by Allen Drury
“I like to think, perhaps falsely, that that’s a lot…
“I am afraid I have spoken too long and too egotistically, but I wanted to state to you—and maybe also,” he added with a sudden disarming smile, “to myself, that I will not be found wanting or failing when the great tests come.”
He started to sit down, but they were all on their feet applauding (even Mary, politely but evidently not quite daring to refrain), and then they were crowding around him, the men to shake his hand and slap him on the back, the women to give him hugs and kisses. Somewhat to his surprise, even May McIntosh participated in this, throwing her arms around him in what he knew must be an uncharacteristically impulsive gesture and murmuring in his ear, “You’re wonderful!”
“Thank you, Mary-Hannah,” he said, with a pleased chuckle. “Now I can say I have been kissed by a Justice of the Supreme Court.”
She laughed.
“A few years ago it could never have happened. But now, if you live up to all you say you will, it might even happen again sometime.”
“I’m going to do my best,” he told her solemnly. She squeezed his arm.
“We know you are,” she said, equally serious, “and we know it’s going to be great.”
Summoned by the Chief Justice’s antique hand-bell bearing the authentic inscription John Marshall—given the Court a year ago by an admirer down in Virginia who had recently come across it among some old family relics—the special staff from the kitchen entered and began serving the meal; and for the next few minutes they all chatted amicably, gradually relaxing from the solemn mood induced by Tay’s and the Chief Justice’s remarks. Both had gone to the fundamentals of the Court and the hard realities of the times. It took a little while to move from under their spell back to the easy exchanges of ordinary dinner-table conversation.
He knew he had made a great hit. He could sense it all around the table in the warmly approving comments, the cordial glances, the new respect that he saw in all eyes but Mary’s; and her reaction, he realized suddenly, did not really matter anymore. He felt himself suddenly free—completely and genuinely free for the first time since their marriage. He found himself wishing—was at first ashamed of himself, then defiant, then glad of the thought—that Cathy could have been there to hear him. He knew now that whatever doubts he had harbored about seeing her again were banished. He would see her again. He would tell her about this. And they would be happy for him, together.
He felt a sudden great impatience for this to happen, and was lost in contemplation of it when he became conscious of a phone ringing somewhere in the background. Conversation hesitated a second, then resumed. One of the waiters went to get it, a moment later came to Tay and leaned down to murmur quietly,
“Justice, Justice Pomeroy is on the phone and wants to speak to you. At least,” he added in a puzzled tone, “I think it’s Justice Pomeroy. He says he is, anyway.”
For a moment after he picked up the receiver and said hello, Tay was not sure himself, so husky and ravaged was the voice in his ear. But it was Moss, all right; and although Tay immediately said, “Hi, where are you, Columbia?” in an attempt to keep the world on an even keel, he knew with an awful instinctive certainty that for some reason it was not, and might never be again.
“What is it?” he asked sharply, more loudly than he intended. He was conscious of another sudden halt in the conversation, this one a full stop: his own tone had been too obviously alarmed not to bring silence. He turned toward their anxious faces, receiver to his ear, as if seeking reassurance; so that they knew as soon as he that something was terribly, dreadfully wrong.
“What is it?” he demanded again. “Moss, what is it?”
He realized with a knowledge that set his heart racing and almost, it seemed, out of control, that Moss was crying.
“Moss,” he said more softly, his voice perfectly audible in the now entirely silent room. “Moss, old buddy, what is it?”
“Our—baby—girls,” Moss managed to say; broke down; and started over. “Our—baby—girls—”
“What’s wrong with our baby girls?” he demanded, and Mary screamed, rushed to his side and grabbed his arm. He flung it off with a glare he made no attempt to conceal.
“Moss,” he said, voice trembling and almost out of control. “Moss, you must calm down and tell me. What about our baby girls?”
“There’s been,” Moss said, “there’s been an—an explosion.”
“What?” he cried in a dreadful voice and was conscious that somewhere almost beyond hearing Mary was screaming again and that they had all uttered sounds of fright and apprehension.
“There’s been—an explosion,” Moss managed again. “I guess he wanted to—get—me on the—platform, but they—they were—there.” He finished in a rush: “Oh God, I wish it had been me!”
“Were they—” he attempted, and failed. “Were they—?”
“They’re in the—hospital,” Moss said with careful slowness. “Here in—in—Columbia. The doctors—don’t know at this—this point.”
And again he broke down and Tay could only hear harsh, strangled sobbing on the line.
“Mary and I are coming right down,” he said firmly, summoning reassurance from God knew where, but summoning it. “Hang on, buddy. Is Sue-Ann all right? … and you? … Thank God for that … okay, okay It is not your fault and you must never, ever say that or feel it, do you hear me!… All right!… We will be down just as fast as we can. Our love to you both. Hang on.”
And slowly he put down the receiver, gave Mary a look which he felt she did not even see, drew a deep breath and faced them.
“Someone,” he said, very carefully and slowly, “apparently bombed the plant. Sarah and Janie have been—been injured.” He drew a heavy breath that seemed to come from the bottom of the world. “They are in the hospital in Columbia and Mary and I must—must go at—at once.”
He was aware of Mary staring at him, face absolutely white; of the silence in the room, broken only by some Justice, he did not know who, saying clearly, “Son of a bitch!” and some wife, probably Birdie, saying, “Oh, dear!” and starting to cry.
Then he was aware that a small, erect figure was at his side, one hand firmly and comfortingly on his arm, the other lifting the telephone receiver.
“This is the Chief Justice,” Duncan Elphinstone said. “Get me the President… I don’t care where he is or what he is doing!” he snapped, and there was no doubt that it was a co-equal branch of the government talking. “You tell them to get him! … Mr. President? Yes, how are you? … Yes, we know now… No, we didn’t hear it on the news, we’re having a dinner up here; Moss just called and told us. Can you have a plane ready at Andrews Air Force Base in fifteen minutes to take Tay and Mary to Columbia? Good… Yes, I’ll tell them, yes. Thank you so much, Mr. President—thank you, Bob. We appreciate it. Good night… He sends his deepest sympathies and prayers,” he said, turning to Mary. “Now take my car and get on out to Andrews. There’ll be a plane waiting.”
“My baby!” she screamed suddenly, at last bursting into tears. “My baby!”
“Yes,” the Chief said crisply, “and we all sympathize most deeply. But there is no time to stop and think about it now. That plane will be ready in fifteen minutes. Now please go.”
He kissed Mary firmly on the cheek, gave Tay a firm handshake, turned them both around with a surprising strength in his small hands and walked them firmly to the door.
“Good luck and God bless you,” he said as he closed it behind them. “We know everything will be all right.”
But when he turned back to them in the warm, charming, civilized room, so snug and secure against the horrors of the savage world, he stood, back resting against the wood, his face a mask of profound sadness and dismay.
For a long time he, no more than they, could speak.
From the plant at Pomeroy Station, unseen in the wild chaotic confusion of those first horrified minutes, the watcher had gone home. After cl
eaning himself, carefully wiping any possible fingerprints off the detonator and burying it, carefully checking to be sure he had left nothing traceable lying about, he had sneaked swiftly away through the trees and vanished down a woods trail, known he thought only to himself, that paralleled the road; and so to the cabin.
There a terrified but determined Janet waited: stone-cold sober, he could see, and in the grip of a great and obvious agitation.
The moment he closed the door behind him he saw, with an instant blinding rage, that she was clutching in one hand, waving it back and forth in front of her like a shield that would somehow fend him off, the pages of his precious manifesto.
“Where did you get that!” he yelled in a frightful voice, and trembling but determined she shouted back,
“Don’t you yell at me, you murderer! I found it, I found it, I saw what it says here, how that plant is a symbol to the whole world of how greed, moral corruption and decay afflict our whole society, how you hate it and wish it were gone, and all! I found it! I found it! I don’t know what you were going to do with it, send it to some newspaper I suppose, boasting about what you did, but I got it first, Billy Ray, I got it first, and so what are you going to do about that?”
“What are you going to do about it?” he asked, suddenly soft and menacing, reflecting ironically in that weird moment that she really did think he was Billy Ray, she never had known him as Earle Holgren in the three years of their casual liaison which had soon become boring and now had obviously become extremely dangerous to him. “What are you going to do about it, bitch?”
“I am not a bitch!” she screamed, and he stepped forward, slapped her twice across the face and made a lunge for the manifesto. But she was too fast for him and jumped back, clutching it close. He could hear John Lennon Peacechild begin to squall in the bedroom, which didn’t help matters any, either.
“Listen,” he said, breathing hard, forcing his voice down, trying to sound reasonable while his heart pounded and his mind raced trying to decide what to do. “I didn’t blow up that plant.”
“Ho!” she said. “Ho, you liar! What kind of a fool do you think I am, you poor pathetic liar? It says right here how much you hate it—”
“I don’t give a God damn what it says,” he shouted, “it doesn’t say I blew it up! It was just a dream. I was just play-acting. It doesn’t mean anything! It was just a fantasy!”
“Some dream!” she cried. “Some fantasy! You carry death with you, Billy Ray, you and your fantasies! Where were you during that ceremony? You never came near John Lennon Peacechild and me because you were somewhere up there in those trees getting ready to blow that place up! And now you’ve probably killed those two pretty little innocent girls and God knows who else, and damaged the plant, and everything!”
“I don’t care if I damaged the plant—” he began loudly but her triumphant crow interrupted him.
“You see, you did do it! You did! You just told me so! You see you did, you did, you did! And they’ll get you, Billy Ray, because you probably did kill those girls too! They’ll get you good! And I hope they do!”
“And what will you do?” he demanded, beginning to edge slowly toward the desk because he didn’t know whether she had taken the gun out of it or not.
“I’m going to turn you over to the law,” she said, and suddenly, as he suspected, she slipped the pistol out of the pocket of her granny dress and pointed it, wavering but too close to miss if she fired, straight at his face. “Now, you stand back from me, Billy Ray, and don’t you come near me while I telephone. I’m going to call the cops and turn you over.”
“Call the pigs?” he demanded, trying desperately to resurrect old hatreds and old, automatic reactions that might aid him in this moment of greatest peril in his life. “You call the pigs? Have you forgotten—”
“That’s all right what I have or haven’t forgotten!” she cried, and the gun, steadier now, pointed straight at his eyes. “You stand back, Billy Ray! You stand back while I telephone!”
“How can you telephone?” he demanded, desperation giving his tone believability. “Do you think I didn’t think of that? I ripped out all the wires before I came in. You can’t telephone. You can’t get through. There’s nobody here but us, you slut, so what about that?”
“Well—” she said uncertainly.
“Look there, see how they’re ripped out!” he cried; and as she turned instinctively, he leaped; and after a furious struggle, because she was a big girl and suddenly it was she who was fighting for life and their battle did not go easily, he got the gun.
“Now!” he said, gasping for breath, holding it on her as she had held it on him, drawing ever deeper breaths, forcing himself to become calmer and colder by the second, until the gun was steady and he was again in complete command of himself as he was of her. “Now, Miss Bitch, you and I are going to take a walk in the woods.”
And suddenly she was terrified, for now truly, as she had cried a moment ago, he “carried death with him,” and it was everywhere: in his eyes, in his voice, in the set of his body, in the sudden stealth with which he moved.
He gestured to the door with his gun as she cried out, “What are you going to do to me?”
“What do you think?” he demanded contemptuously and suddenly she screamed, “You can’t do it, somebody will hear you! You can’t do it!”
“They’ll never think to look for us where I’m going to take you,” he promised, voice suddenly soft again, everything under control, a happy singing in his mind. After all, he had killed once tonight, or thought he had, and he was in the mood now. It would be easy. And she was asking for it. She had no right to interfere with the dreams and the destiny of Earle Holgren and now she was going to get what she deserved. For Earle Holgren the invincible it would be as impersonal as squashing a bug.
“Now,” he said, “give me those papers!”
And when she had, shaking so she could hardly hand them to him, he crumpled them up, jammed them in the fireplace, set them alight with his cigarette lighter and, keeping eye and gun warily trained upon her, stepped back and watched them burn.
“Get your shawl,” he snapped, and desperately seeing in this some frail, flimsy sign that he might really be considerate and not be going to kill her, she jumped obediently to grab it from its hook by the door.
“Now,” he said, “march?”
It was at that moment that John Lennon Peacechild, whom his father had literally forgotten, chose to let out a sudden renewed, angry squall. Instantly Earle Holgren paused.
“No!” Janet wailed. “No, no, no!”
He stepped up to her, whipped the pistol twice across her face and then held it at her ear.
“Get him,” he ordered.
“No!” she wailed again, but he jabbed the gun so deeply into her ear that she screamed in pain; and then, whimpering dully, steps dragging but obedient, went into the bedroom while he stood at the door and held the gun on her; wrapped John Lennon Peacechild in his blanket and, beginning now to sob softly in a helpless, abandoned sort of way, brought him slowly out into the living room she knew with awful certainty she would never see again.
Under one arm, she could see, Billy Ray had the flimsy little portable typewriter.
“Out the door,” he said and still dully, still obediently, still with the soft murmuring mutter of sobs and incoherent protests, she walked before him as he turned onto the trail and they started up the mountain.
He was gambling, and the silence as they walked persuaded him he was correct, that by now the furor would have died down at Pomeroy Station; that there would be guards, but that they would be the country boys he knew so well from his growing-up years in these hills, whom he considered not very bright, not very quick, not very brave—inclined to be superstitious, not the type to put themselves in danger if they could possibly avoid it—nervous, uncertain, not anxious to be heroes, quick to run if they could, the kind through whose loose and nervously organized cordons he could pass withou
t fear of discovery or challenge.
But he made very sure that Janet would be still, jabbing her repeatedly in the ear with the gun when she half-stumbled or when her sobs, which she seemed unable to control, welled up again. Once when the child began to whimper he jabbed her with extra severity and she slapped a terrified hand so hard over the baby’s mouth that he thought she would suffocate it. In his last act of kindness—there had not been many—toward his son, he jabbed her again and whispered savagely, “Stop that! Don’t kill him!”—though why he did not want her to, since he intended to himself, he could not have explained rationally to anyone. He wondered for a second, with his ability to stand outside himself and observe his actions, usually with pleased admiration, whether he was rational right now. Maybe not, he concluded; but he was certainly getting away with what he wanted to, there was no doubt of that. And that was admirable enough, all right. No one could say he was not intelligent, or smart.
Meeting no opposition, hearing no sounds other than the night woods now that the horrified crowd had trailed away and all was still save for nervous guards and the team of federal investigators already at work inside the plant itself, he took his little convoy back up the trail and through the dense cover to the rear opening of the cave where he had watched and waited scarcely an hour ago.
Prodding with the gun, he directed Janet into the cave. She stumbled twice as they walked along the old mine tracks. Savagely each time he reached out a hand to grab her hair and yank her upright. She was sweating copiously, her terror giving off an animal smell. The baby could sense it and was absolutely quiet now.
Midway in the passage they came to the old abandoned well. Stepping forward he tossed in the typewriter, heard it splash, after a long moment, far below. Roughly he yanked the child out of her arms, the shawl off her back, muffled the gun in it, held it to the nape of her neck, fired and pushed her forward. She fell without a sound.