by Gil Brewer
Then I asked her the question I hadn’t wanted to ask.
“What are they going to do with me here?”
And she said, “I don’t know.” She said it to the floor, staring at her feet.
“What about the hit-and-run?”
“Nothing new.”
I could feel the blood pounding again. She wouldn’t tell me anything. Maybe she didn’t know anything, but she could try to relieve me. I grabbed her wrist. “Damn it!” I said. “What’s going on?” I kept my voice down, speaking soft and hard, right at her. “They can’t hold me here, you know that. I’ll break out.”
She watched me, moistened her lips, looked vague.
I threw her hand into her lap. It bounced limply. “I asked you to tell Redfern to stop in and see me.”
“He’s very busy,” she said.
I wanted to hit her. Maybe there was something wrong with me. Barton would come and sit and watch me. Jim never said anything. The other nurses brought me pills I refused to take. And they hadn’t stuck me with another needle.
We sat there for another hour, talking about nothing, while I verged on actual madness. Because no matter what I said, Leda persisted in her vague, half-nervous manner.
Janie came down and Leda borrowed a needle and thread from her to sew up the rips in the shorts. So she sat sewing while I tried to get her to talk.
“I’m leaving with you,” I said finally.
“You can’t, Eric!” For the first time she showed interest. “You can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Because they’d come after you. They’d get you. This’ll only be for a little while, darling. Then everything’ll be all right again.” She had finished sewing up the shorts. She put them on again. They fit so tight she had to mince steps when she walked. It was something. “They—Redfern, there, must have a lead on the accident, or something. I’m sure it won’t be long, now.”
“He tell you that?”
She stared at me. “No, not exactly.”
I cursed, sprawled back on the cot, and turned to the wall. Pretty soon her lips touched the side of my face.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. “I’ll see you tonight.”
“All right.” I didn’t give a damn.
“See you tonight, then.” I listened as she went to the door. Jim came along presently and let her out and locked the door again. They were talking, and I heard her laugh as they walked off across the grounds. Then the woman with the hoarse voice began singing a spiritual.
Leda never came back that night. . . .
A slow monotony of days and nights passed with the sun for a few hours and the blackness for the rest and then the sun again. And the dear old procession of eventless events. Only now it was different.
It worked on me. It worked like a ferment inside with each hour, building and building until something was going to give. Because nobody told me anything.
“There’ll be time when you cooperate,” Doc Barton said from behind his steel-rimmed glasses with his short-sleeved shirts and neatly creased trousers. “We don’t like to keep you locked up like this.”
“Damn you!”
He spread his hands. “You see?” Already he was on his feet, edging toward the door. Not exactly showing me how he felt, but trying not to show me.
“How can you keep me here?”
A smile of sympathy. I wasn’t supposed to be able to detect smiles of sympathy.
“Where’s my wife?”
“We haven’t been able to locate Mrs. Garth,” Barton said. “Now that’s something else, Eric,” he went on. He was standing by the door, and it had been two weeks with me ready for fighting now. “I’ve been playing along with you, waiting for you to tell me. But now I have to press you a bit. Why do you persist in calling this woman your wife? It’s one of the things that—”
“Get the hell out of here!”
“We know damned well she’s not your wife! She was with your brother all the time around town, Eric. Seems to me they were rather close. Wouldn’t surprise me if—Listen, you’ve got to snap out of it.”
I came at him. Jim was on the other side of the door and the door swung open. Barton stood his ground.
“C’mon, Doc!” Jim said. “Can’t you see?”
“No,” Barton said. “Tell me that, Eric. Why do you insist she’s your wife? If you’d get that much straight we’d have taken a step forward.”
“Damn you! Get out of here!”
Barton sighed and went out through the door. Jim looked at me. He’d got his hair cut. Now it was much too short. Almost shaved. He looked like a very thick-headed hick. “That’s right, what Doc told you about her,” he said.
“You, too,” I snapped. “Get!”
“Sure, Eric,” Jim said. “I’ll get. But I’ll be back. My bed’s right out here now. I live in the next room. I’m your neighbor now, Eric. Just take it easy.”
I moved for him. He closed the door and shot the bolt.
My breath was hot in my throat. I paced the room like a caged cat. I tried to calm down and couldn’t. Because I would not believe what was already in my head. Leda had gone off with Frank. She’d been with Frank. It was torture. I forced myself to think differently. She had vanished; she’d gone away to do something. But always the words returned—with Frank. Barton was merely trying to shock me, startle me—for some reason of his own.
This was how the trapped felt when they knew they were trapped and when they had sense enough to wonder why.
Not the truly sick. They didn’t always know, or they didn’t care. I cared, plenty, and wondered why. I sat there trying to calm down, trying to think it all out and—Bang! I’d be out on the floor, standing, ready to smash anybody who entered the room.
A couple of days later I realized I was being watched.
Jim slept just outside my door now. I could see his bed. My bureau with a small mirror above it, cemented to the wall, was faced on the opposite wall where Jim was with another bureau and mirror.
I found out about those mirrors and it made me sick.
One day I was staring at myself in the mirror, seeing what this was doing to me. I looked wild and I felt wild. My thoughts were of Leda with Frank, because Frank had money and I was locked up. I was through. Frank had it and Leda wanted it. Even while thinking like that I tried to close my mind, certain I saw things cockeyed. I condemned myself for thinking of Leda that way.
I heard Jim cough. So far as I knew, he wasn’t in the building.
It struck me all at once. I forgot Leda, Frank, everything. I moved with the cough, fast for the door, and looked through the slot. I’d caught him and I wanted to tear the door down.
“Eric!” Jim said. He was closing a small cabinet, or maybe a panel that made up the mirror on his side. I could just see him by pressing my face against the cold bars on the door.
I went screwy. The top of the bureau came off like you’d lift the lid on a kettle, screws, nuts, bolts, and all. I smashed it at the mirror on my side. It shattered and I was looking into the excited, worried face of Jim.
A mirror, hell. A window where they could watch whoever was in this room.
“Eric!”
“Hell.” I dropped the top of the bureau, went over and flopped on my cot.
Leda wasn’t real anymore. Nothing was real. They were actually driving me insane. Outside, Jim was calling for help.
Pretty soon Dr. Barton came along. He didn’t enter the room, but stood outside the door, talking to me while a carpenter patched up the hole where the mirror had been.
Barton talked on and on, but I didn’t talk at all.
“You’ve got to learn to cooperate, Eric.”
I remembered Leda. Her glinting eyes, and her long flawlessly curved white body tense with breasts gleaming in soft light. Her back, the full firm contours of her hips, and the ache inside me didn’t change. I’d always love her—wild bodied and cryptic, quick to cleave and hot willed. I hadn’t wanted to love her. But I di
d and nothing would ever change that. Everything would work out right.
And I would remember she had vanished. She was gone.
The way she’d look at me, then squeeze her thick hair with it bunching between her fingers, alive and coppery, a sable downpour about her face.
It was like I was bunged up inside, not alone with all the crazy trouble. Leda was right here, yet she was gone. I couldn’t catch hold of it; the thing wouldn’t form like it should. I could smell her and feel her and she was here with me, inside my head. So what do you do? You say to hell with it. Only the words don’t have any meaning.
I hung on for two months like that. They kept me in that room and they told me nothing. Even Doc Barton was acting puzzled and he didn’t come so often.
“You’ve had no mail, Eric?”
“None. Never mind.”
He would frown but he wouldn’t tell me anything. I think he really tried to locate Leda. But he didn’t have any luck. I tried hard not to think of her. I didn’t have much luck, either. Because she was inside me and it was bad. And every time I thought of her close to me, Norma got in there somehow, blonde and smiling. . . .
“Well, you’re going outside today,” Jim said.
“Oh.”
“Going to rake the lawn.”
“Great.”
“Sure.”
“I love raking lawns.”
“Wish you wouldn’t hold things against me, Eric. Things go right, maybe you’ll get back to the main building again. You ain’t caused much trouble lately.”
“Good.”
We went on outside. I had a pair of overalls now, and this was the first I’d been outside since the day they’d locked me up. The sun was blinding and, staring at my hands, I realized I was white as a sheet.
“A half hour, you got,” Jim said. He walked alongside of me. “Make the most of it.”
I thought it over. “Could I make a phone call?”
He thought that over. “I don’t know. C’mon up to the office.” They were trusting me all over the place now. It was a wrong move on their part. But even I didn’t know that yet.
“He wants to use the phone,” Jim told Miss Watkins.
Miss Watkins thought about it for a while. She was seated at the desk and she had very big breasts. They flowed around inside her uniform like very soft dough or mashed potatoes. Her eyes were small and her mouth matched her eyes with a single, small red pout.
“Whom do you wish to call?”
“You’ll be right here,” I said. The phone was at her dimpled elbow.
“Is it a long-distance call?”
“No. Local.”
“I guess it’ll be all right.” She eyed Jim, and he nodded assurance that he’d stand by with folded arms. Janie went by through the sitting room, rolling her hips, with a hypodermic needle in one hand. Jim winked at her and she bridled slightly. Miss Watkins saw it and fussed with a pencil. Janie vanished, rolling her hips fine.
I got Redfern on the line.
“Hello. This is Garth.”
“Ah.”
“They don’t tell me anything about the accident,” I said. “I want to know what’s up about that hit-and-run. They don’t say anything.”
“Where are you, Garth?”
“You know where I am.”
“You mean you’re still out there? At the San?” He was politely incredulous.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Good God.” His manner changed subtly. Not much, but just enough to be noticed. “Well, well. Did you get your car all right?”
“What? Listen. What about that hit-and-run business?”
“Why, hell, Garth. That’s what I mean about the car. They should have told you. Allen withdrew all charges. Said he wasn’t sure about anything. When they won’t place charges, we can’t do anything.”
I stood there hanging onto the phone as if it were a piece of dead wood. My insides turned over and I felt dizzy. Then my head began to clear.
Redfern said, “We turned the car over to that there girl. The one you called your wife, only she wasn’t. Turned the car over to her and your brother. Say, did she go away, Garth?”
It burned down inside. I seemed to sense a smile in his voice. I swallowed what I wanted to say. “Yeah,” I said instead. “You turned the car over to them. They’re no charges, like you say?”
“Like I say.”
I glanced toward Jim. He was over in the sitting room talking with Janie. Miss Watkins had her back turned to me and was busily sharpening pencils.
Redfern said, “Is there anything—” and I laid the phone down carefully on the desk and walked quietly out the front door into the blazing sunlight.
Then I ran like hell.
Chapter 8
I knew that if they caught me now, chances were I’d be kept in that locked room forever. A man who was suspected of being out of his mind, as I was, didn’t stand a chance. There’d be no way of my explaining how I felt. I could say over and over again, somebody’s doing this to me. I’m all right. There’s nothing wrong with me. I know that. And they’d just sit and listen and walk away and make motions at their temples to their friends.
It was a mean fix. So I ran hard, down the walk to the street. The river was over there and for a brief instant I thought of diving in, trying to swim away. But those things were done in the backwoods, not here, where they’d just go around the block and pick me up when I came out dripping and exhausted.
I spotted a car at the curb. It was an old Ford coupe with a smashed fender.
“Eric!”
It was Jim, coming hell-bent down the walk after me. Miss Watkins was yelling at the door. I made for the coupe, yanked the door open and dived inside. The keys were there. Luck was changing. Maybe.
I got the car started as Jim landed on the side and pulled at the door. I cut a sharp left fist and caught his forearm. He let go, running beside the car as I drove off.
“That’s my car, Eric! Man, don’t do it!”
His face bobbed red and mad beside the car, his eyes not pleading but mad, too, and his mouth a dark yelling hole in his head, as he ran along, leaping hedges and staggering on the curb.
I ripped the wheel left, not caring now, and Jim dived for it. I didn’t hit him, but he hit the dirt, hard. As I whipped around the corner I glanced in the rear-view mirror. Jim was kneeling half up, still yelling at me. Then all I could hear was the roar of the motor and the rattle bang of the smashed fender as I headed for the main road.
The car ran smoothly. It was a hot afternoon. The sun was white.
They’d be after me. I had to ditch the car. I was wearing overalls. I had no money. So far as I knew I was judged a mental case. That would bring out a posse in this country; maybe a mob with shotguns, muzzle-loaders, and what-have-you, all yelling and ready to get the madman who had escaped from the Riverview Sanitarium.
I knew something else. Something I had refused to admit to myself and something no one had been willing to answer.
Why was I being held at the sanitarium? Because somebody’d had me committed. Otherwise I’d have been free to go and they would have been able to tell me. All they’d told me was I was there for a rest and not to worry, that everything would be all right. Maybe I was nuts. Maybe I was going home to kill my brother.
Because I was going home. Nothing would stop me.
As I gunned the Ford coupe down the blacktop road, hoping I’d hit a main highway soon, Leda sat beside me. Her ghost was there and she was naked, carrying yellow shorts in one hand. Leda. Leda was gone. Leda had disappeared. Vanished.
The one you called your wife, only she wasn’t.
Neat. Like that. I had to get home. Find out what I could and see Frank face to face. Once that was out of my system, I’d be clean.
Then I could spend the rest of my life hunting Leda. I knew I’d find her because the world isn’t big enough to hide in. Not for Leda it wouldn’t be big enough. I told myself she wasn’t with Frank, hadn’t been
.
I tried to tell myself I’d find her because she’d run out on me when I needed her most. When I had to have her support. I didn’t know where she’d gone. She had weakened and run out on me. Alone, I told myself. Alone!
Because I loved her. She was in me. She was a part of me and no other woman—not even Norma—could ever take her place. There was only one, Leda, and it had to stay that way. It would stay that way.
The blacktop road ended and I hit a stretch of bouncy tar-ribbed cement, which sent the Ford leaping like a stricken sparrow.
When I got home I knew I’d see Norma. She’d be there, as she’d always been. And maybe she’d always be my girl. But there could only be one Leda. . . .
Trees, low hills, shallow gutters, sunny-sided fields sloped past the car with speed, blurred in my vision, dusty through the windshield.
I held the pedal to the floor. It was like flying low. Sunlight jerked in unrhythmic splashes on the road, the car, and across my face. The engine spat and roared with that same unattainable and terrific savagery seen in the myriad and untamed noises a hen makes when being chased by a rooster with a one-track mind.
Cars that passed, and cars I passed, drew out of the way with a slow-motion illusion that was confounding. I knew I was wild, I knew the exertion of the past few moments was telling. But I also knew the old glands were pumping adrenalin and so long as I utilized it, they’d keep pumping.
Stay excited until it’s all over. That’s what I told myself. Make it a blur. And then I got the idea.
Get drunk. Back there in my mind Prescott babbled about how I should stay away from the bottle. But if I did, I’d get calm again. I couldn’t afford to get calm now. I had nearly a thousand miles to cover and it had to be done fast. Once it was done, things wouldn’t matter.
All right. Clothes. Money. Ditch the car. A bottle. And home. How home? Plane. That was the fastest.
How to get them?
The second-hand car lot on the edge of town flashed by with a red-and-white sign reading: “CANNE’S CARS.” I rode the brakes without half realizing what I was doing. The car fishtailed. I made a sharp U-turn and beat it straight for Canne’s place. The Ford whirred like an over-revved plane in a spin as I bounced up the gravel drive leading between flashing new cars into the lot.