I fed the dog and let him out to run a while. I filled his plastic jug and stuck a bottle of aspirin in my other coat pocket. I swallowed a couple of the remaining codeine jobs to convince my ribs I’d enjoy bending myself behind the wheel. In the refrigerator I saw margarine and peanut butter I could spread on toast, but I couldn’t imagine who would eat it beside the dog. I swallowed a little orange juice from the carton. The carton flap was pulpy and most of the juice was gone. “Bachelor kitchen,” I said, making a face, but I didn’t think me funny and I didn’t reply.
I drove to work slowly, and I squinted into a white sky. The sun was strong behind it. My eyes felt sore from not enough sleep, and I thought of lying someplace with my hands on them to keep the sun out. Which reminded me, of course, of Rosalie, and how she’d shielded or shut her eyes like a child and how, later on, I had shielded my eyes like a grown-up under the covers with a child.
And Fanny’s sad face that had been so easy once, and not so breakable-looking.
“It’s because I’m looking into the goddamned sun,” I told the dog.
I listened to sheriff’s deputies talking about road wrecks and house fires. It was a way of not listening to me. I knew a local man with a scanner who would sit in his chair at night and drink beer and listen to catastrophes. He never went to bed unhappy, he said, because he was alive to do it and somebody else, between seven and ten, would have died in a stupid way while he sat in his chair.
The branches were thickening a little, just as Fanny would have pointed out. I saw the tops of grasses in the fields off our road. They were scoured by driving winds after the storms, and then the winds polished them. At dusk or dawn, they gleamed. As spring came on, as no new snow was deposited and as the winds diminished, the tops of the fields grew coarse and started melting down. It seemed a likelihood, I was ready to admit, that winter might be ending. But we had suffered snowfalls in April with some frequency, and I could remember May snow that took saplings over into twisted shapes that looked all spring and summer like suffering. So, yes, it was possible we’d have some spring. But I was ready for winter to go on.
At the Blue Bird, where I had my thermos filled and bought some doughnuts for the dog, I saw Archie Halpern and I waved. I didn’t go over because I felt like one of those patches of grass-topped swamp ground you intend to step on and instead you step into. I was brimming with it and trying not to let it show. I figured if I sat with him for half a sip of Verna’s sour coffee, I’d be shouting into his shoulder and crying out loud. Just thinking of it made me turn away from him. He knew. He knew something was up. He just let his eyebrows go up and come down the next time I looked over.
I read every piece of campus mail, and I signed off on everything I could—rosters for night watch, extra-duty rosters, an agreement with the student rape-prevention service that escorted girls to and from the library at night. The head of the political science department must have hand-delivered the announcement that the Vice President of the United States of America would not be appearing on campus because of unalterable schedule conflicts. “For more information,” his memo said, “consult Head Librarian Horstmuller.” I hadn’t ever much liked him because of his schedule. He was one of those professors who came to work at nine and left at five, like a man who had a job. That kind of trying to act like a businessman annoyed me, since I figured this guy, like most of the others, couldn’t balance his own checkbook. Of course, neither could I. Anyway, I thought Ms. Horstmuller had some balls, even if I didn’t agree with her holding back the information, so I didn’t appreciate the chairman’s tone. What a pity for him, I thought.
Then, letting the dog have one more run before we settled in to cruise, I warmed up the Jeep. The temperature was rising, but the moisture in the air was, too, and my elbows and knees reacted to it. I didn’t even want to think about my ribs, and I wondered if they were going to have to put a screw into the little finger of my right hand. I kept thinking I could feel the pieces of bone shift and grate against one another. I moaned and hissed a bit when I got into the car. This made the dog very pleased and he sat up prettily to pose for the students and teachers we passed.
“She had to have a diary,” Rosalie had said. “They sometimes stop after a while, but most of them at least begin. Girls that age keep diaries.” Rosalie had also said, “I wouldn’t be surprised to hear her parents had found it and suppressed it. They’d hate her sad little cries of ecstasy about the tenderness of whoever was committing statutory rape with her.”
“You’re not bad in the ecstasy department,” I had told her.
“Those aren’t little cries, Jack. You made me come. And this is not rape. Is it?”
I thought again of Janice and I pictured the cheap, sexy underwear. I thought of Fanny’s sturdy, reliable underpants and bras. It had been a very long time since I had seen them except in the washer or dryer. It felt like a very long time since I’d seen her. And Rosalie: I thought of her in the oversized boxer shorts. I thought of her naked with me.
I deserved to live alone with my dog, I thought. I lived with a dog. I rode patrol with a dog. That was who I talked to. Except when I was two-timing Fanny.
Down at the bottom of the campus, on its back end, where the street ran parallel to the main street of town but was separated from it by the width of the college, I saw the black Trans Am with its spoiler and scoop. I stopped and backed up so I had a little cover from some old maples. It seemed to me I saw Everett Stark, the black kid who was tired of white folks and cows. It seemed to me he leaned into the car, then straightened, looked around, and then leaned in again.
I was not about to let him do that to himself. I hit the accelerator hard, and of course I skidded out as I took off. I got control, pretty much, and the slight swerve I stopped with added to the look of law enforcement on the move. I told the dog to stay and I was out and walking, and hurting pretty much, before either of them might have expected me. My Jeep was in front of the Trans Am, so he would have to back up to get away. I walked around behind his car, and I stood there.
I had not realized that I planned to do that. I hadn’t understood that what I was going to do was plant my legs, aim the pistol at the back window, and tell Everett to walk around and stand beside me.
“William Franklin,” I said as Everett came over, “stand outside the car. Shut the door. Place your hands on the roof.”
Franklin came out slowly. I said to Everett, “You stand to my right, behind me, and you stay there. And shame on you, Everett.”
“On the roof,” I told Franklin. I walked a wide circle so I could come in directly behind him. That way, he couldn’t tell whether I had the gun in my pocket, which I did, or aimed at him. I reached for his left hand—I remembered him as a lefty—and I took hold of his little finger. You can make a man the size of a left tackle walk on his tiptoes and sing falsetto with a grip on that finger. I kept hold of him and patted him down. He had a lot of cash, which I threw on the snow behind us, and I found the plastic envelopes I’d expected to. I also found brown pharmaceutical vials.
“Everett, what in hell are you doing with your life?”
Franklin said, “Since when do you guys go armed?”
Everett said, “It was a little speed. Very mild stuff. Ask him. I got to study more. I got to stay up late. I keep falling asleep.”
“You work a job, right? You go to classes all day, you work in the cafeteria, of course you fall asleep. That’s what you need.”
“I can’t afford to sleep,” he said. “I need to study harder.”
“I know where that is,” I said. “But you can’t buy medicine from Dr. Doom out of Staten Island, New York, over here. How do you know what goes in those little items he sells you? You lie down with dogs like this, Everett, you get up with only fleas, you’re lucky. This guy gives you rabies and worms and all kinds of shit. I want you away from him. You hear me?”
Franklin said, “This is a fuckin’ restraint of trade, Ev.”
I tightened
a little on the finger, and he was on his knees, his head sinking.
“It’ll break, William. You know it.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay what?”
“Okay whatever you want.”
I let up enough for him to raise his head.
“Go away, Everett. All right?”
“Jack, you’re a little, like, enthusiastic, you know?”
“Sign of a craftsman, Everett. I take a tremendous amount of pride in my work.” I tightened on the finger a little and Franklin made noises. “See you,” I told Everett.
When I saw him make progress up the campus walk, I let go of Franklin’s finger and I told him, “Sit in the back of your car.” I worked the gun out of my left-hand pocket while he got in, shaking the hand I’d been working on. I got in, too, and I was pleased to note I made no sounds that could be mistaken for the lamentations of a man with broken ribs. He was looking at the gun.
“You’re fucking crazy,” he said.
“I figure one of these, two of these, and you bleed to death fast. Yes? Two, I think. I don’t want to go for the head shot on account of that means broken glass, blood and brains all over it, and they find you sooner. This way, you just go over and shake your legs a lot because of the pains in your intestines and your spongy little inner organs, and then you’re dead. I really would love to get rid of you.”
“Three guys beat the shit out of you—”
“Give yourself credit, William. Four. Don’t I remember a couple of field goals you kicked before you guys called it a night?”
“And you figure—what? You’re Superman?”
“You couldn’t begin to imagine what I’m figuring, son. It begins with you, though. Let’s see. You kicked me in the ribs as hard as you could. Why don’t I put two of these in the same place on you? You ready?”
His handsome white bullyboy’s face was sweaty. That was a good sign. He swallowed a lot, and that was a good sign. His feet were pointed toward me, not at the door to his right, and that was another good sign—he wasn’t about to push off and come at me. And I was pretty certain he believed me. I believed me, too. I was going to do it. That’s part of it, when you take someone on. You have to make yourself believe you’re ready to do it. So we were believers in there, in the smell of his cigarettes and lotion, the air freshener that hung from his rearview mirror stanchion next to his cross. Soon, I was going to smell his sweat, and then maybe the gas he’d begin to leak or even the filling of his pants.
I said, “Ready?”
“Tell me what to do, I’ll do it.”
“Go away.”
“I know how to do that.”
“What about your heavy friends?”
“I have to tell them you ran me.”
“And?”
“I gotta say it. Don’t—I’m just telling you what I think.”
“Speak your little heart, William.”
“I think they’ll try and take you down.”
“Except now you’re not so sure they can. You said try.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“So tell them that.”
“Okay. Right. I will.”
“Don’t come here anymore.”
I cocked it. I let the barrel wander up in the direction of his ribs. I brought it down and tapped his knee. He jumped.
“I promise. I swear it.”
“Cross your heart, William.”
“Cross my heart.”
I was beginning to make myself sick. I backed out, and this time he heard me answer to my ribs. That seemed to impress him more. He shook his head as he crawled out and then got in front behind the wheel.
“You really must love this place,” he said. “All the shit you put up with for a bunch of fuckin’ preppies.”
“I’m supposed to take care of them,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. “Well, you did that, all right. I’m gone. You got it straight up and down. I’m gone.”
He backed up, made a K-turn in the little street, and rumbled toward the corner. I let the hammer down, put the safety on, and stuck the pistol in my pocket. When I looked up, across the street, a man with white hair and glasses was looking through his front window at me. When he saw me focus on him, he started, then stepped behind the curtain. I saw him peeking out when I turned the Jeep around and went back up the hill. He would talk to someone. I would probably lose my job.
But I can always find work in a nightmare, I thought of telling the dog. I didn’t. I was sick of gestures.
I was also scared. I had forgotten what the weight of the .32 made me remember—the kind of power a weapon concentrates at the end of your arm. You move it, and you’re Mrs. Tanner’s heroic Lord. You make decisions. Let this person’s chest be opened. Let there be bone fragments in the air. Let his chest breathe, sucking for air through the maroon spittle on his sternum. The fear on his face begins at the end of your arm with the gun’s dead heaviness, and you’re scared, too. I’d even liked the fear. I had enjoyed it more than I should have. His fear, my fear, the stink of our dry mouths in the back of his car, even the pain in my side and my heartbeat in my fingers, which brushed against the blue-black butt of the pistol. Where I’d gotten to was the cellar of the haunted house, and what was haunting it was me.
Rosalie Piri drove her little tan clunker onto campus too fast. We had a twenty-mile-an-hour limit, and the security people were supposed to enforce it. I didn’t think that writing her a citation would be useful to our further friendship, so I followed her up the steep, slithery, narrow college road, staring from the greater height of the truck down into her car. I thought she knew it was me, but I couldn’t find her eyes in the mirror. She began to slide in the melting, slushy ice and packed snow where the road bent around the administration building. She must have gunned it then, because her rear tires spun and the rear end of her car slid left. I dropped back to avoid her as she went into a backward-turning skid, but you can’t predict a skid, and I figured wrong. She had turned directly around, and she came down into the front of the Jeep. I let us go, not working the brakes, but getting into the clutch and downshifting, then working it into four-wheel drive. I hit the lights and pounded the horn to try to warn anyone behind me. When we slowed a little, I began my tap dance on the brakes, and I worked us into an angle against the softening snowbank, and we stopped. There was Rosalie, poised above me on the incline of the road, half of her left wing in snow, her car apparently pinned beneath the truck at the grillwork, and her eyes very large, her mouth in the wonderful dirty grin.
I walked over to her car a little slowly. The impact hadn’t been bad, but enough for the rib cage.
I said, when she leaned over to roll down the passenger-side window, “You’re in trouble with the law, little lady.”
“Are you going to take matters in hand, Officer?”
I said, “Professor, sweetheart, you go too fast for the surface conditions and the shittiness of your vehicle.”
“I called, but I couldn’t reach you anyplace,” she said. “I had a terrible idea. I mean, it’s terrible, but it’s also maybe right. It’s about a book.”
“A book?”
“And Janice Tanner. I think I could maybe guess who did it. Even though it sounds stupid.”
“That’s what I thought. About my idea.”
She said, “It’s time to debrief again. We’d better get into bed and talk.”
I stepped back, looked at traffic, and said, “If you put it in reverse and just barely touch the accelerator, I might be able to push you back up. Then you can park it at the ad building, and I’ll drive you up to class. If you would like me to.”
She said, “Jack, did anyone ever accuse you of standing around and watching them and looking a lot like you could drive them anyplace you wanted to?”
Two teachers drove past, honking and waving. One was my English professor. They came to a sloppy stop and waited.
Rosalie said, “Shit. I guess I have to go with them.”
“I’ll catch you later on.”
“Please do,” she said. She got out of her car and hauled her briefcase up to her rescuers.
A minute later, behind the wheel, I made a few noises about how my chest felt when I breathed or moved. I rubbed my face and nudged the fingers and made the sounds again. I’d been talking to the dispatcher about a wrecker for Rosalie’s car, and she said, “Say again, Jack? Over.”
“Pissing and moaning is all. Over.”
I thought of my professor, who would probably call her Rosie, and maybe tell her what kind of killer I’d been for the Phoenix Project, or how I was this wonderfully naïve character, this rough country fellow, who came to class with essays about corpse rape and a little duck who didn’t have any feathers to protect him when the cold winds blew—not an uninteresting campus cop.
I drove north after work, to a little country road about half a dozen miles outside town, where I swung west, then south and west, on a road they kept plowed. I suspected someone on the town’s road crews lived there, among the eight houses I counted, and that was why they cleared it. I stuck the Ford as close to the verge as I could get without stranding myself, and I let the dog go out onto the frozen marshy edge of the big lake. Dead reeds shook in the warming winds and I heard game birds under scraggly cover begin to squawk as the dog approached, then go silent when he was on them. His tail went up and he stuck his chest out, demonstrating his savage alertness. He couldn’t see too far past his muzzle, and whatever he smelled he didn’t recognize, but we waved his brushy tale in those short, choppy strokes reserved by dogs for showing humans that they’re tracking.
I went out after him, not caring about the birds, just wanting the emptiness and the silence. The road was a good distance from the far side of the lake and no one came past where I was parked. I worked at letting my shoulders collapse under their own weight from where they’d bunched around my stiff neck. I was contemplating the last of the pain pills. I was contemplating Fanny and Janice Tanner, Rosalie, and the gun that was in my coat pocket. The dog had his face into slush and was snorting it away. I knew not to go as far out as he was, and I walked parallel to the shore, hearing the ice crack under my feet. There was a smell of something soft—I didn’t know what, but it had to do with spring. Either something was rising up from under the ice and snow and black water or something was spilling off the trees and plants. It was possible that spring would come. It might. I didn’t know. Mrs. Tanner was going to die, though. She wouldn’t see Janice. I knew that. I was certain she was dead. I wondered if one of them really had a diary she’d written.
Girls Page 23
