by Jim Thompson
“Well, I’d say tomorrow night. But you know how it is, Doc. Come see, come sah.” She laughed throatily. “Oh, yeah, I knew I was forgettin’ something. Sleepin’ pills. Can’t tell you where they are exactly, but just feel around an’ you’ll find ’em.”
“Oh, fine. I was just going to ask about them. Now, if you’ll just give me a little light for a moment, Ma…”
Ma squatted again, beamed the flashlight down the wall of the pit. Doc studied it, gave her shoulder a pat of thanks, and poised himself on the brink.
“Good night,” he said, and shooting a smile at Carol, “and a very good night to you, my dear.”
Then he jumped, stiff-legged.
There was an audible grunt as he struck the water.
He went under, and he came up. And then, getting a grip on the bushes, he pushed himself under again.
And stayed under.
“Now, there,” Ma said quietly, “there is one hell of a guy. Just in case you didn’t know it.”
“I know it,” Carol said.
She took the rope that Ma handed her, took a turn around her waist with it. Bellying down on the ground, she got her legs over the edge of the pit and squirmed slowly backward. She paused there, half-suspended in space, breathing very rapidly. Then she looked up and gave Ma the nod to lower her.
“Got somethin’ on your mind.” Ma held her where she was for a moment. “Maybe you better unload it while you can.”
“I—nothing, I guess. I was just going to ask about the sleeping pills. I mean, why you and Doc seem to take it for granted that we’ll need them.”
“Why?” Ma frowned incredulously. “Hey, you ain’t been around much, have you, honey?”
“Well—I used to think so.”
“Uh-huh,” Ma said. “Mmm-hum. Well, I’ll tell you somethin’ about them pills. Don’t you doubt that you’ll need ’em. An’ don’t wait to take ’em until you do. You gulp you down some right to begin with, an’ when them wears off…”
She tugged upward on the rope, then slacked off on it. Carol swung off of the brink, and moved slowly down toward the water.
“Yes?” she called, shivering as her feet touched the water. “When they begin to wear off?”
“Take some more,” Ma said.
The hole lay on a slant, and for its first two or three feet it was largely filled with water, making it all but impossible to breathe until one had navigated it.
Carol came through it at a frantic scramble; continued to scramble forward with eyes closed, breath held, until her head butted against the rock at the end of the hole. And then gratefully, gasping in the air, she let herself go prone.
Strangely, it was not absolutely dark. Wherever the faint seepage of air came from, there was an equally faint seepage of light, if only the relative light of the night outside, to relieve the blackness of this hidden cave.
It was like being in a coffin, she thought. A dimly lit, well-ventilated coffin. It wasn’t uncomfortable; not yet at least. Merely confining. As long as one was content to remain in it, and did not try to get out…
Abruptly, she cut off the thought.
Fumbling in the dimness, running her hands up to the end of the hole, she encountered the oval canvas-covered surface of a water canteen. She shook it, felt the swish and swing of the liquid inside. She laid it down again and continued to fumble until she found a small tightly capped bottle. She got the cap off and sniffed the contents. Taking out one of the capsules, she pinched it and touched her tongue to it.
Mildly bitter; a faintly salty taste. She dropped it back into the bottle and screwed the lid back on.
She didn’t need that stuff. She wasn’t going to take anything that made her any more helpless than she was already. Ma had told her, in so many words, that she had nothing to fear. She and Doc were both under Ma’s protection, until they struck out on their own again. But just the same, she wasn’t knocking herself out with goof balls. Ma might be absolutely on the square. She might be. But Doc could outsmart someone like her, without even halfway trying. And if he decided to have things his own way, and if he thought it was safe—well, never mind. But no sleeping pills for her.
If they were sleeping pills.
Her mind moved around and around the subject, moving with a kind of fuzzy firmness. With no coherent thought process, she arrived at a conviction—a habit with the basically insecure; an insecurity whose seeds are invariably planted earlier, in under- or over- protectiveness, in a distrust of parental authority which becomes all authority. It can later, with maturity—a flexible concept—be laughed away, dispelled by determined clear thinking. Or it can be encouraged by self-abusive resentment and brooding self-pity. It can grow ever greater until the original authority becomes intolerable, and a change becomes imperative. Not to a radical one in thinking; that would be too troublesome, too painful. The change is simply to authority in another guise which, in time, and under any great stress, must be distrusted and resented even more than the first.
Thrashing it—and herself—Carol wondered why she feared Doc as she did—how she could fear him and be unable to trust him. And yet love him as she could never love another.
Even now, despite her fear and distrust, she would have given anything to have him with her.
He was always, or virtually always, so calm and self-assured. He always knew just what to do, and how to do it. He could be breaking apart inside and you’d never know it from the way he acted. He’d be just as pleasant and polite as if he didn’t have a care in the world. You had to be careful with someone like that. You could never know what he was thinking. But…
She sighed uxoriously, squirming a little. Doc McCoy—one hell of a guy, Ma had called him. And that had seemed to say it all.
There just wasn’t anyone else in the world like Doc, and there never would be.
She toyed with the bottle of pills. Then, turning on her side, she tapped on the wall with it. He couldn’t be too far away from her, just a few feet through this coldly sweating rock. If she could make him hear her, and if he would reply to it—well, it would be nice. Each would be comforted, she persuaded herself, to know that the other was all right.
She tapped and listened. Tapped and listened. She frowned, with a kind of angry nervousness. Then, brightening, she turned and tapped on the opposite wall. Perhaps he was there, on that side. After all, he just about had to be, didn’t he? He had to be on one side or the other.
She tapped and listened. Tapped and listened.
The silence between tappings pressed in around her. It became an aching thing, a void crying to be filled. It was unbearable, and since the unbearable cannot be borne, her imagination, that friendly enemy, stepped in.
Quite clearly, she heard Doc’s answering taps. Well, not clearly perhaps—the imagination does have its limitations—but she did hear them.
She tapped and he—it—tapped. The signals went back and forth. A great relief spread through her; and then, on its heels, overlaying it, an increasing restlessness and irritation.
What was the point in just tapping, in just making a meaningless noise? Now, if she could send him a message. Ask him, tell him to—to…
But maybe he’d already thought of that. And thought it was impossible. And maybe it was.
She pushed herself back against the wall, then measured the space to the opposite wall. There seemed to be enough room, for two people, that is. It could get to be a tight squeeze, of course; you couldn’t continue it indefinitely. But just for a little while, an hour or so, it would be fine.
The overhead space? Well. She placed her palms against the roof of the hole, gave a start at its nearness to her. In the dimness it had seemed much farther away. She pushed on it, not realizing that she was pushing. And suddenly she pounded on it with her fists.
She stopped that very quickly, and lay very still for a few minutes until the wild pounding of her heart had stopped. Then, pushing herself with heels and elbows, she began to scoot toward the entrance.
/>
Water touched her feet. She jerked them away from it. She let them slide into it again, and remain there for a moment. And then with resentful resignation she withdrew them. For obviously she couldn’t leave this place, go back out into the pit. Someone might see her. For all she knew, the place might be swarming with cops by this time. At any rate, the water was very deep—bottomless, Ma had said—and she could swim very little. If she should be unable to find the hole Doc was in, or if she was unable to get into it or get back into this one…
Perhaps they had planned it that way. They hoped and expected that she would try to leave, knowing that she would drown if she did.
But, anyway, leaving was out of the question. She had to stay here until she was got out, as—her pendulum mind swinging back again—she assured herself she would be. Doc would get her out. After all, she was his wife and they’d been through a lot together, and she’d done a lot for him. And—and—if he’d really wanted to get rid of her, he’d had plenty of chances before this.
He’d get her out all right, as soon as it was safe.
Ma would make him.
It was just a little roomier, down here near the entrance to the hole. The roof was just a little higher. She measured the distance with her upstretched palms, thinking that there was almost room enough to sit up. And no sooner had the thought entered her mind than she knew she must sit up.
She had to. She could not remain prone, or lie half-propped up on her elbows another minute.
Tucking her chin against her chest, she raised herself experimentally. Six inches, a foot, a foot and a half, a—the stone pressed against her head. She shoved against it stubbornly, then with a suppressed “Ouch!” she dropped back to the floor.
She rested for a moment, then tried again. A kind of sideways try this time, with her knees pulled upward. That got her up a little farther, though not nearly far enough. But it did—or seemed to—show her how the trick could be done.
She was very lithe and limber, more so now than ever after the arduous thinning-down of their cross-country journey. So she sucked her stomach in, drew her knees flat against it, and pressed her chin down against them. And thus, in a kind of flat ball, she flung herself upward and forward.
Her head struck the roof with a stunning bump, then skidded along it gratingly, leaving a thin trail of hair and scalp. She would have stopped with the first painful impact, but the momentum of her body arced her onward. And then at last she was sitting up. Or rather, sitting. Bent forward as she was, it would have been far from accurate to say that she was sitting up.
The roof pressed upon her neck and shoulders. Her head was forced downward. Her widespread legs were flattened against the floor and, to support herself, she had her hands placed between them. She raised one of them to brush at her face, but the strain was so intolerable that she hastily put it back in use as a brace.
She rested, breathing heavily, finding it difficult to breathe at all in that constricting position; thinking, Well, at least I know I can do it now. I can sit up if I want to. Then, as the awkward pose became agonizing, she tried to lie down again. And was held almost motionless exactly as she was.
She couldn’t accept the fact. It was too terrible. Now, surely, she thought, if I got into this, I can get out of it. If I can sit up, then I can s—I can lie down again.
“Of course I can,” she spoke, grunted, aloud. “Why not, anyway?”
There was, of course, every reason why not. It was impossible to draw her legs up, as she had in the first instance. Almost impossible to move them at all. As for balling herself up—well, she already was; even more than she had been originally. But now there was no give in the ball. Her body was like an overburdened spring, so heavily laden that it can only go down farther and never up.
“No,” she said quietly. “No.”
Then, on an ascending note, “No, no, n-no!”
She waited, panting, the blood running to her head and her hair tumbled over her eyes. Her wrists throbbed, and her elbows ached with sugary pain. And suddenly they doubled under her and her torso lurched downward, and a tortured scream burbled from her lips.
Sobbing painfully, she braced herself again. Tears ran down her face, and she could not brush them away. And in her agony and growing hysteria, that seemed the most unbearable thing of all.
“C-can’t—can’t even raise a finger,” she wept. “Can’t even r-raise a…”
Then, so softly that she could hardly be heard, “Ma said tomorrow night. Tomorrow night, prob’ly.”
The words trickled off into silence. Her panting grew more labored. She wheezed and coughed, groaned with the jerking of her body, and her tears ran harder.
“I—can’t—stand—it!” she gasped. “You hear me? I can’t stand it! Can’t stand it, can’t stand it, c-caa-an’t stand eet, can’t stand ee-yaahhhhhh…”
She screamed and the pain of the exertion caused her to scream even louder, and that scream wrung still another from her throat. She writhed and screamed, gripped in a frenzy of pain and fury. Her head pounded against the roof and her heels dug and kicked into the floor, and her elbows churned and banged and scraped against the imprisoning sides of the hole.
Blood mingled with the tears on her face. It streamed down her back, over her arms and legs and thighs. From a hundred tiny cuts and scratches and bruises it came, coating her body; warm red blood—combining slippery with the dust of the cave.
She never knew when she broke free. Or how. Or that she had. She was still struggling, still screaming, when she got the cap off the pill bottle and upended it into her mouth…
Peevishly, she came up out of the pleasant blackness. Something was gripping her ankle, and she tried to jerk away from it. But the thing held tight. It yanked, skidding her down the hole, peeling more hide from her body. She cried out in protest, and the cry was choked off suddenly as water closed over her.
Choking and kicking, she slid out of the hole and into the pit. It was night again—or night still? And in the moonlight, she looked blurrily into the flattest eyes she had ever seen.
“I’m Earl,” he grinned, showing twisted teeth. “Just hold tight now, an’ I’ll getcha…”
“Leggo!” She flung herself frantically backward. “Just leave me alone! I don’t want to go anywhere! P-please, please, don’t make me! Just let me s-stay where…”
She made a grab for the bushes, tried to pull herself back into the hole. Treading water, Earl gave her a hard slap in the face.
“Son of a gun,” he mumbled, getting a rope around her waist, signaling to Ma and Doc. “Wasn’t forty-eight hours enough for yuh?”
13
Covered by odds and ends of sacking, Doc and Carol lay in the rear of Earl’s old truck and were taken joltingly back through the hills to a county road, and thence on several miles to the so-called farm where Earl lived. It was a shabby, rundown place with a grassless junk-littered yard, a cow, a few chickens, a couple of acres of fruit trees and two or three more of truck crops. Inside the weatherbeaten house, however, with its bare warped floors and boarded-up windows, there was an outsize color TV set, a huge deep freeze and refrigerator, and an enormous wood-fuel range.
Earl was obviously proud of these possessions, and Doc complimented him on them. Laconically, trying to conceal his pleasure, Santis took a large beef roast from the oven and slapped it platterless on the table. As he whacked it into great bleeding chunks, Ma set out other “vittles”—cold boiled cabbage, bread, a pot of coffee, a gallon jug of bonded whiskey—and tin cups and plates. They all sat down then, and everyone but Carol began to eat hungrily. She sat dazed and listless, her stomach turning queasily, hardly able to tolerate the sight and the smell of the food.
Ma gave her an appraising look, and reached for the whiskey jug. She filled a tin cup—pronounced tin-cup—half full of the white liquid and thrust it across the table.
“Now, you drink that,” she ordered. “Go on! Don’t make me tell you twice.”
Carol dr
ank it. She swallowed hastily, trying to swallow back the sickness, and then a comforting fire spread through her stomach, and a little color came back into her face.
“Now, eat,” Ma said. And Carol ate. And after the first few bites, the food tasted very good to her.
Both of her eyes were slightly blackened. Her mouth was puffy and bruised, and her face and hands were a mass of scratches and cuts. But no one commented on her appearance, or inquired into the why of it. Old hands in the sleazy bypaths of crime, they could pretty well guess what had happened to her.
She kept her eyes on her plate, taking no part in their conversation. As indifferent to it as though it had nothing to do with her.
Needless to say, she and Doc were still very hot. It would be impossible for them to sneak across the Mexican border, and make their way down into the interior by land. But Ma and Earl had lined up a good seaward contact—the captain of a small Portuguese fisherman who had handled similar ventures for them before.
“No one with the kind of heat you two got, o’course.” Ma took a swig of whiskey, belched, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “He’s stallin’ now, trying to weasel out of the deal. But he’ll come around in a day or so, soon’s he sees it ain’t getting him nowheres.”
“You mean,” Doc frowned warily, “you mean he knows who we are?”
Ma said sure, naturally the fellow knew. “Who else would be skippin’ the country right now? But don’t you worry none about it, Doc. He knows all about us Santises, and you got nothing to worry about.”
“I see,” Doc said. “Yes, I’m sure you’re right.”
Roy Santis would be getting out of prison in another year or so. That would make three of them on the loose, not to mention their manifold kinsfolk and friends. And no one who was even slightly familiar with the Santis reputation would do anything to offend them. Anyone who did, in hope of reward or in fear of punishment, would never live to brag about it.
The meal over, Earl filled a crockery jug with water and led Carol and Doc down through his gullied backyard to a haystack-size mound of manure. It was partly dug out, roofed over with boards which were in turn covered with manure. Facing away from the house, the entrance was covered with a piece of canvas which was smeared with cow dung, dried now but apparently applied when wet.