The Scream

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  Father Moran took over. "Well, Crowley. You certainly got our adrenaline flowing. Watch out the devil doesn't catch up with you. He's always on the lookout for a good advocate." The priest shifted his weight, from one buttock to the other. "Tell me, what do you understand to be Iscariot's greater sin-that he betrayed the Lord or that he despaired of being forgiven?"

  "Despair is the greatest sin." It was an answer out of his childhood catechism. "Why?"

  "I don't know, Father." He did not want to be quizzed like a ten-year-old. His moment of self-assurance was going down the drain.

  The back row all had their hands up. The priest nodded to one of the volunteers.

  Then David caught hold of another idea. "But despair is a sin against yourself, isn't it? Being your own judge. Betraying somebody is worse, it seems to me. You're hurting somebody else."

  "Mitchell, you're on," the priest said to the volunteer, ignoring David's attempted postscript, except to say, "Thank you, Crowley."

  David tried to listen to Mitchell's definition of despair as a sin against hope, and his denunciation of Judas because he had given up hope. It went on and on. David could have put it in one sentence. Somebody had done that, he realized, which was how it came into his mind: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. Meaning hell.

  It looked like the class wasn't going to get back on track until everybody had their say on why Judas was so despicable-the kiss, the pieces of silver; somebody said he was jealous of John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. "I know! He was gay!" one of the girls put in. She covered her mouth and giggled. The giggle was infectious and those around her laughed. David pretended to be amused, but he wasn't. He felt he'd been onto something important and had been cut off before he got to the heart of it. He'd had a question he wanted to ask that he felt would shake up even Father Moran. Now he couldn't remember it.

  Between Christian Ethics and his last class, he copied a. friend's notes for Twentieth Century French Literature, the class he had missed that morning, but his mind kept going back to Dennis McGraw and what he called "the incident" the sheriffs deputy was investigating. You wouldn't call anything serious an incident, would you? Suppose he found out tomorrow that the screaming person had not been hurt, not the least bit hurt, that the scream was an act, would that mean he was not guilty of anything? Look now: Was guilt a matter of luck? Getting caught was, maybe. Wasn't that why he was in ethics, to learn why getting caught was not part of the moral issue? And wasn't getting caught what he was really afraid of? He didn't care about that woman at all. Not for her own sake. The person he cared about was David Crowley.

  He tried to focus on the Valéry poem in which he was supposed to trace the Symbolist influence, but he couldn't concentrate. It was hopeless, and he was supposed to be good in French. David felt as though something inside him was writhing, a. stomachful of snakes. The day was almost over, but terrible as it had been, he dreaded for it to end. He didn't want to go home. He had to talk to someone. For just a minute he wondered if he should have been such a smart-ass with Dennis McGraw. McGraw wanted to talk to him. McGraw knew something. He didn't.

  On his way home he thought about his father and what his mother had said at breakfast, how he could tell his father things he couldn't tell her. He was pretty sure she was talking about sex, but if his father was around would he be able to tell him what he'd done, how he'd run away when he might have hurt somebody? He could see his father going out to the car and saying, "Get in, David." He'd order David's mother back into the house and he'd drive straight to the sheriffs office and say, "My son has a statement to make." Even so, David thought, he could tell him sooner than he could tell his mother. What he wanted most was not to have to tell anybody, to wake up and find out it was a dream.

  He drove around the block twice before turning into the driveway, in case McGraw or someone from the sheriffs office was waiting for him. He saw no one, and when he parked in front of the garage door, the nearest neighbor was coming out of her house. She waved to him, got into her car, and drove off. Perfectly normal. In the house he got the same feeling of normalcy. It made him uneasy, as if he might step where there was nothing for his foot to land on. There were no messages for him on the answering machine. Even the cat ignored him. He looked up Dennis McGraw in the yellow pages. He'd thought he might not be there, but he was, the address the County Building. Something was real, anyway: Dennis McGraw, attorney-at-law. He had an enemy, David thought. For the first time in his life he had a real enemy. That was crazy. All McGraw wanted was to make a buck out of him. Unless you'd like me to represent you… But David hadn't admitted anything, except going home on the County Road. McGraw had looked for him because Deputy Muller had a hunch. Oughtn't car license numbers to be available to the police only? Everybody knew the sheriffs office was corrupt. The patrol shouldn't have just taken the beer away last night, they ought to have chased the kids out of the park or arrested them for bringing beer there in the first place. He wondered if any of the other guys had been approached by McGraw. Whoever took Sally home would have had to use the interstate or the County Road; he hadn't thought of that before. They almost certainly had to go that way, and if they had, it would have been after David's trip home.

  He hated to call Sally. He was shaky, and if there was anyone he wanted less than his mother to know what he'd done, it was Sally. He kept putting off calling her until it was almost time for his mother to come home, and then he went out and used the nearest public phone.

  "I wanted to be sure you got home all right last night," he explained.

  "You'd have known by now if I didn't. It was real mean of you, David, to go and leave me with that pack of wolves."

  "I didn't leave you! You said… whatever you said. It doesn't matter. What happened?"What almost happened on the way home was worse. We had to go the County Road-the interstate was closed.…"

  "I know," David said. "What happened to you, I mean?"

  "The guys were fooling around. They're sex fiends, and all of a sudden we almost hit a car parked halfway on the highway. No lights, nobody around, like it died and somebody just left it there."

  David saw the whole thing in his mind's eye. "Did you stop?'

  "Why should we have? We didn't hit it or anything. But it cooled off Micky's sex urge. When we got to Oak Forest, he dropped me at our driveway and took off."

  If the car was still there later, what did it mean? What had happened to the woman?

  "If I didn't see it," David said, the words of denial slipping out, "you must have come home a lot later than me."

  "Not much. I kind of agitated to get us on the road. I'm sorry I said what I did, David. You shouldn't be so sensitive. Women can be frustrated too, you know. You're not crude like those other guys, and I admire that. I admire a lot about you."

  "Thanks," he murmured.

  "What do I have to do to make up for what I said? Ask you for another date? I was the one who asked you last night, you know."

  "I'll call you real soon, Sally."

  "I go back to school on Sunday." She was on midterm break.

  "I'll call you," he said again.

  "Okay, David. Thanks for calling." The phone clicked off.

  Now he had hurt her, but he couldn't help it. He stood in the booth after hanging up and tried to find the words with which he could tell Sally what had happened to him. It went fine until he had to say, I didn't stop. They hadn't stopped either, but they'd not seen the screaming woman.

  A man waiting to use the phone pushed open the door. "Do you always go into a phone booth when you want to talk to yourself?"

  After an early dinner at the kitchen table David attacked his class assignments. He surprised himself with what sounded to him like a great exposition of the Valéry poem. It felt good, as though he'd made some kind of reparation in getting it done. He took it in to where his mother was writing letters and read it to her. He'd been pretty quiet at dinner and she hadn't fussed or probed. He was making up.

  She listen
ed thoughtfully. Then, out of a clear sky, she said: "Would you like a year of study in France if it could be managed?"

  David was stunned. It was as though she had said she no longer needed him. He'd been thinking all along that he was tied to her for life, and now it turned out she felt she was tied down by him. Maybe she had a man he didn't even know about, somebody at the bank… A tumult of alarms possessed him.

  "Well?" she prompted.

  "Yeah, sure. I mean, that's a third-year alternative and I'm only a freshman."

  "Only a freshman," she repeated. "You put yourself down, Davie. You shouldn't do that. The essay is very good."

  "It isn't long enough to call an essay."

  "Nevertheless. Would you like to read the poem itself to me?"

  He was on his way to get the book when the phone rang. His mother called out to let the machine take it for now. He pretended not to hear her. All evening, except for when he lost himself in the poem, he had anticipated something heavy about to happen. Nevertheless, when he heard McGraw's voice, his heart gave a sickening thump.

  "David, I hope I'm not interrupting your dinner. We need to make a date, you and I. Tonight is convenient for me, or first thing in the morning."

  "No," David said. "It's not convenient for me."

  "Then you must make it convenient. It's not a matter of choice, young man. Are you with someone now so that you can't talk?"

  "My mother's home," David murmured.

  "Well now, sooner or later, you will want to involve her. Maybe not. That's not my business. Let's meet somewhere in the morning. I would say my office, but it's being decorated. Unavailable, really. And I don't want to meet in your car again

  We're not conspiring thieves, are we?"

  "David?" his mother called inquiringly from the study.

  "I'll be in in a minute, Mother." To McGraw, he said, "You can come here in the morning, but not before eight-thirty." It was his mother's turn to drive. She'd leave by eight o'clock.

  McGraw repeated the time and checked David's address. He had it right.

  Returning, book in hand, to where his mother was waiting, David explained, "I got some scratches on my car going down to the beach last night. A guy's going to paint them for me."

  "Have it done by a professional, David. I'll help you pay for it."

  "Great," he said.

  "Not everything is great," she said. Then: "Shall we put off the poem until another time?"

  McGraw arrived not long after the hall clock struck the half-hour. David had again cut loose his riders. He took the lawyer to the kitchen. McGraw was wearing the same topcoat. He took it off and put it on the back of a chair and perched the hat on top of it. "It's a good thing I make house calls, isn't it? Any coffee left in the pot?"

  David poured half a mugful and heated it in the microwave. McGraw was taking inventory of every convenience in the kitchen-like he was pricing it for a yard sale.

  He took the coffee black. "Why don't we start with your side of the story first, David-what really happened to you on the way home?"

  "I'm not going to tell you anything," David said.

  "In that case, hear this," McGraw said. "A farmer whose address is rural box seventeen on the County Road heard a woman scream out in front of his place after midnight last night. It woke him from a sound sleep. He looked out, thought he saw a car stalled on the road, and decided to call the sheriffs patrol. The call was clocked at twelve-twenty. But on account of the accident on the interstate, the patrol didn't pick up on it till daylight. I went out there myself with Addy Muller, drove him, in fact. He was dead on his feet after a double shift. But the farmer was pissed at how long it took the sheriffs men to show up. I'm telling it to you straight, David…"

  David didn't say anything. McGraw took a noisy sip of his coffee. "Addy remembered you kids on the beach and figured you might've been heading home about then. He remembered you live in Oak Forest. He asked me if I'd like to look you up while he made the rounds of the hospitals. You were the one he remembered by name and school. He thought you were too young to be running with that crowd.

  "You didn't want to talk to me, David; you didn't show much respect for the truth either. In other words, you were scared. I can see why.

  "It turns out the woman was on her way home from work, tired, late, and she had to relieve herself. No traffic that she could see. She pulled halfway off the road, turned off the lights, and went in front of the car. Now wouldn't you like to take it from there?" David was silent.

  "David, there was a witness. You were driving at high speed, came out of nowhere just as she came around from in front of the car. You could have made sausage meat of her, and you didn't even stop."

  "I didn't hit her. I know that."

  "How do you know?"

  "I just do."

  "So what do you think happened to her?'

  David shook his head.

  "But you didn't care as long as you could get away."

  "I did care, but I knew I hadn't hit her."

  "You knew?" McGraw waited, breathing noisily, a snort.

  "What happened to her, mister?" David could feel that terrible tightness in his throat.

  "I'm not a doctor," McGraw said.

  "Is she all right?"

  "I wouldn't say that. Oh, no. But she is alive."

  David caught the emphasis on "she." 'You said there was a witness. Were they in the car with her?"

  McGraw gave him the sad smirk of a smile. "No, David, you are the witness."

  He wondered how that could be and then realized he had in effect confessed to McGraw. He'd been trapped. He had trapped himself. And he was all he cared about. Not the woman. She wasn't a real person to him. She was a scream, like a face he'd brought up on the computer screen.

  "I want to see her," he said. What he wanted was to feel her, to flesh-and-blood feel her.

  "You could have seen her at the scene. Now it's up to her whether or when she will see you."

  "What am I supposed to do, mister?"

  "Exactly what I advised you to do yesterday: Go over to the sheriffs office this morning and give Deputy Muller your statement."

  "And if I don't?"

  "They'll come and get you, David. I can promise you that. The woman will swear out the warrant for your arrest."

  And the arrest would be reported in the County Sentinel "Crime Watch." But the woman was alive: Why couldn't he say thank God and mean it? He hated himself for what came into his mind and for saying it, but he did: "What if I asked you to represent me?'

  "It's too late for that," McGraw said, sounding regretful.

  "You're representing her, aren't you?'

  "Such a smart young man. David, would you believe me if I told you I don't wish to represent either of you in a court of law? You will agree surely that you owe the unfortunate woman something simply on the strength of the information we have exchanged here this morning?"

  "Isn't this some kind of blackmail, mister?"

  "What a dirty word. No, David. I am offering you an honorable solution to something that could be very nasty. It could mess up your life, your career, people knowing you'd run away like that. What I haven't told you till now-the woman was pregnant, David. She miscarried after the accident."

  David felt the message like a blow to the stomach. He had trouble getting his breath.

  "I think we can call it an accident," McGraw went on, "but in her mind it was murder."

  "I'm sorry for her," David said finally, and it wasn't associated with McGraw's mention of murder. It was for something lost.

  "Sorrow's too cheap, David. Think about it and after you've seen Deputy Muller, let's talk again. She's a poor, hardworking woman. A settlement would not impoverish your family."

  David watched McGraw down the driveway; the coat as he struggled into it swished out like Batman's cape. He tucked it around him as he got behind the wheel of a car marked Sheriffs Office.

  The woman was human, David thought, a human being, and th
e sorrow he felt was for her, not for himself. It was going to be McGraw's word against his, no matter what happened, he reasoned. Not that he was thinking of the lie he could tell to get out of his admission, but he wanted time to think about what he was going to do. He didn't think McGraw would make any move until he had turned himself in, until he signed something saying he had left the scene where someone might have been hurt due to his reckless speed. He was trying to tell himself the truth, the way it was now. In a way, he had hit the woman, and he wanted to go back and pick her up. He couldn't do that, but if he could find her, he could ask her to listen to him, and he could tell her he was sorry. Murder, he felt sure, was McGraw's word. It was meant to scare him. The funny thing was it didn't, but McGraw still did.

  David knew he needed help. Maybe he did need a lawyer, but he just didn't think so. What he needed first was a private detective, something as remote from his experience as a TV melodrama. What he needed was his father. Not available. He'd recommend a lawyer anyway, and in spite of what his mother had said about David's being able to talk to him, he didn't think his father would be able to listen.

  He drove to school and got to see Father Moran in his office. The priest shook hands with him, not the usual start of a student interview. He knew a troubled young person when he saw one. He told David to move his chair so the light wouldn't shine in his face. "I got to thinking after yesterday's brouhaha," the priest said, "one of those what-if questions. What if, after hiding out overnight, Iscariot had showed up at the foot of the cross and said, 'Lord, forgive me.'"

  David grinned. There was nothing to say and yet there was a lot. "What can I do for you, Crowley?"

  "I did a bad thing, Father." David told his story, even to having thrown the condom into the wind.

  The priest lifted an eyebrow. "Standard equipment," he growled. It was the only comment he made until David was finished. Then, after a few seconds of thought: "And when you find her?"