Mick was standing near him. Danny couldn’t catch his eye.
Phase Four was when Danny realized that the power was his. Howard was done, Mick was out, which left Danny in the position he’d spent sixteen years waiting for, wishing for, scheming for, groveling for, grabbing and even (when he was really desperate) praying for. The force of getting this reward after so long overwhelmed Danny at first: the pure thrill of it. That lasted maybe thirty seconds, and then the thrill quieted down and Danny realized something he couldn’t quite put a name to. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Howard’s power—more that the whole power thing seemed phony, beside the point, or maybe just old, like it couldn’t help Danny see this world he was looking at.
An invisible clock had started to tick. Danny didn’t know about the clock, but he knew that some crucial minute had passed when suddenly people began to drift like someone had cut a cord that was holding them all in one place. They floated away, some back toward the castle, some into the woods, some up that broken wall Danny and Howard had climbed, and a couple (unbelievably) back down the stairs into the tunnels. And as they went their ways alone or in pairs or little clusters, white morning light poured down from the sky and began its work of wiping out what had happened underground, so that already it seemed incredible to Danny that any of these graduate students had ever panicked or called out his name, or that Howard had sobbed: a joke, a fantasy too exaggerated to be true.
That was Phase Five.
Danny sat down next to Howard. He hadn’t really seen his cousin’s face since they came outside. Mick he could see, and the guy looked wrecked. The euphoria, the relief that Ann and Nora and the graduate students felt—Danny too—all of that had passed Mick by.
The clock was still ticking, but Danny couldn’t hear it.
Eventually Howard lifted up his head. His face looked gray, old. His voice was flat: You did good, Danny. Under there.
Funny answers, stupid answers, answers that are a way of not answering—all these went through Danny’s head: Hey, I needed the exercise or Falling out a window was a tough act to follow but I gave it my best, or It must’ve been those injections the doc gave me, or Thank God for that trail of bread crumbs, or Tell my dad, wouldja?
But what he finally said was: I left you to die.
Howard looked up, squinting at Danny in the sun. But I didn’t die. I got out.
Danny: They found you.
Before that. I escaped with my mind. I got out of there because I wasn’t going to make it otherwise.
How?
I don’t know. I left. I went into a game. Rooms in my head. We can all do it, you know—we’re just out of practice.
It was weirdly easy to have this conversation, like they’d talked about all of it before. Like it was something they agreed on.
Danny: What the fuck am I doing here, Howard?
I don’t know, buddy. You tell me.
Danny turned his face into the sun. It was weak morning sun, but still so bright. He said: I don’t know. I thought I knew, but there was another layer.
Howard: Ditto. I wanted to—I don’t know what. Impress you, maybe.
Well, you did that.
Howard: I felt a connection. I can’t explain it.
Danny: It wasn’t payback?
Howard looked at him, surprised. How?
I got a little flipped out the past day or two. Maybe the jet lag. Started thinking you had it in for me.
Howard: Come on, it’s late for that. Bygones, right? Anyway, now I owe you.
Please. Don’t say that.
The birds were suddenly loud, jabbering in the trees. Sun, birds, sky—it was like a band starting up.
Howard: You know, what I said before, Danny. I meant that.
Which?
Your help. How you get things done. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much.
My reputation preceded me.
Yeah, a bit.
Danny laughed. You got lucky, I guess.
Howard: But I feel like—we could work together on something.
Danny: I’d love that.
It came automatically. Work with Howard? The longer the idea sat in Danny’s head, the more it felt like something he’d been waiting to do. Wanting to do. You mean…work for you?
No, no. Partners. The real thing. Howard was sitting up straight. He looked better, more like himself. There was life in his face. I’ve had this idea for years about a restaurant.
Danny: You’re an unbelievable cook.
Howard: I say restaurant, but it’s a whole—I’ve got this theory about food. About diet, really. It’s a longer conversation.
Danny: I’ve been working in restaurants for years.
Howard: No shit?
That’s what I do! I’ve been in restaurants for…Christ, it seems like forever.
I don’t know squat about running one.
Well, they almost never make money.
Howard grinned. Come on, Danny, it’s not about money. You know me well enough by now.
Danny: Yeah, I guess I do.
That was Phase Six.
Something made Danny look up at Mick. He’d completely forgotten him, talking to Howard like it was just the two of them by the pool. And Howard was doing the same. But Mick hadn’t gone anywhere—in fact, he hadn’t moved. He looked frozen, inches away from Howard, listening. When Danny looked up, their eyes locked (Phase Seven) and he was hit with the absolute coldness in Mick’s face—a blankness, like a machine. And right then, alto swamped Danny’s mind like he was standing on top of the keep, looking down at every detail of the landscape: Howard was all Mick had. Mick was Howard’s number two. And a number two will do anything.
Mick took a step in Danny’s direction. One step, but Danny felt a jerk of adrenaline. And all that fear, the gnawing worm, the trapped, hunted feeling he’d had—it jumped up in Danny like it had never gone away. He was on his feet a second later, the knife in his hand. Its long curved blade caught the sun.
Mick: Drop it, Danny.
Howard: What the f—?
Howard scrambled onto his feet, stunned and confused like he’d been asleep or still was asleep. They were standing in the place where the moving shapes had been, which is maybe why it all felt so familiar to Danny. Like it had already happened. Or maybe that was the alto. Because Danny saw everything, now, and knew his place in it.
Mick: Watch it, Howard!
The gun came from somewhere on Mick’s ankle. He was unbelievably fast.
Danny tried to lunge with his knife, but he was too late. He’d hardly moved when I fired at his forehead. He was looking at me when the bullet tore through, and I watched the light go out.
Why? That’s a reasonable question. You shoot someone in the head, you should have a reason. And what I’d like to do right now is make you a list, pile up the evidence piece by piece (things like: I actually thought for a second that he was going at Howard with the knife and I knew he’d tell Howard about Ann and me eventually and After fucking up Howard like he did when they were kids, I didn’t think he should get off so easy), so at the end of the list you’d say, Well of course he shot that asshole, and good thing—look at all these reasons! But I don’t have a list. I liked Danny. He reminded me of me.
But I was getting erased. With Danny there it was all going to end, this little bit that I had: Howard and Benjy and Ann. Like for all those years I’d been holding his place.
And of course, after I shot him, it ended anyway.
Danny fell backward (Phase Eight), arms spread out like he was trying to catch something huge falling out of the sky. He fell into the black pool and it folded up around him. Howard jumped in too, groping for Danny in the thick water. But dead things are heavier than anything alive, and Danny sank. For a while they went down together, Howard holding on to Danny with both arms, trying to dredge him back up, but in the end he had to let him go or go with him.
Danny’s eyes were still open. At first he couldn’t see. It was dark and thick and h
e was falling, sinking, but then he felt something under his feet and realized there were steps beginning at the inside edge of the pool and leading down. He found his footing and started to walk, and maybe the water cleared up or maybe his eyes adjusted as he went deeper, because he started seeing stuff he remembered: the blue hose he’d used to help his dad water the bushes along the driveway, the nook by the living room window where he read his comic books, his artwork taped to the kitchen wall, the pink john with the rose soaps in a clamshell behind it, the shower curtain with the bumblebee, the soccer coach who blew his nose without Kleenex, the crab-apple salad his Aunt Corkie used to make, a sublet on Elizabeth Street full of Persian rugs and Persian cat hair, a girl on Rollerblades he’d chased through the Lower East Side, watching a guy pump fake butter onto a bucket of movie popcorn, New York all fuzzy with snow, a pigeon who built a nest on his air conditioner, getting a haircut, whistling for a cab, noticing a sunset between buildings—on and on, a tunnel of memories, stuff, information, and Danny was connected to all of it, he was floating through it, touching it. It was all still there. Nothing disappears. And Danny saw himself, too, in a way you only can if you’re dead or so high you can leave your body behind: a grown man, sinking through black water.
The stairs went on and on. The water pushed its way into Danny’s ears, his eyes, his lungs. But finally, near the earth’s molten core, the stairs ran out. When Danny looked up, the top of the pool was the size of a dime, a dime of blue sky. And then Danny saw a door (Phase Nine) and opened it. He was in a white hall. The water was gone. The walls were smooth, no windows or doors or decorations. All Danny saw was a gray-blue endpoint that looked like another door, and he walked down the hall toward that. It was a long walk, but when he finally got close to the door he realized it wasn’t a door, it was a window. Danny couldn’t see through it—the glass was foggy or dusty or maybe just warped. But when he got to the window and put his hand against it, the glass suddenly cleared (Phase Ten). I saw him standing there. And he saw me.
Where the fuck did you come from? I said.
Danny smiled. He said: You didn’t really think I was going to leave you alone?
He said: Haven’t you learned that the thing you want to forget most is the one that’ll never leave you?
He said: Let the haunting begin. And then he laughed.
He said: We’re twins. There’s no separating us.
He said: I hope you like to write.
And then he started to talk, whispering in my ear.
Underneath me, Davis lay on his tray with the orange radio pushed up against his head. His eyes were shut. He turned the knobs, listening.
PART III
Ray’s manuscript comes to me in a big brown envelope with a local postmark and no return address. Inside I find the castle story, some of which I’ve read, and then about forty pages of handwritten diary entries I’ve never seen before. Reading it takes me all night. I hear traffic in the background. You hear it everywhere around here, louder at night because that’s when the big trucks make their hauls. It’s echoey, like the sea, or like I think the sea would sound if there were a sea nearby, and I wish there was.
If I were a crier I’d cry, reading all that, but I’m not. There was a time when all I did was cry, but since then almost nothing. I’m dry.
When I finish reading, the sky is getting light. The house is quiet. The girls are still asleep, and who knows where Seth is.
Then I have an idea. I go to the kitchen and get a big green garbage bag and a metal spoon. I slip out of the house and quietly tap the chunk of pages on our two concrete steps to straighten them out. I put the chunk in the bottom of the garbage bag and twist the bag and wrap it back around the chunk and twist and wrap it again until there’s no more bag to twist. Then I count my steps away from the house, like Ray would: thirty-five left. I start digging with the spoon. On top the ground is tightly packed, but underneath it’s powdery. I go fast, because I know any minute the girls will wake up. I dig a hole and put the bag inside and then I cover it up with dirt. Not all the dirt goes back on. I stomp it with my foot. My hands look like I’ve been digging graves. And then it’s done and the sun is coming up over the hill and oh, I’m so relieved to know it’s safe, it’s all safe, the whole story and me in the story, that teacher who left her husband, that pretty princess—she’s buried down there like treasure.
I’ve buried the evidence, too. I know it’s illegal to hold on to something sent to you by a convict who’s just escaped.
I let the dogs out of their pen. They pound right over the buried pages. I throw the red ball, and that makes them run harder.
I go back to the house and sit on the steps to smoke a cigarette and enjoy the sunrise. I notice something moving up the road. My eyes see it before my brain does, and then I realize it’s Seth and my stomach knots up because where’s the truck? What has he done with the truck?
Seth gets to the door and I can see he’s still tweaking but slowing down. He’s been gone two days, which is usually what happens after he finishes a job. For a construction worker he’s emaciated, and without his dentures in there’s not a tooth in his head. And this was a rock star, not just locally but in other states. Onstage he’d take off his shirt and girls would throw their beer to see it run down his chest.
He looks at me with empty eyes.
“Where’s the truck?” I ask.
“Had a flat on Eighty-five.” He looks ready to crash, which is a lot like looking ready to die.
“They’re asleep, get inside,” I say, and he does, because the one thing we have, Seth and I, the only thing, is we both love those girls. It’s not like loving each other, but it’s more than nothing.
That same afternoon, two state police officers visit me at the college. One of them is Pete Konig. I’ve known him since fourth grade, but he’s gotten fat since I French-kissed him at junior prom, and he’s sweating in that heavy uniform. The other guy, Sergeant Rufus, looks like he needs an antacid. Everyone in the office stares when I go out to meet them.
“Pete,” I say, “I have lunch in twenty minutes, can you wait?”
“Can we wait?” the other guy bursts out, like I’ve asked him to do my laundry. But Pete says okay, they’ll be in the cafeteria.
I find them outside at my favorite picnic table. It’s a nice spring day, everything full and light green. You can hear the traffic swatting by in the background. Someone with a good pitching arm could throw a ball and hit the interstate.
“Don’t you want to get your lunch?” Pete asks me.
“I don’t like to be the only one eating.”
I sit down and light a cigarette. Pete says: “I understand you knew one of the inmates who escaped. Raymond Michael Dobbs.”
“He was in my writing class.”
“So I understand. Got stabbed by someone else in your class.”
“Yes. Thomas Harrington. I guess they moved him over to the supermax.”
There’s a silence, but with all that traffic there’s always something to listen to.
“You heard anything from him, Holly?” Pete asks. “Dobbs, I mean?”
“No,” I say. “Nothing.” And right as I say it I realize I’m breaking the law, and I feel sweat opening my pores.
“Any way he might know where you live?”
“I hope not.”
Pete’s seen me at my best: the girl who won the school essay contest and wrote a play that the whole class performed in eighth grade. And he’s seen me at my worst: sores all over my face, waiting in the hospital while my baby boy, Corey, hung on to his life. There’s so much sympathy in his eyes I have to look away.
Now the other guy steps in, Sergeant Rufus. “We understand you had a personal relationship with inmate Dobbs,” he says.
“What do you mean by that?”
“You visited him in the hospital.”
“That’s true,” I say. “They said he was going to die.”
“And what was the nature of that visit?”
“Mostly I sat there. He was hardly conscious.”
“Or maybe he’s just a really good fake.”
“I don’t know how you fake a raging intestinal infection,” I say, and get a warning look from Pete.
“You visited Dobbs again,” Rufus says, “after he returned to the prison.”
“Yes.”
“You drove up like any visitor.”
“Yes, I did.”
“And what was the reason for that visit?”
“I wanted to make sure he was well.”
“Beg pardon?”
“I just—I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe he recovered.”
That answer doesn’t make anyone happy. Pete adjusts his weight on the picnic bench.
“On that second visit, what transpired between you and the prisoner?” Rufus asks.
“We just talked.” “You talked about what?” “I can’t remember. I wasn’t there very long.” “You were there an hour and fifteen minutes, ma’am.” It’s bad, I know. It looks very bad. I don’t know what else to say. “Did he mention any plans to escape or ask for your help?”
“Absolutely not,” I say, and I think my volume catches them both by surprise. “Nothing. Nothing like that. I would have reported it immediately.”
That shuts Rufus up—I’m speaking his language now. But for Pete, it may have worked the other way. “The break came as a total surprise to you, Holly?” he asks, tilting his head to look at me.
“Complete.”
“You’ve heard nothing from this guy? Not a whisper?”
Those sweet eyes on mine. Pete’s got four kids, his oldest girl just a year older than Megan. I look right back at him. “Nothing.”
“Good, Holly,” he says. “Because—well, you know this. It’s a federal crime to aid a fugitive.”
“I do know.”
“And it’s just—it wouldn’t be worth it.”
“No way.”
“Not after all you’ve been through. Not when you’re back on track and doing so well.”
The Keep Page 20
