That Glimpse of Truth

by David Miller

  It was late in the afternoon, the sun just going down over the fields, the last of the light filtering through the trees and shrubs along the road by the old hospital. The first green of evening, my mother had always called it, sitting on the back step at home, watching the Peruvian lilies and the montbretia fade into the gloaming. I was never sure if that was a phrase of her own, or a quote from something, some radio drama, say, or a children’s book she’d read to me in the days before memory. Usually, if I got home early, this was my time. While Sall made herself busy in the kitchen, I would sit in the dining room with the paper spread out on the table, or I would listen to the radio, staring out at the garden and fiddling with the dials to get a better signal. That day, though, I had pulled a long run, only just finishing up at Jacob’s Well Farm when the dark set in. It had been a good day, but I knew I wasn’t supposed to overdo it, so I was happy enough saying my goodbyes to Ben Walsh, who used to run Jacob’s Well with his dad, and keeps it going himself now, his wife gone, no kids, both his parents dead. He had been living alone like that for some years by then, which was maybe why he paid so much attention to the few people he encountered. That day, it was attention I could have done without, but then he wasn’t to know what my troubles were. He offered me a cup of tea, but he didn’t seem to mind when I told him I’d better get on back. He gave me a solemn little smile and shook his head. “How’s the missus?” he said. “Keeping all right?” He always talked about Sall as if she were an invalid.

  “Can’t complain,” I said.

  “That’s good.” He gave me an odd, shy look. “Still, if you don’t mind me saying, you’re looking a bit under the weather yourself.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m a bit tired, I suppose,” I said. “It’ll pass.”

  He nodded. He was curious and, I think, genuinely concerned, but he knew not to pursue it. “Well, I hope so,” he said. “You take care of yourself. You don’t want to be coming down with something, right before Christmas.”

  I managed a smile. “You can say that again,” I said. “Anyway, this is the last of it, before the holidays. I’ll get a good rest then. You take care, too.” I shook his hand and got back into the rig. For a moment, I wished I’d said yes to the tea and stopped, not to talk about anything in particular but to keep company with the man for a while. I couldn’t imagine that his Christmas would be that festive, with just him and the animals.

  Then again, I couldn’t imagine much of a Christmas for myself, now that everything was decided. I wasn’t looking forward to the quiet of the holidays, or having to go through the motions with Sall, which she would want to do, because – well, it was Christmas. Maybe Caroline would ring, sometime in the middle of the afternoon, making the call first thing, so she could get on with the rest of the day knowing she’d done her duty. I hadn’t said anything to her about the cancer, of course. I’d considered telling her the first time, but it would only have worried her, and then she might have felt duty-bound to come over. This time, I didn’t even give it a second thought, because I knew for sure that I was going to die, and I wanted to do it in my own way. I wanted to let go of life with some kind of grace, or at least with some attention to what was happening, instead of just sitting quietly in the middle of some great drama between Sall and Caroline about what they thought I should do. That was how it had been through so much of my life: I hadn’t missed any of the big events, but, at the same time, I hadn’t felt entirely present while they were happening. Those last few weeks, though, I noticed everything. Like the way time would catch up with me all of a sudden, and I’d see myself opening a letter, or making a cup of tea: see myself from above, doing these ordinary little things and taking an odd pleasure in them, though I can’t say why.

  I’d notice things out on the road, too, things I’d seen a thousand times before and had liked without knowing why. Little details and imaginings I’d dismissed all my life as plain silliness suddenly became important. Like that stretch of road on the way back from the Glasgow run, when I would pass the turnoff for Larbert. I used to see it all the time: a blue road sign and a row of cherry-cola street lamps running off into the distance – Larbert, A9. It was odd how much I liked that sign. I’d never had reason to go to Larbert. We didn’t do any runs in that direction, but maybe that was why I’d always liked the name. Larbert. It sounded like a place where the teen-age years went on forever, all gray days by the water and strange-tasting sweets that fizzed in your mouth, making you think of the possibility of sex. Not that I had ever known much about sex as a teen-ager, other than what I saw in films and the oddly pleasurable discomfort I felt when Rita Compton visited my sister.

  That was the kind of stuff that was running through my head when I came across the boy, a few hundred yards into the woods, in the first of the heavy rain. I was thirty miles from home when it started, a thick sleet that might turn to snow later, or might come to nothing; it was already dark enough for headlights, but as I came into the woods, passing under the beech trees, it was like entering a little theatre, the lights flickering across the darkness, the woods black and still, like a backdrop. I’d always liked that about the woods, the way they suddenly closed in on me as if a story were about to be told. Like when I was a boy, and the announcer on “Listen with Mother” would say, “Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.” Usually the road was empty, with maybe the odd set of headlamps – not a person, not even a car, just an effect of the light – streaming past in the opposite direction. But that night the story contained another character, though he wasn’t a character from any of the children’s books I knew.

  To begin with, I thought he was a woman. Maybe I wouldn’t have stopped if I’d known otherwise. He certainly looked like a woman: a black dress, no coat, fish-net stockings, ankle boots, shoulder-length wavy hair. She was walking slowly, toward the far end of that little avenue of beech trees, and I couldn’t make out much, but when my lights picked her out she turned, and I saw that there was something odd about her, something heavy. Not that I guessed right away that she was a boy. It was dark and rainy, and then, when I saw her properly, I was distracted by the bruises on her face: the bruises, the mess her hair was in, the dark stain that might have been blood on her right leg, just below the hem of the dress.

  I didn’t pick up hitchhikers much. I did in the early days, and I’d enjoyed the chat most of the time. Not always, but enough to make it worthwhile. More recently, though, I’d preferred being alone in the cab. Some nights, coming home in the dark, reeling off the narrow roads that ran to Perth or St. Andrews, remembering the way by my own landmarks – the hedges and drystone dykes and the spaces between them that other people didn’t even notice, tight angles of holly or lamplight as I came through a town – I would realize, with a pleasant rush of surprise, that I was fond of myself as I was, fond of my life, and yet, at the same time, not that worried about having to let it go. I had got past the stage when company seemed like a good thing on the road, and I have to admit that I thought about driving on that night, even after I’d noticed the gash on her leg. I didn’t need complications, and by then everything that wasn’t part of the usual schedule had come to seem unnecessarily complicated. Nevertheless, I made myself stop, and I pulled up alongside her – still thinking of this person on the road as a woman, possibly a woman in real difficulty – just to check, at least, that she was all right. I rolled down the window and leaned across to the passenger side. “You look like you ran into some trouble,” I called out, trying to make myself heard above the engine and, at the same time, not to be so loud that I might frighten her.

  The moment I put on the brake, she stopped walking – and that was when I realized that she wasn’t a woman. She looked up, and I could see it in everything about her: the way she stood, the darkness in her face, the heaviness. It was a boy, not a woman. Not a man, either, just a boy of eighteen or twenty, fairly thickset and not at all feminine. When he looked up
at me, I saw the fear in his face, behind the mass of wet makeup and mascara, a fear that he wanted, but couldn’t quite manage, to hide. “I’m O.K.,” he said, but he stayed where he was, stock still, waiting.

  “Where are you headed?” I said, switching off the ignition and trying to keep the surprise out of my voice.

  “Home,” he said. Then he mumbled something else that I couldn’t make out.

  “What was that?” I said.

  He shook his head. He seemed desperate, though I wasn’t sure if he was desperate to be helped or to be left alone – at least, not until he spoke. “I’ll be fine,” he said.

  I knew then that he wanted to trust me enough to get him home safe and dry. I also knew that he didn’t trust anybody, not right at that moment, anyway. “Well,” I said, “I’m Bill Harley. I’m on my way home from a long run delivering molasses, and it’s nearly Christmas, so I’m not going to leave you out here in the dark.”

  Something changed in him then. Maybe it struck him as funny that I was talking about molasses, but he seemed to soften. He moved closer to the cab and tried to see inside. “I’m going home,” he said. “It’s just down this road.” He looked up into my face. “I’ll be fine,” he added, though he sounded less convinced than before.

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “Do yourself a favor. We’ll get you home, and you can get cleaned up.” I swung the passenger-side door open.

  The boy nodded. I suppose he’d sized me up and decided it was worth the risk. Or maybe he was just past caring and the promise of shelter was more than he could resist. “All right,” he said. “It’s very kind of you.”

  I nodded, then waited while he climbed in. He had a bit of trouble with that, what with the dress and the sling-back shoes, which I assumed he wasn’t used to, but finally he got himself settled and pulled the door shut. I looked at him for a moment in the golden light from the overhead, then I started the engine as casually as I could. “Well,” I said, raising my voice so he could hear me above the noise. “Where are you headed?”

  “Coaltown?”

  I nodded and turned back toward the road. It was a good twenty miles to Coaltown, not just down the road, but I had to pass it on my way home anyway. “O.K.,” I said.

  “You know it?”

  “I used to work there,” I said. “Long time ago.”

  “Well, he said. “You’ll not find it much changed. I guarantee you that.”

  “I don’t suppose I will,” I said, releasing the hand brake. As I did, I caught sight of the gash on his leg. It looked nasty, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. There was dirt all over his legs and hands, dirt and blood dried into the mesh of his fish-net stockings. His face was badly bruised, as if someone had punched him several times. I turned back toward the road, but I knew that he’d noticed me looking at him.

  “I’m all right,” he said. “Just a few cuts and grazes.”

  I shook my head. “It’s a bit more than that,” I said.

  He let out a short, hard laugh, as if I’d made some joke at his expense. “I suppose it is,” he said – and I detected something in his voice, more of a drift than a slur, that suggested he might be on something.

  “Well,” I said. “It’s none of my business. But I’ve got a first-aid kit in the box behind you.” I tilted my head toward the back. “If you want to get yourself sorted out.”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “But thanks, anyway.” He shot me a quick glance, then looked away. “I’ve had worse.”

  “Really?”

  “Rules of the game,” he said. “It’s not as bad as it looks. I just went to the wrong party.” He glanced out at the side mirror. “I suppose it was a mistake, going for the Aileen Wuornos look.” I had to think about that for a moment, before I remembered who he was talking about, and he must have seen the realization dawn in my face, because he laughed again, louder and more confident this time. “Don’t worry, Bill,” he said. “I didn’t bring the gun.”

  I had to smile at that. “Well,” I said. “There’s a relief.”

  He laughed again, but this time his laughter was good-humored and warm, and I was suddenly glad that I’d stopped. “So,” he said. “Where are you headed, Bill Harley?”

  “Home,” I said, and I realized that I didn’t want to think about home, at least for the moment. I wanted to be out on the road still, out on the road on a winter’s night, with no set destination, passing the time with someone I’d never see again.

  “Ah, yes,” he said. “Home.” He dwelled on the word for the moment before moving on. “Soon be Christmas,” he said.

  “Not long.” I looked over at him; he was watching me, attentive, taking me in, maybe searching for something that he thought I wanted to keep hidden – and I had an image of Caroline, of how she had watched me like that sometimes when she was younger, hoping for a clue to what lay behind the façade that she thought I was working so hard to maintain. Maybe that was what made me say what I said next, surprising myself, and the boy. I didn’t say it very loudly, and I wasn’t really speaking to him, but it was loud enough to be audible above the noise of the engine. “One last Christmas,” I said. “Better make the most of it, eh?”

  It wasn’t what I’d intended to say, though I wasn’t sorry I’d said it. Still, I had no wish to pursue the notion any further, now that it was out – and I think he understood that, because, after allowing just enough space for what I might say next, he let it go without another word, and we drove on in silence, staring out from our separate places into the sleety darkness, our faces filling with light from time to time as a car passed from the opposite direction. It was slow going, then, but the silence didn’t bother me; if anything, it felt strangely comfortable, like having a passenger in the cab and being alone at the same time. After a while, though, the boy picked up the conversation, slipping casually into the kind of slow-moving, pointless talk that goes on between people of good will who don’t know each other well: stuff about football – I was surprised by that, though I suppose I shouldn’t have been – and some documentary he’d seen on television. It could have been anybody in the cab with me, to begin with at least, but then he started talking about other things, minor stuff about his school days mostly, only it was funny and good-humored, and all the time I knew he was really talking about something else altogether, some other story about himself that he wanted to tell, not out of need but because it was interesting. Like his memory of the school atlas that he’d been given in geography class – how he had loved the way the world was all mapped out, all the colors and lines and borders perfect and just, so that it looked like the kind of world it would be a pleasure to inhabit, an utterly fictional world where you could never be lost, because everybody and everything belonged somewhere. I enjoyed that, for as long as it lasted, partly because it felt new, to be driving along like this, talking to a boy in a dress and runny makeup, but also because he was such good company. When we finally reached the turn for Coaltown, he leaned forward in his seat slightly. “If you drop me here, that’ll be fine,” he said.

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to leave him in the dark, on another stretch of featureless road. “I’ll take you to your door,” I said. “It’s no trouble.”

  “Thanks, Bill,” he said. “But I’d rather walk from here. No offense.” He looked over at me, and, even out of the corner of my eye, I could see that he was hoping he hadn’t somehow insulted me.

  “None taken,” I said, but I turned off the main road and carried on a few hundred yards toward the coast before I stopped.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Don’t mention it,” I said.

  He put his hand on the door, as if to go, then he turned and smiled, not so much at me as at something that had just crossed his mind. “It’s not how you think it is,” he said. I felt uneasy, as if he were breaking some prearranged code and had started telling me a secret that I wasn’t supposed to know. “I’m happy with how things are, most of the time,” he said, and it was as if he
were talking to someone else, trying to persuade them that what he was saying was true. Someone else, or himself, or a little of both. “So that question in your mind,” he said. “You might as well forget it.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t say anything. I really didn’t want to make something of it, even if there was a question in my mind, because it probably wasn’t the question he thought I wanted to ask. I didn’t need to know about his life, or what he did sexually, or what he wanted to do, or any of those things. I certainly didn’t want to know what the wrong party had been, or how he had come by his cuts and bruises. Some part of me was curious about him, but it was his happiness that I was curious about – because I thought he wanted me to imagine him as happy, and I wondered why it mattered to him. Or maybe I was just surprised that he seemed to believe that happiness was possible – and probably that was why I asked him the question I thought he wanted to hear, because, even on such short acquaintance, I liked him and I wished him well, at least. It was a piece of shorthand, I suppose, for all the other questions, the ones about happiness and being alone and getting home safe. It was also nothing at all. “Do you know what you’re doing?” I said.

  The boy laughed. “Never,” he said, with a little too much emphasis. “But you have to pretend, Bill.” He regarded me for a moment. “If you don’t pretend,” he said, “you’re lost.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, but I understood anyway. He couldn’t do anything else, was what he meant. He couldn’t do anything different, and neither could anybody else. “Well,” I said. “You be careful now.”

  He slid down off the seat and turned back toward me. “You, too, Bill,” he said. He’d said my name again, and I suddenly realized that I didn’t know his. “Have a good Christmas,” he said.