18-With Option to Die

by Lockridge, Richard

  “Going to be a big one,” Strothers said. “Hope this husband of yours makes it home before it really breaks.”

  “So do I. How about you, Roy? Driving back to town?”

  He was not. He had decided to stay over at the inn. Anyway …

  Both the board members he had talked to hoped the network was not going to make a thing of it. If it did, they both supposed they’d have to be interviewed. Neither of them wanted to.

  “One thing—” Roy said, and again was drowned by thunder. It was not a rumble this time. It was a crash. The lights flickered; then went out. It was abruptly very dark in the room. But then the lights came back on again.

  “This Lieutenant Forniss,” Roy said, in the momentary quiet, “seems to be making the same rounds we’ve been making. He’d talked to Notson before I got there. Notson wasn’t explicit, but I suppose about the attitude of the town, as maybe demonstrated in the blast at the Sentinel. Whether it ties in with anything they’re after.”

  “Inspector Heimrich,” Ann said, “is after whoever killed Faith Powers. I suppose the lieutenant is too.”

  “Scope of the enquiry maybe’s widened,” Strothers said. “To use a tired phrase, as who doesn’t? State police don’t like people setting off dynamite charges. And Mrs. Powers seems to have come out in—”

  Lightning tore the premature dusk to tatters. Thunder was almost immediate and now it was sharp, shaking—seeming to shake the house. The lights did not flicker this time. They went out. Strothers said, “Damn!” and then, picking up a sentence, “ …favor of the club. Made a speech about it at this open meeting, both Notson and Lacey say. And that it’s ridiculous to suppose that her murder had anything to do with that. Notson said I had pretty crazy ideas about the town if I thought people shot each other because they didn’t agree about something.”

  “Only, people do. I hope Eric’s turned in somewhere. Or’s stayed at the plant.”

  “Probably has. Yes, people do. But not, the idea is, in North Wellwood. Anyway, Lacey says, nobody’s proved Mrs. Powers was murdered. Says too many people give kids guns before they’re old enough to handle them. Not that he’s against guns. He’s a member of a local rifle club himself. Right to bear arms is guaranteed under—”

  Again the lightning ripped around them and thunder exploded.

  “—the Constitution,” Strothers said. “Noisy as hell, isn’t it? Says the whole nation is getting soft, which is just what the Commies want. So, naturally, I asked him if he’d ever heard of a man named Nagle. Or of a gang—only I said ‘organization’—which calls itself Patriots United. He said he never—”

  Again lightning leaped around the house and thunder cracked over it. Strothers waited it out.

  Darkness was almost complete in the room. Their cigarettes were red spots, waxing and waning as they drew on them. Ann groped for an ash tray and found it and ground her cigarette out in it. There is not much point in smoking in the dark.

  Still there was no wind.

  “Tornado weather,” Strothers said. “Out where I grew up this was tornado weather. We called it cyclone weather.”

  “Not here,” Ann said. “Not this far—”

  Thunder drowned her voice. The house, which had weathered many storms, shook with the thunder.

  “Wouldn’t bet on it,” Strothers said. “Over the state line, in Connecticut—not more than maybe ten-fifteen miles from here—the selectmen bet on it a few years back. Let the wind insurance on their new school lapse. Tornado came along …”

  Again he had to wait for the crashing noise to cease.

  “And,” he said, “blew the roof off the new school. Very inconsiderate. And very untraditional. Tornadoes ought to stay in the Plains states where they belong. One thing about Notson. He got a phone call just as I was ready to leave. We were in what he calls his study and …”

  The telephone on Notson’s desk had rung and Notson had said, “Excuse me a minute, will you?” and picked it up. Strothers could hear the grating of a man’s voice, but not the words. Notson said, “You mean tonight, Sam?”

  The other voice grated again.

  “Well,” Notson said, “I guess so, if you put it that way. Although what the great rush is all of a sudden.”

  Again the other voice grated. Notson listened longer this time. Then he said, “How about the others?” and again listened.

  “All right,” Notson said. “If you say so. You’re the boss. Nine o’clock it is.”

  Then he hung up.

  “‘Sam’,” Ann said. “And ‘you’re the boss.’”

  “Seemed likely,” Strothers said. “Summons from the chairman. Notson didn’t expect—”

  Lightning flared in the room and the crash of thunder was instant. And then rain beat the house and the rush of wind was violent in it. Rain blew in sheets through the window they sat by.

  “Windows!” Ann said, her voice raised above the tumult. “Help me get—”

  She started up from her chair. In the darkness, in a house strange to her, she stumbled over something. She caught herself as she was falling, putting both hands out against the wall. She heard Strothers say, “Damn!” and heard him move and bump into something. She reached toward the open window and something shot through it—an object like a ball, in shape and size. Something the wind had lifted from somewhere, hurled from somewhere? Something—

  It landed on the floor beyond her; clanged on the floor.

  Then there was thunder again but the thunder was in the room. No, not thunder. Sharper. More—

  The room shook around her and was lighted by a violent flash. Not lightning. A flash of red and—

  Another object, like the first, came through the window.

  Behind her, Roy Strothers cried out, his voice high—his voice a scream.

  “God! I’m—”

  Then his voice stopped.

  There was the red flash again. And then there was a blow on the back of her head—a violent, crushing blow. Then there was blackness.

  Rain and wind shook the station wagon. Eric stopped its forward lumbering because the traffic light at the junction of South Lane and Main Street showed red. Then the light went out, but the green did not come on. He could look down Main Street and all the lights were out. He crept across Main Street, feeling his way toward Hayride Lane. Which ought to be … this was it … this was …

  Cursing—cursing the weather and the clumsy station wagon—he backed out, through coursing water, from the driveway he had lumbered into, thinking it the beginning of Hayride Lane. He went forward again. Then he inched again to the right. If this wasn’t …

  It was a road, at any rate. Lightning leaped around the car. In the instant of its leaping a sign was visible through falling sheets of water: “Hayride Lane.”

  A couple of miles more, if the house hadn’t blown away. If the road hadn’t washed away. If he didn’t get blown off the road; blunder off the narrow road. If he could find the driveway when he got to it.

  There ought to be houses along here. There were no lights showing. Then lightning leaped again and on his right a house leaped out of darkness. The Powers house, if he was guessing right. Only not the Powers house any more. Ann had told him that. Life had gone out of the house.

  Half a mile or so now, if he knew it when he got to it. A strange driveway on a strange and violent afternoon; an afternoon which flashed and leaped around him. It was raining so hard now, the rain beating so furiously on the wagon, that he could hardly hear the thunder. Yet the thunder shook the straining station wagon.

  Here?

  No, nothing here. Perhaps a momentary widening of the road. A stone fence beyond the widening. I don’t remember a stone fence here, Eric Martin thought. I don’t remember a damn thing about any of this. I’m lost. I’m sure as hell lost in—

  Again lightning served him. On his right a mailbox; beyond it the start of a driveway. His own—his own since yesterday? Or somebody’s. It didn’t matter. Somebody he could ask where the h
ell he was.

  He turned up the driveway. In a lightning flash another house leaped into view. A big house with evergreens in a row in front of it. By God, Eric thought. By God, I’ve made it. I’m—

  There was, dimly in the dim lights of the wagon, movement in front of the house. The movement became a car. A car with no lights, yet one in sudden movement. It was moving down the drive; picking up speed on the drive.

  Eric Martin leaned on the horn rim of the wagon. The wagon blared at the lightless car. The car kept on coming. Ann? Ann going somewhere in this? With no lights? But she could see his lights. Whoever was driving could see his lights. He leaned hard on the horn rim.

  The approaching car began to pull toward its right, and Eric yanked the wagon toward the right. He felt its wheels go up on grass, begin to churn in grass.

  The drive’s too narrow, Eric thought. There isn’t going to be room. Some crazy, bloody fool—

  The wagon shrieked, metal against metal. Eric was hurled to the side. His seat belt caught him. The wagon’s lights went out. The wagon leaned far toward the right, but held there.

  He pulled himself up by the wheel and tried the door. It was jammed. Lightning flashed again. The other car was lying on its side by the drive. Not the MG. Then, please God, not Ann. Then—Roy Strothers? He’d been there. Was supposed to have been there. He—

  Eric tugged his seat belt free and slid down the canted seat. The door was partly embedded in wet turf. No chance of forcing it open. He wrenched at the window crank and it stuck. He yelled at it, swore at it. And wrenched at it. And slowly, jerkily, it slid down. Down to a point where he could climb headfirst through it, get hands on soaked turf.

  He crawled out from beneath the tilted car. After a little way he could stand up, bracing himself against wind and rain.

  From beyond the other car there was a sharp flash, and then an explosion. A bullet clanged against the hood of the tilted station wagon.

  Eric Martin ducked back behind it. There was the sound of another shot, but this time there was no clang of a bullet against anything.

  There was another flash. There was now almost no interval between flashes of lightning. Lightning flared through the world.

  In its flare, Eric saw somebody running from behind the prostrate car. It was a man; a man in a flapping raincoat. A slight man, Eric thought. He seemed to be blown by the wind behind him. He carried a revolver in his hand when he first started to run, but then, Eric thought, he thrust it into a pocket of the raincoat. He was running toward the road. Lightning failed and he ran into darkness.

  Eric ran toward the house. There was no use in shouting through the tumult of the night, through the beating of the rain and the crashing of thunder. But as he ran up onto the porch of the house Eric shouted his wife’s name. He kept shouting it as he pushed the door open.

  The door hit something and stuck. He pushed harder and forced the door open.

  Wind was sweeping through the room, carrying rain with it. There were no lights in the room. Then lightning flared through the windows.

  The room looked as if it had been torn apart. A glass-fronted bookcase lay face down in broken glass. A mangled chair had blocked the front door.

  The lightning failed again, but now it did not seem to be dark in the room. It was dim there, still, but the dimness was, suddenly, not much more than that of late evening. He could make things out. And it was quieter, too. The storm was passing. The—

  He could see somebody lying on the floor in the middle of the room. He could hear moans coming from whoever lay there. He hurled a jumble of broken things aside to reach the prostrate person.

  A man. A man with his clothing torn and slashed, and with blood on the floor around him.

  Eric shouted again; shouted, “Ann! Ann!”

  There was no answer.

  The storm was abating, but water still beat down on the house. The wind was quieter, but it still rushed through the room. Probably Ann was upstairs. If he closed the window, closed out the sounds of the storm, she might hear him, might call back to him.

  He pushed things aside to reach the window. He reached out and slammed it shut and then looked down.

  Ann lay on the floor under the window. She lay entirely still. She lay face down.

  Eric dropped to his knees beside her and called her name, not so loudly now. He reached for her and his hands felt the wetness of her clothing.

  He looked at his shaking hands in the increasing light.

  His hands were not red from her wet clothing. There was only water on his hands.

  He lifted her up gently and held her up. There was little color in her face. His hands on her body sought the movement of her breathing.

  XIII

  The storm cleared Van Brunt at a little after seven and rumbled eastward, muttering sullen good-byes. Above the highlands across the Hudson the sun came out, slanting into the hilltop house which once had been a barn. The house, which had been almost dark, became bright although wind from the northwest still buffeted it. The lights came back on and were pale and meaningless in the bright room. Sunlight paled the fire, which had been leaping red and yellow in the fireplace.

  Colonel remained in front of it with his forepaws stretched toward it. Once a situation is settled in Colonel’s mind it is set there, as if in concrete. A fireplace is to lie in front of, especially when the out-of-doors is antagonistic. It does not much matter whether there is a fire in the fireplace.

  At the moment there still was, although Susan and Merton had let it burn low. They sat beyond their dog and faced the fire, as he did. This was, Susan thought, another manifestation of the inertia to which humans as well as other animals are prone. The Heimrichs sipped drinks and Merton told his wife something about the way things were going in a village named North Wellwood.

  The slanting sunshine reached the little black cat between Colonel’s paws. The cat stood up, floated up. Then he arched his back. Then he sat down again, this time facing Colonel. He looked unblinkingly at the dog, his yellow eyes round, his pupils waning to slits. Then he said, “Muyah.”

  Colonel slightly opened one eye, but made no comment. He did move his right forepaw so that it touched the tiny cat and nudged him toward the other enormous paw.

  “Colonel,” Susan said, “is trying to tell the mite it’s too early to get up.”

  The cat pounced on the paw which had moved. He rolled off the paw onto his back and used four feet on the paw, with the apparent intention of tearing it into pieces. Colonel made a low rumbling sound from somewhere in his throat, but he did not move his paw.

  “Children can be so active,” Susan said. “Delightful, of course, but sometimes tiring to their parents. Which reminds me.” She looked at the watch on her wrist. “The Lathams thought about seven,” she said. “But a storm like that knocks everything galley-west. What does galley-west mean, by the way? Where does it come from?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Merton told her. “They’re bringing the boy?”

  “Their turn,” Susan said.

  The Lathams lived on Van Brunt Pass; they had a son of about the age of Michael Faye; the Latham boy was also on the high-school baseball team and today had been a day for practice. Mary Latham and Susan Heimrich alternated in the transportation of young ballplayers.

  A car horn sounded twice outside. Susan floated up from her chair, rather as the tiny black cat had floated to his feet. She went very quickly to the door and out onto the terrace. She’s been anxious, Heimrich thought. About her boy. About our boy. He heard the Latham car crunch on the turnaround and crunch away from it down the drive.

  He’s shooting up, Heimrich thought, watching his stepson open the door for Susan. He’s almost as tall as his mother. He’s skinny, but that’s all right. He’s got a good fast ball, from what I’ve seen of it.

  “We’ve no idea where,” Susan said over her shoulder to her son. “He just came home with it in his mouth. Michael’s already eaten, Merton. They stopped somewh
ere to wait the rain out. Hamburgers, I suppose? With a lot of catsup?”

  “Not really a lot, Mother,” Michael said. “Good evening, Dad.”

  There was likely to be considerable formality in young Michael’s speech. That had bothered them both a little. But “mother” is, in the opinion of both Heimrichs, better than “mom” and “dad” than “sir.” It had taken young Michael several years to drop the “sir.”

  Colonel struggled to his feet when he heard god’s voice. The tiny cat bristled at the movement; he seemed, for an instant, twice his minute size. He also hissed.

  Colonel paid no attention to this. He shook stiffness out of his long legs and went toward god at what was, for him, a prance. He also wagged his entire rear end. In front of god he started to stand up on hind legs, intending to put paws on shoulders and wash a face. In outbursts of affection, Colonel is apt to knock people over.

  “No, Colonel,” Michael said. “Not tonight, Colonel.”

  Colonel, who had been halfway up, settled. He whimpered.

  Young Michael scratched his dog behind both ears in recompense. He said, “Show me this cat of yours, Colonel.”

  And Colonel, to the complete astonishment of the three of them, turned away from god and pointed toward the little cat. And the cat jumped twice across the floor, each jump half a dozen times the length of cat, and landed on Colonel’s left forepaw.

  It was a blustery clear night when Heimrich, after dinner—young Michael found he could be persuaded, hamburgers or not, to eat a substantial piece of cake—went out to the garage. It was also a chilly night. Before the storm, the temperature had been in the low eighties. It was now, at a guess, in the mid-fifties and going down. Susan had planted tomato plants on Sunday. Mid-May was supposed to be safe in southern Putnam County, although some old residents held out for June. Old residents may be right, Heimrich thought, and shivered his way back into the house.

  Colonel had followed god into god’s bedroom, as was his right. The small black kitten was sitting on Susan’s knee. The kitten clung and purred.