Someone to Watch Over Me

by Richard Bausch

  The metal shone under the light, smooth and functional, perfectly wrought, precisely shaped for its purpose, completely itself. Reaching into the little box of ammo in the drawer, he brought out the first cartridge, held the pistol in one hand, the cartridge in the other. His fingers felt abruptly cold at the ends, tipped with ice, though his hands were steady. It took only a minute to load it. He checked the safety, then stood and turned.

  Caroline had come halfway down the stairs.

  “I didn’t hear you,” he said.

  She sighed. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  For an interval, they simply waited. He held the pistol in his right hand, barrel pointed at the floor. She kept her eyes on his face. “I’m tired,” he said.

  She turned, there, and started back up. “Maybe you can sleep now.”

  “Yes,” he said, but too low for her to hear.

  If she was awake when he left in the morning, she didn’t give any sign of it. He made himself some toast, and read the morning paper, sitting in the light of the kitchen table. The news was all about the health care crisis and the economy, the trouble in Africa and Eastern Europe. He read through some of it, but couldn’t really concentrate. The toast seemed too dry, and he ended up throwing most of it away.

  Outside, the cold was like a solid element that gave way slowly as he moved through it. He started the car and let it run while he scraped the frost off the windows, and by the time he finished, it had warmed up inside. As he pulled away he looked back at the picture window of the house, thinking he might see her there, but the window showed only an empty reflection of the brightness, like a pool of clear water.

  There were only the faintest brushlike strokes of cirrus across the very top of the sky, and the sun was making long shadows on the street: just the kind of winter morning he had always loved. There wasn’t much traffic. He was on Delany Street in no time at all, and he slowed down, feeling the need to be cautious, as if anyone would be watching for him. When he reached his daughter’s place he parked across the street, trying to decide how to proceed. The pistol was where he had put it last night, and even so, he reached into the coat pocket and closed his hand around it. The only thing to do was wait, so he did that. Perhaps an hour went by, perhaps less, and then Delbert came out of the door and took leaps down the stairs, looking like an excited kid on his way to something fun. He strolled to the Ford, opened the passenger side door, reached in and got a scraper, then kicked the door shut. He was clearing ice from the windows, whistling and singing to himself, as Kaufman approached him. “You about finished with that?”

  Delbert turned, and started. He held both hands up, though the older man had not produced the gun yet. “Whoa, you scared me, man.” Then he seemed to realize who it was. “Mr. Kaufman?”

  “Get in behind the wheel, son.” Kaufman brought the gun out of his pocket, and felt strangely like someone playing at cops and robbers. “Right now,” he said.

  “What is this?”

  “Do it.”

  Delbert dropped the scraper, then bent down and picked it up. He held it as if to throw it. Kaufman took a step back, and sighted along the barrel of the pistol. “I’ll put one between your eyes, boy.”

  “Come on, man,” Delbert said. “Cut this out. This isn’t funny.”

  “Just open that passenger door, and walk around and get in behind the wheel.”

  Delbert dropped the scraper and did as he had been told. Kaufman eased in next to him, holding the pistol on him, arranging himself.

  “Take it out toward Charlottesville.”

  “This isn’t right.” Delbert raced the engine, then backed out and accelerated. He was concentrating on the road ahead, and his eyes were wide. “It isn’t right, man.”

  The whiteness of the lawns and the surrounding hills blazed at them, scintillate with what looked like grains of salt. Kaufman saw the snow-covered houses, the many windows with their fleeting glimpses of color and order. “There’s a little farm road about four miles up on this side,” he said, fighting the quaver in his voice. “Take it when you get there.”

  Delbert put both hands on the wheel, and stared straight ahead. “Listen,” he said after a sudden intake of breath. “You’re not—you don’t really—this isn’t—”

  “There’s no use talking about it, son.”

  “Wait a minute—you gotta hold on—”

  “Farm road up here on the right,” Kaufman said.

  They were quiet, and there was a quality to the silence now. Kaufman felt vaguely sick to his stomach, watching the side of the other man’s face. The air was heavy with the smell of the oil he had used to clean the gun. At the farm road, Delbert made the turn, slowing down for the unevenness of the gravel surface under the snow.

  “Where are we going? You—you can’t mean this. Look—I’m sorry. I’m being better, really. Ask Fay. Let’s go back and ask her.”

  “It’s just a little further.” Kaufman heard an element of something almost soothing in his own voice, the tone of a man trying to calm a child. He said, “I’ve seen Fay. I’ve seen what you did to her.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Delbert said, starting to cry. “Look, I didn’t mean it, man. And I was so sorry. I said it would never, ever happen again this time. I told her. I made an oath. You’re not gonna hurt me—”

  “Stop here,” Kaufman told him.

  He slowed. The tears were streaming down his cheeks. “Shit,” he said. “You’ve got me really scared, OK? If that’s what you set out to do.”

  “Open the door.”

  He did, and got out, and walked a few unsteady paces up the road. Kaufman got out, too. “That’s good,” he said.

  Delbert turned. He was crying, murmuring something to himself. Then, to Kaufman he said, “You just wanted to scare me, right? She can move back with you. You can have her.”

  “Be quiet, now,” Kaufman said. “Be still.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His hands were shaking. He held the pistol up, aimed.

  Delbert sank, slowly, to his knees. “Please, Frank. Come on.”

  “I can’t have it,” Kaufman said, walking around him. “I’m sorry, son. You did this to yourself.” The younger man was saying something, but Kaufman didn’t hear him now. He had entered some zone of stillness, remembering the powerlessness of knowing what Delbert had done to her, what she had suffered at his hands—and recalling, too, absurdly, with a kind of rush at his heart, the huge frustration and anger of the days when she was choosing this irritating boy against the wishes of her parents—and in the next instant, as if to pause any longer might somehow dilute his will, he aimed the pistol, his whole body trembling, and squeezed the trigger. Even so, it seemed to fire before he wanted it to. The sound of it was surprisingly big, and at first he wasn’t certain that he had actually fired. The explosion came, as though all on its own, and Delbert seemed to throw himself onto the surface of the road, his hands working at his neck, as if he were trying to undo something too tight there. Everything had erupted in the sound of the gun going off, and now it was here. Delbert lay writhing in the road, seeming to try to run on his side, clutching at his neck. It was here. They had gone past everything now. It was done now.

  “Delbert?” Kaufman’s own voice seemed to come from somewhere far away.

  His son-in-law looked at him, and tried to speak. He held his hands over the moving dark place in his neck, and then Kaufman saw that blood was pouring through his fingers. Delbert coughed and spattered it everywhere. His eyes were wide, and he looked at the older man, coughing. He got out the words, “I’m shot. Jesus.”

  Kaufman said, “Oh, God,” and then, out of a kind of aghast and terrified reflex, aimed the pistol at the side of the boy’s head, hearing the deep throat-sound, looking at the intricate flesh of his ear, blood-spattered.

  “It hurts,” Delbert got out, spitting blood. He coughed and tried to scream. What came from him did not sound human.

  Kaufman closed his eyes and tried to fire again, wan
ting only for the sound to stop. It was all he wanted in the world now. He had a vague sense of the need to end the other’s pain.

  “Awgh, God,” Delbert said, coughing. “Aghh. Help. Christ.”

  The pistol went off, seemed to jump in Kaufman’s hand once more. And for a little while the younger man simply lay there, staring, with a look of supreme disappointment and sorrow on his face, his left leg jerking oddly. The leg went on jerking, and Kaufman stood in the appalling bright sun, waiting for it to stop. Then he walked a few paces away and came back, hearing Delbert give forth another hard cough—almost a barking sound—and still another, lower, somehow farther down in the throat. It went on. There was more thrashing, the high thin sound of an effort to breathe.

  “Goddamn it—I told you, boy. Goddamn it.”

  The waiting was awful, and he thought he should fire again. The second bullet had gone in somewhere along the side of Delbert’s head, and had done something to his eyesight, because the eyes did nothing when Kaufman dropped the gun and knelt down to speak to him.

  “Delbert? Jesus Christ, son.”

  The breathing was still going on, the shrill, beast-whistling, desperate sound of it. In the next instant, Kaufman lunged to his feet and ran wildly in the direction of the highway, falling, scrabbling to his feet, crying for help. He reached the highway and found nothing—empty fields of snow and ice. Turning, he came to the realization that the only sound now was his own ragged breathing. Delbert lay on his side, very still in the road, and a little blast of the wind lifted the hair at the crown of his head. Kaufman started toward him, then paused. He was sick. He knelt down, sick, and his hands went into the melting snow and ice. He heard someone say, “Oh, God,” and came quickly to his feet. But there wasn’t anyone; it had been his own voice. “Oh, God, oh God. God, God, God.”

  The car had both doors open. Spines of dry grass were sticking up out of the crust of snow in the fields on either side. He noticed these things. Minute details; the curve of stones in the road surface, the colors of frozen earth and grass, flesh of the backs of his hands, blood-flecked. There was a prodigious quiet all around—a huge, unnatural silence. He coughed into it, breathed, and then tried to breathe out. He couldn’t look at where the body lay, and then he couldn’t keep from looking.

  He could not find in himself anything but this woozy, sinking, breath-stealing sickness and fascination. A sense of the terrible quiet. He walked to the car, closed the doors, and then sat down in the road, holding his arms around himself. The other man lay there, so still, not a man now, and he had never been anything but a spoiled, headlong, brutal, talkative boy.

  There was a voice speaking, and again it took another moment for him to realize it was his own. The knowledge came to him with a wave of revulsion. He had been mouthing the Lord’s Prayer.

  He got into the car and drove it to his house. His wife stood in the window, wringing her hands, waiting. She opened the door for him. “Oh, Frank.”

  “Better call the police,” he said. He couldn’t believe the words. Something leapt in his stomach. He saw it all over again—his son-in-law pitching and lurching and bleeding in the road. He had actually done this thing.

  “Oh, honey.” She reached for him.

  “Don’t,” he said. He went past her, into the kitchen, where he sat down and put his hands to his head.

  “Frank?” she said from the entrance. “Fay called. She was frantic. She saw you drive away together.”

  He looked at her. It came to him that he could not stand the thought of having her touch him; nor did he want the sound of her voice, or to have her near him at all.

  “I’m afraid, Frank. I’m so terrified. Tell me. You didn’t actually—” She stopped. “You just scared him, right? Frank?”

  “Leave me alone,” he said. “Please.”

  She walked over and put her hands on his shoulders. It took everything he had to keep from striking her.

  “Get away from me,” he said. “Call the police. It’s done. Understand? He won’t be hurting her or anybody anymore. Do you understand me? It’s over with.”

  “Oh, please—” she said. “Oh, God.”

  “I said call the police. Just take care of that much. You can do that, can’t you?”

  She left him there. He put his head down on his folded arms, trying not to be sick, and he could hear her moving around in the next room. She used the telephone, but he couldn’t tell what she said. Then there was just the quiet of waiting for the rest of this, whatever it would be, to play itself out. He kept still. It came to him, like something surfacing out of memory, that he would never see anything anymore, closing his eyes, but what lay in that farm road in the sun, not five miles away.

  He sat up and looked at the opposite wall. He heard Caroline crying in the other room. Without wanting to, he thought of all the countless, unremarkable, harmless disagreements of their long life together, how they had always managed gradually to find their way back to being civil, and then friendly; and then in love again. How it always was: the anger subsiding at last, the day’s practical matters requiring attention, which led to talk, and the talk invariably leading them home to each other. He remembered it all, and he wished with his whole heart that his daughter might one day know something of it: that life which was over for him now, unbridgeable distances gone, and couldn’t ever come back anymore. He understood quite well that it had been obliterated in the awful minutes it took Delbert Chase to die. And even so, some part of his mind kept insisting on its own motion, and Kaufman felt again how it had been, in that life so far away—how it was to go through his days in the confidence, the perfectly reasonable and thoughtless expectation, of happiness.

  TWO ALTERCATIONS

  The calm early summer afternoon that “in the flash of a moment would be shattered by gunfire”—the newspaper writer expressed it this way—had been unremarkable for the Blakelys: like the other “returning commuters” (the newspaper writer again) they were sitting in traffic, in the heat, with jazz playing on the radio, saying little to each other, staring out. Exactly as it usually was on the ride home from work. Neither of them felt any particular need to speak. The music played, and they did not quite hear it. Both were tired, both had been through an arduous day’s work—Michael was an office clerk in the university’s admissions office, and Ivy was a receptionist in the office of the dean of arts and sciences.

  “Is this all right?” she said to him, meaning what was on the radio.

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  “This music. I could look for something else.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I don’t mind it.”

  She sat back and gazed out her window at a car full of young children. All of them seemed to be singing, but she couldn’t hear their voices. The car in which they were riding moved on ahead a few lengths, and was replaced by the tall side of a truck. Jake Plumbly & Son, Contractors.

  “I guess I’m in the wrong lane again,” he said.

  “No. They’re stopped, too, now.”

  He sighed.

  “Everybody’s stopped again,” she said.

  They sat there.

  She brought a magazine out of her purse, paged through it, and left it open on her lap. She looked at her husband, then out at the road. Michael sat with his head back on the seat top, his hands on the bottom curve of the wheel. The music changed—some piano piece that seemed tuneless for all the notes running up and down the scale, and the whisper of a drum and brushes.

  She looked at the magazine. Staring at a bright picture of little girls in a grass field, she remembered something unpleasant, and turned the page with an impatient suddenness that made him look over at her.

  “What?” he said.

  She said, “Hmm?”

  He shrugged, and stared ahead.

  No ongoing conflict or source of unrest existed between them.

  But something was troubling her. It had happened that on a recent occasion a new acquaintance had expressed surprise upon fin
ding out that they had been married only seven months. This person’s embarrassed reaction to the discovery had made Ivy feel weirdly susceptible. She had lain awake that night, hearing her new husband’s helpless snoring, and wondering about things which it was not normally in her temperament to consider. In that unpleasant zone of disturbed silence, she couldn’t get rid of the sense that her life had been decided for her in some quarter far away from her own small clutch of desires and wishes—this little shaking self lying here in the dark, thinking—though she had done no more and no less than exactly what she wanted to do for many years now. She was thirty-three. She had lived apart from her family for a dozen years, and if Michael was a mistake, she was the responsible party: she had decided everything.

  Through the long hours of that night, she had arrived at this fact over and over, like a kind of resolution, only to have it dissolve into forms of unease that kept her from drifting off to sleep. It seemed to her that he had been less interested in her of late, or could she have imagined this? It was true enough that she sometimes caught herself wondering if he were not already taking her for granted, or if there were someone else he might be interested in. There was an element of his personality that remained somehow distant, that he actively kept away from her, and from everyone. At times, in fact, he was almost detached. She was not, on the whole, unhappy. They got along fine as a couple. Yet on occasion, she had to admit, she caught herself wondering if she made any impression at all on him. When she looked over at him in the insular stillness of his sleep, the thought blew through her that anything might happen. What if he were to leave her? This made her heart race, and she turned in the bed, trying to put her mind to other things.