by Peter Rabe
Raise it, raise it! If the pain weren’t there, how much simpler the whole thing would be. But the big, sharp star of pain felt like a glow that got brighter. Could Loma see it? Quick. Go through it again, fast and precise to prove that he was doing exactly what he must do: I am a machine which can move, can do anything which the brain tells it to do because what can stop a machine with a brain, nothing can hurt a machine with a brain — Spinner gritted his teeth. He should feel nothing. He lifted the gun. But this pain?
It was like the star bursting and throwing the gun on the floor and turning, running out, was all one thing to him because it was all himself, Spinner himself. He ran out into the open. Now he was no longer running away from Loma’s room. He was not running away from anything, but toward something.
The car was there, empty. Her bag was there; she hadn’t come back. Spinner ran down the road through the woods, and he thought his lungs would burst.
He ran for the light in front of the main house where some people were standing. Spinner could hear them talk, saw someone holding a glass, a girl giggled — Dickie — and then she stopped, and the three men and the two girls turned around when they heard Spinner running.
“Ann!” he called. “Ann, here I am!”
Ann was holding a cigarette. She put it up to her mouth and took a drag, watching Spinner. She let the stub drop to the gravel and exhaled smoke in a thin stream. She watched Spinner without moving out of his way.
He didn’t stop till he was up against her and when his arms went around her he started to laugh, loud and full. He also tried to say something, but the laughter was the only clear thing, and his arms around her.
“Ann,” he said, “I’m back! I’m here! You see, Ann. You and me now, the way you wanted it, the way I want it,” and he laughed and he cried. Then he felt her arms tighten around him, her face close, her kisses, and she was laughing too.
• • •
Loma had stayed on his bed. His open door was a square of light but he didn’t watch it any more, and since Spinner would not be back Loma returned his gun to his pocket He had been holding it for quite a long time. It had taken Spinner a while to come in, but he wouldn’t be back. Loma stayed on his bed like that till he heard the motor start up and the lights flit past the cabin. Then he got up and collected his things and the gun which Spinner had dropped on the floor, and walked out of the cabin with the help of the cane. He kept the headlights off and drove away.
• • •
They got lost on the way to St. Louis because it was still dark and they weren’t watching the signs very closely. But it didn’t upset them. Spinner drove and Ann, next to him, talked and laughed and finally got them back on the right road.
“It’ll be just dawn when we get there. Won’t that be nice?” she said.
Spinner said, “Then we can drive off in the daylight and see what we’re leaving.”
“I won’t take but a minute,” she said. “I’ll just run up to the apartment and right back down.”
“I won’t even turn off the motor.”
“And we’ll drive, drive, drive — ”
“And when we stop, everything will start new.”
They smiled at each other and said nothing else for a while, just thinking about it. Ann leaned against his side and he put his hand into her lap.
“I can type, you know,” she said next.
“I haven’t got a thing to dictate,” said Spinner.
“I mean when we stop. I can get a job typing and help out.”
“I thought you said you had all that money saved,” said Spinner. “Or am I marrying a pauper?”
“Take your choice,” she said. “You want to marry a pauper or me?”
Spinner didn’t answer but slowed the car to a stop. Then he bent over and gave her a kiss.
“My answer,” he said, and started to drive again.
“You’re in,” she answered, and Spinner laughed.
“Fact is,” he said after a while, “you won’t have to type. I got some talent.”
“Like what? I mean, what kind that can earn you a living.”
“Well, I got a thing from the army says I’m a good mechanic. Trucks and so forth.”
“Where are you going to find all those army trucks to …”
“Wait, wait. And then, when I was guest of the state for three years, more trucks. All kinds. I also got a written thing to prove that part of my training.”
She laughed. “How about ordinary cars? And bicycles, maybe.”
“No bicycles. Tractors, though. On my farm — ” He hesitated, and then said, “Did you know I went to agricultural school for a while? Didn’t, did you? You thought I was a peasant, huh?”
She squeezed his arm and smiled. “You know, Jake, perhaps a small town would be best. Perhaps you can work a farm. Would you like that?”
“I would like that best,” he said after a while. “But you may not like it You’ve lived in the city all your life.”
“I won’t miss it, Jake.”
They drove and shared a cigarette.
“You would like that, wouldn’t you, Jake?”
“What?”
“Have your own farm — ”
He gave her the cigarette and blew the smoke against the windshield in front of him.
“I can’t think that way, Ann.” Then he laughed. “Besides, all those weeds are there.”
“I just like to think about it And perhaps, after a while — ”
“I can’t think that way, Ann.”
She put her hand on the back of his neck and said, “I bet you didn’t know I could cook, did you? And that I’m a good housekeeper.”
“I’ll find out,” he said.
“And that I once learned how to candle eggs. That’s a talent you didn’t know about, did you?”
“You just hold on to that talent You may get it into your mind one day, when you bring home a dozen from the store, to candle those eggs.”
She smiled and tucked her legs under her. She looked out the window and said, “I’d like to do it on your farm. I’m just thinking how nice it would be, you know?”
“I know. I like to think of it too.”
When they drove into St Louis it was dawn. The main streets had some traffic already but elsewhere the city looked empty. Ann’s street had some trees on one side. They looked cool and clean in the morning air and at the end of the street Spinner could see the road they would be taking. He stopped in front of the apartment house.
“I’m leaving the motor running. Two minutes flat or nothing.”
“You won’t get away,” she said, and jumped out of the car.
Spinner watched her run into the building and after she had disappeared he kept smiling at the front door which closed slowly. She would be a few minutes. For a few minutes he would look the length of the empty street toward the road that went out of town. For a few minutes he would just look at it, and then he and Ann would drive out that way. They would drive west There was more land that way and fewer cities, and after leaving the state and crossing some others, he would know how it was not to be chased, he would soon feel that freedom too. He rubbed the wheel, thinking about it He could feel it in his bones.
He could see Ann behind the glass door, running. She was smiling at him. She opened the door and Spinner had never seen a woman look so beautiful.
He saw nothing else. He still grasped nothing else when Ann screamed and her face became white with fright.
They wore mufti and uniforms. Two grabbed the girl, two yanked open the doors of the car, and all Spinner saw was Ann screaming and her arms reaching for him.
They had to sap Spinner unconscious, which was the only way they could take him in.
CHAPTER 26
Loma did not stop until he reached Seattle, as he had planned. The timetable was off, and while still in the vicinity of St. Louis there had been some special precautions; but aside from that Loma stuck to his original plan since it was still good. And because of t
he way Loma worked and because of his habits, that should have been all as far as the St. Louis job was concerned.
But he went over it again and again, the last part of the affair, the reasons why he had Spinner arrested. They were all good reasons. The arrest made sure of Spinner’s whereabouts, an important point in Loma’s flight.
It made sure that Spinner would not try to involve Loma further. Arrested for murder, Spinner could prove innocence only by establishing Loma’s existence. To do this he would have to call the very same witnesses who had seen Spinner and Loma together acting like friends. And it would keep Spinner away from the St. Louis people, at least as long as it would take Loma to get out of reach.
Having Spinner arrested only made sense. He was going over it again and again, Loma decided, for no good reason. When he got to Seattle, Loma disappeared.
• • •
The prosecutor had speckled gray hair and a well-trained voice with full modulations. The attorney for the defense had also gray hair and a voice that fit his performance. There were differences between the two men, but Spinner did not see them. He rarely looked at anyone and when he did, he saw nothing. He ate when there was food and he slept when he was alone in his cell. He answered when he was spoken to but volunteered nothing. He no longer felt any interest.
Everything had collapsed, and after the first shock of his failure it had almost seemed to Spinner like part of a design. He was still angry then.
Until he lost Ann.
He hadn’t seen Ann while she had been under arrest, but they released her quite soon. She had not been an accomplice, she had not even been an accessory to Spinner’s flight Ann had been with him for professional reasons.
She had been released very soon and then had come to see him. They had been strained with each other. He hadn’t asked her to come. He had started to wonder about her release and about his arrest He did not know how Loma could have timed his arrest, how Loma could know he would be at Ann’s house. Spinner’s doubts grew. But before they got too big, Spinner went suddenly dull. He felt bored with thinking about it, which saved him from doubt and which kept him from finding an answer. He turned dull and did not need an answer. All he needed was to be left alone. And after a while Ann did not try to see him any more.
The trial was dull. Spinner’s presence threw a pall over the room, a sense of disinterest, and it was difficult to question his guilt Even the cross-examination lacked drama. The opposing lawyers both suffered from lack of an audience and only rarely worked themselves up to a spirit of personal enmity. But the prosecutor had to cover a number of points.
“Is it not true, Mr. Spinner, that you spent three years in jail for criminally assaulting Alvin Dixon because of a long-standing feud between …”
“Objection,” said the defense.
The prosecutor stopped, the judge cocked his head to one side, and defense counsel said, “… on the grounds that the question is irrelevant to the particulars, namely …”
“We know the particulars,” said the judge. “I’m sorry, were you through?”
“… and on the further grounds that an answer by the defendant would tend to be self-incriminatory …”
“Sustained,” said the judge, and to the prosecutor, “Do you want to rephrase your question?”
The prosecutor decided to save it for his summation.
“Mr. Spinner, I show you Exhibit A, a Garand bearing your fingerprints. You are aware of the fact, Mr. Spinner, that this gun shot and killed …”
“Objection!”
“Sustained. Mr. Prosecutor, if you want to rephrase …”
“Thank you. Mr. Spinner, have you ever been in the army?”
“Yes.”
“As part of your training, did you ever shoot an M-l?”
“Yes.”
“And in combat, over a long period of time, have you not shot and killed, repeatedly shot and …”
“Objection.”
“Sustained,” said the judge. “I particularly want the jury to disregard this last — ”
The prosecutor did not press the point any further. He would save it for the summation.
“Back to Stone Bluff then,” said the prosecutor. He craned his neck for a moment, closing his eyes, because he was tired. “How did it happen, Mr. Spinner, that you drove the getaway car …”
“Objection — ”
“Sustained — ”
“… that the getaway car was driven into a torn-up road?”
Spinner, after a moment, shrugged. He might have thought of an answer but the prosecutor went on.
“Strike that,” he told the stenotype man, and said to Spinner, “On the night that Alvin Dixon was killed you had come to town for the first time in about three years?”
“Yes.”
“Indeed. Isn’t it true, Mr. Spinner, that you could therefore not know of the recent excavations on the south end of Stone Bluff and could therefore not know that the lane where the getaway car got stuck had been made impassable?”
There was some legal activity on that point, especially when Spinner refused to answer, but then the prosecution relinquished the point. It would be simpler to make it again in summation.
“Mr. Spinner,” said the prosecutor, “I have here a shoe.” He lifted the shoe off the table where the exhibits were kept. “You and all of us have heard detailed, expert testimony about this shoe.” The prosecutor was tired and sighed. Then he said, “This shoe was found at the place where you got stuck with the …”
“Objection. Really, Your Honor, I object …”
“Sustained.”
“Expert testimony,” said the prosecutor, tired as before, “establishes that dirt on this shoe is identical to dirt found near the hedge of Alvin Dixon’s lawn, and identical to dirt found in a spot which is in line with the shot that killed Alvin Dixon, and …”
“Your Honor, this dirt on the shoe could have been …”
“Do you wish to make an objection?” asked the judge.
The defense made an objection and got very technical about dirt There was an argument which developed some heat. Defense got carried away into raising the point that there might have been somebody else, that it was strange indeed —
“You mean, where is the other one?” the prosecutor started to shout “Where is the other shoe? Mr. Spinner!” The whole thing was out of order, but the prosecutor kept shouting. “Where is the other shoe, Mr. Spinner, would you tell us? Who’s wearing the other shoe, Mr. Spinner, could you say?”
The gaveling and the yelling left Spinner completely out of the picture. It was now important to establish order in the court and the activity turned to that. This ended in silence. The heat of the free-for-all was shortlived because there had been nothing behind it, just some personal irritation. It ended so suddenly that the silence was quite complete.
The prosecutor closed his eyes. When he opened them he looked past the judge.
“Will the court direct the accused to put on this shoe.”
They gave Spinner the shoe.
The shoe fit.
There was a room in the courthouse which they let Spinner use during the recess, because the jail was too far away. The room had varnish on all the woodwork and lettuce-green paint on the ceiling and wall’s. Spinner’s guard sat by the window and looked at the trees outside. Under the trees the guard saw a bed of yellow asters. They had just opened.
“Did you notice the — ” the guard started to say, but he let it go. He was going to say something about the plants, but Spinner sat with his back turned the other way and was looking at the walls and the woodwork. He was thinking that if he had a blanket he might roll up on the floor and try to sleep. But the lawyer would be sure to come and interrupt him. He always came in some time during recess to interrupt with questions.
Spinner heard footsteps come down the hall and watched the guard get out of his chair. The guard, too, knew about the lawyer’s useless visits.
There was a knock, and the guard
unlocked the door, but it wasn’t the lawyer. The sheriff came in.
“Hello, Jake.”
Spinner grunted. He put his hands in his pockets.
“Jake. I haven’t come to see you since the start of the trial. There wasn’t any point — ”
“Even less now,” said Spinner and turned his chair so he faced the window. It kept him from seeing how the sheriff controlled himself, how the old man felt sick about all of this.
The sheriff pulled up a chair and tapped on the table in front of him. He tapped with one finger, making a dull, restrained sound. Then he suddenly stopped.
“Jake, turn around. What I’ve got to say …”
“You don’t tell me to turn around, Sheriff,” said Spinner, and saying it quietly, with no effort showing, made the cut in his voice that much sharper. “You’re not talking to a man that’s green, Sheriff. I’m not scared any more.”
Since Spinner was facing the other way he didn’t see what was happening. The sheriff had not been able to hold back any longer. He was up and now began shaking Spinner back and forth by the shoulders.
“Listen to me! At least listen to me! Maybe it will take a thrashing to knock that idiot stare out of your face and the bullheadedness out of your head. Maybe you think you’re sitting there, all through, but if you were, Jake Spinner, you wouldn’t know where to get the strength to be bull-headed like that!”
The sheriff stared at the man on the chair, then turned away. When he faced.
Spinner again he was ready to try it differently. “I know how you got this way, Jake. I was in on it, that’s how I know. I’m going to try and make good.”
“Sure.”
The sheriff ignored it He even thought it was just bravado the way Spinner had said it.
“I’m from a different town now, Jake. Stone Bluff is a different town now Dixon is gone, and we’re trying to …”
“Trying to thank me for the favor that killing did you and that town?”