The Truth of the Matter

by John Lutz

  “It adds up to that,” she said. “The way you parked the car so it wouldn’t be noticeable, the way you’ve got your clothes laid out with your boots by the bed, like you could step into them in a second and be gone. And the way you were just listening to that siren, all sad and lonely. Besides, it wasn’t really loud enough to wake you up.”

  Roebuck tried to look her in the eye. “Maybe I’m on the F.B.I.’s top ten.”

  Ellie smiled. “Maybe you are. Maybe I wouldn’t care.”

  “It could get you in trouble,” Roebuck said, “housing a fugitive.”

  “Fugitive from what?”

  Roebuck rolled over and sat up. “Damnit, Ellie, I’m only kidding!”

  “No you’re not. But like I told you, I guess I just don’t care. It would be exciting, anyway.”

  “What would be exciting?”

  “Being a fugitive. At least you’re not like everybody else, stuck to a job like a machine ….I guess I’m too romantic. That’s what my family always said.”

  Roebuck lay back on the bed. Suppose she really didn’t care if he was a wanted man? He could tell her. He could take her with him. The police wouldn’t be as suspicious of a man with a woman in a car, a man with his wife out for a drive. And if it did come to a chase they wouldn’t shoot; they might think she was a hostage. Then too, the last few hours had proven it would be much more pleasurable traveling if he could have a companion like Ellie. Any real man would want something like her.

  “Can you keep something under your hat?” he asked in a serious tone.

  “If you haven’t noticed, I’m not wearing a hat, but I’ll keep it somewhere.”

  “I am wanted,” he said.

  Ellie was silent, listening.

  “But not exactly by the police.” Roebuck folded his hands behind his head and expanded his chest. “Of course, you’ve never heard of ‘Project N.’ It’s a government project designed to solve the nutrition problem. Did you know that nine-tenths of the world is malnourished?”

  “I read that in the paper,” Ellie said. “Were you working on this ‘N’ project?”

  “As a civilian government employee,” Roebuck said. “Then a month ago it happened. I figured out a formula that could solve the whole problem, and I’m the only man who has this knowledge.”

  “What kind of formula?”

  “It’s a system that enables us to extract raw protein from seawater and process it to powder form—from common seawater!” Roebuck stood and began to pace in the nude. “The world, the whole world, needs protein! And I discovered a way to give it to them! Why, if you wanted to, you could put one teaspoonful in a glass of fruit juice and you wouldn’t really have to eat again for three days! Do you realize the possibilities?”

  Ellie looked up at him from the bed and nodded.

  “A power hungry group of politicians realized it too. That’s why they want my formula, so they can sell it to the highest bidder.” He looked shrewdly at Ellie. “And you know who that would be.”

  He began to pace faster, waving his arms. “They’ve got their whole crooked organization after me. They framed me for a murder back East so even the police will be hunting me, working for them without knowing it. And once they get me they’ll fly me where they want to take me and use sodium pentathol on me. They have the power to do that. And any man will talk under the influence of truth serum—any man!”

  “But why don’t you take your formula to the right authorities?”

  Roebuck let out one of his little snorts and stopped pacing. “You tell me who the right authorities are! You tell me who to trust!”

  Ellie was subdued.

  “All I can do,” Roebuck said in a low voice, “is wait for the Secret Service to see what’s happening and stop it. I have to run until then, do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Ellie said firmly, “and I told you I didn’t care.”

  After neither of them spoke for a long moment she stood and slipped into her robe. “I’ll fix you something to eat. There’s some tuna salad in the refrigerator.”

  She walked slowly into the kitchen and began removing dishes from one of the cabinets. “You are hungry, aren’t you?”

  Roebuck grinned at her and nodded, feeling rather foolish not because he was standing before her stark nude but, oddly enough, because he had doubted her to begin with.

  “Have I got time to take a shower?” he asked.

  Ellie nodded. “Time for anything you want.”

  Beneath the soothing hot needles of shower water Roebuck relaxed completely for the first time. He reached out, turned the water on even hotter and stood with his head back, enjoying the pinpoint pressure of the fine spray, breathing in the steam that was rising around him. There was a strange security here, not only of the secret confines of the sliding glass shower doors but of the steady, beating sound. The entire outside world, sight, sound, smell, touch, all was cut off, held back by the warm, rushing, roaring privacy here.

  It was with reluctance that he turned off the water, toweled himself dry and slipped into his shorts. The outside room was cool as he walked quickly to the chair where his clothes were laid out and hurriedly put on his pants and undershirt.

  “The food’s ready if you are,” Ellie said.

  She had two plates with sandwiches and potato chips on them laid out on the small kitchen table. There was a bowl of tuna salad in the center of the table, and two glasses of milk. It looked delicious to Roebuck.

  “Would you rather have something else to drink?” Ellie asked as they sat down.

  Roebuck shook his head. “Milk is the most wholesome thing there is.”

  They began to eat slowly, occasionally looking across the table at each other.

  “How long have you lived here?” Roebuck asked.

  “Oh, maybe a year. How come you ask?”

  “Curiosity. A scientist is curious. Were you born around here?”

  “In Iowa, about a hundred years ago.”

  “Why’d you leave?”

  Ellie shrugged. “I don’t know, really. I quit high school after two years to go to work, but I decided I didn’t like work. The only job I could get was in a dairy, washing milk bottles. I quit after three months. They were going to get an automatic washer anyway.”

  “I can’t see you washing bottles.”

  “Me either. Right after I quit, my older brother and I both left home.”

  “The brother in California?”

  Ellie nodded. Her face glowed as she talked of her brother. “Ralph is a guitar player—he’s played in a lot of night spots in California. And he’s a poet, too. Now and then he sends me copies of those little poetry magazines he gets published in.”

  Roebuck took a bite of tuna salad sandwich. “That’s great, a poet,” he said with his mouth full.

  Ellie leaned back in her chair and a dreamy look passed over her eyes. “We used to have an act together for a while, in Iowa. I’d sing while he played the guitar. I liked it but I just wasn’t good enough. I knew it after a while, when the bookings thinned out and I heard people talk. But Ralph is great! You should see him, crooning, crooning away, making love to his guitar under the hot lights in front of all those people.” She smiled. “That’s how he put it once in one of his poems, and that’s how I used to talk when I was younger, like a damn poet. You outgrow that, I guess.”

  “Most of us do,” Roebuck said, and Ellie caught the sadness in his voice.

  “Have you outgrown that poetic stuff?” she asked candidly.

  “Most of it,” Roebuck answered, taking a swig of milk. He decided it was time to get on another subject. “I’ve got an idea, Ellie.”

  She let her chair tilt forward and sat listening.

  “Why don’t you come with me when I leave?”

  Mild surprise showed on Ellie’s face, the kind of surprise women show at being unexpectedly complimented. “You mean quit living here and travel with you?”

  “I mean run with me,” Roebuck said. “I nev
er pulled any punches. You’d be in this thing with me all the way. They might even think I told you the formula and try to get it out of you. That’s why I wouldn’t tell you the formula, for your own sake. It’s all up here.” Roebuck touched his forefinger to his temple.

  Ellie looked down at the table. “I don’t know, Lou….”

  “It might not be a picnic. Nothing worthwhile is a picnic.”

  Ellie leaned toward him. “All right, Lou, I’ll come.”

  Roebuck hadn’t expected her to be convinced so easily. “Like I said—”

  “I know,” Ellie interrupted. “I don’t expect a honeymoon trip. But do you know how much happens around here, I mean really happens? Nothing. Boredom can be worse than anything.”

  “That’s the only reason you’re coming? Boredom?”

  “No, Lou, I’m coming because for some reason I don’t want to refuse you.”

  Roebuck nodded in the face of what he did not quite understand. “There’s nothing in it for you….”

  Ellie smiled across the table at him and laid her hand on his. She lifted his hand and brushed her lips on the back of his knuckles.

  Early the next morning they rose, breakfasted, and Ellie began to pack her things in a small plaid suitcase. Roebuck observed that she had a meager wardrobe, inexpensive but not in bad taste.

  “We can leave some of this stuff,” she said, closing the last empty bureau drawer.

  “How about the dishes?”

  “They’re the motel’s. I’ve got a refund coming on my rent, too. I’ll go check out with Mr. Lane soon as we’re finished here.”

  Roebuck was drinking his second cup of coffee, gazing out the window through the partly opened blinds.

  “You better make up a story when you check out,” he said. “Why don’t you tell them I’m your brother, and you’re leaving because somebody in your family is sick?”

  Ellie snapped the plaid suitcase shut. “I suppose that’s a fairly believable fib.” She went to the closet and opened the sliding doors one at a time to check the top shelf above the clothes hangers. “Funny,” she said, “everything I’ve got will fit into one suitcase and a grocery bag. I guess it’s funny, anyway.”

  There was a knock on the front door and Roebuck bolted away from the window as if someone had shot at him. “Who is it?” he asked Ellie in a desperate whisper. “Who the hell could that be?” He hadn’t seen the man approach from the window. He must have come from the other direction. Or had he crouched and passed under the window, the way they did in Western movies?

  Ellie glanced at the electric clock above the refrigerator. “I think it’s Billy,” she said.

  “Billy?”

  “The bartender at Fay’s. He comes by sometimes in the mornings on his way to work to drive me over there. You better get in the bathroom and shut the door.”

  “Get rid of him quick as you can,” Roebuck said. He retreated to the bathroom and shut the door until only a narrow crack remained through which he could see. He turned his head and checked behind him to see if the small window was unlocked. If it wasn’t Billy at the door he could make his retreat that way.

  From behind the bathroom door Roebuck could hear them talking but he couldn’t make out the words. Then he caught a glimpse of a fleshy face in front of Ellie and he knew that it was the bartender to whom she was talking. He relaxed slightly. Ellie would know how to handle him.

  They talked a while longer, then Ellie stood back and closed the door. Roebuck waited in the bathroom until he heard a car door slam outside and the sound of an accelerating motor on the highway. When he stepped out of the bathroom Ellie was holding the curtains back a few inches, watching out the window. She turned.

  “He’s gone,” she said. “I told him I wasn’t going to Fay’s today, said I had the flu.”

  “You don’t suppose he saw me, do you?”

  “If he did he wouldn’t think anything about it. That’s one reason I’m going to miss Billy.”

  They finished getting Ellie’s things together, then Roebuck waited while she walked to the motel office to check out and get her rent refund.

  As he was putting her things in the back of the car he saw her returning slowly, buttoning the flap of her purse.

  “Everything all right?” he asked.

  “Sure, I told them what you said to.” She went to the motel room door and closed it so it locked from the inside. “I hate to leave anyplace,” she said. “I guess I’m the kind that gets attached to things more than I should.”

  As they were getting into the car an old man stepped out of the motel office and waved to them. Roebuck raised an arm and waved back as he shut the car door.

  “Mr. Lane?” he asked.

  Ellie nodded, not looking up as Roebuck drove the car from the lot and out onto the highway.

  He cranked down his window to let in the fresh morning air.

  8

  They had been traveling for two days along the side roads and the back highways, through the fertile plowed fields of Illinois, across the Mississippi into the lush, hot greenness of Missouri in summertime. Ellie sat beside Roebuck in the car, staring straight ahead at everything and nothing in that mild hypnotic state people fall into after hours of driving. Roebuck glanced sideways at her profile against the rushing scenery, and she sensed his glance.

  “It’s beautiful in this part of the country,” she said, “all rolling and wild.”

  “Ever been through here in the fall?” Roebuck asked, watching the highway. “There’s every color you can imagine in those woods. I was here some time ago on a hunting trip.”

  “Do you like to hunt?”

  “I’ve hunted everything from squirrel to lion.”

  They lapsed into silence, a silent with which Roebuck could be completely at ease. Ellie worked that way on him sometime, soothing him. Perhaps it was his complete and uncompromising mastery over her, and her complete loyalty. Here was a woman who could be trusted, Roebuck thought, and he had not thought that about many women. Maybe that was the reason she inspired a certain degree of confession in him.

  “I was born near here,” Roebuck said, “Arkansas. But it’s not like it is here, not this pretty or this hot.”

  “Do you have those weeping willow trees there?” Ellie pointed to a roadside grove of the huge, graceful trees.

  “Some.”

  “There’s no prettier tree than a weeping willow,” Ellie said, “or sadder, the way they thirst for moisture and grow all turned down instead of up.”

  Roebuck nodded. “You usually find them around septic tanks.” He concentrated on his driving for a while. “We’re going to have to steal another car sometime soon.”

  “It sure is less trouble to steal a car than I thought.”

  “You bet it is,” Roebuck said with a tight grin. “People are fools.”

  Ellie sighed. “I hope the police are fools.”

  “They are,” he assured her.

  “How come we don’t travel at night, Lou?”

  Roebuck crooked his arm and rested it on the ledge of the open car window, flattening his bicep against the warm metal of the door as a group of young motorcyclists flashed by going in the other direction. “Less conspicuous during the day,” he said. “There are fewer cars on the road at night and you can see their lights for miles. Besides, the police might be expecting me to travel by night. I told you they were mostly fools. In Intelligence it was all we could do to keep them from botching up our work when they were trying to help.”

  A brightly lettered restaurant sign, crying for their attention with a command to STOP AND EAT, appeared in the distance alongside the highway, and Roebuck slowed the car. “What about some supper?”

  “If you want to stop, Lou.”

  “We have to eat soon,” Roebuck said, “and that little place only has a few cars on the lot.”

  “I suppose we could use a good meal,” Ellie agreed. “And try not to be so nervous, Lou.”

  There was only one ot
her customer in the small diner. They chose a booth in the far corner away from the counter and grill, a secluded corner near a plate glass window. Roebuck studiously avoided looking at the dead moths on the long metal sill as he and Ellie slid into the booth.

  “Help you folks?” It was the cook who had been standing behind the counter when they entered, a fat, greasy man in a white shirt and apron. He placed two glasses of water on the booth table.

  “What’s good?” Ellie asked.

  “Everything,” the man answered flatly. He held a broken pencil poised over his order tablet. “Special’s the best, and it’s all cooked up. Roast beef and gravy.”

  “That’ll be good,” Roebuck said. “And two coffees.”

  The fat man made a quick notation on his tablet and moved off.

  “No need to keep looking out the window,” Ellie said. “We’re safe here.”

  Roebuck smiled at her. He knew she represented the transition in his image from a hard-pressed fugitive to an average family man on the road with his wife. Of course, that was the image seen by the outsider. He knew he was a fugitive, and so did Ellie.

  “There’s something I’d like to tell you,” Roebuck said confidentially.

  Ellie waited, revolving her glass slowly in the spreading ring of water it left on the table.

  “My real name’s not Lou Watson, it’s Lou Roebuck.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes unreadable.

  “The seawater story, that wasn’t true either. It was to test you, to see if I could really trust you.”

  “And can you?”

  “I can,” Roebuck said. “That’s why I’ve decided to tell you the truth, the absolute truth.”

  “I don’t know if there is such a thing, Lou.”

  “Roast beef, folks.” The fat man waddled toward them with two platters of beef and mashed potatoes covered with gravy. He set a plate before each of them. “You came to the right spot, folks. Finest eating this side of the Mississip!”

  “Thanks,” Roebuck said, watching the bulging retreating back.

  “Then you aren’t really a wanted man?” Ellie asked.

  “I am,” Roebuck said, “and I want to tell you how it happened.”