End of Story

by Peter Abrahams

  “Think he’ll actually bring money?” Ivy said.

  “Some,” Harrow said. “What else is he going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ivy. “Threaten me?”

  “Looking forward to that,” Harrow said. He glanced at the dashboard clock. “Leaves us some free time.”

  Almost six hours. Ivy took a deep breath. It seemed like a long, long time. “I know just the place,” she said.

  “Yeah?” said Harrow.

  “It’s kind of a shortcut,” Ivy said.

  “To where?” said Harrow.

  Ivy hadn’t tried the shortcut at night, but somehow it turned out to be easy: narrow blacktop to rutted lane, rutted lane up to the clearing.

  “This is where I saw the bear,” she said.

  The clearing was empty now, shadows on the perimeter, all of them still. Harrow nodded; he’d been silent the whole way, his eyes barely blinking, his eyelashes—long and finely shaped—tipped with silvery light. She could feel him absorbing everything. She thought of saying, They took my story, thanks to you, decided it could wait. Rutted lane down to the dirt road. The flat, blank-face rock went by.

  “I keep wanting to write something on it,” Ivy said.

  “Like what?”

  “Don’t know.”

  She drove on. Harrow slid down his window.

  “I smell water,” he said.

  A minute or two later, Ivy pulled up in front of the Wilderness Lake Cabins. The cabins were dark, the lake beyond them even darker, but with a slight gleam, like polished coal. The headlights shone on the door to cabin one. A sign read: CLOSED FOR THE SEASON. SEE U NEXT SPRING.

  Ivy drove a little farther, stopped in front of the last cabin, number four. She took the flashlight from the glove box; and the key.

  “How come you’ve got the key?” Harrow said.

  She’d forgotten to put it back under the mat; a simple mistake, she’d thought at the time. “An accident,” Ivy told him; but maybe, as some people said, there were no accidents.

  They got out, walked to the cabin. No stars, no wind, no sound but their footsteps. Ivy switched on the light. Harrow passed through its circle and she spotted that sheen of sweat on his forehead.

  “You all right?” she said.

  “Yeah.” He shielded his face. She pointed the light away from him, but not before noticing that it wasn’t just his shirt: the pants she’d bought him, probably even the sneakers—too big.

  She unlocked the door. They went inside. Ivy panned the beam around the room: knotty-pine floors, brass bed still made up, with those clean white pillowcases and the rose-colored duvet, the wooden desk and chair at the window, and the stone fireplace, logs in the grate.

  “I’ll light a fire,” Ivy said.

  “I’d like to do that,” Harrow said.

  He went to the fireplace, opened the flue, struck a match. The tiny flame glowed in his eyes. Lighting a fire, and all that could mean: How long since he’d done that, been free to make fire? Ivy took off her clothes and got in bed. A minute or two later, a fire was crackling away and he was lying beside her, red-gold light from the flames ebbing and flowing in the cabin.

  “Hungry?” she said. “I’ve got sandwiches in the car.”

  “Later,” Harrow said.

  He rolled on top of her, penetrated her without foreplay, or kissing, or a word, omissions so obviously intolerable to someone like her that no man had ever dared try anything close.

  But it was perfect.

  And this was just the start. How long before they found Betty Ann, she told her story to the authorities, and the hard part was all over? Twenty-four hours? Less? Morocco could really happen, although staying right here for a week or so seemed pretty good, too.

  “Maybe I should apologize,” Ivy said.

  “For what?” He looked over, the firelight flickering in his eyes. “I would have bet you were thinking about Morocco,” he said.

  “How much?”

  “The works.”

  “You’d have won,” Ivy said. “But I was thinking about Betty Ann, too. My apology is about her.”

  “Oh?” he said.

  “It was such a horrible way to find out,” Ivy said, “me telling you like that.”

  “Find out what?” said Harrow.

  “That she was having an affair with Frank,” Ivy said. “But I had to get you to stop protecting her.”

  Silence. Was he in some kind of emotional pain, all mixed up inside about Betty Ann? Ivy thought so.

  “Who’s your source?” he said at last.

  “Claudette.”

  They lay without talking, their sides just touching. Was he trembling? Maybe the littlest bit. The fire hissed, flames finding moisture under the bark.

  “You’re angry,” Ivy said.

  “Who could be angry at you?” He took her hand. “You’re my savior,” he said.

  “Don’t be silly,” Ivy said. All at once, she felt very sleepy, fatigue closing in like huge rolling clouds in her mind. She tried to fight them off; there were loose ends to tie up, and she wanted them tied up now, here in this cabin before their first night together, before they really got started.

  “Did you even know about the robbery?” she said. “Or did Betty Ann keep you in the dark about that, too?”

  He let go of her hand. “None of that matters anymore.”

  “Sure it does,” said Ivy. “Betty Ann was the inside person, must have been planning to leave you all along. She met Frank at the boat ramp and took off with the money. Then he turned you in, made his deal. They were probably together within days.”

  “You’re good at figuring things out,” Harrow said.

  “I’m really not.” Ivy turned, kissed him on the cheek, gazed into his eyes. Enough thinking, enough figuring things out. It was time just to feel. Her own eyes started closing; there was nothing she could do. Enough thinking.

  Sometime later, Ivy awoke. The fire was out, now just a faint red glow from the embers. Harrow was way down under the covers, his face between her legs, active, desperate, like a starving man. Ivy thought at once of the bear and the deer, a confusing thought, and then she was just launched. Her legs clamped closed around him, pressing against the bandages on his back. She was far above, maybe miles, didn’t come down for an eternity.

  Ivy slept. During the night, her mind busied itself with The Surveyor. It figured out the very first line, which turned out to be dialogue: “An inch is as good as a mile.” It worked out all the major incidents in the story, culminating in the collapse of an enormous dam in some far-off and pitiful country. And even the very last line came, without the slightest effort on her part, for free: The sun touched the horizon, flattened out, wobbled and lost its shape.

  Twenty-nine

  Ivy awoke, cabin number four completely dark, the embers in the fireplace dead. She felt around beside her: he wasn’t there. She’d known that already, the feeling-around part unnecessary.

  She sat up. The door opened: Harrow. Ivy knew it was him, just from the shape of his silhouette against the night.

  “You’re up,” she said.

  He came in, his steps silent, and closed the door. Then a quick, rasping sound from over by the desk, and a candle was burning.

  “Morning, sleepyhead,” he said.

  “Are we okay for time?” Ivy said.

  “Ahead of schedule,” said Harrow.

  “Did you sleep at all?”

  “Like a baby.”

  She noticed he no longer wore that too-big clothing she’d bought at Marshalls, now had on a sweatshirt and jeans that fit him better.

  “I snooped around a little,” he said.

  “I’ll know your size next time,” Ivy said. Harrow smiled, the candlelight gleaming on his teeth. Ivy patted the mattress beside her.

  “Not that far ahead of schedule,” Harrow said.

  Ivy rose, got dressed. She felt his eyes on her and did everything a little slower than normal.

  “All set?”
he said.

  She noticed his bandages, lying in a clump on the floor.

  “You all right?” she said.

  “Never better,” he said. “And that’s the whole truth.” Ivy believed him. He looked great, forehead free of that sweaty sheen, his face fuller than it had been in the hospital or even at Dannemora, as though he’d managed to put on weight overnight. Some of these guys are like another species, physiologically speaking. A disgusting remark, and false in more ways than one: Why couldn’t some of the innocent be as strong, too, or in Harrow’s case, considering what he’d been through, even stronger?

  Harrow picked up the bandages, straightened the bed. They went outside, the sky starless, the air cold and still. “You like swimming?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Me, too.” He walked down to the lake, tossed the bandages in the water. “The Lusks couldn’t swim a stroke. Scared of the water, every goddamn one.”

  They moved around the cabin. Ivy could make out the shape of the Saab parked out front where she’d left it—deformed now, with the tarp-covered ladder still on the roof, and beside it, another, bigger shadow. She switched on the flashlight and recognized the old pickup that Jean Savard kept beside cabin one.

  “Switching rides,” Harrow said.

  “Are they looking for us already?” Ivy said.

  “Probably not,” said Harrow. “Shift doesn’t change till eight. And even then they’ll just be looking for me at first. But why take chances?”

  “Right,” she said. The question didn’t seem ludicrous at all. “You think Betty Ann’s close by?”

  He nodded and got in the driver’s side. Ivy went around, climbed up on the seat. One of those bench seats: she slid over next to him.

  “That means it’ll all be over soon,” Ivy said.

  He nodded again, turned the key. The pickup started with a sharp explosive sound.

  “Was the key in it?” Ivy said.

  “Found it in cabin one, where I got the clothes,” said Harrow. He glanced at her, maybe saw her gazing closely at his profile. “The door wasn’t locked,” he said.

  “Really?” But then Ivy remembered Jean and her bottle of gin: could have happened, easily.

  Harrow drove down the dirt road, into the woods. One of the headlights out, the other off center: but he was at ease, hands light on the wheel.

  “This must feel good,” Ivy said.

  “Everything,” he said. “Everything feels good.”

  The beam of the lone headlight passed across the flat, blank-faced rock at the entrance to the rutted lane. Harrow slowed down, as though to make the turn, then came to a complete stop. He got out, reaching into his pocket, and walked over to the rock, now out of the light. He leaned forward, paused for a moment, then returned.

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing.” He turned up the rutted lane. Ivy twisted around, shone her flashlight through the pickup’s narrow back window, just in time to catch a glimpse of the rock. No longer blank. Instead, she saw a chalked heart and inside the words you and me. No names. Just you and me. Ivy draped her arm over his shoulders, a position she was coming to love.

  He drove through the clearing at the top, down the other side to the narrow blacktop. Not long after, they were on the road to Raquette. One or two cars passed them going the other way, just ordinary cars without banks of lights on top. Ivy noticed that the hands of the clock weren’t moving.

  “What time is it?” she said.

  “We’ll be early,” said Harrow.

  “But what time is it?”

  His wrists were bare. The inmates didn’t have watches, and Ivy no longer used one, relying on her cell phone. She patted her pockets: not there, probably in the Saab.

  “Relax,” he said.

  She relaxed.

  “I brought those sandwiches,” he said, tilting his head toward the long storage shelf behind the seats.

  Ivy reached around, found the sandwich bag lying on a rolled-up blanket with something that felt hard, like tools, underneath.

  “Roast beef or chicken?” she said.

  “Roast beef?” he said. “You really got roast beef?”

  They ate the sandwiches. Ivy could see him trying to eat slowly, not to wolf it down, but he couldn’t help himself. After, they shared a Coke.

  “God damn,” he said. He looked over at her and grinned.

  Another mile or two went by. Was it her imagination, or was the eastern sky lightening just a bit, as though skim milk were leaking in?

  “Tell me about the Lusks,” she said.

  His hands tightened on the wheel.

  “Sorry,” Ivy said. “But they sound awful. It must have been so bad.”

  “I guess I opened the door to this,” Harrow said.

  “How?”

  “Giving you the ice-storm story.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Ivy said.

  “Only good things,” he said. He patted her knee. The feeling went zinging through her body, like every cell wanted in on the action. “What do you want to know?”

  Everything about your life from the day you were born to the day we die, including how many children we’re going to have plus their names, was the answer, so far over-the-top it might have come from the mind of someone else; but true. Ivy just said, “Start with the ice storm.”

  A half mile more of empty road went by. Ivy was beginning to think he hadn’t heard, when Harrow said, “Glass on glass.”

  “I love that line,” said Ivy. “So scary. But what actually happened?”

  “What actually happened?” Harrow said. “I didn’t think we talked like that in the writing game.”

  She took her arm off his shoulder. “This isn’t the writing game.”

  His eyes shifted toward her. “We’re on the same page about that?”

  She laughed. He laughed, too. “Not much to tell about the ice storm,” he said, his laughter fading. “My parents got killed in a car wreck up in Canada, which I’m sure you found out already. Then I went to live with the Lusks. Mrs. Lusk and my mom were some kind of cousins.”

  “This is when you were seven or eight?” Ivy said, trying to remember what the West Raquette High football coach told her.

  “Five,” said Harrow.

  “What was Mrs. Lusk like?” Ivy said.

  “A whore,” Harrow said. “Although I didn’t really get what that meant till a couple years later. She took her tricks to the basement bedroom I shared with Marv, on account of her scruples about using the marital bed. Lusk himself couldn’t have cared less. Irony—right, teacher? He was a trucker until he lost his license for good—an alcoholic, of course, the raging kind. Want me to describe this belt he had?”

  “No.” Ivy couldn’t have said one more word without crying. So easy to see how a little orphan boy might hide out in a world of make-believe. She remembered those lines he’d written out loud, if that was how to put it, in the Dannemora library: They say life is all about connecting, like that’s a good thing. But when brain and eyes are lining up you know different. An insight she’d admired for its pizzazz at the time and now actually understood. At the same time, she thought: But what’s the alternative? And barged ahead: “I’ve done some thinking about the curly-haired girl. The daughter in your story. At first I assumed she was the daughter of you and Betty Ann. But everyone says you didn’t have a daughter. True?”

  “True in actuality,” Harrow said.

  “And therefore I’ve been wondering whether the curly-haired girl was in fact your sister, and maybe she died in the car wreck, too.”

  Up ahead the landscape opened up. Dark fields sloped down to an even darker horizontal: the river. Lights flickered on the other side.

  “You’re so good,” Harrow said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “You can even figure things out that can’t be figured out,” Harrow said. “There’s no sister.” A sign went by: RAQUETTE: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING TRIBAL LAND. He’d come by some
route she didn’t know. “Unless you count Marv’s sister,” he added, slowing down. “She was much older. Also a whore.”

  Harrow turned onto a lane that curved through scrubby woods and ended by a broken-down shed. He parked behind it. “A little early,” he said, although Ivy had no idea how he knew that. “But better to arrive first, this kind of adventure. Got the flashlight?”

  “Yes.”

  He held out his hand.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Ivy, giving it to him. “He’s going to ask me questions, like how did I track him down and who else knows.”

  “Don’t worry about any of that,” Harrow said, getting out of the pickup.

  “But what do I say?”

  “‘Let’s see the money,’” Harrow said. “He’s comfortable with talk like that.”

  She followed him along a narrow path through the trees. He carried the flashlight but didn’t use it. “Another thing,” she began.

  He grabbed her arm, hard.

  Ivy went silent.

  They’d walked only thirty yards or so before they stepped out of the woods and onto the bumpy dirt road that ran by the river. On the other side of the road stood the willow tree, like a huge, low mushroom cloud in the night; and at its foot the boat ramp, slanting into the water.

  Harrow switched on the flashlight, his hand hooded over the lens. Very quickly, he went from place to place, poking the beam into the darkness: along the sides of the ramp, at spaces between rocks on the riverbank, in bushes by the side of the road. He even waded into the river, shone the light down on the water at the end of the ramp. Then he paused for a moment, his head tilted—that bearlike tilt, at the willow tree.

  Harrow walked up the ramp to the base of the tree. He aimed the light here and there, up the trunk, into the branches, back down. The beam steadied. He laughed, very low. Was Mandrell hiding up there? Ivy stepped closer. All she could see was an oblong hole in the trunk, about ten feet up, big, but not big enough to hide a man.

  Ivy raised her hands, palms up, in a silent question. Harrow switched off the light, tousled her hair, whispered, “That Frankie.”

  “What?” she said, as softly as she could.