his apartment window. Those little items were small in the inside pages—three liners. But the quotes--- they really capped the lot; they were the cream. Draper and his vow not to rest until I’d been found, how the whole reputation of the Department rested on that very fact. My brother’s statement that he could hardly bring himself to believe I could have had anything to do with it, but he was only looking forward to the day we would meet face to face and only then, by meeting face to face, would he know and he’d know instantly whether I was guilty or not. From Mr. Florian, a prominent local businessman—how a thing like this could happen in a town like ours defies belief. And so on and so on. But of course, what the papers didn’t say was that Draper and Florian and whoever else was involved were hoping to Christ their own boys would find me before the usual agencies did just in case I got the chance to get my story across, and maybe if I did that, someone just might believe me.
The coffee comes to the boil so I go over to the stove and fill the tin cup from the jug and wander around the ranch house for something to do until the coffee has cooled enough for me to drink it. While I’m doing that, I catch sight of myself in the small mirror tacked up above the sink and so I walk a little closer and take a look at myself just to pass the time. And it occurs to me, looking at my face, looking at the beard and the length of my hair and the greasy collar of my denim, a lot of time has passed. My friend Boldt, the dropouts’ dropout. But I have to admit, like the man said—so far so good.
It hadn’t been difficult for me to get away from the Hillcrest. In fact, it had never been intended for me to get away at all and that was what had made it easy. Only Styles and Lesley and Charlie were going to walk out of there, and after the pop-gun popped and my brother’s brains had started slip-streaming down the street, every cop in the immediate vicinity would have started out for where they thought the pop had come from. And playing percentages, if the whole thing had been regular, maybe two or even three of them would have got to the Hillcrest, maybe even made it around to the back exit. And that’s exactly what Draper and company didn’t want to happen. So he must have directed Bolan to put his men as far from the Hillcrest as was decent just far enough to give the first part of the getaway its head start. Christ alone knows what arrangements had been made beyond the first sixty seconds, but they sure as hell would have been out of town before my brother’s brains hit the sidewalk. So I’d taken advantage of the ignorance of the guys on the beat and getting away from the Hillcrest had been no problem.
Somewhere to go and getting there could have been a little more difficult, but I’d had a little bit of luck and a bit more of inspiration. The luck stemmed from the situation. Nobody knew what had happened up in that room until Styles had gotten out and passed on the good news. So until then Draper couldn’t pull the alarm switch on me in case it short circuited and blew his balls off. That way I had a little time to wait for my inspiration, the time it took me to get to Murdock’s car and put some blocks between myself and the Hillcrest. And inspiration came because of the direction I happened to be traveling in, the direction of Sammy’s. Now first of all the thought of ditching Murdock’s car without it being a pointer to where I might be heading for had been bothering me, but when I’d got conscious, I was making for Sammy’s. I’d remembered his lock-up in the alley behind his bar—a place that had once been used for face-lifting hot cars. Sammy had been part of it, but there’d been a split and the other fellows no longer operated from there. So Sammy had since taken it over completely and so it occurred to me that the lock-up would be better than the street.
After I’d thought of that, everything else about my getaway came flooding into my mind. So I’d put the car in the alley and gone in Sammy’s the back way. The first person I’d seen was Joan which had been great for me because I’d laid everything on her as quickly as I could and there’d been no doubt in her mind which way to break. She’d gone and got Sammy and at first all the reasons he’d used a couple of days earlier had made him try and turn me down. But Joan had been adamant, so adamant, in fact, that while Sammy had been starting all over again from A, Joan had gone out in the alley and put Murdock’s car in the lock-up and from that point on, I’d been there for six weeks. Not in the bar building but in the little hidey-hole of an apartment above the lock-up. It was a nice little place, all set up with a freezer and a stove and other domestic offices and the light came in through an angled skylight that wasn’t overlooked by any other buildings; all I could see was the way the sky changed from day to day over the six-week period. And while I was doing my cloud watching, Joan or Sammy’d come in with provisions and the papers and the booze and during the whole of that period, they never got a visit from the Department because nobody in it knew about my involvement with Sammy. Except, of course, Murdock.
I never told Sammy or Joan about Styles, never went into any real details at all. I just asked them to trust me which Joan did and Sammy, I think, didn’t, but what Sammy thought wasn’t going to make any difference to anything because I was there, and in no way was I going to move until the time was right. And that time didn’t only depend on the town cooling down. It depended on my arriving at a plan. A plan I needed to work out to perfection so the score could be evened out a little bit for Murdock. And the time had been well spent because I’d cracked it with a little bit of inspiration.
I’d left Sammy’s in a pickup driven by Joan. The pickup was a nice little affair Sammy’d used in the days he’d been working. He’d fixed it up himself and what he’d done was to engineer a false compartment between the driver’s seat in the back of the cabin and the carrying part of the truck. It was pretty tight but I’d only been in it for an hour or so until Joan’d driven out of town and seventy miles down the highway until the desert turn-off. Then a quarter of an hour into that Joan’d stopped and let me out and I’d taken over the driving for the next half hour until we’d come to the first of the derelict ranches. Beyond this the road ran out. Daytime, Joan could’ve taken over and driven to whe
re we were going, but at night there was no way I was going to risk any accident that left the truck wide open in daylight for the helicopter patrol to home in on it. So I got out of the pickup with my rucksack and my bedroll and said goodbye to Joan and sacked down for the night in one of the outbuildings of the rundown ranch. I’d waited outside all next day and looked out at the rocks and the desert and got the bearings I’d been given fixed in my mind and then when it got close to dusk, I’d started out for Sammy’s place. I’d taken just over two hours to get there and the light was just disappearing, but I’d had the place in view for the last half hour, so even in the hurrying light there was no chance I was going to miss Sammy’s ranch.
Sammy’s ranch looks just as derelict as the last place from the outside, and when I’d got there I’d been wondering if I’d got the wrong bearing. But once I’d unlocked the front door and swung the flashlight around a little bit, I realized I’d got the right place.
Sammy acquired the rights to this place seven or eight years ago before his accident had put him out of business. He took it for the same kind of reason I’m using it but he never needed it. So he fixed it up a little bit, built in one or two home comforts, and what the hell, if any squatters or hippies busted in on it, then, Christ, he wasn’t going to lose too much sleep over that. But maybe when he and Joan gave up the bar they could use it some weekends, one of those places people think about like that but never do anything about.
And so here I’ve been, three months. Joan’s been out here twice since with provisions. And I have to admit, every cloud has its silver lining. The first time she comes out she helps me unload the provisions, and it strikes me there’s a tension about her. At first I put it down to the general nervousness created by the situation, but then I remember she was pretty cool when she brought me out here. So after we stack everything away, I say to her why don’t we celebrate our labors with a cup of coffee and she says, no, she’d better not; the light’ll be going soon, she’d better be getting back. But I already have the stove lit and I’m working with the coffee and while I’m doing that, I’m telling her the light’ll stay for an hour yet. Desert light’s different to anywhere else; I should know, I’m getting to be a veteran. So she finally says yes but she doesn’t sit down, she wanders around the room looking at the stuff in it as though she’s never seen any of it before. The coffee boils up and I fill two mugs and while I’m waiting for it to cool, I break open a bottle of scotch and a can of ginger ale. The sound of that activity makes her start as if somebody’s just fixed a machine gun, so I say to her you’ve got to join me; I mean, I got all next month and some to drink alone. She stares at the bottle as I gurgle the scotch into the only two glasses in the place, tumblers, and when I’ve finished, I ask her if she’d like any ginger ale. She shakes her head but only after she’s looked at the tumbler for quite a while.
Once she’s made that movement, I get the feeling that it’s no longer going to be like when Sammy was away, and I think, maybe the years between have had a lot to do with it. So I go around the other side of the table to where she is and hand her the tumbler. She takes it and holds it against her breasts, both hands, like with a sacramental cup, and she closes her eyes. I stand there for a minute or two, looking at her, and then I take the tumbler away from her and her hands part slightly away from her breasts, and I begin to unbutton her shirt. She makes no move at all, except to drop her arms to her side so that her shirt can slide off her shoulders and down her arms on to the floor. Then I put my arms around her, unhook her bra, slip the straps and then the bra joins the shirt. Still no movement from her, still the eyes closed. So I unbuckle the belt of her jeans and release the press stud and the zip begins to open of its own accord. I give it a little help and the jeans are tight enough so that when I ease them down her hips, the panties go with them. Still no movement, so I pull her to me and I kiss her and suddenly there’s movement; her arms go around my neck, and I nearly over-balance backward across the table. After that I have no time to think about movement or non-movement because Joan is making up for the absence of the last seven years, feeling hands on her again, and to me seven years is nothing; it’s worth a lifetime to be on the receiving end of that kind of tidal wave.
So that’s how it was. Afterward, she could hardly bring herself to stop rushing out into the desert dusk air and vomiting, but she managed somehow and to give her a break, I walked out onto the porch so that she could get dressed without her feeling my eyes on the way she felt. When she’d done that, she came outside too and without a word she walked past me, climbed into the pickup and fired the ignition and a minute or two later the truck was a dark shimmering nothing against the desert dusk.
The second time she comes to me, it’s almost the same. Except she’s had a month to think about it and I’ve had a month to think about it and this time when we meet, it’s like being two kids--- that time when nothing is so important as to be with the person who’s generating that special kind of electricity. Every minute that builds up to the meeting is an hour of superb hell, and then the meeting, the floodgate, the oneness, unselfishness, the mingling; Jesus, that’s what it’s like this time, sweetening the sex and the body smell of it, making the whole thing a totally honorable estate. And this time, this feeling is what makes her guillotine herself about Sammy. She’s in pain, she’s in anguish, she wants to be dead, but this is the great thing: the agony is enormous but the enormity of it is cancelled, terrifying for her, by the need for the continuation of what she’s feeling for me. And so this time we talk and we talk with a sureness, taking full account of the pain, a sureness about what we’re going to do, taking full account of all the dangers, all the selfishness, all the misery our actions are going to cause. And the talk is about our future. About us. Together. Christ, I think at one point, is this me in this situation talking of things like this? But my question is like a double negative because underneath it, even while I’m rationalizing it, there’s a repose in the knowledge that there’s no answer to the question because there’s no need to ask it in the first place.
So that was the second time. The time we arranged our future. And now, now I wait for the third time. This is the last time here. She’s coming to take me out this time. She’s no knowledge of what I’m going to do. She only knows the place we’re to meet after I’ve done it. She has ideas, she has a fear, but unlike her conquering her guilt over Sammy, there’s no way any consideration for Joan is going to stop me doing what I’m going to do. All right, she’s had seven years to drive her to her present state of mind, but part of her motivation stems from love and I’m driven by hate, and in my book that’s the stronger of the two emotions. I’ve had three months to stoke up that hatred, and the hatred’s not just been warped and hyped up by mind pictures. I’ve had real pictures: the pictures in the papers, pictures of Murdock in different attitudes of death taken from the different vantage points of the photographers almost adding up to a two-dimensional essay on death in the round; the blood-soaked shirt he’d been so careful to hang up when he first moved into my apartment; the fingers stiff in their final grab for the gun—now frozen in the futile pose of grasping for life; the eyes like pebbles; the trouser leg screwed up to his knee displaying a neat, suspender-fixed sock; and the blood itself, on his mouth, on the hand clutching the shirt where his stomach has opened up on the floor around him. And the counterpoint of the relaxed legs and easy balance of the cops standing around him, dispassionately placed shoes, the way I would have been viewing just another death.
The coffee boils over and I turn off the stove, but instead of pouring some coffee into a cup I pick up the scotch and fill a tumbler and drink until the tumbler’s only half-full; then I open the door and stand on the porch looking down the dry wash of the low canyon. The wind is cold and the desert scene is as usual clear and clean in its sharp deep focus. But there is nothing else. I look at my watch. Late. She’s late. Not much but enough to set me off like a con who’s on his l
ast day waiting for the guard to come and conduct him through the ritual with the warden, and then to the opening gates; he knows it’s going to happen, he knows he’s going out, but it doesn’t help. His guts are water, and the panic of expectancy matches the panic of the moment of capture, and no amount of repeating to himself that it’s true (as opposed to repeating it’s not true when the bust happened), none of that helps. Only the closing door is the final convincer.
I turn to go back inside again and as I get to the doorway, I hear the sound I’ve been waiting for—the lurching, hesitant sound of the pickup being carried down the wind toward me. I turn back and the pickup is just appearing at the top of the gully. Then it dips and starts on its downward path toward the ranch. I finish the rest of my scotch and there is a cracking tension in me and without any conscious thought I hurl the tumbler at the nearest rock and spin around and scream into the evening air.
