Whipple's Castle

by Thomas Williams

  Gordon wasn’t even aware of the nature of his crime, had no idea why he was being judged.

  “Well, Susie had a kind of mental disease called nymphomania. I hate to say it, Horace, but that’s the way it was. You won’t get mad, now, if I explain what it is? Okay? By the way, if you decide to put that safety back on, be careful, huh? I mean don’t pull the trigger by mistake? Okay? Well, nymphomaniacs just have to sleep with everybody that comes along. It’s not their fault, now. Remember that! It’s a disease. You know Susie’s mother’s in Concord. You knew that. Well, there’s a history of mental illness in the family, you know.” He shook his head sadly.

  Gordon had been sweating, but now he was full of confidence, for some reason. It began to seem dangerous, just a little dangerous. Gordon peered carefully out of his head, seeming to see great results Horace couldn’t see. His hair gleamed like red metal, and his big chest expanded with confidence. Freckles overlapped like plates upon his face and hands. It must have been that name for her that had generated such confidence. Horace raised the shotgun.

  “Horace! What the hell? Are you crazy?”

  Yes, he was mad. The man he knew to be Gordon Ward had become for an instant Zoster. Chitin slid, smooth sheaths along the jaws. The red was the blood of victims, the green eyes were cold as absolute zero. Horace had never chosen to guard against them. He wanted to explain it all to Susie, how they would come to suck her warmth, how they liked torture. He had never told her about the flayed dog screaming for its skin. They were power, the ones who always had the power, didn’t she understand? They could kill her any way they chose and never be made to suffer. He must warn her about them again. He saw her lying in her sleep, so frail, no lock on the door. Their grins, bloated parts, teeth, smirks, cold armor. It was almost too late. It was hard, what he had to do. He had almost died of fright at the unnaturalness when he ran at Leverah’s window, staring with his open eyes. She fell, exploding in blood and her own terror. It was hard to do, wrong to do. Unnatural. But they made these rules, not he. Anticipating attack or flight, he quickly fired into the head of this one.

  As the big body jackknifed, part of the head pushed off toward the wall. Long ropes and finer bells of blood painted the wallpaper, lay ribbon like along the floor. He had expected power from Wood’s shotgun, but the head! Pieces of scalp still grew orange hair. Pinkish-gray cereal gleamed on the carpet, crawled down a table leg.

  In the silence of the gaudy hallway he remembered who he was and saw what he had done.

  33

  David stopped at Anna’s Teach Your Dollars More Cents and bought five twelve-ounce bottles of beer. Anna made him show his driver’s license before she’d believe he was twenty-one, in spite of his having bought beer there less than two weeks before. Though he suffered slightly from this insult, the redeeming thing was that she had forgotten it was Sunday, when beer wasn’t supposed to be sold. With a bottle of beer cooling his crotch, he resumed his meaningless patrol of the town.

  He was pleased by his little truck. Its flathead V-8 purred along nicely. The only jarring thing was the one rattle in the body or bed somewhere he couldn’t locate, but such a little imperfection made him more constantly aware of his machine’s general well-being. And his nagging, wavelike concern about Horace—or more likely his awareness of responsibility for Horace—made his neat truck, his ride through the warm night with the big white instrument dial glowing, the crisp feel of shifting gears, more enjoyable too. Procrastination, a kind of hooky, but it was good to pass along the streets, the houses, under the tall trees.

  He went down Water Street past the tenement. Window glass glittered where it had been pushed back from the sidewalk; the windows of Susie’s kitchen were soft black holes. No Horace skulked between the old buildings, along the railroad tracks, behind the American Legion Hall. He cruised down Mechanic Street, crossed Poverty Street, then passed the mills, only night lights glowing deep in their huge rooms, floodlights on cinder parking lots empty now of all but a watchman’s car or two. A whiff of tannery, a moonlit gleam of the river. Because he was pointing that way, he followed the Cascom River to the Connecticut and crossed the long covered bridge into Vermont, then turned and came back to Leah, to cruise the Town Square once again.

  A few lights were on in the Wards’ big brick house. Horace might blame Gordon in some way, and in spite of seeming foolishly dramatic, he thought of possibly warning Gordon. But there were many reasons for his not wanting to do this. Horace was not one to enter upon violence without being forced into it. They had always counted upon Horace’s gentleness. It was himself he always hurt, unless by pure accident. He didn’t want to betray Horace with that sort of bad judgment, either, especially to Gordon Ward. Horace had a queer enough reputation already. But the main reason for not seeing Gordon was what Kate had told him. He wouldn’t be able to look Gordon in the eye. Perhaps he would never, on his own initiative, see Gordon again. Strange, because the facts of the matter were not that horrendous. Face it: when girls liked boys, boys who liked girls did that to girls. Sometimes it took longer than at other times, but it happened. Then why couldn’t he think of looking Gordon casually in the eye? Because he hated the son of a bitch. Because Kate Whipple was too beautiful and good for the likes of Gordon Ward. Gordon Ward should never have been allowed to play with her responses, even to touch her.

  As he came around the square past the post office, the little round library, Trask’s, the hotel, the Town Hall, people began to emerge from the first show at the Strand. He parked near the marquee and watched, doubting that Horace would have gone to the movies under these circumstances. But he doubted that he would find Horace anyway. He turned off the engine and leaned back.

  Then strange things began to happen.

  It was the beginning of an adventure he would always remember with a great deal of awe. Strange imperfections in timing and desire, childhood returning in force, with ironic lessons implied; he would begin to think of his whole life in terms of such timing. He would always seem destined to survive, to move on toward an ironic skewing of desire. He would remember the air-raid tower, when the little bullet born of a wishful yearning for action had missed his chest by the smallest hairline crack of timing. He had just missed, just been missed, how many times? He thought of Lucifer of the golden eye, the desperate screech of tires on asphalt, a short round in basic that demolished a nearby truck, a tree branch slowly giving way. There had been other times, and there would be more, but after this confrontation they would all fit together with a haunting, adhesive quality that would always cause him to dream upon his possibilities.

  After most of the people had come out of the Strand and gone their way, Carol Oakes came out alone. She stood next to the coming-attractions display cases, striking as she always was, just slightly more a woman than other women. This quality could have been measured, he supposed, in tenths of inches, but slight though the measurements might have been, they were highly visible. She wore a light summer dress, chalky blue, and she struck him with all the force of high school. She seemed pale, worried, her large face translucent as marble. He sat within the sanctuary of the cab staring avidly, letting all the guilt shocks, fantasies, the masturbation flashes of his adolescence come back as he examined her forbidden, always impossible excess of femaleness. Letty was smooth, possible, his likeness, friend and comrade. Carol Oakes was that somnolent goddess of breadth and burning, fragile and voluminous, wasp and cloud.

  He was prepared to make these observations, to take these scorches upon his nerves and go, when she walked straight toward him with knowledge in her eyes. She put her long hand on the window sill of his truck.

  “Davy?” she said. Her voice had always been throaty, with a small warble in it, as though she barely controlled some deep emotion.

  “Hi, Carol,” he said. Her eyes were a little older, which made them clearer, more distinct around the edges, the irises a more primary blue. Her unhappiness had a touch of rakishness about it—the way she tossed
her head, her rich auburn hair swinging across her cheek. She seemed about to do something dramatic.

  “Are you waiting for anybody?”

  “I was looking around for Horace, but I don’t expect to find him. You want a ride?”

  “Yes!” She got in beside him and leaned back with an unhappy sigh.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, it’s Mike Spinelli. I’m through with him, absolutely through!” She took a Kleenex from a little cloth bag and blew her nose.

  He started the truck and drove around the square to Sum-merslee Street, which led toward her house. When she saw where he was going she said, “Are you doing anything, Davy? Do you have a date or something?”

  “No,” he said, trembling like a freshman.

  “Don’t take me home, huh? I couldn’t stand going home.”

  He drove on past her house and they entered the country. She accepted a beer. “God, that’s what I need,” she said. She leaned lightly against him—a lightness that was unbearably tender, as though she possessed magnificent reflexes toward a man. “Take me somewhere, Davy. Just take me anywhere.” She held his beer so he could put his arm around her as he drove. It was all so smooth, so charged it might have been the beginning of any of his thousand fantasies about her. He seemed a child again, dreaming of being a man, his hand for the first time actually touching her waist, her hip. When he came to Ralph Hill Road he turned east; this would take them back to the Cascom road, which led toward the lake and the cabin.

  He could hardly believe any of it. Ladyfingers were going off in his knees. At the cabin she accepted a drink of whiskey, cried a little on his shoulder, cried a little more after they had come to rest on the couch on the screened porch. Moonlight bathed them in its cool light, and the wind died down to an occasional soft gust. As she told him her story about Mike Spinelli, how Mike was probably going to marry Jane Stevens, he took off her clothes. Hardly moving, she helped him. Pressures eased where his hands were. He could not believe what she seemed to be helping him to do. When they were naked her moans of pleasure were almost sobs; for a fraction of a moment he thought them exaggerated, as though she tried to prove her helplessness under his kisses—if she were helpless, stunned by passion, what she allowed him could not be her fault. Then his response obliterated any thought at all. That he could cause this goddess to thrash and whimper! They fell yet seemed weightless.

  Afterwards she was so still he thought her actually unconscious until he gave the slightest indication—hardly a thought—that he might rise. Her fingernails pressed him back into her like threatening daggers, light needles of threat, and again he began to slide down toward falling—a strange slope, convex, all forbidden oil and soft color—toward the totality, the prickly hysterical pleasure of a child. She cried that she loved him. He was certain that he loved her. Nothing like this stirring of nerve and depth had ever happened to him. He was the cause of her rapture, and when the time came again he unraveled, froze; in his shut eyes constellations burned. And then, almost at once, her moist white body turned guiltily beneath him, freshly naked.

  They had slept. Time had passed, leaving its echo. When he awoke she was kissing the nipples on his chest, but not as if to rouse him. “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you,” he said. He did love her, though a warning, thin as a distant siren, told him he was dangerously convinced—too dangerously convinced. But he didn’t want to think, to endanger his love. He thought of marriage, of the nights, one long night turning her inside out, over and over.

  “You’re not like him at all,” she said.

  “Mike?”

  “He’s so selfish, Davy. I never realized it. I’m such a dumb bunny anyway.” She stuck her little finger in his navel, and he sneezed. With a little giggle she did it again and he sneezed again. “I found your sneeze button,” she said.

  “You found all my buttons,” he said, not wanting to make such a joke.

  She laughed. “I shouldn’t be so happy, I guess. I’m in no position to laugh. I was all fixed up for Mike and he stood me up again. It was just pure accident you came along, but I wouldn’t of gone with anybody else because I always knew you had this thing about me.”

  “You did?”

  “A girl knows. Whenever you looked at me you thought of something like what just happened. You even thought of the same thing in grammar school, for goodness’ sakes.”

  “So did everybody.”

  “Yes, but I always wondered about you. Mike was the only boy who had the nerve to ask me. The others were such little children I’d of felt silly going out with them. Mike’s so selfish, though. He never made me feel like you did. I never knew it could happen. I just wanted him more and more often. Then he made me go to Manchester and lie to the doctor so I could get the diaphragm and all, and pretty soon we never went out hardly at all. We just met for one single solitary purpose. Sometimes he’d call me and pick me up and I’d be back home by nine. He’d just squirt and go.”

  “Don’t talk,” he said. Her voice should form itself around better words. Its tremulous breath was too beautiful for those words. He must begin to change her.

  “Again, Davy?” she said with wonder. Ah, that was better. She should only say words in groups of one or two, because he loved her. He couldn’t think of letting her go. He didn’t want to go back to Chicago anyway. They could live here at the cabin, and he could get a job, or transfer to Northlee College. Yes. With her job at the Public Service Company and his GI Bill they could get along fine. He saw that future in mist, moon-colored, voluminous. She made him ache. A warm confusion of love and desire swirled around them—he could see its convolutions. All his problems, his aimless aspirations, were over.

  “I never did it with anybody but Mike, Davy,” she said.

  “Shh. It’s all right.” He was turning to liquid, to rock, a smooth river broken in slow swirls by a still rock.

  “I meant it when I said that, Davy. I’m wild for you.”

  “Shh, now.” It was again utterly new, that shocking entrance.

  At that moment real light flashed. Hugh branches printed themselves across the screens, leaves thrashing. Then the branches swerved and with incredible speed rushed across and out. A car had turned into the parking space. A car door slammed. He had just enough time to find his pants and pull them on before the screen door opened and the porch light came on with its harsh, tawdry brightness. Kate stood there, her hand still raised to the light chain. “Davy!” she said. He turned to Carol, who had found the old afghan at the foot of the couch. Her breasts gleamed before she got them covered.

  As he had turned away from Kate he knew that something terrible was in her face, but he had to see the scene as it presented itself to her. Carol’s big breasts, pink nipples standing, then her smooth glowing legs because the afghan had a perverse short fold in it. As he turned back, Kate’s face was white, her eyes walleyed, her mouth a round hole. She bawled certain words he couldn’t catch but knew were words. She stood as if bound to a stake, all the disintegration taking place in her mouth and eyes.

  “Horace! Horace!” Kate cried.

  “What? What?” He couldn’t help imitating her voice because he felt her dread. She cried, still talking but not in recognizable words, shaking, choking on her breaths. He went to her, but as soon as her hands touched his skin she jumped back as though he’d frightened her. She looked over his shoulder, and he turned to see Carol slipping into her clothes.

  “What about Horace?” he demanded. “What about him?”

  She had gone all to pieces and couldn’t begin to talk. Horrified, he forced her to sit down on the couch. Her keening was musical in its waverings, its slides into the minor. Sometimes she seemed to be trying to laugh. Hysteria, he thought, so this is hysteria. He slapped her face lightly, but couldn’t hit her hard enough to communicate the intent to shock. Finally he went to the kitchen, ran cold water on a dishtowel, came back and placed it on her face and neck. She shuddered and grew quie
t. Carol sat on the other side of her and they held her and petted her until she could breathe normally again.

  He knew something very bad had happened—again in his dishonorable absence. He knew he would have to hear it, but he was giddy, almost ready to faint, and he had the absurd desire to get some sleep before he was subjected to the news Kate brought. He must take care of Carol, get her out of this first.

  “Horace killed Gordon! God, Davy!”

  No, he couldn’t believe that because…

  “They’re hunting him now, Davy! There’re men with guns all around the house!”

  “Oh, Kate!” Carol said.

  David found his mind curiously traveling, an easy inward journey toward alternate possibilities. But Kate was here, and she didn’t lie her way out of things the way he might. No hopeful theories came to light, so he came back to Kate. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.” He had the information straight enough, but soon would come the confrontation with his feelings. Horace. He heard him bawling, red-faced, too big to be comforted. The giant child.

  Calmly he put on the rest of his clothes. His shorts he kicked surreptitiously under the couch to be recovered another time. What other time? He felt a bit like a kamikaze. Plan the next action and the next. Steer correctly. Kate shouldn’t drive, so he would take them both in the Chevrolet. He was weak, cold in the mind. His fluids were low. He would take Carol home first, to be recovered another time.

  They sat Kate between them in the car, Carol trying to comfort her, crooning gentle nonwords to her. “Poor Horsie,” Kate said when her breath let her. David knew he needed more information. He had to have it but he didn’t want it—he didn’t want the information he already had. So Gordon Ward was dead; he couldn’t yet begin to think of that enormous blank.

  Carol’s house was dark—it was one o’clock in the morning. She patted Kate once more, said good night and got out of the car. David sat there for a moment, then was drawn to Carol. It seemed unlike him in these circumstances, even ominous, because he quickly got out of the car, ran up the walk and caught her on the front steps. When he kissed her she made a small noise of surprise and gratitude.