The Truth of the Matter

by John Lutz

  Roebuck let his head press back against the bed. He had admitted it for the first time, to Ellie and to himself. Through the growing effects of the bourbon he did feel a sense of release, of freedom. There was a madness in the world of dreams, and a loneliness. He lifted his glass and found that it was empty, but he didn’t care. He had shown himself to himself, and to someone else.

  “…Murderer, murderer, murderer,” Ellie was whispering softly into her pillow. “Who gives a damn…?”

  5

  Roebuck awoke by slow degrees, taking in the angular furniture of the motel room as he lay on his stomach, his head turned to the side and pressed deeply into the pillow. He remembered last night, and a warm relief passed through him. Strange that a man hunted for murder could feel relief, but Roebuck was suddenly free of so many things. For the first time he had acknowledged his true self, and the illusions had disappeared like shadows exposed to the sun. No longer did he have to strike his poses, worry about Benny Gipp, lie to himself every minute of the day about the deaths he’d caused. Murderer: a fact faced easier in the light. Roebuck was clear to himself now; he didn’t like everything he saw, but there it was and he couldn’t change it.

  But why couldn’t he? The idea ran like a thin wire into Roebuck’s brain. Now that he knew himself, accepted himself for what he was, didn’t that give him the strength, the power to change himself?

  He struggled to sit up in bed, feeling for the first time the unpleasant effects of last night’s bourbon. Ellie was still asleep beside him, a wisp of blonde hair covering one of her closed eyes. By the light filtering through the blinds, Roebuck estimated that it was past nine o’clock. They’d have to be leaving soon, though right now all he wanted was to sit with his back pressed against the cool wooden headboard and let himself come fully awake.

  Ellie stirred beside him, rolled onto her side and nestled her head in the crook of her arm. He watched her awaken, her one visible eye above the smooth flesh of her arm fluttering, then opening slowly.

  The gray eye was vague at first, unfocused, then it fastened itself on Roebuck’s face. For an instant there was an uncomfortable dropping sensation in his stomach; something had changed in the eye, deep in the black of it. Then Ellie raised her head and smiled at him, with both eyes.

  “Morning,” she said drowsily.

  Roebuck leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.

  “Is it late?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “How come you didn’t wake me up?” She extended her arms in a languid stretch.

  “I don’t know,” Roebuck said. “Somehow it didn’t seem important to get an early start this morning.”

  “You’re not so afraid anymore, are you?” There was still sleep in Ellie’s voice.

  “No,” Roebuck said, “not like I was.”

  Ellie rolled onto her back with a sigh. “You’re not the first person to ever kill.”

  She was right, Roebuck thought. She had brought that fact home to him, and for the first time in his life he didn’t feel alone. He got up and began dressing.

  “People don’t realize how easy it is to live with yourself once you know you can’t change,” Ellie said, throwing back the sheet and sitting with her legs apart on the edge of the bed.

  Roebuck hesitated, buckling his belt.

  “Want me to put on some coffee?” she asked behind him.

  “Why don’t you think you can change?” Roebuck asked.

  “You are what you are.” Ellie laughed a sad low laugh. “You’re born that way, I guess.”

  Roebuck turned to face her. “Ever think of trying to change again?”

  Ellie’s wide mouth turned down and then up, as if confused at the signals from her mind. “I’ve had my try, Lou. I just know it can’t be done.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” Again he saw that fleeting look, deep in her eyes, and he couldn’t or wouldn’t identify it. “No need to put coffee on this morning,” he said. “Let’s chance a restaurant.”

  After they’d dressed and closed the motel room door behind them, Roebuck breathed in the fresh air and felt oddly at peace, in harmony. He and Ellie got into the car, and he pulled out onto the quiet highway. Before the gleaming yellow hood the Rocky Mountains loomed, touched by morning haze.

  As they sped toward the unmoving mountains the thought continued to burrow into Roebuck’s mind: why couldn’t he change? He had faced what he was, and seeing the horror of it, wasn’t there a compulsion to change, a compulsion he wouldn’t admit to himself? No, he would admit it to himself. Was this the irresistible impulse to confess he’d heard and read so much about, the criminal’s desire to purge himself of his sins, to punish himself? Whatever it was, Roebuck knew that it was fast becoming a part of him. He couldn’t fully realize his own imperfection without trying to change it, to balance it.

  “Why do you suppose so many murderers turn themselves in?” he asked aloud. “Knowing what’s in store for them?”

  “I don’t know,” Ellie said. “Maybe they just get tired.”

  “It does tire a man out,” Roebuck said, “worrying about every possible slip. A man afraid sees danger everywhere.” He looked sideways and he recognized the thing he’d seen in Ellie’s eyes. It was fear, undeniable fear bobbing to the surface like a cork. It suddenly jolted Roebuck. He had confessed to her, and she was afraid of him.

  Not that he’d do anything to harm her. But in her fear would she do something to protect herself? Had Roebuck something to fear from her?

  The thought of Ellie turning him in was completely unacceptable to Roebuck. He pushed it to the back of his mind and looked up at the distant mountain peaks.

  “Scrambled eggs are going to taste mighty good,” he said.

  “Anything for a change,” Ellie replied, staring straight ahead through the windshield.

  They ate breakfast at a clean, near empty truck stop. When they were finished they sat talking over coffee, and Roebuck was aware of a new tension between them, a weighing of words. Their conversation seemed to be constructed brick by brick to conceal what each of them was thinking. Ellie waited in the car while Roebuck took the bill to the cashier.

  They drove on slowly, each lulled into quiet by the hypnotic, twisting highway and the mountains that seemed larger and were appearing to the side of them.

  At Roebuck’s request they stopped for an early lunch at one of the roadside rest parks along the highway. It was no more than a small clearing with picnic essentials—stone barbecue pit, wooden table cemented into the ground, lidless green trash barrel.

  Roebuck backed the car in toward the woods. They sat at the picnic table in the shade of a gigantic pine tree and Ellie opened a can of peaches and some potato chips. With the edge of his hand, Roebuck brushed some ants off the rough wood of the table, glancing up as a car swished by on the highway.

  They ate silently, Ellie staring into the woods that started behind a smooth rock formation, Roebuck looking down at the overlapping tire tracks in the hard earth.

  He finished the last of the peaches and tossed the empty can into the metal trash barrel. The echoing clang of metal on metal seemed to awaken something in Ellie for a second and their eyes met.

  “Can’t change, huh?” Roebuck said.

  Instead of answering she crumpled the potato chip bag and rose to throw it away. Roebuck watched her walk, watched the sway of her hips and the compact rhythm. When she returned she stood on the other side of the table.

  “Sit down,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her around the end of the table to sit next to him.

  “It’s quiet and private here,” he whispered in her ear, “and the woods are cool.” He sensed something within her drawing away from him.

  “We have to drive, Lou. Don’t forget who we are.”

  “I’m not forgetting. I can’t. But we have time.”

  “I guess we do,” Ellie said, standing again, “but I’m not much in the mood.”

  Roebuck turned on the bench seat
and leaned back with both elbows on the table. “Why not?”

  She shrugged with an attempted smile. “I don’t know. I suppose because it’s the middle of the afternoon.”

  “That never bothered you before.”

  “It’s the woods, too,” Ellie said. „I’ve had enough of the woods.”

  “Or enough of me.”

  “Maybe I’m just used to you now, Lou. Things cool off some; ask any married couple.”

  “I’ve been married,” Roebuck said, toeing the cement at the base of a table leg. “Things don’t cool off that fast.”

  A sudden breeze passed them, rippling Ellie’s skirt and hair, stirring the dust from the beaten ground.

  Roebuck crossed his outstretched legs, setting one shining boot atop the other, and looked at her. “You’re afraid to go into the woods with me, aren’t you?”

  For a moment he was thrown by the surprised expression on her face, but her eyes weren’t surprised. “Why should I be afraid?”

  “I have every reason to kill you,” Roebuck said, “now that I’ve confessed murder to you. You weren’t sure before, but now you know. And you said yourself people can’t change.”

  “But why would you have to kill me?”

  How convincing she was, Roebuck thought.

  “Because you’re afraid of me,” he said. “You might turn me in out of fear. And because you’re afraid of me, the smartest thing for me to do would be to get rid of you. It’s what’s known as a vicious circle.”

  Ellie came to him and sat beside him. She rested her hand against the side of his face and brushed her lips against his. “Well, that circle’s broken,” she said gently. “You’re one man I’m not afraid of.”

  “You know I’ve murdered.”

  “And you know I don’t care.”

  Roebuck stared at her, his face creased against the sun. „“I’d care if I were you.”

  “You’re not, though,” Ellie said. “We’re all ourselves.” She stood and folded her arms, her slender body hunched as if she were cold. For a moment she stood that way, looking into the silent woods, then she turned and walked to the car.

  6

  Roebuck knew now that Ellie was afraid, and that her fear was a real danger. For the first time he wondered if the idea of murdering her was creeping into his mind. He knew Ellie. She wasn’t exactly immoral; she was simply Ellie. It occurred to Roebuck that she might think she should turn him in. She loved him now, but that love was disintegrating along with their mutual trust.

  He glanced at her as he guided the car up a winding mountain road. Danger. All the while he’d been looking behind him, fearing what might be drawing nearer, danger was sitting next to him in the car, lying beside him at night. Life had always dealt with Roebuck that way: misfortune from an unexpected quarter.

  They stopped that night at the Mountain Crest Motel, a futuristic, semicircular building erected on a site carved out of the side of a mountain. The motel appealed to Roebuck. It was high, aloof, secluded. From the window of their room the dimming view stretched to a faraway invisible horizon.

  After dinner in the motel’s restaurant they had a few drinks and returned to their room. The distrust had been growing between them, pushing them apart. In the motel room the strain of their silence became almost unbearable, so they avoided it by sitting transfixed before the flickering unreality of the T.V., absorbing themselves in the two dimensional dreams and problems of the six inch figures that moved and talked across the screen. The National Anthem was their lullaby.

  Sleep was impossible for Roebuck that night. He lay in the faint light and watched Ellie sleep, secure in her positive identity and unchangeability. Then he turned away from her, staring at the blankness of the wall and listening to the even rhythm of her breathing.

  At three A.M. he got up to go to the bathroom, and as he flushed the toilet his gaze fell on a bottle of disinfectant on the floor beneath the washbasin. The bottle was half full of thick amber liquid that killed and cleaned. Wasn’t that what Roebuck was looking for, purity and oblivion? He sat on the edge of the bathtub with his elbows resting on his knees, staring at the bottle.

  DIRT-GONE, the label on the disinfectant read, THE STRONGEST INDUSTRIAL GERM KILLER ON THE MARKET! Roebuck wondered if it would kill the long-ago planted germ in him. He stood wearily, so that the washbasin blocked his view of the bottle, and studied his reflection in the mirror, running his fingers over the bristly moustache he’d started a few days before. Quickly his hand moved to the light switch, snapping the bathroom into darkness. He found his way back to the bed and stretched out on the mattress with his eyes open.

  Roebuck already had his pants on the next morning, and was struggling into his boots, when Ellie awoke and sat straight up in bed. She turned her tousled head as if to bring the strange room into perspective and then stared at him with sleep-puffed eyes.

  “How come you’re getting dressed so early?”

  Roebuck said nothing, finished putting on his boots and stood.

  “Where are you going, Lou?” She asked the question as if she knew the answer, only wanted him to say it if he must.

  “To give myself up.”

  She looked at him as if he’d hurt her. “Are you joking?”

  “I’ve been joking all my life.”

  “Well, this one isn’t funny, Lou. You better not do what you said. The best you’ll get is life in prison. They might even give you death, let you sit in a cell for months and then strap you into the chair, electrocute you!” She scooted back to lean against her pillow. “You can’t mean what you say!”

  Roebuck buttoned his shirt.

  “Why do you want to, Lou? Are you tired?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe I just want to balance the scales on myself.”

  “Don’t talk crap! Nothing can change the fact you’re a murderer! Your chancing death in the electric chair won’t change that!”

  “It will to me. I can see what I am, and I can do something about it.”

  “You can’t!” He was almost finished dressing and she was getting frantic. “You’ll be sorry after you do it! You know you will!”

  He moved toward the door.

  “Don’t be an ass, Lou! Nothing can make up for what you did! Nothing!”

  Roebuck hesitated, and then he turned to face her. He began walking toward the bed and he saw the fear rise in her like a bloated corpse rising to the surface of smooth water. “If I’m what you say I am,” he said in an even voice, “if I really can’t do anything about what I am and will be, then I ought to kill you.”

  Ellie’s mouth opened as his hands clamped about her slender neck, blocking her breath. Roebuck stared down at her, digging his thumbs into the warm flesh of her throat, feeling the rush of her pulse beneath them. He hadn’t intended to kill her when he’d walked to the bed; he’d only wanted to frighten her. He tried to think, tried to loosen his grip, but he had to listen to the old, old voices in his blood, the voices that whispered to kill.

  He watched as her complexion changed to red, then a mottled purple.

  When her eyelids began to flutter Roebuck jerked his hands away, and Ellie fell back onto the bed. She lay staring up at him, taking great gasps as if she were trying to eat the air.

  “You don’t like to admit it!” Roebuck screamed hoarsely. “You don’t like to admit you can do something about yourself! That’s the truth you’re running away from!”

  He didn’t look back at her as he walked out the door.

  Roebuck was more sure of himself than he’d ever been in his life. He knew what he should do, must do, would do! He had reality by the balls!

  The people in the room next to them had heard and were looking out through the blinds, and toward the motel office a man was standing staring down that way. Roebuck didn’t give a damn. He strode to the car and got in, slamming the door. He looked about him as he twisted the ignition key. The morning was new and clear and beautiful. Beneath the glistening yellow hood the engine caught the firs
t time, and Roebuck pulled out onto the mountain highway.

  It was a winding road, a steep road that arced down the mountain in great sweeping spirals. Roebuck hadn’t driven very far on it when he looked into the rear view mirror and saw the car behind him. The car was big and shining black, of a make he didn’t recognize.

  Fear went through Roebuck like a blade of ice. “Oh, Christ!” he whispered.

  Behind the windshield of the dark car two round lenses caught the glint of sunlight and shot it at Roebuck like sparks of rifle fire. The car was close enough for him to see the square, hard features of Benny Gipp quite clearly.

  Roebuck twisted the wheel, taking a curve with squealing tires as he almost brushed the wooden guard rail that marked an endless fall. The rhythm of his hammering heart beat in his ears. Had Roebuck’s own new self double-crossed him? Had he not fantasized a vengeful and pursuing Gipp, or was he fantasizing him now? Had Gipp really been after him all along, waiting his chance to get him alone? Reality had broken out of Roebuck’s world of fantasy.

  Roebuck was speeding as fast as he dared now down the winding mountain road—faster than he dared! The black car maintained exactly the same speed, the same distance behind him, as if they were two toy cars, one trailing the other by a piece of string. “Oh, Christ!” Roebuck said aloud, squirming in his seat. He could smell the Mercury’s brakes burning as he rode the pedal to make the twisting, dangerous turns, taking panicky glances in the mirror to see the big car still near his bumper, Gipp’s shining spectacles still aiming rays of light at him. And strangely, even when the steep and winding road took them away from the sun, the lenses still seemed to catch the brilliant light.

  Roebuck screamed in fright as he lost control for a second and the car careened off the wall of the mountain, bouncing chunks of rock down the road in front of him. “Oh, Christ!” He struggled over the steering wheel, whipping the car back to the center of the road with a screech of rubber, just ticking the guard rail on the other side. His speed was building, and still the black car kept pace, turning smoothly, not even leaning on the curves. The steering wheel, hot and slippery from perspiration, was vibrating in Roebuck’s clenched hands and the distant horizon was rotating madly before him as he pressed down even harder on the accelerator with his right foot, trying to stay on the road by slamming at the brake with his left. Again he crashed into the side of the mountain, sparks flying from the crumpled yellow metal. The car rocked, jolted him from side to side, and in the rear view mirror he caught a glimpse of the black car still speeding smoothly behind him as if riding a cushion of air. He screamed again, not even hearing himself over the roaring engine and screeching tires.