On the Run

by John D. MacDonald

  He had taken a direct jet flight to Idlewild and had flown from there back to Syracuse on Mohawk Airlines. At the Syracuse Airport he had picked up the rental car he had arranged for, a big convertible. It had turned out to be a yellow one. He was not displeased. He had arrived just at dusk.

  Before leaving, once he knew his schedule, he had asked Sad Frank Lesca to give him the right name in Syracuse. Frank had looked it up and phoned a man named Casey Stoker. When he was in the hotel, he phoned Stoker’s number. Stoker didn’t want to be friendly. He sounded bored. Lesca had told him it wasn’t a business trip. Stoker sent him to a place called Hill Haven, told him to ask for Sam. He left the rental car and took a cab. It was a four dollar fare. Sam was bored too. These people seemed indifferent to the west coast operation. When he tried to talk about his places, Sam yawned in his face. But the action was good. The tab was on the house, at least for drinks and dinner. Good drinks. Fine steaks. The girl arrived before he had finished his second drink. He’d told Sam something not too young, slim and dark and small, maybe, with a little class, but not so much class she couldn’t laugh a little. And for all night.

  She went by initials. T.C. Everybody called her TeeCee. She had a cute little face and a big pile of dark hair, and a hard narrow little dancer’s body. She had a small scar on the bridge of her nose, and gold way back in her mouth when she laughed. She got the money part out of the way real quick, so that it was snapped away into the purse, over and done with so they could forget it. My God, she went through that steak like Sonny Liston. She was a happy kid. She told her troubles and turned them into jokes. She’d been a dancer, gone out to the coast, married a stunt man. After being paid to fall off horses and buildings, he’d fallen off a curb for free, dead drunk, cracking his spine. No insurance. No compensation. They had a three year old kid named Joy. After trying everything else, she’d finally started hustling, got hooked up with a pretty good call circuit. Good protection. The spine was damaged so high up, the husband’s health was shaky. And brooding about how she was making a living didn’t help him much. When Joy was five, the stunt man died of pneumonia. She quit the business and came back to Syracuse. Joy was nine now. A cute kid. They lived with her mother. TeeCee worked days as a receptionist. She hadn’t expected to go back to hustling. But, you know, you get bored. And she ran into an old friend. And then she got lined up with Sam. Really sort of part time. A couple of tricks a week. No slobs and no drunks and no creep routines. Sort of dates.

  After the steaks they went back to where the games were. Sam cleared him. He bought a hundred of chips and split with TeeCee. She liked craps. It was easy to see which way they were swinging the game, and he coached her to go with it until she started getting a little too fat, and then he cashed her out with two hundred clear. They were giving him a cold eye, so he put his fifty on the come line and let them take it. He took his fifty back from TeeCee, and without being asked, she cut the two hundred down the middle. He liked that. It showed a nice instinct.

  They had vodka stingers out at the bar and taxied back to his hotel. She was a good hard worker, but something about her kept cooling him off. When it was finished off, he turned another light on and rolled her over and looked at what had kept taking his mind off it, a whole spidery mess of narrow little white scars and old welts that striped her narrow back and her hard little butt. It made his stomach feel funny. She started snuffling even before he could ask her about it.

  “It was my hus-hus-husband,” she said. “He was in that wheel chair I bought him and he was s-still real strong in the arms. And I’d come back from a t-trick and he’d cry and say terrible stinking things to me and say he was going to kill himself. And the only thing I could do that would help him, I’d strip and bite down on a towel or something and get braced good, and he’d whip me bloody. Sometimes I’d pass out. We tried not to make too much noise and wake the kid. Afterwards, he’d put stuff on my back, and I’d help him into bed, and he’d hold me and we’d both cry on account of what had become of us. You see, angel, it was the only thing in the world I could do for him. It was the only way he could feel like a man, the poor son of a bitch. It should have killed him quick when he fell onto that curb, not slow like it did. I can’t wear low backs on anything.”

  “You poor kid,” he said. “You poor kid.” He turned the light off and held her close and patted her until she was able to have a nice cry.

  When she was over it, she said, “Well, he used to knock me around some before he got hurt. You want we should sleep a little now?”

  So together they slept in the cold rackety breath of the compressors, his arm across a body as narrow as Liz’s had once been, his face nuzzled into the back of the lean striated shoulder, her dark hair spilled, the light of the far lamp golden across them, lost to each other on the far side of their dreams. And should he awaken, she would come back from her sleep to meet her obligation, making for him a sinewy diligence, manufacturing her obligatory cries of acclaim, falsifying her pleasure, while she wondered if her mother would remember to call the man to fix the dishwasher first thing in the morning, wondered if Joy was getting enough out of her dancing class this year, wondered if the blue blouse would be all right for the office if she turned the collar.

  In the second floor bedroom on the southwest corner of the old Brower house, in all the sweetness of the country night, in the soft center hollow of the old bed, the lovers lay entwined, murmurous and enchanted, their hearts slowed for so long that the nostalgia of their caresses was beginning to turn upon a promised edge of new urgency. The electronic heart thumped, reminding them of mortality, making love more sweet.

  She caught his hand and kissed the palm of it, placed it carefully back where it had been and said, “Like those people in the geometry problems, the ones that live on the surface of the paper, and all they can go is sideways. We’re that way about time. There’s only now.”

  “Two tenses. Now and soon.”

  “Don’t talk about any other kind of time. We have a comparative tense though, don’t we?” She nuzzled his throat. “Better. We don’t have good, better, best. We just have better, better, better. We’re very limited people, Sid.”

  “Caught in a rut.”

  “You mean in rut. No. That was coarse and vulgar and wicked. I’m no lady.”

  “Don’t you swoon? Ladies swoon.”

  “You keep doing that, boyo, and you’ll see a swoon, believe me. Sid?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Should I … should I try to be a little more passive?”

  “Nobody tries to be anything. We just are. No fakes in the group.”

  Suddenly she was tense and still. “Listen!” she whispered. “Listen to Tom.”

  He held his breath to sharpen his hearing.

  “Can you hear how it’s different?” she asked.

  “The heart is the same, but the breathing isn’t as regular.”

  “That means he’s awake. I better go down and see if he needs anything.” She left him. He saw her as a pale blur, moving. He heard the creak of a floor board and the slither of fabric as she put her robe on. “Don’t move,” she whispered. “Take a nap. Rest yourself.”

  He heard the door open and close. In a minute or two the speaker made a rusty braying sound that made him jump. He turned it down, and it picked up Tom’s voice perfectly. “… materialize like a damned witch.”

  “All you have to do is think of me and here I am.” Her voice was fainter, but he could hear her clearly.

  “I was thinking of you, my dear.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “No. You can sit close and hold my hand and listen to me.”

  “Wisdom out of the night?”

  “Even with old eyes and a tiny light, you’re beautiful tonight, Paula.”

  “Flattery will get you somewhere, sir.”

  “Flushed and tousled and beautiful and in a sweet daze of love, ever since you got back.”

  “Oh come now!”

&
nbsp; “Protestations ring strangely false, my dear. When you were both in here this afternoon, your awareness of each other was almost tangible. I should be glad, you know. He is my grandson. I am very fond of you.”

  “Then be glad.”

  “I’m a sick old man, but I’m not a foolish old man.”

  “That’s a strange thing to say!”

  Sid reached to turn the intercom speaker off, touched the knob, pulled his hand back. If she wanted it off, certainly there was some way she could disconnect it at that end.

  “Strange? That is a very guarded young man. That is a very secret and private and controlled and watchful young man.”

  “I love him, Tom.”

  “Ah, that solves everything, of course. You lean out of your bower and sprinkle him with rose petals, and a thousand violins play.”

  “Why are you being so nasty?”

  “If he did not have to run, everything would be totally wonderful. Is that what you think? Your love flows one way and mends all. Yes, I’m being nasty. I’m trying to make you think. Sidney is considerably more complex than you care to believe. Is he capable of love? Can he accept love? Can he believe himself worth love? What makes you so certain he is not an emotional cripple, Paula, incapable of love because it was never given to him? If he cannot, in his heart of hearts, truly believe that anyone can love him, then he can not give love. He can only imitate.”

  “What makes you so damned certain of everything?”

  “My dear, a man running will try to find a hiding place where he can fulfill his own needs. And this man, this grandson of mine, has not only been hiding from the Florida villain, he has hidden from any significant demand on his abilities or upon his emotions.”

  “He couldn’t afford that!”

  “It would be a drive he couldn’t avoid, if he was a whole man. Do you know how I know these things, really? Because I was never a whole man. I could not love. I could never put enough value on myself to be able to give love. I drove my daughter away. I substituted pride and coldness and intelligence for a warm heart. And would rather have had the warm heart than anything in the world. You have the warm heart, my dear. You have all the giving. You accept life. He rejects it. As he has been rejected. His mother rejected him by dying. I rejected him by letting him be taken away from here. His father rejected him by not loving him. His brother rejected him. His wife rejected him, brutally. And no matter how hard he tries to believe in your love, in the back of his mind he is preparing himself for you to reject him too.”

  “No!”

  “So he will try to save the hurt by rejecting you first. He’ll tell himself it’s to keep from hurting you. But hurt you in that way.”

  “I’m making no claim on him, Tom. None.”

  “You fool girl, love is the only claim worth adult attention. Your man is lean and decorative. Your man is dramatic. Your man is intelligent. But he is emotionally immature. Incurably. Root him out from behind the wall where he now hides, and he’ll dodge behind the next one. And then the next. Your love, unreturned, will not be reinforced, and cannot grow. Now don’t argue with me. Talk to him. Question him. Observe him. All I’ve done is open your eyes. Now you may give me one of those little pills. Thank you, my dear.”

  “Why should you try to …”

  “Goodnight, my dear.”

  The speaker was silent. He turned the volume up until he could hear the sound of the heart and the soft rasp of the breath, at the same volume that she kept it. The door latch made a small sound. There was a hiss of fabric, the thud of a slipper, a tilt of the bed, and she slipped close to him and he took the warm length of her into his arms. But somehow it seemed an imitation of closeness, the ineptness of puppets.

  “You heard,” she whispered against his throat.

  “Yes.”

  “What does he know about anything?” she whispered fiercely. “What could he possibly know about us?”

  “He’s a wise man.”

  She kissed him. She gave him an irritable little shake. “We feel all dull together. What has he done to us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where are you? Where have you gone?” He could not answer her. He could not speak. She rolled up onto her elbows and looked down into his face, so close her dark hair tickled his cheek. He put his hands on her and they felt like wooden hands. “Listen to me,” she said. “Listen to me and believe me. I love you. You are worth loving. You are worthy of love.”

  “No,” he whispered.

  “You are good!”

  “I am nothing.”

  She lay upon his chest and began to cry. He held her and felt the heat of her tears and could not comfort her. He had wooden arms, quartz eyes and a paper heart, and no creature could find comfort in him. Her tears stopped. She sighed, and it was a sound to tear a paper heart. He looked down into himself, into the cave of echoes that was Sidney Shanley and he found something under the floor of the cave. He brushed the sand away with greatest care, and found a membranous thing there, a toughened, leathery, forgotten thing. It pulsed slightly and imperceptibly, and he pulled at it with every effort of his will. Nothing changed for a long time. And then he saw that it had begun to bulge a little more with each pulsation. With jaw and fists clenched and eyes rolled inward, he stretched the leathery carapace until it was so swollen it filled the cave. He held the woman, and called upon God, and took a deep breath, and the dark and hardened thing burst within him. His jaw creaked, and acid spurted into his eyes, and he shifted the woman and rocked his iron face against her breasts and gave a great strangling guffaw of his agony. It was all there at once—a room that smelled sick and her face like candles—she’s gone boy—Jane crying as the man knocked her down—and the dazing chunk of fist against his head—Thelma’s eyes rolling, and the sound she made—We get fifty bucks a month for giving you board and room, kid, and keeping you busy—rolling in the wet rainy grass in the stink of his own scorched flesh. Child, boy and man, all at once, taking the agonies all at once. He held the woman and sobbed against her breasts and called to her. “Help me! My God, help me!”

  She held him and rocked him and murmured, and put her tears with his, and said, “Let it all come, my darling. All of it. All there is.”

  And after a long time he was still. The emptiness was filled with images and with things learned, but they were tangled, and it would be a long time sorting them, if ever they could be.

  His breath caught from time to time, an echo of a sob. He felt drained and weak and strangely placid. She lay beside him, her head pillowed on his shoulder. He touched her brows and her lips with his fingertips. “I love you,” he said in a harsh and effortful whisper.

  “Yes.”

  “I can love you. I won’t be so good at it. But I do. I can. I can make it good. I can stay with it. I’ll want to run.”

  “I won’t let you.”

  “Whatever happens, you’ll be a part of it. Whatever my life is, it will be with you.”

  “I know.”

  “And you might regret …”

  “Hush!” she said. “I am part of you. You are part of me. I’m worth only as much as you are.”

  He kissed her hair. “That old man,” he said.

  “Wrong, wrong, wrong.”

  “Right and wrong.”

  She stretched luxuriantly against him. “But look at us now. No more dull. All the little nerves reaching. Alive but weary, huh? Let’s sleep, my love.”

  “Yes indeed.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, Paula.”

  The goodnight kiss was a caress. And in the process of settling themselves for sleep there were further small caresses. And small excuses for just one more. And another. And it became, in a drowsy way, interrogation and response. A reply and a new question. Another settling, an effort of will, a few innocent slynesses, until finally she laughed softly and turned toward her acceptance of an obviousness and said, “This time sweet and soft and slow and lazy, with time for jokes
and wise sayings and protestations of love, and let me be in charge. Like so. And thus. Because you are my man, and I adore you.”

  nine

  The old man in the gas station told George Shanley how to find the Brower house. It was two o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. He drove slowly east in the big yellow convertible with the top down, through a tunnel of elm trees, the car radio loud. He wore big dark glasses, and he looked at the tall frame houses of earlier times. A dead place, he thought. A hick operation. The big action is bingo in the church basement.

  The Brower place was the one with the iron fence across the front. He turned into the driveway and stopped by the side, near the walk. He turned the car off and got out and stared at the house, feeling disappointed. The yard was in good shape, but the house needed work. It looked as if you could shake it and carved pieces would fall off. The ride up had blown away the last symptoms of mild hangover, but he still felt depressed. Big deal, to inherit the old barn. Who’d buy anything this far from anyplace? If the old bastard had any real money, he wouldn’t live like this. He shrugged and divided his minimum expectation by ten. So even ten grand wouldn’t be a total loss. It would be worth the trip.

  As he took his first slow steps along the walk, a woman came down the porch steps to meet him, wearing a rather formal smile. Dark-haired woman with a strong face, looking a little bit foreign somehow, lean, moving well, built pretty good, looking like class, more than you’d expect from the town and the house, wearing a light green skirt, a white sleeveless blouse, flat heels.

  “George Shanley?” she asked.

  “That’s me.”

  “I’m Paula Lettinger. We were expecting you a little sooner.”

  “I couldn’t get away as soon as I expected, then I got hung up in Syracuse. A business deal. Two birds with one stone. Did the old guy die?”

  She looked startled. “Of course not.”

  “So a little late doesn’t matter. Where do you fit the picture?”

  “I’m Mr. Brower’s special nurse.”