Cancel All Our Vows

by John D. MacDonald

  Fletcher rocked up onto his knees and said, “Get out!” His voice sounded odd in his own ears, as though it had been years since he had used words.

  The man took a slow step into the stall, his weight compressing the hay under the heavy shoe. “This is my place,” the man said thickly. He spoke to Fletcher, but he did not take his eyes from Laura, from the sleekness of her in the barn gloom. And he took another slow step toward her. Laura crouched, quite still, her hands on her clothing. Fletcher was on his knees. The man balanced warily, nostrils spread, neck swollen. Fletcher looked at Laura’s eyes, and saw the blindness in them, and he knew suddenly that this was, to her, after her initial surprise, another part of the same day, another part of the same death, and that she could accept this man, accept him in the same anonymity, in the same facelessness that she had accepted him. She seemed oddly like some silken machine which had rested idle for too long, and now, awakened, would continue to function without thought, without discrimination, almost without conscious wish.

  Fletcher came up off his knees, lurching toward the man, his footing uncertain on the hay. And the hard hand swung at him, a casual backhand swipe that hit him like a club over his ear, so that he fell back, his elbow scraping the side of the stall as he fell. He rolled to his feet again and the man turned to face him, wearing an expression of annoyance rather than anger. Fletcher dodged the blow and grappled with the man and they fell, rolled on the slope of hay to the stall door. Fletcher felt the rough work clothing under his hands, felt the hard strength of the man, smelled the sharp acid of perspiration. The man bucked him off and Fletcher, trying to get to his feet, stepped on the edge of one of the holes, fell heavily on the barn floor, a pain like fire running through his ankle. He got up. The man had turned toward the stall door again. Fletcher made two soundless strides, and as his weight came on the wrenched ankle he nearly cried out. He pulled at the man’s shoulder and hit him, the blow missing the bone of jaw, striking instead into the softness of throat under the jaw.

  The man grunted and put both hands to his throat and coughed. He hit at Fletcher and the bad ankle kept Fletcher from dodging. The blow struck his chest, under his heart. He fell against the man and pulled him down and the man’s head struck the stall door and he was suddenly slack. Fletcher saw the piece of chain near the stall wall. Four huge rusted links, each the size of a fist. The man was stirring weakly. Fletcher reached across him and grabbed the short length of chain. He held the link at one end and swung it back, knowing precisely how he should flail at the heavy face, knowing the ruin it would make.

  He held the heavy chain poised, the end swinging a bit, rust harsh against his palm.

  “Do it!” she said. “Do it!” Her voice was thin, and clear, and strong.

  He turned his head slowly, the chain still poised, and looked at her. She stood in the stall door, her shoulders slumped, her hands spread against her belly, fingers faintly hooked so that each fingertip made a deep depression. She was not looking at him, but at the face of the man, and her eyes were narrowed, as though she looked into a strong light.

  Fletcher felt as though he had dived from some high place, as though he coasted slowly up through the paling shades of green toward the surface. He broke through the surface into daylight and sanity. He threw the chain aside. It thudded and clinked against the floor, skidded, and slid slowly down through one of the holes in the floor to land against the earth underneath, clinking again.

  He stood up slowly, aware of his own nakedness. She stood in the same position, and she made a small mewling sound. He slapped her hard. She turned toward him, eyes widening.

  “Get your clothes on,” he said.

  He kept his back to her as he dressed. He could hear the soft sounds of her as she dressed, the whispering sound of fabric. He sat and tenderly pulled his sock on over the puffing ankle, worked it into the moccasin shoe, pulled the lace as tightly as he could.

  The man was sitting up. He held his hand flat against the side of his head and squinched his face up. Fletcher looked at Laura. She zipped up the side of the gay skirt, settled it properly on her slim waist. She met his look and there was nothing in her face, nothing but a faintly puffed look, a sated, artificial calm. She folded the blanket with professional neatness after shaking the clinging bits of hay from it. She held it over her arm and picked up the red case.

  Fletcher stood over the man. “You all right?”

  The man glared up at him and stood up heavily. “This here is private property, mister. Take your tramp woman some other place.” He was trying to bluster, but Fletcher sensed the uncertainty behind it. The man was only too aware of what he had tried to do, and he knew that they both knew it.

  “If you’re all right, well go,” Fletcher said calmly.

  “I got your license number and I’m going to report you,” the man said.

  Fletcher sensed that the man was regaining confidence, sensed that indeed he might make a report, motivated, perhaps, by his own awareness of guilt.

  Fletcher looked in his wallet and counted what he had. Thirty-six dollars. He took it out, all of it, folded it twice, reached out and slid it into the pocket of the man’s work shirt.

  “Call it rent if you want to,” he said.

  “I can still report it,” the man said truculently.

  “And the lady and I will tell what we paid you.”

  The man knuckled his lips. “Get off the property,” he said softly.

  After they had passed the fence Fletcher looked back. The man stood in the doorway of the barn. He licked his thumb and began to count the money.

  They got into the car and Fletcher backed it out of the dooryard onto the stony road. He went cautiously down the steep hill in second gear. Laura did not speak. A mile further he pulled in under the shade of a giant locust tree with its grooved prehistoric bark, grey as elephants.

  “How is your ankle?” she asked tonelessly.

  “Sprained, I guess. Not too bad though.”

  He sat, facing her, his crooked arm hooked over the back of the seat. She had the bright skirt pulled halfway up her thighs, her slim legs extended straight ahead. He remembered again the exquisite daintiness of the Hindu figurine.

  The car was hot. Sweat trickled down his ribs. “Laura,” he said.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be beautiful. It was supposed to be … what it was.”

  “Are you making that sound like an apology?”

  She turned her head sharply to look at him. “No.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because you act … I don’t know. Ashamed.”

  “I don’t know how I’m acting. I feel as if … I’d been taken apart and put back together in the wrong order.”

  “A little death?”

  “Maybe.”

  She leaned her head back on the seat and closed her eyes. There were new dark patches under her eyes. “Soon again?” she said softly. “Soon?”

  “I … I can’t even answer that. It was two other people back there. I can’t answer for him.”

  “I can answer for her. She says yes. Soon.”

  “I don’t want it to happen again. Ever.”

  He expected protest. She turned her head slowly, opened her eyes and smiled. It was a very lazy, very enigmatic smile. “We can’t keep it from happening again. Neither of us, Fletcher. No matter how hard we try.”

  “Because it was that good?”

  “Don’t try to simplify, dear. Not because it was that good. Because it was that evil. Something in both of us responds to that. Let’s say it. You wanted to kill him. I wanted you to. Because we … had just finished opening doors that lets that sort of thing out. Now the doors are open. All the way.”

  “Doors can be closed.”

  She moistened her lips, yawned without covering her mouth, and he saw the pink tongue back-curled like a cat’s. “Then try to close them, darling. Try hard. Now drive back. I want to sleep, deep and hard. All my springs are unwound.”

  He started
the car and drove in silence. The white dust rose behind them. Cattle lay under the shade trees. A cat stalked in the dry grass beside the ditch.

  He drove and his mind was full of a thousand pictures of her, of the oiled boneless strength of her. It made him remember a time long ago, a high-school night when the Kribe brothers had the tree house, and the Kribe family was away, and they had the half-simple Swedish maid up there, and they had taunted him and then left him alone with her up there, and the gas lantern made harsh blue-white light against the board walls of the tree house, and how it had been, and how she had laughed softly all the time deep in her throat. And now, riding with Laura, it was somehow like the next morning after being in the tree house, and it was a Sunday morning and he had come down to face his family at the breakfast table, knowing in desperation that in spite of the hot bath, the harsh brush, they would merely have to look at him and they would know. This was like that. This was a shamed panic in the back of the mind, and yet a panic diluted, as long ago, with the memory of a shrill delight.

  Love, then, he thought, is something which makes a deep and almost solemn sweetness of the moment of union. And those others, without love, had been just uncomplicated physical release, as he had thought this would be. But in this a strange psychic pendulum swung to a place opposite love.

  This was a moment of hate in union, a time of pain and disgust. A black mass spoken backwards to an alien goddess. As she said, it opened a door. And you found odd things behind that door. Odd, pitiless, insatiable things.

  Love, perhaps, left you with a warmth, with a tenderness.

  This left you with a feeling of chill. Of utter cold.

  He turned onto the narrow asphalt that led down to the busy main highway. The red barn was behind him. He saw the speeding cars crossing the junction ahead, with flicker of chrome and whispering roar.

  A short time before, he had been a part of all the bustle and motion and color of the world. It had all been a thing accepted, barely noticed.

  Yet now, after Laura, he felt as though he crouched alone in some dark place and watched the outside world through some slit so cleverly camouflaged that no one could detect it, could come close and look in on him and see what he was.

  He moved into the right-hand lane and slowed down as he came to his street. He pulled over to the curb, put the emergency brake on, left the motor running.

  She stirred as though coming out of sleep. Her mouth looked bruised.

  “Don’t try to say anything, Fletcher.”

  He looked into her eyes and saw something very like amusement, or perhaps a faint scorn.

  He got out and slammed the door. She slid over, released the brake and moved out into traffic without glancing back. She seemed small behind the wheel, and she sat with her chin high to see over the long hood.

  Fletcher waited for traffic, then limped slowly across the road and up the quiet afternoon of Coffeepot Road.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Fletcher was shocked to discover, when he entered the silent house, that it was not much past three. The world had changed in a short time. The house looked different, as though someone else lived here. He looked at his right hand and saw the dull brown stain of rust. Rust on his hand, and the taste of her across his mouth, and a hundred places where her fingers had touched and brought deadness.

  He limped into the bedroom and saw Jane’s unopened overnight bag on the bed. There was no need to call her. There was a quality to the stillness that told him the house was empty. He took off the grey shirt, crumpled it and stuffed it into the laundry hamper. He took off his slacks. There was a shred of straw clinging to the cuff. He picked it off and rolled it into a ball between his fingers. He hung the slacks up with great and unusual care, and tossed his empty wallet onto the desk in the study. He sat down and pulled his shoes off, then gingerly peeled the sock from the bad ankle. It had a bloated, underwater look. When he poked it with his finger the dent took several seconds to fill up again. It hurt worse to walk on it without the support of the shoe.

  He took a long shower and did not feel completely clean when he stepped out of it. He put on some old, paint-dotted khaki shorts and a T shirt and hunted for the adhesive tape. After ten minutes of futile search he decided that the kids had used it for something. In the chest in the utility room he found some old sheeting, tore off a long strip and bound his ankle clumsily but tightly. With an effort of will he could step on the foot without wincing. He iodined the scraped elbow. After digging through drawers, he found the pair of wool socks with the leather soles and he bit his lip as he eased one on over the bound ankle.

  Though he was aware of massive hunger pangs, the desire for sleep was more pressing. He stretched out on the studio couch.

  Somebody was shaking him and he growled and stared up at Jane standing over him in the dim room. Sleep had been so heavy that he could not figure out what time of day it was, or what he was doing asleep in the study.

  He had sweat heavily in his sleep. The T shirt was sodden. As he peered uncertainly up at her, all the memories came back, memories of a luminescent tormenting body, and memories of the dust smell and the field insects.

  “Are you all right?” Jane asked.

  He sat up, rubbing his face. The memories had turned Jane into a calm-faced stranger. “What time is it?”

  “Nearly five.”

  He scratched his chest, yawning. “I was dead.”

  “Do you want to eat here or what?”

  “… I don’t know.” He stood up and gave a sharp gasp of pain as his weight came on the forgotten ankle. He caught her shoulder for support.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He took his hand away quickly, balancing most of his weight on his good ankle. “Wrenched my ankle.”

  “Have you done anything about it?”

  “Tied it up tight. Couldn’t find that wide tape anyplace. Used a piece of sheet from the chest in the utility room.”

  She snapped the blinds open and the late sunlight came in at an angle. She looked as crisp and confident as any office nurse. “Sit down. I want to take a look at it.”

  “It’s fine. It’s all right.” She pushed at him gently and he sat down and held the bad foot out. She knelt on the floor and gently pulled the sock down and worked it off his toes. “Ow!” he said softly. She untied the fat knots and unwound the strip of sheet. The fabric had left its patterns on the puffed flesh. She touched it lightly. “A doctor ought to look at it. It’s a bad sprain.”

  “I’m not going to bother any doctor with that.”

  She sat back on her heels. “Then you better do what I tell you. We’ll soak it in hot water and Epsom salts. After it gets a good soaking. I’ll tape it.”

  “Why the Epsom salts?”

  “It takes the soreness out and keeps it from stiffening. Come on now. I think you ought to be in the living room. Can you make it out there?”

  He stood up and tried a tentative step, winced.

  “Put your arm around my shoulders. Don’t be afraid to lean.”

  She put her arm around his waist He leaned on her heavily, barely touching his foot to the floor with each step. She walked him into the living room and over to his favorite chair. He lowered himself clumsily into it.

  She walked quickly out of the room and came back in quite soon carefully carrying a big washbasin. It was steaming. She sat it down on the floor in front of the chair. “Put your foot in it.”

  He touched his heel to the surface of the water and jerked it out quickly, hurting his ankle. “Oh, sure! Burn it right off, I suppose.”

  “It has to be hot, or it won’t do any good. Come on now. I had my hand in it. It isn’t that hot.”

  “Your hands are used to hot water.”

  She went off and got the Epsom salts, dumped a lot of it out of the cardboard cylinder into the water. He shut his teeth hard and managed to hold his heel in the water. Then, a fraction of an inch at a time, he worked his foot down until at last it rested on the bottom o
f the basin. He let out his pent-up breath.

  “That will take the soreness out. How did you … I’m sorry.”

  “I stepped on a stone and it rolled. I fell and skinned my elbow.”

  “Did you put anything on it?”

  “Iodine.”

  “Let’s see it. Well, that’s just a scrape. Do you want to eat here? There’s shrimp in the freezer. I could make a salad if you’d like that. And peas.”

  It made him feel uncomfortable. “That … that would be fine. I mean I wouldn’t put you to the trouble, but I can’t get very far on this ankle, I guess.”

  “It’s no trouble.” At the kitchen door she turned. “I could make you a drink if you want.”

  “Are you going to have one?”

  “Yes, I thought I would. Gin and tonic. That’s cool.”

  “Yes, I’d like that. This … is about the longest heat wave I can remember.”

  “Every day seems a little worse. We usually get them in August.”

  “Yes, this is early for it.”

  He could hear her getting the ice. He reached over and got a magazine off the tricky little wrought-iron rack on which you hung them across the iron bars. He opened it and tried to start an article on the army weather stations in Alaska, but he couldn’t keep his mind on it. Yet he managed to appear absorbed in it when she came in with his drink.

  “Oh! Thanks. That’s fine.”

  She put her finger in the water in the basin. “I better add a little more hot. I’ve got a kettle on the stove.”

  She brought it in and he took his foot out while she poured the steaming water. After she left the room, it took him a long time to get his foot back into it. It didn’t feel as sore. He sipped the drink slowly. Two drinks before dinner. Maybe three. But no more, and no drinking after dinner. No three bad evenings in a row.

  Jane came through the living room on the way to the bedroom wing and glanced at him and said, “I planned to throw those shorts out.”

  “They’ve got all the pockets regular pants have. It’s hard to find shorts with all the pockets.”