The Truth of the Matter

by John Lutz

  Only the woods.

  “It’s something!” Roebuck whispered. They both knew somehow that what they had heard was not an animal, that it was a sound unnatural to the harmony of the woods. There was in the deep woods the noise made by things frightened, by things stalking, by things wary or watching. But this had been none of those; this had been the bold sound of something unafraid but unaggressive, outside the ritual of nature.

  They heard it again, a rising and falling steady sound of something moving through the carpet of leaves. It was moving toward them, but from what direction they couldn’t tell.

  Then it stepped out from behind a tree.

  A boy, about twelve years old, his eyes wide and startled at seeing two people suddenly appear before him. He was wearing a long-sleeved plaid shirt and blue jeans, ragged, and he stood very still and stared at them, waiting for them to make the first move.

  Roebuck’s head was spinning. Now they were spotted! Now someone could tell the law that they were still in the area, on foot and easy to capture! This wasn’t in his plans. This was an aberration that he couldn’t tolerate.

  The gun was suddenly in his hand, pointed at the boy.

  “What are you doing here?” Roebuck asked.

  The boy backed up a step, his skinny body tense. He stared from the gun up into Roebuck’s eyes and saw a subtle change of light in them, like something turning in deep water. For a fragment of a second man and boy stood staring at each other, the will of death between them.

  “He’s only a boy, Lou,” Ellie said from beside Roebuck.

  “Of course he is,” Roebuck said. “I’m not going to hurt him. But what are we going to do? He knows about us now. What in the hell are we going to do?”

  “We’ll think of something,” Ellie said. “We’ve thought of something so far, haven’t we?”

  Roebuck motioned with the gun. “Come over here, son.”

  The boy walked toward them reluctantly, afraid but a long way from panic.

  “What are you doing out here in the woods alone?”

  The voice was thin and unsteady. “I live near here.”

  “How far away?” Ellie asked gently.

  The boy turned toward her, sensing her sympathy. “’Bout half a mile.”

  Roebuck slid the revolver back in his belt. “What are you doing out here alone?”

  “Jus’ walkin’.”

  “To where?”

  “Nowheres. I jus’ like to walk in the woods is all.”

  “What’s your name?” Ellie asked.

  “Claude Mulhaney.”

  Roebuck knew what they must do. They would never be safe once this boy was out of their sight.

  “How many are in your family?” he asked, glowering menacingly at the boy to frighten a correct answer from him.

  “Me an’ my dad an’ ma.” Young Claude was not nearly as frightened as he had been, and in fact was showing a certain degree of cockiness, the instinctive courage of something cornered.

  “Who’s home now?” Roebuck asked.

  “Jus’ my ma.”

  Roebuck made a jerking motion with his thumb. “Lead the way.”

  Claude didn’t move.

  Roebuck again drew the pistol from his belt. “Why aren’t you moving, son?”

  “I want you to promise.”

  “Promise what?”

  “That you won’t hurt my ma.”

  “Nobody’ll hurt your mother,” Ellie said.

  “Nobody’s going to hurt anybody.” Roebuck waved the pistol. “That’s a promise from somebody who’s never broken one, son. Now you show us where you live.”

  Claude gave him a searching look, then turned and began leading them in the direction he’d come from. Roebuck saw that the boy’s sandy hair was close-cropped around the neck and ears, as if someone actually had placed a bowl on his head to give him a haircut. He had to admire the courage of the boy in the face of a loaded gun. What might such courage grow into?

  They had gone only a short way through the woods when they came upon a path, a winding dirt trail through a corridor of green where the woods thinned to let in the sunlight and there was high foliage beneath the trees on either side of them.

  “We’re being honest with you,” Roebuck said, as they followed the small bobbing head. “We don’t expect you to try something cute like leading us in a circle.”

  “Don’t worry,” Claude said without looking back. “Long as I got your promise.”

  “Brigadier generals have taken my word,” Roebuck said. “You can rely on it.”

  “You some kind of soldier?”

  “Was.”

  “Really? In the army?”

  “For a while,” Roebuck said, “then I was in the Special Service, a spy outfit.”

  “You don’t look like a spy.”

  “That’s enough yapping,” Roebuck said. “You just lead the way.”

  2

  Claude’s home was situated at the foot of a tall but not very steep bluff. As he led Roebuck and Ellie down the dirt path on the opposite hill, Roebuck could see a small garden behind the ramshackle house, an outhouse, and to one side a fairly big patch of corn. The house itself was frame with a tin roof. There was another frame building behind it that leaned to one side away from the garden. As they got closer Roebuck saw that both buildings were in terrible disrepair, with peeling, colorless paint, spots of rotting wood, and cardboard where some of the window panes should have been. Some scraggly chickens pecked about in the bare earth before the house and on the wooden porch where a worn kitchen chair sat.

  “Stop here, son,” Roebuck said, when they were still far enough from the house not to have been seen by its occupants. “You’ve got my promise, now I want yours that there isn’t anybody in that house but your mother.”

  “There ain’t,” the boy said sincerely. “I swear it!”

  Roebuck lifted the gun that had been dangling in his hand and slipped it inside his shirt

  “Okay, son, let’s go.”

  When they entered, the woman looked up from where she was sitting at the kitchen table. There was nothing on the table before her; she had just been sitting there.

  “These here are some people I met, Ma,” Claude stammered.

  Roebuck nodded at her, smiling. “Mrs. Mulhaney.”

  She wasn’t an old woman, but she had very stooped shoulders and a lock of drab brown hair carefully flattened over one side of her forehead that made her look older. She coughed and touched a wadded handkerchief to her thin lips.

  “Where’d you meet these folks, Claude?”

  “In the woods, Ma—they said they wouldn’t hurt you!”

  The woman looked blankly at Roebuck and Ellie, her face gaunt and very pale.

  “There’s no reason for anybody to get hurt,” Roebuck said, strangely ashamed at having intruded into the woman’s privacy. He looked about him at the small farmhouse’s pathetically worn furniture and saw an old wooden radio on a shelf above the yellowed sink.

  “There’s no use to pretend,” the woman said, following Roebuck’s gaze. “I know who you are.” Her voice was throaty and rich, the voice of a nightclub torch singer insanely out of place. “I’m Iris Mulhaney and this is my son Claude.”

  “We meant it when we said nobody was going to get hurt,” Ellie said.

  “I believe you did, ma’am,” Iris Mulhaney said, and she bent forward momentarily as a fit of coughing doubled her. “You’ll haft’a excuse me.” The handkerchief dabbed at her mouth.

  Claude went over to stand by his mother. “Ma ain’t well. You see there’s no call to hurt her, no reason.”

  Roebuck walked to the sink and turned the tap for a drink of water but got nothing.

  “Somethin’ wrong with the line,” Iris Mulhaney said. “You’ll haft’a use the hand pump out back.”

  “Where’s your husband?” Ellie asked, slumping into a torn armchair.

  “Works in the city. He comes home on weekends, sometimes not even then.�
� There was no bitterness in the fogged voice, only fact stripped of all emotion, ancient history still happening.

  “That means he won’t be home for three days,” Roebuck said, leaning on the sink.

  “Maybe not then.”

  Roebuck turned the knob on the radio to satisfy, himself that it worked, then turned it off. “We don’t have any choice but to stay here, Mrs. Mulhaney. You have my promise that we won’t cause any trouble.”

  Iris Mulhaney nodded and Roebuck saw that the lock of hair was combed down over her forehead to conceal a reddish scar, possibly from a burn.

  “How long do you think we’ll have to stay, Lou?” Ellie asked.

  “It depends,” Roebuck said, “on a lot of things.”

  “There ain’t much to eat,” Iris said in a voice of apology.

  “I’ll fix us something later,” Ellie said to her with a smile. “We might as well make this a vacation for you, Mrs. Mulhaney.”

  Roebuck turned to Claude. “How far is your nearest neighbor, son?”

  “Ain’t got no neighbors.”

  “There must be somebody….”

  “The Webster place,” Iris said, “but I wouldn’t call ’em neighbors. It’s over a mile.”

  Roebuck nodded and looked again at Claude. “Are there any guns in the house?”

  Claude hesitated.

  “We have each other’s word,” Roebuck said.

  “There’s an old shotgun, but we ain’t got any shells.”

  “Where at?”

  Claude pointed to the farmhouse’s one other room.

  Roebuck went into the room that contained a battered bedroom set with twin beds and saw the shotgun leaning in a corner. He checked to make sure it was empty and carried it back into the main room.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said to Ellie, and he left the house to walk a short distance into the woods where he buried the shotgun beneath some leaves.

  When he returned Ellie and Claude were setting the table while Iris sat in the armchair and watched.

  “I’ll tell you where the gun is when we leave,” Roebuck said, and Claude nodded silently.

  “Why don’t you and Claude go out and pump some water and pick some vegetables,” Ellie said, “and I can get the best meal you ever tasted on that woodstove.”

  “Okay,” Roebuck said. “You bring the bucket, son.”

  By the time they’d finished a delicious supper of hamburger, corn on the cob and baked potatoes it was dark outside. Roebuck made sure all the shades were pulled before turning on the lights.

  “How come you don’t have a telephone?” he asked as they were sitting on the worn furniture after supper.

  “No real need for one,” Iris said. “And they cost money.”

  “When do you do your shopping, on weekends?”

  “Usually. When my husband comes home. There’s a pickup in the garage behind the house, but it ain’t running right now.”

  The thought that they might get the pickup truck running and leave occurred to Roebuck, but he knew that Claude would make the mile to the nearest neighbor and a phone before they could get very far. Of course they might be able to tie the boy and his mother so it would take them a while to get loose.

  “What’s the matter with the truck?” Roebuck asked.

  Iris coughed violently. “Lord knows.”

  “We can look at it in the morning,” Roebuck said.

  They sat talking guardedly, feeling one another out, until well into the evening. Then Claude and his mother went into the bedroom to sleep while Roebuck sat in the armchair where he could watch both beds from the living room. Ellie slept on the couch with an old alarm clock set for two A.M., when it would be Roebuck’s turn to sleep.

  They were both still tired when morning came, but Roebuck felt considerably better after stripping to his shorts and washing in the cold water from the pump. He watched Iris fry the eggs for breakfast while Ellie and Claude carried in buckets of water for Ellie’s bath in the ancient and useless bathroom tub.

  During breakfast they learned that a doctor had told Iris she might have tuberculosis, but that she had received no treatment and had refused to go to a sanitarium.

  “What does your husband say about that?” Ellie asked.

  “He says a sanitarium costs a lot of money, and he’s right.”

  Roebuck looked across the table and saw Claude stuffing a last bite of egg into his mouth, staring straight ahead.

  “This might be as good a place to rest as a sanitarium,” Roebuck said. “You’ve got quiet and a nice garden out in back, not to mention Claude’s medical attention.”

  “The garden ain’t much,” Claude said soberly.

  “It is, considering the soil,” Roebuck said. “It looks like rocky Arkansas soil, but it’s surprising what can be grown on it if you know what you’re doing. And judging by the garden, somebody knows what they’re doing.”

  “Were you ever a farmer?”

  “Once.”

  “Before you were in the army?”

  Roebuck smiled. “I grew up on a farm. When I hit basic training I could shoot better than anybody in the company.”

  Iris stood and began to clear the table.

  “I’ll help you,” Ellie said, standing and placing her cup and silverware on her plate.

  Roebuck pushed back from the table and stood. “Turn on that radio, Ellie, and keep listening for the news while I go outside and look over that pickup truck.”

  “I’ll show it to you.” Claude quickly left the table and followed Roebuck out the door.

  They opened the rotted double doors of the barn-like garage, one of which was supported crookedly by a single rusted hinge. The smell of grease and stale air wafted out at them from the high-ceilinged darkness.

  “This is it,” Claude said proudly.

  It was an old red Ford pickup, battered and faded, with rusting fenders that looked as though they’d been sledge-hammered.

  “How long since it’s run?” Roebuck asked.

  “Oh, ’bout two weeks. Last time me an’ Ma tried to go into town it wouldn’t start.”

  In the dim light Roebuck saw a can of gasoline among some tools at the other end of the garage. He checked the truck’s gas gauge and saw that the needle was broken. “Get me that gas can,” he said to Claude.

  Claude brought him the can and he poured its contents, about two gallons, into the truck’s tank. He opened the squeaking door again, released the emergency brake and put the gearshift lever in neutral.

  “You get in back, son, and we’ll push it out into the light where we can look at it.”

  The truck looked even worse in the sunlight. Roebuck got in, sat on the ragged upholstery and pressed the starter. Nothing happened. He flicked the one knob on the dashboard radio and turned it all the way to his left.

  “This old radio work?” he asked Claude.

  “Sometimes.”

  Roebuck climbed down from the cab and slammed the door. “Well, it’s not working now.”

  He walked to the front of the truck and raised the hood. Everything looked greasy, but nothing seemed out of place. The battery was a mass of corrosion.

  “How old is this battery, son?”

  “Real old.” Claude stood up on the dashboard and peered down under the hood at the engine. “Do you think you can fix it?”

  “I was a pit mechanic at Indianapolis,” Roebuck said, playing with a wire. “After my nerve went and I couldn’t race anymore.”

  “What caused you to lose your nerve?”

  “The accident.”

  Roebuck slammed the hood.

  “Wha’d’ya think?” Claude asked, looking up at him.

  “Hit the lights.”

  Claude reached into the cab and pulled the headlight switch. The lights barely glowed.

  Roebuck nodded and Claude pushed the switch back in.

  “It might start with a push.” Roebuck crossed his arms and looked about him. “Do you have a hammer and some n
ails?”

  “Might have,” the boy answered, surprised. “Why?”

  “We might as well fix those front steps before your mother has an accident.”

  They went back into the garage and found a hammer and a box of nails.

  “There’s some boards in the pump house,” Claude said, as they were walking toward the front of the house. “I’ll go get ’em.”

  As Claude danced away Roebuck patted him gently on the back and gazed up at the sky. “We better hurry. It’s clouding up.”

  They’d barely finished replacing the rotted boards when a sudden deluge of rain fell, smashing against the tin porch roof in a monotonous roar.

  3

  Sheriff Boadeen stood behind his office window in Danton and watched the heavy rain flood over the glass.

  “It looks like they might ’a slipped through,” Will Clacker, his part-time deputy, said behind him. Clacker was a small, potbellied man with only one arm. He’d lost the other arm in Korea and was drawing a nice government pension.

  “That’s what the State Patrol’s starting to think,” Boadeen said, still staring out at the rain, “but it’ll take another day or so to make up their minds.”

  “What do you think?” Clacker asked, striking a book match deftly with one hand and lighting a cigarette.

  Boadeen rubbed his smooth-shaven chin. “Could be they’re still in the area, holed up, that they never even tried to get past the roadblocks.”

  Clacker nodded. “Patrol’s probably thought of that. If they’re still hereabouts their car’ll be spotted sooner or later.”

  Boadeen walked over and sat on the corner of his desk. “Probably later.” He touched the sore spot on his head where the heavy reel had struck him.

  “You got something on your mind, Sheriff?” Clacker asked.

  Boadeen jutted out his lower lip and nodded. “Surely do.” He walked to the wall map of Clark County. “Seems to me that if they didn’t get by one of the roadblocks that they’re holed up somewheres in here.” He traced an invisible circle with his capped ball-point pen. “Now, in a day or two the State Patrol figures to give up on the roadblocks and search the whole area.”

  “And?”

  Boadeen gave his crooked smile. “I figure we’re gonna beat them to the punch.”