Meeting Evil

by Thomas Berger

  “Drive faster, John!”

  “Okay,” John said, “but this hill winds a lot. You wouldn’t want to go off the road.”

  “You’re the only one worries about that.”

  He was right. That was what made Richie so difficult to deal with. By his own implication, he had nothing to lose. John was not a stunt driver who could presumably control a car crash so that, say, only the rear half of the vehicle would be smashed. He hoped he survived the day and could get home to explain to Joanie everything he had done or not done and so understand it all himself. This was ultimately more important to him than what the authorities might make of it.

  He accelerated, and braked squealingly on the curves, but was sufficiently prudent to reach the bottom without even a close call. Woods lined the road on either side all the way down the hill, but on the level ground there was a development of high ranches that would have been within the price ranges in which he was wont to work. But not a living soul was in evidence, on this temperate afternoon, as he went speeding past with the siren and whirling red light. At such a distance he must look authentic, but it was unreasonable to believe the car could clear the roadblock with impunity. He wore a police jacket over his old work shirt, the collar of which protruded. Anyone glancing into the vehicle from close by could see Richie on the floor in back. It was likely that a gun battle would ensue, with Richie getting in the first shots and perhaps dropping more than one officer. John would be in the line of fire from the others.

  “There it is,” Richie said, peeping over the seat-back near John’s shoulder. It took another few seconds for John to recognize that the vehicles up ahead were not blocking the road so much as constricting it to half a lane. He had expected a complete obstruction and therefore was relieved yet disheartened all the same.

  “Floor it!” Richie cried gleefully, lowering himself again. He produced metallic sounds that signified he was readying his arsenal for war.

  But what could he do if, just before reaching the roadblock, John stood on the brakes, skidded wildly to a stop, hurled the door open, and rolled out? Unfortunately there was an all-too-reasonable answer: he was not skillful enough at the wheel to effect a maneuver of that kind, in a car he had not known for long. He might succeed only in killing himself. It was the habitual bad idea.

  John accelerated. The police cars grew larger in his vision. Then, simultaneously, both vehicles pulled to the respective shoulders so that he would have no impediment! He felt he had no power to do otherwise than continue at high speed, and as he passed his supposed colleagues in law enforcement, he did not dare glance at them, let alone signal.

  Richie eventually spoke from the rear. “We must have made it by now.”

  “Three-quarters of a mile back.”

  Richie rose to his knees. “Slow down and kill the siren and flasher as soon as we get past this next bend.”

  Going ninety-five with some pedal still left to go, John had become intoxicated by the speed at his command. The cruiser had a more powerful engine than any car he had ever owned, and it was ironically true that under current conditions he was not limited by traffic ordinance. He might have disregarded Richie’s instructions—for what authority could a mere passenger have, even one armed with deadly weapons?—had he not been forced by a law of nature to diminish speed as he entered the bend, which was demanding enough to hurl them against a granite embankment if the tires lost adhesion.

  “Where to now?”

  “I’m thinking,” said Richie. “Don’t ever worry about that. My mind is always working. I know you have your doubts about me, but at least give me that much credit.”

  Now that he did not need both hands for the steering wheel, John used one to adjust the police cap. The sweatband felt clammy, reminding him of the cold water he had exuded while approaching and running the roadblock, though consciously he was more frightened now than he had been then.

  He addressed Richie in the rearview mirror. “Why don’t I just pull over and give you the car and say goodbye? I’ll be on foot, so I can’t do you any damage.”

  Richie shook his head. “You’re still trying to dissociate yourself from me? After all we’ve been through? I don’t want to rub your nose in it, but legally you’re an accessory, you know. You’re a fugitive.”

  John nodded. “And impersonating a police officer, wearing his stolen uniform and driving his stolen police car. So what?”

  Richie sniffed. “They’ll throw the book at you.”

  “Let me worry about that,” said John. “Just let me go.”

  “When have I ever tried to hold you?” Richie asked. “The fact is, you might not want to think about it, high and mighty as you consider yourself, but we’ve got a lot in common, you and me, underneath it all. It just might be I’m more honest with myself than you are. I admit I wish I was more like you. I envy your way of life, wife and kids and home and all. But so do you envy me, if you would admit it. Else why did you continue to hang on with me all this while? You had plenty of chances to dispense with my company. Didn’t I tell you to go on and leave if you wanted?”

  John pulled the car onto a sandy shoulder. He really saw no purpose in trying to make a rational point with the man. “Be that as it may,” he said, struggling out of Officer Swanson’s jacket, “I’m accepting your kind offer here and now.” He left the garment on the front seat and stepped out of the car. They were on a three-lane blacktop road, flanked on either side by undeveloped land. In the distance he could see what looked like a collection of structures, perhaps the beginning of a village. He had no idea where he was now, but judging from the sun, he assumed he faced east. Home was presumably in that direction.

  Richie made a serpentine transfer of himself from back to front seat. He saluted John with two fingers to his hairline. “If that’s your pleasure,” he said. He clapped Swanson’s hat onto his head. Why it seemed to fit was a mystery: his skull obviously could not match the circumference of the cop’s or of John’s own. “Okay, John,” he said out the window as the vehicle started rolling. “I’ll be waiting at your house.” Then he violently kicked the accelerator, and the car sped away.

  John felt terror as a physical effect. He was breathing not air but an inflammable gas: his head was afire. He wanted to pursue Richie, imploring him with cries and gestures, but the police car seemed almost instantly to be so far away that its blue and white had already become the gray monochrome of distance, and he was unable to move his brittle legs at a faster pace.

  He tried to restrain his mind from attempting a rough calculation of how long it would take Richie to complete the trip compared with his own travel time in reaching the buildings ahead, among which would surely be a phone he could use to alert Joanie, but he was obsessed with the matter. Soon those elements of the state police that were searching for the farm would have to find it. A general alert would be sent out regarding the stolen police car. If Richie stayed in it, he would be apprehended long before he could drive all the way back to John’s house.

  Unless he ditched the car and stole a civilian vehicle.

  With an intensity of effort he had hitherto exerted only in bad dreams, John managed to pick up the pace to a kind of hobble, and stimulated his morale with indignation against the public: for no apparent reason, all motorists were boycotting this perfectly good road. Had one come along, he was ready to deploy his body so that the car would either have stopped or run him down. But nobody appeared during the endless march, the later phases of which were made even more unhappy by his eventual identification of the buildings as a pair of sheds in decay.

  He stumbled onward in the conviction that outbuildings were not normally placed so far from any main structure. Reason did rule, though we might not always be able immediately to understand given examples of reality. But the fact was that these sheds stood by themselves, purposelessly, monuments to the prevailing nonsense of a world in which Richie roamed with impunity.

  But then, plodding on, he saw that the road took a sw
eeping right-hand turn and a short descent, and that not a hundred yards distant was a gas station, and another on the opposite side, and a third within an eighth of a mile. Also two motels and an array of fast-food places. The rational was back in command. A six-lane limited-access motorway roared nearby. He was offered a choice of public telephones. But Richie had been presented with a means of high-speed travel.

  John limped as rapidly as he could to the nearest gas station. He was no longer alone in the universe, for all the good that any of these people could do him, but there they were. In this full-service facility, every lane was occupied by a car, and two attendants were on the pumps or cleaning windshields. Inside the open garage a mechanic examined the underparts of a vehicle high on a lift, as its probable owner paced gravely behind him.

  John found a phone in its outdoor clamshell and quickly did what was required for a collect call, but as quickly heard the busy signal.

  “Operator,” he said, “this is a serious emergency. Please break in!”

  But that functionary, a male voice, had already left the line. John was forced to repeat the earlier procedure. Now the number rang again and again, until a new and female operator informed him needlessly that it was not being answered.

  “How is that possible when a few seconds ago it was busy?”

  “They went out,” said the operator. “Or to the bathroom. Or it’s a wrong number, or was when it was supposedly busy. Want me to try again?”

  She was a decent person. “Please,” said he.

  She did it, and the line was busy once again.

  “Please cut in,” he said. “This is a terrible emergency. This is not a hoax. Lives are in danger. Get your supervisor, but hurry. Let me give you my name.…” He could not stop talking, terrified as he was by the possibility that this sensible woman might doubt his credentials—even while realizing that she had gone away.

  After a moment she was back. “No one’s speaking on that line, sir. The telephone seems to be off the hook.”

  For God’s sake, Melanie was up to her newfound trick: picking up one of the extensions and dropping it elsewhere than in its cradle. He had begged Joan to be on the constant lookout for such behavior, but no one could be so attentive at all times—hence the childproof caps on medicaments and toxic cleaning materials, annoyances to those without small kids but godsends to the harried contemporary parent, and even so, not perfect: had not a toddler on the next block from the Feltons somehow worried off the fastener of one container and swallowed something or oth— Come on, John, you’ll have to do better than babbling! He stared desperately at the pumpside cars. Could he get one of the drivers to believe his story and rush him home? With a gun he might have commandeered a vehicle. There were situations in which force was not only justified but the only means to an end.

  Of course he was ignoring the obvious: a call to the police. If it were only that simple! He was a wanted man, and the official mind, even when striving to be well-meaning, tended toward rigidity. Look at Swanson’s performance at the farm. He had chosen John as the more dangerous of the fugitives, manacled him with the only set of handcuffs, and refused to let him speak. It was really this mistake that had led to the officer’s downfall, maybe even his death, which then could be added to John’s other supposed crimes, none of which had any basis in reality but all of which would no doubt be doggedly cherished by the cops until time could be spared for their enlightenment, in a place where his safety could be assured while he was so establishing the truth. At the moment—and who could blame them?—they were like sharks in bloody water.

  Even at such an extremity he must call no further attention to himself by breaking the law. He hastened to the mechanic in the garage, who at the moment was lowering the car on the lift.

  “Excuse me. This is an emergency. Can I rent a car from you?”

  The mechanic’s blue-gray pants and shirt looked impeccable, unmarked by grease, but his face was streaked. He failed to acknowledge John, simply continued to stare at the vehicle until its tires met the floor.

  “It’s an emergency. I’ve got to rent a car.”

  At last the mechanic glanced at him. “Look in the phone book if you want.” He nodded in the direction of the office.

  “No time for that!” But John’s urgency had no effect on the man, who turned coolly on his rubber-soled shoes and went to the rear of the garage, where he rubbed his hands on a blackened rag.

  The owner of the automobile at hand had strolled away before John got there and had not come back. He was likely in the men’s room. John opened the door, stepped into the car, started the engine, and rapidly backed out of the garage. He had no interest in whether he was being pursued and did not look back. At the ramp leading onto the motorway, he was far too exercised to read the signs and could only hope he chose the right way home. The traffic was too heavy to have allowed him prompt access in his normal state, but he cared nothing for personal safety now and less for that of any stranger, and he forced a savagely grimacing man in a red car to brake and let him enter the procession, which almost immediately thereafter, too late for him to back out, slowed to a bumper-to-bumper crawl.

  He had made a bad choice of route. By now rush hour had arrived. Any local road would have been preferable. The only hope was that Richie, too, was frozen in traffic—if indeed he had been as stupid and taken the motorway. This was the worst situation John had been in throughout a day of misfortunes. He had been holding off, for he was mostly an unbeliever who would have considered it unethical to pray only when he was in trouble. But he felt so powerless now as to have returned to early childhood, when the Almighty could be implored with all honesty, and he asked God to give him help in his dire need, for he had exhausted all the measures at his own command. He told himself he could hardly expect to get a favorable response after all these years of neglect, but in fact he lied: he did look for immediate aid, and when it did not come, he was infused with resentment. It should not be possible to get up one morning and guiltlessly meet the day, only to have it claimed by evil so soon thereafter, by now threatening all that he held dear.

  The traffic had at least been creeping along until now, but all at once, as if in perverse response to his prayers, it stopped altogether, and not only in his proximate segment but as far as the eye could see, a mile or more, for the roadway ahead went into a gentle incline.

  John hurled the door open and leaped out. First he ran in the direction in which the cars in his lanes were pointing, between the files of static vehicles, with an intent eventually to reach a stymied Richie, but after a while he realized that the man had had too good a start on him to be overtaken soon in this fashion—if Richie had even taken the motorway, as to which there was no way of knowing—and cut horizontally through the ranks to the corrugated-steel guardrail, ran down a gritty embankment to a blacktopped local road, and hurled himself with agitated cruciformed arms into the route of the next vehicle that came along, which finally stopped, though until the last moment he believed it would not.

  Only after a man in a wide-brimmed felt hat appeared behind an opened door on either side of the car, and each twin pointed a pistol at him, both shouting abusive commands, did he react to the automobile, the rooftop light-rack of which should long since have identified it as a police car.

  If the appearance of the state troopers represented the prayed-for intervention in his affairs by the Deity, then quite clearly God despised him.

  The troopers handcuffed and searched and arrested him. Again he was read his rights.

  “Okay,” he cried, “I’m not resisting. But will you just please send somebody to protect my wife and children? An insane criminal is on his way to get them.” He shouted the address several times.

  At close range the troopers were anything but twins. One was much taller than the other and had red-brown eyebrows that all but joined over his nose.

  The other, thickset and swarthy, said, “Do yourself a favor and don’t talk like that. You’ll be lucky
as it is if you’re not lynched.”

  The taller trooper asked, “What’d you do with the weapons?”

  “I didn’t have any!” John said. “Will you please protect my family? I’ll give you all my story, but get on your radio and send somebody to protect my wife and kids.” He told them the address again. “I know this guy. He’s capable of anything.”

  “What’s your real name?” demanded the dark-complexioned trooper, whose own name, Brocket, was displayed on a tag over the upper-left pocket of his tunic.

  “John Felton.”

  “You got no I.D.”

  “Everything’s at home,” said John. “Take me there. I’ve got to protect my family. I can prove who I am. I’ve got a wife and two kids, a job with a prestigious—”

  “Jesus,” said the taller officer, glowering under his sandy eyebrow, “it turns my stomach to hear you talk about yourself like you were a normal human being instead of some sick piece of shit who would try to kill some old lady invalid just for kicks, I guess, wasn’t it? She didn’t have anything to steal.”

  They seized John, one on either side of him, marched him to the car, and put him in the rear. Brocket climbed in after him, while the tall trooper, whose name tag he had been too distracted to read, took the driver’s seat and immediately thereafter began to speak into the handpiece of the radio.

  John continued to shout during this sequence.

  “If you don’t shut up,” Brocket said calmly, “I’m going to shoot you.”

  John tried to impose control on himself. “Just listen. My wife and children are in terrible danger. Please check on them! I’ve never tried to kill anybody in my life. I’ve spent most of the day saving other people from being killed by this maniac, or anyway doing everything I could to keep it from happening. You just ask—” In his anxiety, he had forgotten her name. “You found her, didn’t you? At the farm? With the young boy? Save my family!”