Bad Desire

by Devon, Gary;

  “No, Sheila, come—”

  The cedar boughs whipped round her as she fled toward home. After a moment, even they denied that she had been there; the boughs were standing motionless, very full and very green.

  It was almost six-thirty when the Jeep shot down the interstate, still headed out of town. Turning under the high trestles of the Bay Court exit, he again drove inland—the highway quickly becoming a narrower, secondary road running beside a freshwater stream.

  The valley was burnished with purple shadow that evening. The setting sun cast the fields and wooded foothills in a rich, warm chiaroscuro. Long tree shadows lay across the road like bars and the Jeep ran smoothly through them, the light beating against the windshield in deep flickers. Once this road had been featured on scenic maps; the countryside was scattered with remnants of that other time—a caved-in souvenir shack, a crumbling drive-in restaurant. Slater passed by filling stations without signs or pumps. Now they were enclosed by fences; the landscape had reverted to pasture. Grazing sheep and goats wandered through the forgotten buildings.

  Fifteen miles from Rio Del Palmos stood the remains of an abandoned almond grove. Many of the trees were dead—blackened twigs exposed to the wind—the rest would bear some leaves, nothing more. At an opening in the barbed-wire fence, the Jeep turned in on an old grassy trail, followed it for a hundred yards and dropped from sight over a rise. What was left of the trail, on the backside of the slope, curved down to a stream that ran in the crease between hills.

  The draw was badly overgrown. Among chaparral and a stand of ancient oaks lay an old homesteader’s spread. Only three of the buildings still stood: the house, a barn beyond repair and the stable that Slater had converted to a garage. At the edge of the yard where the stream ran past, someone long ago had built a dam, creating a deep rock pool, edged with sun-bleached boulders.

  After searching for nearly a year, Slater had discovered the place last summer during a long Sunday afternoon hike. He had been attracted to the rock pool and the blind privacy of the place. Using an assumed name, he had purchased the property from the absentee owner, who was living in Hawaii. The transaction had been arranged by telephone through a rural real estate agent, the check drawn on Slater’s own secret account at a Vandalia bank. He came here when he could get away in the evenings or on weekends and worked at fixing up the old house. No one knew this place was his, not even his wife.

  Skirting the dirt driveway, he pulled the Jeep around to the back and entered the stable by the new overhead door. Once inside, he hit the button to shut the door, and the gloom closed around him. It was like a place under the sea, the dwindling sunlight filtering through chinks in the siding. Next to him, in the dimness, sat a brightly polished, navy blue Cadillac Eldorado.

  Slater got out of the Jeep and flipped on the single light bulb over the workbench, checking to see that the place hadn’t been broken into. He always looked, first, against the wall under the old workbench, at the steamer trunk that had been his father’s in the Korean War. Locked with a padlock and covered with cobwebs, the trunk contained nothing of value—only the little that remained of Slater’s young life. There were no pictures in it, not even a picture postcard of the Peabody mine, and he sometimes wished there had been a few pictures left of his Ma and Dad. He had never opened it. The trunk was still the way he had packed it when he was nineteen, with his father’s hard hat and his own, the carbide lanterns, the pickaxes and lunch pails and the borrowed books on chemistry and electrical engineering that Slater had poured over at night, trying to win a scholarship and improve his lot. It was in January when the morning crew hit methane gas, thirty men dead at twelve hundred feet, including Joseph Slater, his father. Ruled to be unsafe by the courts, the mine was sealed, his mother dead of heartbreak before the following spring. That’s when Henry Lee Slater packed the trunk. He had taken it with him everywhere he had gone, storing it in depots and train stations, never wanting to open it. No one knew that it was always with him. It was a part of his life he found no reason to talk about.

  Satisfied that nothing had been disturbed, Slater opened the back of the Eldorado, where a second set of clothes was laid out: a dark blue suit, a clean white shirt, a red silk tie, black oxfords, black socks.

  He tossed his plain blue baseball cap into the Jeep and went through the tack room to the small bathroom, which had taken him three weekend afternoons to fix up. He flipped the light on, washed his hands and returned to the opened trunk of the car. Taking his wallet and some change from his pockets, he quickly undressed, stripping off his gray sweatshirt and faded blue jeans. Leaning against the massive fender, he removed his running shoes and athletic socks one foot at a time and replaced them with the black socks and shoes. He gathered the old clothes up in a bundle, dropped them into the back of the Jeep and locked it.

  By the time he took up the finer clothes, his manner had begun to change. He dressed carefully, buttoning the small white buttons on his chest and wrists, lifting the pant legs off the floor and drawing them over the strong articulations of muscle, the fine black hair of his legs. He set the clasp on his waist, pulled the smooth zipper up, the belt already run through the loops, slipped into place in the buckle. Returning the wallet and change to his pockets, he picked up the red silk tie, and when he turned a second time toward the tiny bathroom, his stride was solemn and solid.

  The bathroom mirror was lodged in a frame of hammered tin. He stood before it, looping the red tie around his neck, tying it and then folding the collar down, leaving only the knot visible in the immaculate white wedge at the hollow of his throat. Slater was critically aware of how he looked, wanting to give the impression of power and mystery when he spoke later this evening. He flipped off the bathroom light, took the suit jacket from the trunk of the Eldorado and slipped it on.

  At forty-three, Henry Lee Slater was very much a man in his prime, a dark, good-looking man with gray eyes that were unfaltering. He credited his Irish ancestry for his full head of black hair, his good cheekbones, his bony Celtic nose and for the music he could bring to his voice. Now fully clothed, he had assumed the manner of a man armored in principle and authority, a man worthy of the prominent position he held in Rio Del Palmos.

  He slammed the trunk lid shut and stood listening to the night outside. It was almost dark in the stable, the last scraps of light withering away. The overhead door cranked up and the glossy dark car backed out into the deep sunset.

  Not a trace of fog softened the cool May air that evening as Slater picked up the receiver from his car phone and dialed his home number. The maid answered. “Luisa,” he said, “I’m running a little behind schedule. Let me talk to Mrs. Slater.”

  “Mrs. Slater is not here,” the maid told him. “She says tell you Manuella Arturo have her baby. Very long, hard labor. Mrs. Slater goes, taking some clean things. She says you must go to meeting and she will come meet you there.”

  Slater thanked her and hung up. It wasn’t the first time this sort of thing had happened. His wife had developed the annoying habit of rearranging her schedule at the last minute. Two years ago he’d found it infuriating when she raced out the door every time the church called, always in a hurry to take care of her strays; now it was little more than an irritation. He started the car and pulled away, feeling only an abiding ambivalence: as far as he was concerned the marriage had run its course long ago. But he had to keep his feelings secret, even from her. A man in politics could never lose sight of the necessity of having a good marriage.

  Ten minutes later, he drove down the aisle of live oaks to the country club. Straight ahead, far out over the Pacific, beneath a towering bank of cloud, the sun clung to the horizon, and the bright dying light transformed the trees and the club’s compound of buildings into stark cutouts. At a distance, the steeply shadowed landscape amazed the eye with its artificiality. Everything, even a bird diving for its nest, seemed sharpened to a painful edge.

  At the parking lot entrance, he passed the large
glass-covered placard where coming events were listed. Beneath the announcement for the Early Bird Golf Tournament, he saw his name: 59TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION. MAYOR HENRY LEE SLATER, SPEAKER. The lot was filled with parked cars. He drove among them to the row nearest the clubhouse lodge and parked in the space reserved for him.

  The sun was about to go down. The light from the infinite ocean space was so brilliant and cutting that at first he didn’t see her, couldn’t differentiate her presence from the shrubbery. As he stepped out of the car, she came toward him, wearing a strapless, emerald gown set about the shoulders with a shawl of black satin. Tall and slender, she hovered on the evening air like a fantastic luna moth. Faith Slater was not a pretty woman, but she worked hard at what God had given her. Other women always remarked how striking and elegant she was.

  The silver bracelets clinked on her wrist as she lifted her hand to his cheek, kissed him and said, “I’m sorry about the mix-up. Mrs. Simms from church called me and I felt I simply had to do something.”

  “I was running late myself,” he told her. “There was something I had to do.” His hand settled comfortably on the small of her back, just above the jut of her hips, maneuvering her toward the side door where they would enter and from where he would go to the podium. “Looks like quite a crowd.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I pulled in just before you got here. I saw John and Nancy Herbert as they were going inside. They didn’t see me, thank God. It saved me the embarrassment of explaining why we’re both late. Anyway, you’ll have a good audience. We’d better hurry …”

  Faith went on talking, which was exactly what he wanted her to do, although he scarcely heard a word she said as he prepared himself to step before the large gathering of the club’s exclusive membership. Ushering Faith before him, he opened the side door for her and then stepped into the darkened vestibule himself. One of the committee women met them. “Oh, good!” she said, “you’re here.” Then she rushed to signal the woman at the podium. Catching the signal, Mrs. Harriet Vance immediately launched into her final remarks. “And now it’s my very great pleasure to introduce to you this evening a man who, in fact, needs no introduction, a man who has reshaped the nature of city government in Rio Del Palmos.”

  Faith brushed his lapels and told him to “give ’em hell,” and Henry Lee Slater strode into the floodlights toward the podium.

  Applause spread throughout the packed room. A few flashbulbs popped. A low rumbling chant began to gain definition: “SLA-TER, SLA-TER.”

  Joining in the applause, the guests of honor and the high-ranking committee women stood at their chairs on either side of the podium. Slater smiled and began to greet each of them, shaking their hands warmly. “Good evening,” he said. “Good evening, Mrs. Vance, thank you for the kind words.” And as he moved among them, going from one to the next, the memory of watching the girl walk away was fresh in him; the thought of seeing that tiny kick move through her hips quivered like a burning speck of poison in the depths of his mind.

  3

  Sheila had a campaign button with his picture printed on it that she kept in the handkerchief drawer of her bureau. The button was several months old now—she had worn it pinned to her sweater at his rallies late last fall—but the picture was still a good likeness of him. In the evening, after the dishes were done and she sprawled across her bed listening to her cassette player and talking on the telephone, she sometimes pulled the drawer open, took out the button and looked into Henry Slater’s eyes. To her, they were like the brooding eyes of a god.

  She couldn’t think of a time when she hadn’t been in love with him; she still had all the things he had given her. She remembered coming to Rio Del Palmos to live with her grandmother and how he had walked across the street toward their parked car to welcome them. It was nearly dark, crickets chirping; they had been driving since ten o’clock that morning. He came up along the passenger side of the car and looked in through her open window. “Well, Rachel,” he said, across the car’s interior, “what have we here? Is this your new boarder?” Her grandmother said, yes, it was, all the way from Farley, Nevada. He had smiled and then he had spoken directly to her, a girl ten years old. “Hi,” he said, “I’m Henry Lee Slater. We live across the street. I’ll bet your highness’d like to stretch her legs. Here, let me help you out.” He opened the car door and offered his hand and his hand was big and strong; it swallowed her fingers. “What’s your name?” he asked her and she told him it was Sheila.

  His after-shave smelled cool and fresh, she remembered, and he wore a white shirt and a dark blue necktie. Pressed into its silky material was a tiny gold clasp in the shape of an arrow. When her feet were on the ground, Sheila pointed to it. “It’s pretty,” she said. He stooped to make himself not so much taller than she was. “You mean this?” He laughed. “I’ll tell you what, you can just have it.”

  He undid the clasp while her grandmother stood behind them protesting. “Henry, you shouldn’t. Don’t give her that. You’ll spoil her.” But he placed the tiny arrow in her hand and closed her fingers over it. “There,” he said, “now it’s yours. A pretty girl like you can have anything she wants.”

  After she and her grandmother had gone inside, Sheila said, “He’s a strong man, isn’t he, Gramma?”

  Lifting the last of their suitcases to take along upstairs, Rachel looked at her and smiled. Then she said something that had stuck in Sheila’s mind ever since. “Well, I don’t know about that,” her grandmother told her. “Henry’s been a good neighbor. But, Sheila, you shouldn’t put much stock in him. There’s something about him I’ve never trusted. He’s a born salesman. Nobody loves to hear himself talk as much as Henry Slater.”

  The next year the Slaters moved to the house in the hills on the other side of town. Hidden away with the other things he had given her, Sheila still kept the little gold arrow.

  But that was seven years ago.

  Tonight through the network of bedroom telephones, the girls of Rio Del Palmos High were excitedly preparing for the Senior Prom, now barely two nights away. Sheila talked to Christy Bledsoe for nearly an hour trying to convince her that Jeremy Phalen was an acceptable prom date, even if he had waited till the very last minute to ask her. “But Christy, all of us junior girls are going with seniors. Look, if you’re still really nervous about it, I’ll talk to Denny and Tommy and you can go with us. Nobody’ll know it’s your sister’s dress. Wear that silver necklace and earrings you wore to church that time. You’ll be a smash.”

  “Wouldn’t that be too casual?”

  “With that formal?” Sheila advised her. “Are you kidding?”

  Among the clutter of books and papers, the brooding eyes on the campaign button drilled into Sheila as she talked. “I know he wants to go out with you, Christy. He told me so.”

  Minutes later, she hung up the telephone and again stretched out across the bed, tapping the pencil against her teeth, half-heartedly attempting to begin her last book report of the semester:

  A Thing of Beauty by A. J. Cronin is an interesting book but it took forever to read. I picked this book because I really liked The Citadel, which was on the reading list, and I wanted to try something else by Mr. Cronin, thinking it would be as good …

  She rolled over on her side.

  The way he kissed me—

  On her nightstand, she kept a cluster of photographs in a variety of frames—the one she liked the best was a blown-up snapshot, showing her with her boyfriend, Denny Rivera, their arms thrown around each other. It had been taken on the fifty-yard line the night the Panthers won the semistate. Sheila was wearing her cheerleading outfit, Denny looked ragged, but triumphant; his jersey was torn and muddied, grease smudges under his eyes … and yet, tonight, her thoughts kept straying back to the campaign button. For minutes at a time she managed to stop thinking about Henry Slater, then suddenly she was back again. Why me? she wondered. Why me? But Sheila loved meeting him in secret, loved the danger. What if someone saw us? She shi
vered.

  Digging into her pocket, she pulled out the jewel-encrusted sea horse. He’s so much smarter than I am, she kept thinking, and he’s so powerful. Once more the feeling of unreality crept over her. This’s unbelievable, Sheila thought. He’s married.

  She swung herself off the bed, took a miniature key from the drawer of her nightstand and went to her closet, leaving the door ajar for the light. Her dress shoes were stored in the original shoe boxes, neatly stacked on the floor. Dropping to her knees, she quickly and quietly set the boxes aside, exposing, behind them, an old leather-covered stationery box standing on end. Sheila took it up and leaned into the spill of light. A small metal hasp and lock held the lid snug. With a twist of the miniature key, the lock snapped open.

  The shallow box contained gold bracelets and gold chains and earrings, gold and jewelled pendants, gold pins, one set with diamonds or rhinestones—she couldn’t tell which. Some of the pieces were heavy for their size, she thought. He also had given her money from time to time, and Sheila kept it hidden here, the twenties, the five fifties, rolled very tight and held by a rubber band. “Buy yourself something pretty,” he would say. She didn’t take time to count it now, as she often did, with wonder. Tonight, she placed the sea horse among the other things, closed and locked the box and put it back, rearranging the camouflage of shoe boxes in front of it. I’d better find a new place, she thought, closing the closet door, before Gramma stumbles onto this one. She went back to her book report on the bed.

  It was after eight-thirty when Denny Rivera called.

  “Where’ve you been?” she asked him. She returned the campaign button to the handkerchief drawer and her homework to the night-stand. Then she said, softly, “Wait a minute.”

  Carrying the telephone in her left hand, Sheila walked out on the landing and listened for her grandmother’s movements downstairs. She heard nothing out of the ordinary, went back into her bedroom and quietly shut the door.