Praying for Sleep

by Deaver, Jeffrey

  He was then nearly as large as he was now, with long curly hair, Neanderthal eyebrows grown together and a round face that paradoxically seemed kind as long as he didn’t smile or laugh. When he did, his expression—in fact usually one of bewilderment—appeared to be pure malice. He had no friends.

  Michael was therefore surprised, one gray March Sunday, to hear a knock on his door. He hadn’t showered for several weeks and had been wearing the same jeans and shirt for nearly a month. No one could remember, he least of all, when he had last cleaned the room. His roommate had long ago escaped to a girlfriend’s apartment, a desertion that delighted Michael, who was certain that the student had been taking pictures of him while he slept. On this Sunday he’d spent two hours hunched over his desk, repeatedly reading T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” He found this task was like trying to read a block of wood.

  “Yo, Mike.”

  “Who is it?”

  The visitors were two students—juniors who lived in the dorm. Michael stood in the open door, gazing at them suspiciously. They smiled their clean-cut smiles and asked how he was doing. Michael stared at them and said nothing.

  “Mikey, you’re working too hard. Come on. We got a party in the rec room.”

  “Have something to eat, come on.”

  “I have to study!” he whined.

  “Naw, naw, come on. . . . Let’s party. You’re working too totally hard, man. Have something to eat.”

  Well, Michael did like to eat. He ate three big meals a day and snacked constantly. He also tended to acquiesce to people’s requests; if he didn’t—if he refused to do what they wanted—his gut erupted with fiery bursts of worry. What would they think about him? What would they say?

  “Maybe.”

  “Hey, excellent. Party down!”

  So Michael reluctantly followed the two young men down the hall toward the dorm’s common room, where a loud party was in progress. As they passed a darkened bedroom the juniors paused to let Michael precede them. They suddenly swiveled and pushed him into the room, slamming the door shut and tying it closed.

  Michael howled in panic, tugging furiously at the knob. He stumbled, looking unsuccessfully for a light. He stormed to the window, ripped down the shade and was about to break the glass and jump forty feet to the grass lawn when he noticed the room’s other occupant. He’d seen her at one or two parties. She was an overweight freshman with a round face and curly hair cut very short. She had thick ankles and wore a dozen bracelets around her pudgy wrists. The girl was passed-out drunk, lying on the bed, skirt up to her waist. She wore no panties. Her hand held a glass that contained the dregs of orange juice and vodka. She had apparently regained consciousness long enough to vomit then passed out again.

  Michael leaned close and studied her. Instantly, the sight of her genitals (his first glimpse of female private anatomy) and the smell of liquor and puke sent him into paroxysms of fear. He screamed at the insensible girl, “What are you doing to me?” Then he flung himself into the door again and again, the huge noise resounding throughout the dormitory. In the hallway outside, laughter pealed. Michael fell back onto the bed, hyperventilating. Claustrophobia clutched him and sweat flowed from every pore. A moment later his mind mercifully shut down and his vision went black. The next thing he remembered was the cruel grip of two security guards, brutally pulling him to his feet. The now-conscious girl, tugging down her skirt, was screaming. Michael’s pants were undone and his limp penis hung out, cut and bloodied by the zipper of his trousers.

  Michael recalled nothing of what had happened. The girl claimed she had just gone to bed, having caught the flu. She’d opened her eyes and found Michael spreading her legs and penetrating her violently, despite her desperate protests. Police were called, parents notified. Michael spent the night in jail, under the cautious eye of two very uncomfortable deputies, unprepared for a prisoner who glared at them and threatened to make them “dead fuckers” if they didn’t bring him a history book from his room.

  The evidence was in conflict. Although there were traces of three different condom lubricants found in and around the girl’s vagina, Michael wasn’t wearing a condom when the guards captured him nor were any located in the room. The defense lawyer’s tack was that the girl herself had lifted Michael’s penis from his jeans and alleged rape, rather than admit that she’d taken on a succession of students after drinking herself semiconscious—a theory that, while politically incorrect, might very well have appealed to the jury.

  On the other hand there were several purported witnesses to the crime, including the girl herself. Then too Michael had threatened or glared at half the campus at one time or another—particularly women.

  But the most damning evidence of all: Michael Hrubek himself—a big, scary boy, more than twice the girl’s size, who’d been caught, the prosecutor was only too pleased to point out, with his pants down. Nailing shut his own coffin, Michael grew incoherent after the incident and began to mutter violent epithets. Taking the stand in court would have been a disaster. The lawyer pled him down to one count of sexual assault and he was given probation on condition that he withdraw from school and voluntarily commit himself to a state hospital near his home, where he’d undergo a treatment program for violent sex offenders.

  After six months he was discharged from the hospital and returned to his parents’ home.

  Once he was back in Westbury, reason and madness rapidly began to merge. One day, the autumn after the rape, Michael announced to his mother that he wanted to return to college. He added, “I’m only going to take history. They better let me do that. Oh, and I want to become a priest. I’m not going to study anything else. No math, no English, no al-ge-bra! Just fucking forget about it! I’m only going to study history.”

  His bleary-eyed mother, lolling in her unmade bed, her blond hair stiff as straw, laughed in astonishment at his demands. “Go back to college? Are you serious? Look what you did! Do you know what you did to that girl?”

  No, Michael didn’t know what he’d done. He had no idea. All he remembered was some girl lying about him and because of that he’d been forced to abandon his precious history classes. “She’s a fucker! She lied! Why can’t I go back? Aren’t I fashionable enough to go to school? Well, aren’t I? Priests are very fashionable. Someday I’ll write a his-tory about them. They often fuck little boys, you know.”

  “Go to your room!” his mother tearfully shouted, and he—a man in his twenties, a man twice her size—scurried off like a whipped dog.

  Often he’d whine, “Please? I want to go back to school!” He promised to study hard and become one fucker of a priest to make her happy. He said he’d wear a crown of thorns on his bloody head and make people rise from their graves.

  “Jesus wore thorns because He rose from the dead,” he explained one day to her. “That’s why roses have thorns.”

  “I’m going out, Michael,” she would cry.

  “Are you go-ing to run away from me? Where are you go-ing? To al-ge-bra class? Are you going to wear a bra while a priest fucks you?”

  His mother left the house. She no longer called him her little soldier boy. She no longer had nails as red as burning cigarette embers, and the masks of her eyes often ran in streaks down the matte skin of her cheeks.

  Oh, Mama, what are you wearing? Take that hat off your head. Take off that crown. All those bloody thorns! I don’t like that, not one bit. Please! I’m sorry for what I said about you and the soldiers. Please, please, please, take that off!

  It was an extremely agitated Michael Hrubek who, upon this damp night in November, bicycled doggedly down Route 236 at twenty miles an hour, lost in these hard memories—which was why he didn’t hear the police car, dark and silent, until it was within ten feet of the bike’s rear wheel. The lights and siren burst to life.

  “Oh God oh God oh God!” Hrubek screamed. Panic exploded throughout his body.

  A voice came over the loudspeaker, jarring as a firecracker
. “You there! Stop that bicycle and get off.” A spotlight was trained on the back of Hrubek’s head.

  John Cops! he thought. Agents! FBI! Hrubek coasted to a stop and the deputies stepped from their squad car.

  “Just climb off that, young man.”

  Hrubek swung awkwardly off the bike. The men cautiously approached. One whispered, “He’s a mountain. He’s huge.”

  “All right there. Could we see some identification?”

  Fucking fucker conspirators, Hrubek thought. Politely he asked, “Are you federal agents?”

  “Agents?” One of them chuckled. “No, we’re just police officers. From Gunderson.”

  “Step over here, sir. You have a driver’s license?”

  Hrubek sat down, his back to the officers, and bowed his head.

  The policemen looked at each other, wondering how they might deal with this. Hrubek upped the ante by crying out, “I’m soooo upset! He took everything. He hit me on the head with a rock. Look at my hand.” He held up his scraped palm. “I’ve been look-ing for help.”

  They continued forward but stopped a safe distance away. “Somebody attacked you, you say? Are you hurt? If you could just let us see some ID.”

  “Is it him?” one asked.

  “We just want to see some identification, sir. A driver’s license. Anything.”

  “He took my wallet. He took everything.”

  “You’ve been robbed?”

  “There were several of them. Took my wallet and my watch. That watch,” Hrubek reported solemnly, “was a present from my mother. If you’d watched the roads better, you might’ve prevented a serious crime.”

  “I’m sorry if you’ve had some misfortune, sir. Could you give us your name and address. . . .”

  “John W. Booth is my name.”

  “Didn’t think it was that,” one cop said to the other, as if speaking in front of an infant.

  “Don’t recall. The notice said he’s harmless.”

  “May be, but he’s big.”

  One cop walked closer to Hrubek, who rocked and moaned in mournful tears. “We’d appreciate you standing up, Johnnie, just coming over to the car. People at the hospital’re worried about you. We want to take you back there.” In a singsong voice he added, “Wouldn’t you like to go home? Get some pie and milk maybe? Some nice apple pie?” He stood behind Hrubek, training his flashlight on the man’s empty hands then shining it again on the back of the glossy and somewhat blue head.

  “Thank you, sir. You know, I would like to be getting back, now that you mention it. I miss the place.” Hrubek turned and grinned amiably as he reached up very slowly to shake the officer’s hand. The policeman too smiled—in curiosity at the young man’s sincere gesture—and gripped Hrubek’s meaty fist, realizing too late that the madman was intending to break his wrist. The bone snapped and, shrieking, the officer dropped to his knees, the flashlight falling onto the ground beside him. His partner reached for his gun but Hrubek had already trained the stolen Colt on him.

  “Nice try,” he announced with damp lips that pulled into a wry smile. “Drop that, drop that!”

  The cop did. “Oh, Jesus.”

  Hrubek took the injured cop’s gun from his holster and tossed it away. The man huddled on the ground, cradling his wrist.

  “Look, fellow,” his partner pled, “you’re going to get in nothing but trouble over this.”

  Hrubek chewed on a fingernail then he looked down at the cops. “You can’t stop me. I can do it. I’m going to do it, and I’m going to do it quickly!” These words rose like a mad battle cry. He shook a fist above his head.

  “Please, young man, put that gun down.” The injured policeman’s voice broke and his eyes and nose dripped pitifully. “Nothing serious’s happened. Nobody’s been really hurt yet.”

  Hrubek turned a triumphant eye on him. He spat out, “Oh, nice try, John Cop. But that’s where you’re wrong. Everybody’s been hurt. Everybody, everybody, everybody! And it’s not over yet.”

  Owen Atcheson parked his truck along Route 236 next to a large, freshly turned field about seven miles west of the high rock overlook where he’d located Hrubek’s nest. As anticipated, he’d found deep indentations of footsteps, indicating Hrubek was moving parallel to the road. From the depth and spacing of the toe prints it was clear he was moving fast, running.

  Owen stopped at a closed gas station and used the pay phone to call the Marsden Inn. The clerk told him that Mrs. Atcheson and her sister had called and said they’d be delayed some. They hadn’t checked in yet.

  “Delayed? Did they say why?”

  “No, sir, they didn’t. Is there any message?”

  Owen debated. He thought of trying to encode a message for her: Tell her the visitor’s heading west but she’s not to call anyone about it. . . . But there was too much risk that the clerk would be suspicious or get the message wrong.

  Owen said, “No, I’ll try them at home.”

  But there was no answer at the house. Just missed them, he thought. He’d call them at the Inn later.

  The night was very dark now, the cloud cover complete, the air growing colder, compressing around him. He used his flashlight sparingly, only when he thought he saw a clue and even then lowering the light almost to the ground before clicking it on, to limit the radiation of the light. He then moved on—but slowly, very slowly. Every soldier knows—as between the hunter and the hunted, the prey has the vastly greater advantage.

  Owen fell several times, catching his boot on a fence wire or forsythia tendril. He went down hard, always rolling and absorbing the impact with his shoulder and sides, never risking breaking a finger or wrist. He saw no more traps. Only at one point did Owen despair. The trail vanished completely. This happened in a vast grassy field, twenty acres square and bordered on all sides with dense woods. Owen was two hundred yards from Route 236. He stood in the center of this field and looked around him. The field extended through a break in the long line of rocky hills and offered an easy route south toward train tracks and more populated parts of the county. Freight trains came through here regularly and it was conceivable that Hrubek had leapt onto one. Or maybe he’d simply continued through the notch in the hills south toward Boyleston, a town that had both Amtrak and Greyhound stations.

  Losing hope, Owen moved aimlessly through the grass, pausing to listen for footsteps, and hearing only owls or distant truck horns or the eerie white noise of an expansive autumn night. After ten minutes of meandering he noticed a glint coming from a line of trees west of him. He headed instinctively toward it. At the grove of maples he went into a crouch and moved slowly through a cluster of saplings until he came to a break in the foliage. With his gun he pushed aside a bough of dew-soaked hemlock, inhaling in surprise as drops of water fell with chill pinpricks on his neck and face.

  Walking in slow circles around the old MG, Owen studied the ground. He kicked aside a white animal skull. He recognized it instantly as a ferret’s. There were dozens of footprints and tire prints covering the asphalt and the shoulder. Some seemed to be Hrubek’s but they were largely obliterated by people who had been here after him. He saw dog prints too and wondered momentarily if the trackers had learned that Hrubek was going west. But there was evidence of only one animal, not the three that he’d seen pursuing Hrubek from the site of his escape.

  He circled the car again, weaving over the shoulder and through the bushes nearby. No sign of Hrubek’s prints in any direction. Hands on hips, he glanced at the car once more. This time he noticed the bike rack but then he immediately dismissed the idea that Hrubek had stolen a cycle. What kind of escapee, he reasoned, would make a getaway on a bike, riding down open highways?

  But wait. . . . Michael Hrubek was a man whose madness had its own logic. A bicycle? Why not? Owen examined the road around the car and found faint tread marks, rather wide ones—either balloon tires or those of a bike ridden by a heavy cyclist. He glanced back at the car. The carrier rack seemed broken as if the bike had be
en removed by sheer force.

  Owen continued to follow the tread marks. At the intersection of this country lane and Route 236 he found where the rider had paused, perhaps debating which way to go.

  He was not surprised to find, beside the tread, the clear imprint of Hrubek’s boot.

  Nor was he surprised to find that the rider had decided to turn west.

  15

  The house was little more than a shotgun cabin at the end of a dirt-and-rock road winding through this scruffy forest. The BMW squealed to a stop in a rectangle of mud amid discarded auto parts, sheet metal, termite-chewed firewood and oil drums torch-cut as if someone had intended to make a business of manufacturing barbecues but gave up after running out of acetylene, or desire.

  Richard Kohler climbed out of the car and walked to the cabin. Rubbing his deep-set red eyes with a scrawny knuckle, he knocked on the screen door. No answer, though he heard the tinny, cluttered sound of a TV from inside. He rapped again, louder.

  When the door opened he smelled liquor before he smelled wood smoke, and there was a lot of wood smoke to smell.

  “Hello, Stuart.”

  After a long pause the man responded, “Didn’t expect to see you. Guess I might’ve. Raining yet? It’s supposed to be a son-of-a-bitch storm.”

  “You mind if I come in for a few minutes?”

  “My girlfriend, she’s out tonight.” Stuart Lowe didn’t move from the doorway.

  “It won’t take long.”

  “Well.”

  Kohler stepped past the orderly and into the small living room.

  The couch was draped with two blankets and had the appearance of a sickbed. It was an odd piece of furniture—bamboo frame, cushions printed with orange and brown and yellow blotches. It reminded Kohler poignantly of Tahiti, where he’d gone on his honeymoon. And where he’d gone after his divorce, which had occurred thirty-three months later. Those two weeks represented his only vacations in the last seven years.