The Truth of the Matter

by John Lutz

  Ellie was quiet, across the state line, into Colorado. What bothered Roebuck was that she didn’t seem at all upset about the conversation they’d had. Of course, Roebuck had understood all along what she was. That was part of her appeal to him. Ellie was the kind of woman a hard-bitten fugitive from the law should have; she was part of the cast for his present role, like Gipp chasing him across the country, like the gun on the seat beside him and the moustache he was beginning to cultivate—props, all of them. He was beginning, only beginning, to understand that, to face it.

  His eyes went slowly to the rear view mirror, checking the empty road behind him. The fear of Gipp was there, so why couldn’t Gipp be? Running from Gipp made Roebuck feel like a character in a movie he’d once seen, where a private detective traced the man who killed his partner all the way from New York to San Francisco—only this time the hero and villain were reversed.

  Ellie sighed, leaning back in her seat and staring up at the yellow upholstery on the car’s ceiling.

  “You aren’t ashamed of what you are,” Roebuck said. “I don’t understand that.”

  “Ashamed?” Ellie closed her eyes. “Why should I be ashamed?”

  Roebuck didn’t answer.

  “I never told you,” Ellie said, “but I tried marriage—twice.”

  “What happened?”

  “My first husband turned out to be a drunk. That’s when I started going out with other men, and we got a divorce. Marriage worked for a while the second time; then I started going out again. I liked going out with other men; I couldn’t help it. Al found out and divorced me. He wouldn’t have had any trouble finding correspondents if I’d contested it. It was my fault and I didn’t much care.” Her voice wavered and Roebuck saw her hand clutch the material of her dress. “Except for my little girl. Al’s family got her.”

  “If you loved your girl, why didn’t you stay home?”

  “Because I couldn’t, Lou. You called me a whore, and I guess I am one. I can’t change. I accept myself as what I am, and I’m…you know…content.”

  Content. Roebuck didn’t completely understand that, but he envied it. Ellie accepted what she was, and so she was somebody. It was the source of her strength, knowing what she was. “Whore,” that was her label. She might wish it was something else, but that was her label. Oh, people were classified, by society, by God, by themselves. Everybody was something that marked him or her—thief, housewife, cop, con, queer, drunk, wife beater, businessman, tramp, pimp….The list went on. People fell into their niches, were held fast there. They were labeled, to themselves and to everyone else, and sometimes they didn’t like what they read on their labels.

  Ellie’s voice was gentle, a confirmation of what he’d been thinking. “You knew what I was, Lou, really.”

  “Yeah.” Roebuck passed his hand over his perspiring face, as if wiping away a vision. “I knew.”

  “And you loved me anyway.”

  “How could I?”

  “Everybody loves somebody anyway.”

  “Maybe they do,” Roebuck said.

  The mountains appeared before them suddenly, shockingly. Around them the land was still low and rolling, and like weird, unsymmetrical pyramids built on level sand, the mountains loomed out of place and purple in the distance. One second they were an idle thought in the back of Roebuck’s mind; the next second he felt he could stretch out his hand and touch them.

  “They’re still far away,” Ellie said. “They fool you, like mirages.” She turned to Roebuck. “If you want to stop soon, Lou, I’ll fix us some supper and go out and get a bottle somewhere. You’ll feel better.”

  “Okay,” Roebuck said, staring at the distant mountain range, “that sounds good.”

  The mountains reminded him of a roller coaster at an amusement park he’d gone to once as a school boy. Everybody in the class had been afraid to go on that roller coaster; he’d been the only one who’d volunteered. He’d gone not only once, but over and over, roaring through dips and turns, listening to the screams, feeling the rise and fall tear at his stomach, proving his courage to himself and his timid classmates, finally and forever.

  He knew now why some people went on roller coasters, pretending they had courage, taking a hundred thousand to one chance to reassure themselves and their girls. Comparing courage with going on a roller coaster was like comparing love with going to a whorehouse. Roebuck felt a twinge of alarm at the thought and looked at Ellie, almost afraid she’d read his thoughts.

  As they drove the mountains loomed ahead of them as before, magnificent and unchanging, like a fantastic mural against a canvas of dimming blue sky.

  “There’s a sign that says Clinton’s Motel’s five miles away,” Ellie said.

  “I see it.” Roebuck rested his arm on the rolled down window. “That’s where I’d planned on stopping.”

  Clinton’s Motel was like a thousand others, low, square, with a garish neon sign that blinked a slumbery invitation.

  In the dead silence of the turned off engine Roebuck tucked the .38 in his belt beneath his shirt and got out of the car. He felt an unexpected cool passage of air as he stood there, like a chill emanating from the faraway mountains. Making sure the revolver was wedged firmly in his belt, he entered the motel office.

  4

  Roebuck felt immediately ill at ease at Clinton’s Motel. The desk clerk had given him a strange look when he’d signed the register, a penetrating gaze from hooded blue eyes. And now that they were in their room Roebuck was even more uncomfortable. Everything in the tiny, ultra-modern room was square and sharp-angled—everything but the people. Roebuck felt his own human softness and vulnerability in contrast to the hard, precision angles and clean, cutting lines around him.

  After a quick drink from the bottle of bourbon Ellie had bought at the motel lounge, he lay on the firm bed, feeling out of place and uneasy, his stockinged feet hanging over the edge of the mattress. It was silly, he told himself. These four walls concealed them just as the walls of any motel room.

  “You want to rest before we eat?” Ellie asked, stepping over to examine the bathroom.

  Roebuck told her he wanted to. He toyed with the notion of apologizing to Ellie for the things he’d called her, but damn it, they were true! Besides, she was acting as if it hadn’t happened. It didn’t bother her, being called what she was.

  The occasional whine of a passing truck invaded the quiet room, and now and then the resonant slapping of the motel pool’s diving board sounded. The window air conditioner was drawing in a faint chlorine scent from the pool to hang cool and clear in the atmosphere of the small, sparsely furnished room, giving it the antiseptic air of an operating room.

  Roebuck heard and felt Ellie stretch out on the bed next to him, but he kept his eyes closed and let everything become distant. He descended into sleep.

  It was pitch-black in the room when Roebuck opened his eyes and fought his way up, up out of sleep like a man struggling to the surface of dark water.

  The lamp by the bed came on and he slumped back limply, lying with his fingertips pressed for reassurance against the firmness of the mattress beneath him.

  Ellie’s voice came to him, as comfortingly real as the light and the mattress. “What did you dream this time?”

  Roebuck folded his hands behind his head, expanding his chest to breathe in the too cool air in the room. He held his breath as long as he could and then let it out in a long sigh. “The same dream,” he said. “It’s always the same dream.”

  “It must be a bad one.”

  He was quiet, letting the reality around him implant itself, taking the place of the more horrible reality he’d experienced in his sleep.

  “Why don’t you tell me about it?” Ellie said. “Tell me about it and you might not dream it anymore.” She touched his bare arm, and the touch was like a lifeline.

  “I’ll always have that dream,” Roebuck said, “even when I’m awake.” Since they’d left the cabin at Lake Chippewa the dream had be
come a presence in him, a swelling, shadowed thing that grew and grew.

  “I don’t guess you can be blamed for your dreams,” Ellie said, “awake or asleep. For the things that come into your mind when you let your guard down.”

  Roebuck didn’t answer.

  “Tell me about it,” Ellie said.

  He had never told anyone about his dream.

  Her fingers, peaceful, compelling, caressed his arm. “Tell me about it….”

  “I was eleven,” Roebuck said. “I was raised in Arkansas on a little farm something like the one we stayed at with Claude and his mother, not enough land to really make a living, and what land there was all rocky and dry. And tilted. No matter what you did on the land, plowing, tilling, seeding, it was always on a tilt. There were only a few buildings, a frame house, barn, chicken coop…all falling apart, paint peeling. We lived there, though, me, my dad and my two older brothers, Mark and Frank. They were my half brothers, really, from my dad’s first wife, and five and six years older than me. I remember when I was a lot younger asking my dad what happened to my mother. He told me she’d died in childbirth, and he’d been drinking ever since.

  “But he was only just starting to drink.

  “Time passed, and my dad began to harden toward me, like when I’d ask to go someplace with him.

  “Don’t need you to help carry feed, Louie Boy.’

  “‘All I wanna do is watch, Pa. Mark can carry the grain if you want.’”

  “He rubbed his chin, all covered with whiskers, then pushed me in the back with his fist. ‘Come along, then, damn you! An eleven-year-old boy can carry his share at that!’

  “I was eleven when he started to really beat me. I guess he figured I was old enough that nobody would report him. It was a long piece of harness leather that he’d use, and he’d keep it tucked in his belt and call me a son of a bitch and zing it at me for no reason at all. I showed Mark the welts on my legs and back one time, and he didn’t say anything. When I showed them to Frank, though, he put some stuff on me that he got at the drugstore. Frank was my favorite, but I idolized both my brothers. An eleven-year-old boy is proud of his older brothers, and I was more so because I couldn’t be proud of my father.

  “He beat me more and more, Pa did, until I tried to stay away from him, out of his reach for whole days at a time. Then he’d look at me with a hate that ate away at me. As if when he couldn’t reach me with the leather strap he’d make marks on my body with his eyes.

  “He was my natural pa, no matter what he did, and I knew I should love him, but I couldn’t. Still I felt something for him, through the pain and hate, through the shame. Even when he’d come out of the house all drunk and lash away at the animals and chickens with his leather strap, screaming and red in the face until he had to sit down. Even then when he was sitting there in the hot sun looking around at what he’d done to the animals I’d feel something for him. He was my natural pa.

  “It got worse. Pa was either ignoring me altogether or swearing and beating me like one of the animals. Frank would tell me to be patient, and he’d talk to Pa sometimes, long talks they’d have out in the fields or in the mornings before Pa started to drink. But I didn’t like to see it, because that’s when Pa would blow up and swear at Frank. He never bit him, though, like he did me.

  “Then one day it came out. Pa was especially drunk and especially mad at me. He whistled the strap twice across my back and then he screamed it at me. ‘Bastard! You ain’t mine!’ He let loose again with the strap. I didn’t understand.

  “‘You belong to some over-the-road trucker that layed over in town! You’re your filthy ma’s!’ His eyes were sad and he began to mumble. ‘…No blood of mine. Git to the barn….’

  “He always told me that, to sleep in the barn. Frank and Mark were away on a hunting trip, so I was alone with Pa and I was afraid.

  “…Son of a bitch!’ he moaned at me.

  “I caught one more lick on the back as I broke for the door.

  “When I was out in the barn I thought about what Pa had said. I didn’t understand it exactly, but I saw that he must have hated my ma. I fell asleep crying, like I did more often than not.

  “It was late when I woke up, and dark and hot in the barn. I was in the loft, where it was still and hard to breathe, so I climbed down onto the barn floor and went outside.

  “The lights were all out in the house, and as I stood there staring at it, at that cold dark house, the hate in me for Pa just got bigger and bigger. I can remember standing there under the moon, shaking with hate. It was like I was still half asleep, or dreaming. I went back into the barn and got a can of coal oil and some matches. I don’t think anything but hate was going through my mind as I walked toward the house.

  “The fire caught right away, so fast it scared me. It lit up the night as I stood there and watched it, knowing Pa was sleeping drunk inside. I could hear the town fire bell ringing, far away.

  “They came in a hurry. There were headlights all over, and a red pumper and men with buckets. There was nothing I could do. I stood and watched.

  “What happened, Lou?”

  “It was Grady, a big bald man who was the Volunteer Fire Department chief.

  “I think I mumbled that I didn’t know, that I’d been sleeping in the barn. Grady yelled some instructions to his men, but it didn’t do any good. The house was burning like a cardboard box. Another man I knew, Quentin Dibbs, came up and wiped his forehead.

  “‘Whooeee! There’s no way to get in there, Grady. Too damn hot!’

  “‘I know,’ Grady said, watching the flames. ‘It’s too late.’ He looked down at me. ‘Your pa and brothers in there?’

  “I just stood there, not even thinking.

  “Dibbs bent over and stared at me, his face all black with soot. ‘Shock,’ he said. ‘I do believe that boy’s in shock.’

  “I started to say something when I heard the scream. It was Pa’s scream, and every man at the fire stood still for a moment, listening. It came from inside the house, inside the flames, like nothing you ever heard.

  “Then somebody came running out the door, black, burning, on fire. Only it wasn’t Pa, it was Frank!

  “He died right there, holding onto the burning porch rail. They rushed to him and got blankets around him, but I could see he was dead and just leaning there.

  “After they dragged Frank away they continued pouring water onto the fire, mostly for sport, because everything was beyond saving anyway.

  “‘Whoeee!’ Quentin Dibbs was yelling. ‘Smells just like a barbecue!’

  “Grady’s hand closed on my shoulder and squeezed harder and harder, so hard that it hurt. My eyes were stinging from the smoke. The breeze shifted and I was choking on the sweet grayish haze. I screamed, just like Pa did…!”

  Ellie’s fingers were entwined in Roebuck’s.

  “The neighbors all thought the fire was an accident,” Roebuck was saying, “and they all said how lucky I was to be sleeping in the barn. I never told them otherwise, that I set the fire, that I murdered my father and two brothers. I went to live with an aunt, and I had to live that lie. From then on it became hard for me to tell the truth or to see the truth about anything. Except in my sleep; in my sleep the truth always found me.”

  Ellie got up, hunted the bottle of bourbon and poured them each a drink straight over some ice cubes.

  “It was a long time ago,” she said, returning with the glasses to sit on the edge of the bed.

  “What matter?” Roebuck said. “I’m a murderer. No matter what other people think of me, I know that’s what I am. I’ve always tried to run away from it, even convincing myself that the fire was accidental. But I could only convince myself up to a point.” He took a drink. “My whole life is a lie.”

  “Well, now you’ve told the truth,” Ellie said gently. “If you murdered, you’re a murderer. There’s no changing that. I guess you just have to face it and live with it.”

  “Running away from the truth
has become a habit with me, a compulsion. Oh, it’s not as hard as you think—so much of the goddamn world is behind our eyes!” Roebuck lifted the glass to his lips and drained it, sloshing some of the liquor down his chin.

  For the next hour they drank steadily, seriously, as if it were some strange kind of religious communion, an unspoken agreement to get drunk as soon as possible.

  Ellie refilled their glasses. “Face it,” she said in a voice made thick by the liquor. “Face it and you can live with it. That’s the only way, Lou. I know.”

  Roebuck hurriedly lifted his glass, letting the cold bourbon bite at his throat. “It’s all been a rotten lie and still is. I murdered Ingrahm too; it was no accident. I don’t know why I did it, but I did. Killing is in me, deep in me! If you hadn’t been there I would have killed Boadeen, crushed his head in. And you’ll never know how close I came to shooting that boy we stole the car from.”

  “But you didn’t kill them, Lou. You can control it.” She tilted back her glass.

  Sleep or liquor or both was making Roebuck’s head whirl. “I can’t control it! Everything’s a goddamn lie, an act! Don’t you see, it’s all part of my desperado act! Kidding myself that I’ve got guts, that I’m innocent, the gun I carry, imagining Gipp is chasing me across the country, even you, all part of the act…to keep me from facing myself…!”

  Again the neck of the bottle clinked against the glasses. Ellie stroked Roebuck’s cheek in long, comforting caresses. “You don’t have to suffer, Lou. Just admit it to yourself. Easier to live with the truth than run from it, believe me.” Her words were running together. She turned and lay with her head propped on her pillow, holding her glass unsteadily. “You know, you can’t change it.”

  “I know,” Roebuck said softly. “It’s like a label on me. Everybody’s marked as something. The mark of Cain…on the inside of our heads, and we put it there ourselves….”

  “Admit it and live with it,” Ellie mumbled, not realizing that her glass was tilted and the little remaining bourbon was spilling to the floor. “Only way, only way.”