* * *
The Fifth Day
* * *
Good weather this morning. Blue sky, sunlight slanting in through the window at an oblique angle. I stood at the window for a long time, watching the sun sparkle on the snowdrifts and the snow-heavy tree branches and the icicles hanging from the near eaves of the shed roof. Snow looks so clean and fresh with the sun on it; everything looks clean and fresh, untouched, unsullied, and it gives you hope. Not that I’m losing hope. No. But with the day bright like this, so clean-looking, the loneliness is a little easier to handle and I don’t have to work so hard to keep my spirits up, to keep on believing.
I fiddled with the radio again while I was at the window and had better luck. The honky-tonk station came in for a visit and hasn’t left yet, at least not for more than a few minutes at a time. It’s staticky and it keeps fluctuating, but it’s audible enough.
Station KHOT, out of Stockton. That gives me some idea of where I am. A Stockton country station doesn’t figure to have all that much range, so that puts this cabin somewhere in the Sierras to the east of Stockton. Yosemite’s to the southeast; so are clusters of little Mother Lode towns and ski resorts. Doesn’t figure he’d have taken me down that far. More likely, this place is in Amador or Calaveras or Alpine county; lots of wilderness in that section of the Sierra foothills, not too many towns, and a sparse population in winter. And the traveling time would be just about right, if my memory hasn’t distorted those long, painful hours on the road.
All right: the Sierra foothills east or northeast of Stockton. That isn’t much, but it’s something. Not having any idea of where you are is like existing in limbo, as if you were already dead.
So I’ve been listening to KHOT and its honky-tonk music. One of the songs they played was “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille,” and for some reason it brought a sudden, vivid image of Kerry. The hurt got so bad so quickly I had to move the dial to get away from it. I found another station, somebody talking, but it was so static-riddled that I could only make out random words and sentence fragments—not enough to understand much of what was being said. When I switched back to KHOT I caught most of a news broadcast. All sorts of things happening on the international and national and local scenes, but no mention of me. That’s not surprising, though. I’m yesterday’s news by now.
The radio is still on, still playing country music. “Silver Threads and Golden Needles.” Very spritely, even though the lyrics themselves aren’t too cheerful. It’s good to hear the sound of another human voice, even a singer’s over a staticky radio. The silence was beginning to get to me a little. Much more of it and I might have started talking to myself just to relieve it.
Music, and the sun shining off clean snow outside. This day won’t be too difficult to get through. Not too difficult.
* * *
There are forty-three books in the carton of paperbacks—forty-two different titles. Eleven mysteries, four by Agatha Christie, including two dog-eared copies of Sleeping Murder. Two spy novels. Five adult Westerns and four traditional Westerns and one pioneer-family saga. Two science fiction novels. Six historical romances. Three Harlequin romances. Two sex-in-the-big-city novels. Two show-business biographies. One book on organic gardening. One fad diet book. One history of jazz. And one book on how to avoid stress.
In the carton of old magazines there are a total of thirty-seven issues and seven different titles. Five issues of Vogue, all from the late seventies. Six issues of Sports Illustrated from 1985 and 1986. Twelve issues of Time, random over a five-year period beginning in 1976. Two issues of The Yachtsman, dated June and July of 1981. Eight issues of Arizona Highways, six from the late seventies and two from 1980. Three issues of Redbook, dated March, May, and August of 1986. And one issue of Better Homes and Gardens, dated January 1985.
I’ve put all of the them, books and magazines, into little separate piles along the wall next to the cot. No reason for that—I can’t reach most of them easily without sitting or lying on the cot—or for cataloguing them as I have, other than to pass the time. The first couple of days, I didn’t read anything. I tried once, the second day, but I couldn’t concentrate, could not sit still. Monday morning I forced myself to page slowly through an issue of Sports Illustrated. And Monday evening I looked at a couple of issues of Arizona Highways, until the photographs of wide-open spaces caused the loneliness and the trapped feeling to well up and I had to stop.
On Tuesday I picked out a traditional Western novel called Gunsmoke Galoot. Silly title, but it was originally published in 1940 and that was the sort of title they put on Westerns back then. I managed to get through one chapter in the morning, another in the afternoon, and still another before I went to sleep. Yesterday I was able to sit still long enough to read two chapters at a time until I finished it. I remember very little about the plot or characters—just that the writing had a nice pulpy flavor that was comforting, almost soothing.
I’ve never read Westerns much, books or pulps, though I don’t have the attitude of some people that they’re childish and inferior to most other kinds of fiction. Of the more than six thousand pulp magazines I’ve collected over the years—
My pulps. What will happen to them if I don’t get out of here? What will Kerry do with them? Sell them off? Put them in storage? And the rest of the things in my flat … books, clothing, furniture, the accumulated detritus of a man’s life? And the flat itself, what about that? The rent is paid until the first of the year; my landlord is a generous sort, he won’t start pressing for back rent until February, but what then, when he does start pressing? Will Kerry pay the rent, on the slim hope that I’ll be found alive or return on my own? or will she—
No, dammit, it’s not going to work out that way. Stop trying to look ahead! Today is what matters. The here and now.
Of the 6,000 pulps in my collection, only about 50 or so are Westerns. Dime Western, Star Western, .44 Western, Western Story. All are issues from the thirties and forties, most with stories by writers who also wrote detective stories: Frederick Brown, Norbert Davis, William R. Cox. A few have stories by Jim Bohannon, a writer who used to contribute Western detective stories to Adventure. I met him at a pulp convention in San Francisco a few years ago—the same convention at which I met Kerry and her parents, Cybil and Ivan, both former pulp writers themselves. Cybil wrote hard-boiled private-eye stories under the male pseudonym Samuel Leatherman; Ivan wrote horror stories—still writes them at novel length. It’s an appropriate field for him because he’s something of a horror himself. He hates me because he thinks I’m not good enough for Kerry, and too old for her besides; I hate him because he’s a grade-A asshole and how did I get off on Ivan Wade? The subject here is Westerns, for Christ’s sake.
I used to like Western films and serials when I was a kid. Every Saturday my ma would give me a quarter and send me off to the neighborhood movie theater, alone or with friends. That way, I wouldn’t be home when my old man … the hell with my old man, I’m not going to write about him. I liked the crime films best, the serials about detectives like Dick Tracy, superheroes like the Spider and Captain Marvel, but I would sit just as engrossed through a Gene Autry or Roy Rogers or Three Mesquiteers film, or chapters of Western serials. I remember one serial, I think it was called Adventures of Red Ryder. It had an Indian boy in it—Little Beaver. I envied that kid as much as I envied the pulp private eyes when I got older. I wanted to be Little Beaver, run around having exciting adventures, wear a headband with a feather in it, Jesus that film made an impression on me. I must have been eight at the time, maybe nine. Little Beaver …
Now I seem to have drifted into childhood reminiscences. What the hell is the point in that? Or in wasting any more paper on the subject of Westerns? It may pass the time but it doesn’t seem to be doing me much good otherwise. Besides, my fingers are starting to cramp up.
Station KHOT has faded out again and I should try to tune it back in. Then something to eat, and a chapter or two of another paperback, and
then maybe I’ll wash out my shirt and underwear. They’re starting to smell, and with the sun out it’s not as cold in here as it has been; I can wrap myself in one of the blankets while the clothing dries in front of the heater.
I wish I could shave, too. My beard is growing out and it itches. But there’s nothing I can use for a razor, except maybe a can lid and that would cut hell out of my skin. I’ll just have to endure the discomfort until my facial hair gets long enough and the itching stops.
Tuna, crackers, and some Oreo cookies for lunch—a regular feast. But I’ve been on short rations from the first, and I’ve got to stay on them just in case. I’ve even taken to reusing one tea bag three and four times, and making coffee with just half a teaspoonful of instant.
Clouds in the sky now. The sun is hidden and it won’t be long before it sets. There are long shadows, night shadows, on the drifted snow outside. I can see other shadows in the trees—crouching in the trees like animals, predators hiding there waiting for nightfall.
Cold in here again. And wouldn’t you know it, my shirt and underwear still aren’t dry.
* * *
The Sixth Day
* * *
No more sun. Heavy clouds instead, gunmetal gray and veined with a kind of gangrenous black. Ugly clouds. Fat, bloated clouds full of rain. Break open pretty soon, dump rain like gray piss on the rest of the day.
I can’t keep still. Cold in here, the air smells of rain even in here, I need to move around. I’m not going to write any more, pointless to keep writing crap like this.
Gray piss all over the rest of the day.
* * *
The Seventh Day
* * *
Yesterday was bad, the worst since I’ve been here, and today doesn’t look much better. More dark clouds, more rain—it hasn’t stopped raining since yesterday noon.
I’m still edgy, depressed. It’s getting to me, all of it, the weather, the chain and the leg iron, the short rations, the staticky radio, all of it, and I can’t seem to break the mood. Dangerous frame of mind, I know it is, I know I’ve got to snap out of it, but how? How? I did an hour’s worth of nonstop exercises this morning, then paced and paced and paced until I was fatigued, but the workout didn’t seem to have any effect on me mentally. I don’t even want to eat. My belly is screaming for food but the thought of food makes my throat close up. I’ve got to eat, though. Got to keep my strength up.
Frigging weather. Why doesn’t it stop raining?
I keep wondering if he’ll be back.
Nearly a week now since he left. And he said he wouldn’t come again until he was sure I was dead. But will he be able to stay away that long? The whole purpose of this prison is to make me suffer, right? A man who hates that deeply, who craves revenge that much—wouldn’t he want to keep tabs on his victim, get a firsthand look at some of the suffering? Seems likely he would. He’d have to have tremendous will power not to. And wouldn’t he want to make sure I hadn’t found some way to get free, no matter how escape-proof he thinks this place is? If I were him I wouldn’t be able to sleep night after night for as long as four months if there was even the remotest chance of my prisoner getting loose, coming after me.
But I could never be a man like him, so how can I know what goes on in a mind like his? Maybe he’s completely satisfied that there’s no way for me to escape. And maybe just the thought of my suffering is enough for him.
Still. Still, there’s a chance he’ll come back. I want him to, because then I might be able to gull him into believing I’m sick, catch him off guard that way. He wasn’t careless before, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be maneuvered into making a mistake. Oh yes, I want him to come back, I want him to make a mistake, I want to get my hands on him.
I want to kill him.
Only one other person I’ve felt that way about. Man named Emerson who hired a gunman to take out Eberhardt a few years ago. I happened to be with Eb at his house when the gunman showed up and both of us got shot, Eberhardt so seriously that he almost died. I tracked Emerson down with every intention of canceling his ticket—only he was dead when I caught up with him, dead of a freak accident, and it came as a relief because I didn’t have to put myself to the test after all, find out if I really was capable of cold-blooded murder when the moment of truth arrived. Now, looking back on that time, I know I would not have been able to kill Emerson. All my life I’ve lived and worked within the law. And I’ve seen too much torn and bleeding flesh, too much death and dying, to want to inflict that kind of indecency on another human being.
But this is different. What the whisperer has done to me isn’t human; he isn’t human. He’s a dangerous animal, a mad dog. And I can kill a mad dog—I know that just as surely as I know I wouldn’t have been able to destroy Emerson.
Every man has his price in murder, just as he has his price in wealth or power or love. When the mad dog locked me in these chains we both found mine.
* * *
The Tenth Day
* * *
My daily routine is well established now, some of it by choice and some of it dictated by the contents and confines of my cell.
Wake up around seven, get up immediately. To the window first, for a look at the new day. Passable weather this morning: high, broken overcast, streaks and wedges of blue here and there. The sun hasn’t appeared yet; I keep hoping it will before the day ends. But at least there haven’t been any more rainstorms. The one over the weekend lasted two full days, broke at last on Sunday afternoon—and the worst of my depression broke with it. Odd how the weather can affect your mood so profoundly. I can tolerate overcast and snow flurries, I’ve discovered, but I dread long periods of rain. And I yearn for the sun. In a way I’ve become a sun-worshiper: I need it to help me survive.
Back near the cot for my morning exercises. Sit-ups first; I can do a set of fifty now, where I could do only twenty-five when I started. Then leg pulls and stretches, easy enough with my right leg, damned difficult with my left because of the leg iron and the chain. Then push-ups, twenty or so, then on my feet for knee bends, toe touches, several other twists and stretches and jerks that I can’t name because I’ve more or less made them up myself. I can do an hour’s worth of exercises now without fatigue. Tomorrow I’ll increase the time by fifteen minutes. And keep increasing it in fifteen-minute increments whenever I feel I’m ready. Eventually, I should be able to use up most of the morning in exercising, and that will be good because your mind shuts down when you’re making physical demands on your body. Sweat and strain equal a period of relative peace.
Drag the chain into the bathroom, use the toilet, then strip to the waist, brush my teeth and wash my face, and take a quick sponge bath with the dampened cloth. Avoid looking into the cracked mirror over the sink; I’ve only glanced at my reflection once, two days ago, and that was plenty. The face itself is unpleasant enough, with its coating of straggly gray whiskers and its haggard aspect. But the eyes … I’m afraid to look into my own eyes, for fear of what I might see reflected there.
Put on shirt and coats, go get the coffeepot and fill it with water and then take it back out and put it on the hot plate. Plug in the hot plate. Spoon coffee into the mug (coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon, tea at night). Draw an X through the day’s date on the calendar. Switch on the heater, just for a few minutes, to take some of the chill out of the room: I’ll be feeling cold again because my body has cooled after the morning workout. Find something on the shelves to eat for breakfast; open the can and set it aside. By this time the water should be boiling. Make the coffee, take the cup to the cot and sit down with it. Turn on the radio, try to bring in KHOT—the only station I seem to get on the radio. The last few days it hasn’t come in for more than thirty seconds at a time, but this morning I got one twenty-minute stretch of golden oldies like “Orange Blossom Special” and “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” songs I’m beginning to like in spite of myself, and several other stretches of five to ten minutes each. Plus part of a news br
oadcast that told me a bunch of things, none of which I particularly wanted to hear (and nothing about me, of course). I’ve always been an ostrich when it comes to the daily news. For too long my life has been overrun with pain and suffering and ugliness; I don’t need any more of it in black and white, or in bright colors with some newscaster speaking solemnly in a voice-over—the same newscaster who will be joking it up with a weatherman or a sportscaster two minutes later. So I didn’t listen to much of the radio newscast, paid the most attention to a sports update that told me the Forty-niners won last Sunday. Let’s hear it for the Forty-niners.
When I’ve finished the coffee, return to the hot plate and make another half cup. Then pour my breakfast into the saucepan and heat that. Eat breakfast on the cot, washed down with my second cup of coffee. Wash out the saucepan and the plate afterward, put them back on the top shelf next to the hotplate.
Pace for a while, twenty minutes to half an hour, as long as I can stand it.
Sit or lie on the cot and read a chapter or two or three of one of the paperbacks. I’m partway through an unauthorized biography of Frank Sinatra now, as a change of pace from the fiction. Lurid stuff, plenty of sex, lots of glitter and glamour and big money, all sorts of innuendo on a variety of fronts. All I knew about Sinatra before I started this book was that he was a crooner and a decent actor and a paisan who may or may not have a few underworld connections. Now I know enough to make me care even less about him than I did before.
Write a little, as I’m doing now. If I happen to feel like writing, that is. I haven’t the past two days, so I didn’t bother; there was just nothing I cared to set down on paper. Today I felt like picking up a pen again and I seem to be going on at some length. Not for any therapeutic reason … or maybe it is therapy, in a way, the kind that helps you keep things in perspective by confronting your thoughts, writing them out. But I don’t want to force it. Does it matter if I keep a record of every single day I’m here? I don’t see how it can.
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