"Wrong," I said. "All wrong."
"What is?" asked Andy.
"That boy. Chuck. Wrong, something left out of him."
"Crazy?" said Andy.
"No, not that. Different." I was hunting for a word and couldn't find it. I looked at Joe talking into the telephone. "Communication. No communication. We could talk for a hundred years and neither one of us would ever know what the other one was thinking, or why."
"It doesn't excuse him," said Andy. "Legally or morally."
"I'm not even sure it explains it," I said. "But when he had his arm around my neck there, my life literally under his hand, where he could feel it, where he could stop it in a minute if he wanted to, he was—at ease. As though he'd finally made contact. Maybe that's the only way he can make contact with the people around him, through domination. Through violence."
"Must be damned hard on his friends," said Andy.
Joe Thompson put the phone down. "They'll be right out," he said, and started for the door. "Back in a minute, Walt. I want to tell my wife."
"Tell mine too," said Andy. He sat down beside me. "What about the others?"
"I'll hazard a guess. One familiar type of sadistic moron. One kid brought up in an atmosphere of brutality, dishing out a little, of what he's always had to take. One—well, compensating for something or other, I suppose, or just exercising a naturally dirty nature. And one that doesn't seem to belong with the others in the first place. But Chuck is the catalyst. He gives them all direction and meaning."
Andy looked at me sharply. "Aren't you dreaming this up a little, Walt? They seem to me to be like an ordinary bunch of young hoodlums, of which we have far too many these days."
"Yes," I said. "But how ordinary is ordinary? I mean, you can just as easily say any ordinary Dillinger type, or an ordinary Marquis de Sade. They weren't either one of them unique. They just happened to get famous."
He decided not to argue it with me. Joe came back after a bit, and then the police came, two officers I didn't know in a prowl car. They asked all the pertinent questions and went over the grounds with a flashlight, retrieving the piece of torn newspaper that Chuck had dropped and placing it carefully in an envelope. Then one of them went off up the street to ask if any of the neighbors had seen the car.
It had apparently been parked well away from the house, on a stretch where nothing had yet been built. Two or three people remembered having noticed a light-colored convertible, probably gray, but not the license number nor who got out of it.
I told the officers I would be down in the morning to talk to Koleski. They said they would keep an eye on the neighborhood in case the boys came back, and advised me to keep my door locked. They left. I considered calling Tracey but decided against it. Let her have her night's sleep. Morning would be time enough.
Both Andy and Joe tried to talk me into spending the rest of the night at their place. After all, they said, why be a hero? And I couldn't see much reason myself at this moment. I didn't believe the boys would come back, but I knew I was going to leap and twitch at every sound no matter what my common sense told me. I picked Joe's place because the guest room was on the ground floor and I didn't feel like climbing stairs.
Joe brought my pajamas and a bottle to put beside the bed, and his wife made me welcome, and that was fine. But after I crawled in between the sheets I couldn't sleep. I felt safe enough but I kept going over what had happened and how my plans had got messed up and everything had gone wrong. I cursed George Warren and wondered what would come next, who would make the move and what it would be. I turned and twisted and raged and sweated, in a waking nightmare of frustration.
I pulled on the bottle until I couldn't feel my leg ache any more, and the frustration and the anger dimmed, and just before I finally dropped off one simple idea came clear and shone in my mind with an ominous light.
Tomorrow, I thought, I will get myself a gun.
That may be an answer, I thought, one answer anyway, to Chuck and Everett and those faceless others. But to Tracey there is no answer. And now there won't be one unless she gives it to me.
Anyway, I thought, I'm glad I didn't ask.
10
I WAS still glad of it in the morning, when I called Tracey. It wasn't much use trying to keep her from knowing what had happened. There would almost certainly be a mention of it in the paper, on a news broadcast, or in the mouth of a helpful friend, and then she would be frantic. Better to tell her myself.
I did, as matter-of-factly as I could, stressing the idea that I was perfectly all right. I heard her sharp shocked sigh on the other end of the line, and then she said, "I told you, Walt. I told you."
"Yes, you did."
"Surely you'll stop now."
"I don't think that's possible, even if I wanted to."
"Of course it's possible. What do you mean, it isn't possible?"
"Well, in the first place, I lost my temper and told them to go to hell. In the second place, I can't stop the police. And anyway, how could I convince them that I had quit? They're irresponsible, Tracey. They're dangerous. I can't just cover my head and pretend they're not there, not with that kind of a threat hanging over me." I added, "Over us."
"Over us," she repeated slowly, and then a silence came to me from her end of the wire and spread all through the empty house around me so I could hear the faint ticking of the walls as the sun began to heat them up.
It went on so long that the operator asked if we had completed our call.
"No," said Tracey. "No, wait. Walt, did they tell you——"
Again silence, and I thought I could hear her heart beating, but I suppose it was only the pulsation of the line.
"—about the letter," she finished.
"Why, no," I said. "
"Didn't you ask them? I thought——"
"What did you think?"
"I don't know. I don't know, Walt. I feel so queer these days, not as though I was living in the real world at all."
"I know what you mean."
"I'm frightened. All the time, every minute." Her voice went up into the borderline of hysteria. "Why won't you stop it and go away where you'll be safe and not frighten me to death?"
"Honey," I said. "Leave my job, and our house, our families?"
"I have to see you," she said, and now her voice had slid back down to a flat half whisper.
"No. You stay right where you are till this is over. If I have a gun I can take care of myself but I can't take you on too."
"Walt, I have to see you."
"I'm not going to argue with you. You stay there. I'll come up as soon as I can. I have to go downtown now, Koleski's waiting for me. I'll call you."
I hung up and went out of the house quickly so I could not hear the phone if she called back. The garden looked beautiful. There had been some rain late in the night. The earth in the beds was moist and dark, the flowers were bright, and all the green things were clean-washed and shining. If I have a gun I can take care of myself. It sounded silly.
Then I looked at the maple tree and the scuffed places under it in the grass.
I drove downtown to Headquarters. And all the way, without consciously thinking about it, I was expecting a gray convertible to come at me from out of some sudden crossroad, driven by a tall strong handsome boy. I wondered who his parents were. I wondered if they knew, or suspected, what their child was. Whoever they were, I felt sorry for them.
Koleski already had the report but he had me give him the story anyway, questioning me pretty closely, especially about the threats and my reference to Everett Bush.
"Chuck denied knowing Everett Bush," he said.
"Naturally. He was lying."
"You state that very positively."
"I am positive. It's obvious. Everett told them he'd been traced and questioned. He told them they'd better get me off his neck. So they came."
Koleski smoothed the crumpled clipping on his desk, the same one Chuck had brought and dropped.
&nb
sp; "This seems clear enough."
"Of course they'd lay it onto that," I said impatiently. "They wouldn't be likely to lay it on Everett, would they?"
"No," said Koleski, and sighed. "Unfortunately, I can't either."
"Chuck's a smart boy," I said. "He's only made one mistake so far. He said so."
"What's that?"
"Me. But he's made another, only he doesn't know it yet." Koleski waited, and I told him, "He thinks he's going to get away with it. Look, I want a permit."
"For a gun?" said Koleski, looking at me.
"For what else?"
He continued to look at me. "I like you, Sherris. I'd hate to have to bring you in here on a bad rap."
"I'm not going hunting," I said. "My life has been threatened. I know I'm a grown man and therefore not sacred like a child, but it seems as though I ought to have the right to protect myself."
Koleski sighed again. He picked up the phone and talked for a minute; and then put it down again. "They'll fix you up," he said. "Just be careful, will you? I mean that."
He laid the clipping back in the report folder, and I knew what he was thinking. "No," I said. "Nothing like that. I'm leaving this strictly to Finelli. I'm going back to work Monday."
He grunted as though he would like to believe me but couldn't, quite. I left him. Before I was halfway down the hall he passed me, with two other men, all going somewhere in a hurry. As he had said before, he was a busy man, and what's a beating in this world of homicides and holdups, arsons and kidnapings?
I went down the street and bought a .38 automatic.
Finelli was waiting for me, in answer to a phone call I had made. He listened while I told my story again, asking much the same questions that Koleski had. I don't know how much of my insistence that last night's visit was directly connected with Everett Bush seemed convincing to him, but he said he would go ahead with the case, keeping it in mind.
"If he did contact the other boys yesterday," he said, "it was probably by phone, and the chances are that he'll stay away from them for some time. Not only in case he's being watched, but to keep his parents from learning the truth. They might have different ideas about covering for him if they did."
"Take all the time you need," I said, "but I don't think you'll have too long to wait." I was thinking of the way those other beatings were spaced out.
"Okay," he said. "It's your money."
"Also my neck," I told him. I gave him my office phone to use after the first of the week if he needed it. Then I decided to go round to where my brother-in-law makes his living selling insurance and see if I could have lunch with him. I was getting lonesome.
Vince was glad to see me, and sure, we could have lunch together. But he had somebody with him. Would I wait? I said I would and sat down in the outer office. His girl, Peggy, hadn't seen me since before I got hurt, and she was flatteringly anxious to talk about it between taking calls and making appointments. I had been there perhaps fifteen minutes when Peggy, answering the phone and explaining that Mr. Farrel was busy, suddenly looked at me and said,
"Well now, that's an odd thing. Mrs. Farrel—your brother's right here. Do you want to talk to him?"
I got up, startled, and took the phone. "Mae?" I said. "Were you trying to get me? What's wrong?"
Mae's voice sounded agitated, a little impatient, a little angry. "It's Tracey," she said. "She just left here."
"What do you mean, she just left there? She's at the lake——"
"Oh no, she's not. Her father drove her down. He wouldn't leave her at your place when he found you weren't there, so they came here—and the minute his back was turned she called a cab and took off."
"Took off where?"
"Home. Your home. She says she belongs there and that's where she's going to stay, no matter what. I don't like the way she's acting, Walt, and furthermore, she told me all about last night, and if you want my opinion, Walt, you're acting like a damn fool——"
I didn't want her opinion, not at that moment. I handed the phone back to Peggy and went out. I wanted to run to my car, and it was an awful feeling not to be able to. It seemed to me that the block between Vince's office and the lot where I was parked had stretched out since the last time I had seen it until it was two miles long.
The way home seemed even longer. I was an old man before I made it. I thought, I wasn't cut out for a life like this, my nerves aren't good, they aren't standing up well. I'm afraid all the time now, of everything and nothing, for myself and everyone around me.
They say in action you get conditioned to fear. I was never in action, so I don't know. But at least there you would know who the enemy was and where he was and how he could be expected to strike.
I thought, I am becoming a shivering coward. It's a bright hot summer day, my wife has come down from the lake to see me, and she is waiting in our house. What's wrong with that?
The wrongness is because of five shadows in the dark, three shadows underneath the maple tree. The wrongness is because of violence, senseless and reasonless and beyond prediction because it has no cause.
Yet it must have a cause. Not in me, not in any of the people that it wounds and hurts, but in the deep unknown of the secret individual, the hungry, doubtful, fearful, predatory I crouched in eternal isolation behind its ramparts of flesh and bone, peering at the world.
Money makes a Dillinger, but what makes a De Sade? Why will one child, too young for social hypocrisy, weep with pity for a dead kitten, while another, in solemn and intense excitement, bloodily destroys every small defenseless creature that comes its way? Who can say for sure what dark images of need and pleasure these strange children pursue?
Sunlight poured brilliantly through the green overhang of the trees. It made the road shimmer. I was beginning to hate that road. Too much had happened on it, at its end and its beginning.
I reached the house. There was no one in sight. I left my car in the drive and went as fast as I could up to the front door. It was open behind the aluminium storm door that had its screen insert in place for the summer. I pulled this open too and went in, calling Tracey's name.
There was no answer.
11
FOR a minute I was terrified and then I saw her, sitting quietly on the couch, her back very straight, her head bowed a little to one side, her hands folded in her lap. She looked almost as though she was posing for an effect, and yet I knew she wasn't. She wasn't conscious of herself at all. She looked up at me when I came into the room, and there was a stark honesty in her face that was pitiful to see. She was not hiding any more, from herself or me.
"Walt," she said, "there wasn't any letter."
Just like that.
But it wasn't enough. She had to go on.
"I was afraid. That was a terrible night when they called me and said you'd been hurt and I went down to the hospital. I saw you lying there in the bed, and you weren't Walt any more, you were far away from me, gone." She made a pushing gesture in the air. Her eyes had not wavered from mine. "They said you might always be like that, they couldn't tell yet. Not you at all, just—something in a bed. I ran away, Walt. I did. I made it up about the threatening letter so it wouldn't seem as though I had, but I did. And afterwards I was ashamed. I was ashamed to come back."
Now she had said it, and there was no more. She sat still, watching me, a patient figure, asking for nothing, not pity or forgiveness or even understanding.
"Tracey," I said. "Dear——"
I sat down beside her and put my arms around her. Her mouth trembled, but her body was passive and withdrawn.
"I ran away," she said, "when you needed me the most."
"You came back," I said.
"You knew, didn't you? All along."
I pulled her closer. "It's all over now."
"You knew, but you never said anything and you didn't even ask the boys——"
Now she made me feel ashamed.
"Tracey," I said. "You're my wife, aren't you? From now on?"
<
br /> "Could you ever trust me again?"
"I'd better," I said. "You're the only wife I've got."
She said a word or two more, but I couldn't understand them. The trembling was all over her now. She began to cry and then she had her arms around me under my jacket and was pressing her head against my chest, tight, very tight, as though she wanted to get right inside me, to show by the merging of her body with mine that we were indeed, as it says in the ceremony, one flesh. Or perhaps it was only that very human, very animal need for comfort, the need to be held and reassured. Whichever it was, I didn't care. I held her as long as she wanted, until she had stopped crying and stopped trembling and was just Tracey, my wife, warm and quiet in my arms, the way she always had been.
No, not that way. Not quite that way ever again. That was the young us, before we had ever had to think about courage and forgiving and our own shortcomings. We were different people now. Sometimes it doesn't take years to grow older. Sometimes it can be done in a few weeks, a few days, a few minutes. We had aged. We looked at each other, and we knew it, but neither of us said anything. We kissed, and that was different too, not less loving but more gentle. We knew, and understood.
I got up and opened all the doors and windows wide to let the sunlight in. I guess it was one of those broadly symbolic gestures, but I wasn't thinking about it. I was thinking that I hadn't realized until now how forlorn and deserted I had felt, and how much of my fear came from that subconscious sense of being alone.
Tracey came behind me as I opened the door onto the terrace. She was crying again, but smiling too. She said, "I'll go get us some lunch."
That was the beginning of a good period. It lasted for nine days, until the Saturday night when Finelli was killed. After that things seemed to go in a blind downhill rush, but those nine days were fine. Part of them I spent at the lake with Tracey's folks and the children. Most of them I spent at my desk in the offices of Valley Steel, putting on the familiar routine again piece by piece, like an old comfortable suit of clothes. All of them I spent with Tracey. For that short time we were back in the real world again, doing real things, and the only voice from the shadowland was Finelli's, calling occasionally to say that he had nothing to report. The boys did not show themselves again. Perhaps Chuck thought that in spite of what I said I had taken his warning seriously. Certainly nothing happened in that time to make him think otherwise.
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