“ ‘But you are telling me,’ I cried.
“ ‘Oh, the joke—the grim joke of it! Yes, I am telling you. Listen. When I first understood what it was, this horror—I tried to speak, to tell.
I couldn’t. My voice wouldn’t work. Something slipped, but not far enough. I couldn’t tell. It was all pent up inside of me. The other night—you remember?—that was the first change, the first real adventure, the first thrill I have ever had. Ever. When I heard my own voice saying what I really thought. I did not fore know this, that I can speak to you. To you alone. Ah, the grim joke!’
“And he laughed, Harmon. How he laughed!”
The rain stung the window panes softly and the room was cased in quiet. Griffing raised his eyes.
“Can you see how the boy felt? Are you close enough to the idea? Here is more. ‘Aeons and aeons of time ago, beyond the births and deaths of suns and races of men, I lived, perhaps not for the first time, even then. Everybody lived. You lived. But, God help me—I alone remember. The mysterious forces over all—slipped—and I remember. I am living my life over again, and it must be the same. It must be. Imagine seeing the pageant of your life at a glance, —knowing the inexorable pattern through the days that your feet must take. I shall be glad to die. Remember, I shall be glad to die. Perhaps, next time,
I shall not remember.
“ ‘If I need not feel. But see—I am like two men in one. The external man living, feeling, loving, while behind him lurks my awful memory, my awful foresight. And it feels, this internal being, and it loves, and it knows what I must do. And no one can know how it suffers—for see, I am doomed to wound those whom I love, quite consciously. I cannot warn them. I cannot even prevent them from loving me.
“ ‘I remembered about the fight, —about Martha. I remember how and when I shall die. I remember what I will do tonight. I did it before—last time. Do you see? I will strike my father in a fit of drunken rage. Can you understand how terrible that is? When I know—I can’t help it. Promise me you will try to tell him. I can’t help it. There is nothing I can do but this.’ ”
Griffing spoke the boy’s passion out and sat very still. A saxophone was shivering down a scale from the floor above. Harmon ran his finger about the rim of his glass.
“Then,” said Griffing, “I asked him if he knew—I asked him how he was going to die.”
The silence rippled over his words.
“Well—” asked Harmon.
“He would not tell me that,” said Griffing.
A log in the fire stirred. Griffing was rubbing the bowl of his pipe in the palm of his hand.
“He went away, with a few sane words of parting, almost as if it were scheduled so. I let him go. I didn’t believe. I will not believe, now. But
I sat here, and there was his empty glass. And my imagination took hold of the thing. I sat here and tried—God help me—to remember what I had done with my life. It was that mood on the road, translated into time. Empty, aching time—back beyond the universe, through the dead watches of infinity to the universe again. I felt the vise—that night, the invisible vise, holding. And I imagined thin memories in the void until I told myself aloud that he was mad, and went to bed, praying that
I might not remember.
“But even now—Listen. The little people are going to bed, secure in their importance. Tomorrow they will get up and live and feel, and so again and endlessly. There’s a sky over this roof. Is anything up there interested enough to laugh at us? Listen—can you hear the wheels of time rolling endlessly, relentlessly, and to no purpose? Little people worry and ponder, and strut when they make decisions wisely. An inexorable pattern through the days—Can you hear the long wind of eternity blowing?”
“But—” Harmon shivered, “but—Dewey? Did you say Roger Dewey?”
“Ah, you remember? Yes, it happened as he said and as he knew, but did not say. The quarrel? Yes. You have heard that old tale of how I ran down a drunken boy in the street one night, and killed him?”
This novelette is difficult to characterize and difficult to put down. When it appeared in EQMM in 1967, the editor challenged readers to find a writer who could handle such a delicate subject more honestly and characterized the work as one of the most unusual short novels to appear in the magazine. Part of what makes this story so disconcerting for readers, in fact, is the dark humor associated with the victim’s death, the perplexity one feels about the protagonist’s response to the death, the shock in discovering the reason for that response, and the dual relief and again momentary humor one experiences when the one responsible for the death confesses. All these elements and potential responses make for a complex story in which Armstrong takes her characters and their situation very seriously. We challenge you to come away from the story unmoved.
THE SECOND COMMANDMENT
Halley was sure glad the damn fog had rolled up and was billowing off over the mountains. Hey, if you looked southwest, you could even see a couple of stars. Lucky. They might have to hang around, maybe till morning.
And it was a little too quiet out here. Not much traffic on California Route 1; on a night like this there had better not be. The sea kept booming; it always did. The men shouted once in a while at their work, but they knew their business. They’d have her up on the road, and pretty quick.
Hey, here’s my chance, thought Halley, to get all the stuff down, like they keep telling me. So the young Sheriff’s Deputy opened the back door of his official car and leaned over to let the dome light fall on his paper work. The husband was sitting inside, and quiet.
“May I please have your name again, sir?” Halley used the polite official drone.
“Hugh Macroy.” The other’s voice, even in exhaustion, had a timbre and a promise of richness. A singer, maybe? Young Halley’s ear had caught this possibility when he had first answered the call. He never had seen the man—at least, not too well. Now the lighting was weird—red lights flashing on the equipment, for instance.
“Address?” Halley asked, after he had checked the spelling.
“382 Scott—no, I’m sorry. 1501 South Columbo.”
“That’s in Santa Carla, sir? Right out of L.A.?”
“Yes.” The man was holding his head at the temples, between thumb and two middle fingers. Poor old guy, he didn’t hardly remember where he lived. But Halley, who knew better than to indulge in emotions of his own over one of these routine tragedies, figured himself lucky the fellow wasn’t cracking up.
“Your age, sir?”
“Forty-five.”
(Check. Kind of an old-looking guy.) “Occupation?”
“I am the Pastor at St. Andrew’s.”
Halley became a little more respectful, if possible, because—well, hell, you were supposed to be. “Just you and your wife in the car, right, sir?
En route from Carmel, didn’t you say, sir? To Santa Carla?”
“We had expected to stay the night in San Luis Obispo.”
“I see, sir. Your wife’s name, please?”
“Sarah. Sarah Bright.”
Halley wrote down Sara. “Her age, please?”
“Fifty-five.”
(Huh!) “Housewife, sir, would you say?”
“I suppose so.” The man was very calm—too beat, probably, thought Halley, to be anything else. Although Halley had heard some who carried on and cried and sometimes words kept coming out of them like a damn broken faucet.
“And how long you been married?” the Deputy Sheriff continued politely.
“I think it has been two days, if today is Wednesday.” Now, in the syllables, the voice keened softly.
“Any chil—” (Oh, oh!) “Excuse me, sir.”
“There is Sarah’s daughter, in San Luis Obispo. Mrs. Geoffrey Minter. She should be told about this, as soon as may be. She will have been worrying.”
“Yes, sir,” said Halley, reacting a little crisply not only to the tone but to the grammar. “If you’ve got her address or phone, I can get her no
tified, right now.”
The man dictated an address and a phone number as if he were reading them from a list he could see. Halley could tell that his attention had gone away from what he was saying. He was awfully quiet.
Halley thanked him and called in from the front seat. “Okay. They’ll call her, sir. We probably won’t be here too long now,” he told the silent figure and drew himself away and shut the car doors gently.
He strolled on strong legs to the brink. He could hear the heavy water slamming into rock forty feet below. (Always did.) The night sky was clearing all the way overhead now. There was even a pale moon.
Some honeymoon, thought Halley. But he wasn’t going to say anything. It had occurred to him that this one might not be routine, not exactly, and that Halley had better watch his step, and be, at all times, absolutely correct.
“How’s it going?” he inquired cheerfully of the toilers.
They had a strong light playing on her as she came up in the basket. She was dead, all right.
Macroy got out of the car and looked down at her and maybe he prayed or something. Halley didn’t wait too long before he touched the clergyman’s arm.
“They’ll take her now, sir. If you’ll just come with me?”
The man turned obediently. Halley put him into the back seat of the official car and got in to drive.
As the Deputy steered skillfully onto the pavement Macroy said, “You are very kind. I don’t think I could drive—not just now.” His voice sounded shaky and coming over shaky teeth, but it was still singsongy.
“That’s all right, sir,” said Halley. But he thought, Don’t he know his car’s got to stay put and get checked out, for godsake? That kind of voice—Halley didn’t exactly trust it. Sounded old-timey to him. Or some kind of phony.
On the highway, that narrow stretch along the curving cliffs, Halley scooted along steadily and safely toward the place where this man must go. By the book. And that was how Halley was going, you bet—by the book. It might not be a routine case at all.
So forget the sight of Sarah Bright Macroy, aged fifty-five, in her final stillness. And how she’d looked as if she had about four chins, where the crepey skin fell off her jawbone. And thick in the waist, but with those puny legs some old biddies get, sticking out like sticks, with knots in them, and her shoes gone so that the feet turned outward like a couple of fins, all gnarled and bunioned. Um boy, some honeymoon! Halley couldn’t figure it.
So swiftly, decisively, youthfully, Halley drove the official car, watching the guy from the back of his head, in case he got excited or anything. But he didn’t. He just sat there, quiet, stunned.
Sheriff’s Captain Horace Burns was a sharp-nosed man of forty-seven and there was a universal opinion (which included his own) that you had to get up early in the morning to fool him. His office had seen about as much wear as he had, but Burns kept it in stern order, and it was a place where people behaved themselves.
Burns had felt satisfied with Halley, who sat up straight on the hard chair by the door, with his young face poker-smooth. His report had been clear and concise. His mien was proper. The Captain’s attention was on this preacher. He saw a good-looking man, about his own age, lean and well set up, his face aquiline but rugged enough not to be “pretty.” He also saw the pallor on the skin, the glaze of shock in the dark eyes—which, of course, were to be expected.
Macroy, as invited, was telling the story in his own words, and the Captain, listening, didn’t fiddle with anything. His hands were at rest. He listened like a cat.
“So we left Carmel early this afternoon,” Macroy was saying. “We had driven up on 101. We thought we’d come down along the ocean, having no idea that the fog was going to roll in the way it did.”
Behind him a clerk was taking it down. Macroy didn’t seem to be aware of that.
“But it did,” said that voice, and woe was in it. “As thick a fog as
I have ever experienced. We had passed Big Sur. You can’t, you know, get through the mountains and change routes.”
“You’re stuck with it,” the Captain said agreeably.
“Yes. Well, it was very slow going and very tiring. We were so much delayed that the sun went down, although you could hardly tell.”
“You stopped,” Burns prodded, thinking that the voice sounded like a preacher’s, all right. “About what time?”
“I don’t know. There was a sudden rift and I was able to see the wide place to our right. On the ocean side. A scenic point, I imagine.” The Captain nodded. “Well, it looked possible to take the car off the highway there, so I—so I did. I had been so tense for such a long time that
I was very glad to stop driving. Then, Sarah wished to get out of the car, and I—”
“Why?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Why did she wish to get out of the car?” The Captain used the official drone. When the minister didn’t answer, Burns said, “It has to be included in your statement.”
“Yes,” said Macroy. He glanced at the clerk. “She needed to—”
When he got stuck, Halley’s face was careful not to ripple.
“Answer a call of nature,” droned the Captain. “Has to be on record. That’s right, Reverend?”
Macroy said with sober sadness, “Yes. I took the flashlight and got out to make sure there was enough margin between us and the edge.” He stared over the Captain’s head, seeing visions. “The light didn’t accomplish much,” he went on, “except to create a kind of blank white wall, about three feet before me. But I could check the ground. So I helped her out. I gave her the light and cautioned her. She promised not to go too far. I, of course, got back into my seat—”
He hesitated.
The Captain said, “Car lights on, were they?”
“Yes.”
“She went around behind the car?”
“Yes.”
“Go on. Full details, please. You’re doing fine.”
“I was comforting my right shoulder with a little massage,” said the minister with a touch of bitterness, “when I thought I heard her cry out.”
“Motor off, was it?” The Captain’s calm insistence held him.
“Yes. It was very quiet. Except for the surf. When I heard, or thought
I heard . . . I listened, but there was no other cry. In a short while I called to her. There was no answer. I couldn’t . . . couldn’t, of course, see anything. I called again. And again. Finally, I got out.”
“And what did you do?” said the Captain, and again his droning voice held the man.
“The flashlight,” he said, “was there.”
“On, was it? The light on, I mean?”
“Yes.” Macroy seemed to wait for and rely on these questions. “It was lying on the ground, pointing to sea. I picked it up. I began to call and range the whole—the whole—well, it is a sort of platform, you might say, a sort of triangular plateau. I shuffled over all of it—between the pavement and the brink—and she wasn’t . . .”
“Take your time,” said the Captain.
But the minister lifted his head and spoke more rapidly. “At last, and I don’t know when, a car came along. Mercifully it stopped. The driver offered me a ride. But I couldn’t leave her.” The anguished music was back in the voice. “How could I leave her?”
“He didn’t get out? The driver of the car?” said Burns, again coming to the rescue.
“No. No. I begged him to send some help. Then I just kept on ranging and calling and—hoping and waiting, until help came.” Macroy sank back.
“He called in, all right,” Burns said in his flat tone. “Hung up without giving his name. But he can be found, I think, any time we need him.”
Macroy was staring at the Captain with total incomprehension. He said, “I would like to thank him—yes, I would like to some day.” Not now, wept his voice. Not yet.
“Can be arranged.” Burns leaned back. “Just a couple of questions,
Mr. Macroy. Was it your wife�
�s suggestion that you stop the car?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Did she ask you to stop? Or was it your idea?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t following. No, it was my—well, you see, I knew she was in distress. But it was I who saw the opportunity.”
“I see,” said the Captain. “And you got back in the car for reasons of—er—privacy?”
“Values,” said Macroy with sudden hollowness. “How ridiculous! In that dangerous spot. I knew how dangerous it was. I shouldn’t have let her. I shouldn’t.”
The Captain, had he been a cat, would have had his ears up, and his tail, curled, would have stirred lazily.
“I will always—” Macroy was as good as weeping now. “Always regret.” His eyes closed.
“You were only a few miles from low ground,” said the Captain calmly. “You didn’t know that?”
Macroy had his face in his hands and he rocked his whole body in the negative.
The Captain, when his continued listening was obviously proving unprofitable, said for the record, “You didn’t know. Well, sir, I guess that’s about all, for now.”
“Where have they brought her?” Macroy dropped his hands.
“I—er—wouldn’t go over to the funeral parlor. No point. You realize there’s got to be an autopsy?” Macroy said nothing. “Now, we aren’t holding you, but you’re a lot of miles from home. So I think what you’d better do, Reverend, is go over to the motel and rest there for the night. We’ll need your signature on your statement, for one thing. In the morning will do.” The Captain stood up.
“Thank you,” said Macroy. “Yes. I couldn’t leave.”
“Did you push your wife?” said the Captain conversationally.
Macroy’s face could be no paler. “No,” he said with wondering restraint. “I told you.”
“The motel,” said the Captain in exactly the same conversational manner, “is almost straight across the highway, a little to your left.”
Night Call and Other Stories of Suspense Page 24