“Henry? Henry Green?”
“Hi, Hallie. I’m sorry about this,” he said quietly. His hand touched her elbow. “You’re freezing. Where’s your coat?”
“I covered him,” she said.
The man in the driver’s seat of the police car was leaning so that light struck his face. “You’re Doc White’s daughter. I’m Con Meloney. Knew your father pretty well.”
“Everybody did,” she said feebly. The younger policeman was helping her, urging her, into the car. When they were three in the front seat Hallie, sandwiched in between them, began to feel much better.
Con Meloney was white-haired, pink-faced, and calm to the point of weariness. “Tell us if we go wrong, Miss Hallie.”
“East on the cut-off,” said Henry Green. “Paint-brush Road they call it now. Did you phone your mother, Hallie?”
“No. No, she doesn’t expect me. Doesn’t know I decided to drive on through tonight.”
The car backed to turn eastward at the intersection. She realized that Meloney was signaling behind him. “What’s that?”
“Ambulance,” said Henry. “How was he hurt?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see a thing. I was afraid to touch him.”
“You don’t know who he is, Miss Hallie?” Meloney asked.
“No. I didn’t—I was just trying to figure out what to do. There’s absolutely no traffic out there.” Her tongue was loosened. “We agreed
I ought to hurry into town. So I put my topcoat over him as best I could in the dark. Don’t go too fast. He’s on the left. Just off the pavement.”
“About three miles, you say?”
“Oh, how can I know,” she babbled. “I’m only guessing. It happened so fast. I wasn’t speeding. Thirty miles an hour, I’m sure of that. I didn’t see a thing until he jumped right out of the dark. He’d been drinking.
I suppose that explains it, if anything c-can.”
These men were giving her respectful attention and this was comforting. “I tried not to hit him,” she chattered on. “I skidded all over the place but the tail of the car swished . . . I felt it . . . But I don’t know—!”
“We’ll see,” said Henry. “Our job. Just take it easy.”
Hallie sighed. She felt grateful that he wasn’t asking her to remember him, nor was he reminiscing about old times. Henry Green switched on a searchlight and began to manipulate the beam so that it probed the left margin of the road with a long white finger. Hallie tried to watch. “I told him I’d be right back,” she said. “It must seem like forever! Poor man . . .”
“Take it easy,” Henry said again.
The police car was creeping now. The finger of light felt into the dark. It slipped over clumps of greasewood, it slid around rocks, it rippled like water into the spaces between. Hallie waited for it to pick out the patch of light color that her beige coat should make.
She thought of something. “Wait. There was a building. Right near . . .”
“Not much along here but the Rock Shop,” Meloney said.
“There were no lights in it,” said Hallie. “He kept begging me to go to town. ‘The lights,’ he said.”
“Hold it,” said Henry softly.
“What?” She could see nothing significant in the spotlight’s path.
“Here’s where you skidded.”
“Oh . . .?”
Meloney stopped the car and signaled behind to stop the big ambulance that had kept quietly on their heels.
“Should be close by the skid marks.” The bright beam under Henry’s hand swept far ahead and began to come slowly, and with system, backward and leftward.
“There’s the building,” Hallie cried. “There . . . that’s it!”
The building was a long, squat shack of brown-stained wood with dusty windows that stood some thirty feet back from the roadside.
“Car there,” said Henry. The beam reversed and touched again the far edge of the shack. There was a glitter of glass and chromium. A car was parked there, at the far side and almost behind the shack.
“I didn’t see any car,” said Hallie nervously. “I saw no car at all, since the highway. It was unc-canny.” Her teeth clicked.
Neither of the men spoke. The beam swept over the shack again and came back towards them. Small white-leaved desert growths leapt into dazzling view.
“There he is,” said Henry.
Hallie had seen nothing. Cold air came suddenly in upon her from both sides as the men got out of the car. She moved, but Meloney said rather severely, “You sit where you are, please, Miss Hallie.”
The doors closed, creating pressure upon her ears. She sat where she was. She looked straight forward, along the white road leading off to nowhere. Oh, come on, Hallie! Not nowhere. It leads to the highway, as you perfectly well know. You just came over it. For pity’s sake, keep on keeping your wits.
She lifted her gaze and turned her head just a trifle, and the mountains were there. “I will lift up mine eyes . . .” the whole phrase rang in her head as if someone were saying it aloud to her . . . “unto the hills whence my help cometh . . .” Hallie shut her eyes quickly. Get yourself together. No amount of weeping or praying is going to change what has already happened. You meant no harm. That’s the only thing that you know. And what is a mountain but a great spectacular obstacle, a nuisance—
She leaned back and rested her strained and aching neck muscles. Out in the road she knew there were four men now. Two of them, in white coats, had come from the ambulance. They were men who knew exactly what to do, and they were out there doing it, and it was their job. Henry had said so. Henry Green. Her teeth still chattered intermittently.
She did not watch, but the corner of her eye knew when there was movement and a change of light. Her ears could tell that the men were speaking, but she did not try to distinguish the words. After a long time light changed on the surface of the rear-view mirror. She heard the ambulance engine start up. It began a U-turn. A reddishness on the mirror told her that it was going away. Quietly.
Well, why should they use the siren on this road? she thought, with strange petulance. No need to shriek and howl and blast a way with noise. There’s nobody out here in this God-forsaken — She sat up.
“Hallie?” Henry Green was standing beside the police car. She turned the window crank a little.
“They don’t need a siren out here?” she said, rather absurdly.
“They don’t need it,” said Henry quietly.
“Was he . . . Who was he?”
“Walter Bryson.”
“Oh?” Hallie couldn’t remember the name.
“I think you’d remember John Bryson. Used to work in the Post Office?” Henry was leaning there, chatting now.
“Oh, yes. The nice old gentleman. Mr. John, we called him. But you said Walter . . .”
“This is John Bryson’s nephew . . .”
“I didn’t know him, did I?”
“I guess not. He’s been here six or seven years, I believe. You’ve been gone almost nine. Isn’t that right? Except for visits?”
Hallie said, “Henry, you are being awfully chatty.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry, Hallie.” She heard the wind blowing. “He was dead when we got here,” Henry told her.
“Dead?” she cried. “But he couldn’t be!” Then her voice ran down to a wail. “Oh, Henry, was he? Did I do it?”
“It would seem so,” said Henry very gently.
She put both hands to her face and pressed hard.
“He had been drinking, you say?” (She didn’t answer.) “Hallie?”
“Yes, he had been drinking. He just must have staggered into the road.” That figure came leaping into the light again—and then again—in her mind’s eye.
“You could see that he was under the influence, could you?”
“I could smell it,” she said. “Oh, poor man—I wish I’d stayed . . . If I’d known . . .”
“You weren’t speeding, and you tried not t
o hit him,” Henry said. “We can tell by your skid marks.”
“What?” she said stupidly.
“We’ll be here a little while longer. Are you O.K.?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” she said loudly and bitterly.
He moved away then and she knew that he and Meloney were walking about with flashlights.
She did not want to think about a man who had to die alone on the cold ground with those mountains so smugly and simply there and the stars too high and the wind going over . . . No good if she thought about it. It had happened—
So she thought about Henry Green. In the ninth grade. He had been fifteen years old, about. She, in the eighth grade, had been fourteen. Only fourteen? Babies. There was a song all the kids sang in the spring of that year. A maddening ditty.
Henry Green
Likes Hallie White.
Then they had
A little fight.
He was mad
And she was mean
And Hallie White
Likes Henry Green.
Nyah nyah nyah . . . de nyah nyah nyah . . . the tune nagged. It had always infuriated her. It was so stupid!
So Henry Green was a policeman now. She had known that. Someone had told her. Well, what of it? There had to be policemen in the world . . . to do their jobs. Him and his tact. It was an accident. He knew that from the skid marks.
Hallie knew that anger was one of the masks that guilt could wear. Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, she said to herself, that the man is dead. I wish it hadn’t happened. But it was an accident. So I am sorry, but I am not required to feel guilty. The accident was not my fault. I have to remember that, be sure of that, and stick to that.
It did not seem long before the men came back to the car. The doors wagged, let in cold air, and then she was sandwiched between them once more.
“You all right, Hallie?” Henry asked her.
She said, quietly, “No.”
No more was said. The car ran on down the road while Henry, for some reason incomprehensible to her, worked the spotlight again.
At last the car turned and they ran swiftly back into the town.
Hallie asked, “Has he a family?”
“Not in town,” said Meloney. “There’s only old John living with him up there. Since old John retired.”
Street lights flashed by. The car knew where it was going. When it stopped Hallie blinked and looked about her. “Where is this?”
“This is the police station.” Meloney got out. Henry got out and seemed to expect her to get out. Hallie sat still.
Henry said, “For one thing, we’ll have to get your statement down and have you sign it. For another thing, you ought to come in where it’s warm. Do you want to call your mother?”
Hallie moved and slid out on his side. “No use to upset her, is there?” she said.
“I don’t think so,” said Henry soothingly. They took her inside.
Inside it was a bright room with desks and file cabinets and a young man in shirt sleeves at some sort of switchboard. Henry led her across this place to one of the two doors at the far end. He put her in an office, sat her down in the leather chair behind the desk. “Rest a while,” he said kindly. “We’ll get you something hot to drink. Joe will come in and
run the tape recorder for you. You must just tell what happened in sequence . . . that’s all. Everything that you remember.”
Hallie said, “I remember everything.”
“All right,” said Henry. “One thing I’d like you to do for me right away. Would you please describe your coat?”
“Describe it!” She looked up at him. His face in the full light was very familiar. His greenish eyes had the same slant, the same sideways glint to them. “Why should I describe it?” burst Hallie.
“Because there wasn’t any coat out there.”
“No coat! But that’s imposs . . . I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” said Henry without excitement. “What was the coat like?”
“Why it was . . . beige wool, a long coat, no belt, big pockets, a brown lining. Just a topcoat. I’ve had it for years. What could have happened?”
“We’ll have to see if we can’t find out,” said Henry. He smiled at her and left her. In a minute a young man with shirt sleeves came bustling with a paper cup of hot coffee.
Hallie thanked him, but she did not drink it. She folded her cold fingers around the hot cup while he fussed with the machine. When it was ready, she told her story into the microphone, using a calm clear voice and no embroidery. Afterwards, she sat alone in the room, which was warm and brightly lit, where she felt safe, away from the night and the cold. There were people around her. She could hear the rumble of voices, the clicking of a typewriter, the phone, when it rang. The door to the next office was closed, but she knew Meloney was in there. Was this office, then, Henry Green’s? Why was she waiting here? Oh, yes, for the typing to be done. She folded her arms on the top of the desk and put her head down on them.
Henry Green likes
Hallie White . . .
The nagging tune kept going around and around. It never had made any sense at all. It was for teasing. How she had hated it! Still hated it. Had forgotten how much she hated it.
She was in a state that was not quite sleep when the door to that other office cracked suddenly and burst open. Hallie lifted her head quickly. Henry was there, hand on the knob. He was speaking, but not to her. “. . . like to talk to her, Mr. Bryson, she’s right here and I know she’d be glad to tell you just what . . .”
A high voice said, “No, no . . .”
Hallie stood up quickly enough to make her head swim. But she conquered that. She walked around the desk. This was going to be bad, but it had to be faced. Nothing would change. She must have the courage to walk right into the consequences of what had happened.
She stopped in the doorway. At the other side of this other office the old man stood. He was dressed in a jumble of clothing—slacks, the top of some pajamas, an unbuttoned khaki-colored windbreaker. His white hair was tousled. His face, she thought, was drawn and pale. But she knew him at once. The old don’t change as much, with the years, as the young do, she thought.
She said, “Mr. Bryson? Mr. John? I’m so sorry—I tried the best
I could . . . but there was nothing I could do.”
He began to back away from her. He said shrilly, “I don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want to hear about it . . . I don’t want her to tell me anything . . .”
Henry had not let go of the door knob, so that she was standing with his arm at her back. She wanted to shrink backward herself, and rest against it, but she forced herself to step forward instead. “Please believe me, that it was an accident,” she said. “You see, he . . .”
But John Bryson kept moving away. He even put up his hands as
if to fend off the evil eye. “Walter is dead,” he shrilled. “That’s enough.
I don’t want to look at her . . . I want to go now . . .” His face shocked her very much. What was this? Loathing? Condemnation? Fear? Old John fumbled at the other door. He fled.
Hallie turned to look at Henry. “Is this the way it is going to be?” she said tensely. “Are people going to look at me like that?”
“He’s upset,” said Meloney from behind the desk.
“Fooled me,” said Henry. “Over at the funeral parlor he had more philosophy. I wouldn’t have let you in for that, Hallie.”
“It’s just getting to him,” Meloney said. “That happens. Thanks, Joe.” Joe had come in and put down a sheaf of papers.
Hallie said abruptly, “May I sign that thing and go home?”
Neither man answered her.
“Or not?” she said sharply.
Henry moved then. He said, “Sit down, Hallie. Won’t take long.”
He was putting her into a chair facing the desk. But Hallie could tell that it wasn’t the man behind the desk who was in charge here. It was Henry Green, who now put a haunch o
n the desk corner and on the end of one long leg, let his foot swing. He wore handsome tan trousers. The police do wear, she thought, good cloth.
Henry said, “Hallie, you tell us that the man jumped into the way of your car. The skid marks tell us the same thing.”
“I’m glad,” she said a little sarcastically. She looked right into his green eyes.
“And it seemed to you that he was drunk?”
“That he had been drinking,” she corrected.
“Then you say that you smelled it on his breath?”
“Yes.”
“When was that?”
“When I spread my coat over him to keep him warm.”
“You definitely smelled liquor?”
“I am familiar with the smell of whiskey,” she said stiffly. “It was very strong.”
“Tell me,” said Henry, looking at the wall, “whether this is possible. Say you were startled when he, as you say, jumped. That was a pretty stupid thing for him to do. ‘The man must be drunk . . .’ you think to yourself. Then, when you were close to him later on, that idea was already in your mind. The assumption was very strong that he would smell of liquor.”
“You are asking me whether this is possible?” she said shrewdly. Henry nodded. Hallie said, “I don’t see that it matters how possible it might be. Since nothing of the sort happened in my mind. I never thought of drunkenness. I wasn’t even sure it was a man. Later on, I smelled the whiskey on his breath as plain . . . as plain as anything I ever knew.”
Henry looked at her and said, “Trouble is, Hallie, there’s no liquor smell on Walter Bryson whatsoever. People say he never took a drop.”
She gasped and sat straighter. “And no coat, either?” she snapped.
“No coat.”
“Do you think I am lying?” She was alarmed by mystery, and defensive.
“Why no,” said Henry rather wearily.
“Then what are you thinking?”
“Honesty is one thing,” said Henry coolly. “The truth is another. I’m trying to figure out what happened. Now . . . you said ‘we agreed.’ You said ‘he begged me.’ Does that mean you had a conversation with the man?”
Night Call and Other Stories of Suspense Page 30