by Farris, John
“What were you drinking?”
“Beer. We had a long lunch and I ate practically nothing, but I drank about seven cans of beer. That wasn’t unusual, I could hold that much all right; but it was a boiling hot day and the jeep was bouncing all over the place; and before long I started feeling bad. I should have quit drinking, but I had just opened a can and I didn’t want to waste it. So I drank the beer down fast, and—that’s the last thing I remember, except for bits and flashes. The Major, with tears streaming down his face, forgiving me for killing his daughter.” Guthrie’s face was lugubrious. “I killed her all right, as surely as if I’d put a gun to her head. I was too drunk to drive. And yet ...”
“What is it, John?”
“In some of the dreams I’ve had, I wasn’t driving. Molly was.”
“Molly? Could she operate a jeep?”
“Sure. She loved to drive, and she could handle the wheel pretty well, although she’d just turned thirteen. Sometimes, when we went out jeeping, I let her drive. She was begging me to let her have the wheel that day, too.” Guthrie licked his dry lips. “That’s what I remember. Or was it a part of the dream, too?”
Practice felt a prickling of excitement, but he kept his voice level.
“It may not be a dream. What do you remember?”
“The sun, shining in my eyes. The river. Clear blue sky. And Molly’s voice. She was laughing and teasing me.”
“What did she say?”
“ ‘Old—drunk.’ ” Guthrie’s eyes were fixed in absorption on the carpet. “ ‘Move over, you old drunk, and let me ...’”
“Drive?”
Guthrie looked up slowly.
“She was driving, Jim. I remember clearly now—the motion of the jeep, the sun stunting in the sky, and the river down below. We were on a high bank ...” He swallowed and wiped his forehead where a film of perspiration had appeared. “And then Molly started screaming, and the jeep slid to one side. I almost pitched out. We were sliding out of control down the bank, and I—I ...”
“What happened?”
“This is the nightmare part. My hands are stuck, stuck tight somehow, and I can’t reach the wheel. I know something horrible is going to happen, but I can’t reach the wheel. Then the Major’s face and his terrible eyes, and I hear him saying, ‘I forgive you, I forgive you.’ ” Guthrie put his face down into his hands and sat quietly.
Practice looked at him abstractedly, thinking hard.
“According to Steppie,” he said slowly, “the films which Fletch Childs took show you behind the wheel of the car, with your arm caught in the wheel. Could that be what you remember, John, when you say your hands were stuck tight?”
“I don’t know,” Guthrie replied, his voice muffled. “I was drunk. Anything could have happened. Maybe Molly wasn’t driving. Maybe I only want to believe that she was.”
“Maybe,” Practice said. “At any rate, Fletch Childs saw the accident and filmed the aftermath. And in those films you’re behind the wheel of the jeep.” He fell silent, lost in thought.
The Governor raised his head and shook himself like a nervous horse.
“I—suppose I’d better be getting to the hospital,” he said. “Dore will be wondering ...”
“I’ll call down and have the car ready,” Practice said, and Guthrie nodded.
After the Governor had left, Practice sat alone in the apartment for some time, thinking about the death of Molly Kinsaker.
He tried to picture the girl in his mind as she must have been on the last day of her life: an exuberant, high-spirited girl, strong-willed, perhaps with a saving grace of humor. He saw Molly and John riding across the rough meadows in the jeep, going toward the river, following a familiar trail that Molly knew well. It was reasonable that she would be eager to take a turn at the wheel. And it would be reasonable that Guthrie, feeling the impact of the beer and the heat, would allow her to drive. Then—too much speed, the wheels slipping over the edge of a sandy embankment, the girl frantically struggling to keep the jeep upright as they skidded down. Perhaps at a crucial moment the inexperienced Molly had placed her foot upon the gas pedal instead of the brake and hurtled them into the midst of the trees.
“My hands are stuck, stuck tight somehow ...”
Stuck where? Between the seats? So that at the moment of impact only Molly Kinsaker was flung from the jeep, across the windshield, headfirst into the wall of trees?
After the crash, silence. The birds have flown from the trees and are circling in fright high in the cloudless sky. Far away, perhaps, undisturbed by the noise, other birds are twittering on a perfect summer’s day.
And across the field a man comes walking, slowly at first, as the impact of the tragedy he has witnessed drags after him. Then perhaps he breaks into a run and makes his way breathlessly to the periphery of tree shadow, where the hot odor of the jeep engine slowly escapes into the broad air and a dead girl lies faceup across the crumpled hood, staring sightlessly at the sky.
Practice squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. And after, for reasons known only to himself, Fletcher Childs rearranges the unconscious form of John Guthrie so that it appears as if Guthrie was behind the wheel of the jeep at the time of the accident, and then methodically films every gruesome detail to substantiate the lie he is going to tell.
• 15 •
As Practice sat in edgy contemplation, the telephone on the table beside him rang, and then rang again. It was the Governor’s private line; the ring wouldn’t be answered below. Probably Dore, he thought, wanting her husband, and picked up the receiver.
At first he heard nothing on the wire. Then, little by little, human sounds reached his ears, the sounds of someone at the limits of physical endurance trying to speak or to scream, to find relief in human contact, in any manner at all.
“Who is it?” he said sharply, with a sudden icy tautness from the nape of his neck to the small of his back.
“Jim—I need—you ...”
“Lucy?” He hunched forward, pressing the receiver of the telephone closer to his ear, as if by sheer concentration he could bring her voice more strongly from the void in which she seemed to be speaking. “Where are you?”
“Lake Road,” he heard indistinctly. “The Mill—then—Baldtree. Fletch ...”
“Talk louder, Lucy, for God’s ...”
“Can’t—say any more. Help—Jim ...”
There was a plastic clatter in his ear, then the click followed by an instant’s nothingness, and the long droning of an empty line.
He sat for a few moments with a grimace chiseled on his face, then got up quickly. The Lake Road. Apparently she had called him from the big reservoir forty miles south of the city, and Baldtree—that would be Fletcher Childs’s summer place. Practice had heard them both talk about it, but had never been there. So that’s where Lucy had gone after leaving the mansion earlier in the day. To be alone, or to meet ...
He borrowed one of the mansion Cadillacs for the trip to the reservoir. It was an almost new, midnight-blue behemoth, with all the power he could ask for on the highway and plenty of weight for negotiating the narrow, precipitous roads in the woods above the reservoir shores.
He drove with only a part of his mind alert to the still-wet highway and the oncoming traffic. The feeling of oppression that had begun earlier in Billie Charmian’s antiseptic room in the warehouse had settled on him again. The shadow of a boy whom he had never met raced through his mind, and he withdrew in glum horror from its touch. Because the boy wanted revenge against a man who hadn’t known he existed, Practice’s own life was involved beyond his control. For several years he had lived in a thin, dry atmosphere, in the midst of people, but without acknowledging their humanity. Whenever their personal failings had seemed to threaten him in some obscure way, he had withdrawn deep inside himself.
During the months at Doc Merrill’s, he had attempted to strengthen his personality by simplifying it, and in gaining strength he had discarded all those emotions that m
ake life unpredictable, confusing, and sometimes unpleasant. He had tried to make a simple equation of himself, so that each day would be a mathematical certainty, with only the variables of his work to provide stimulation. But those variables had nothing to do with him; they were pertinent only to John Guthrie and his career.
Lucy had known all of this, intuitively, and she had taken it chance on loving him. He had responded painfully—taking care to hide his pain—dutifully bringing out all the old words, the litany of love, while feeling guilty for desiring her. Maybe he had been relieved when at last she despaired of finding a reliable depth of passion and had left him, naked, distressed, but persistent out of ritual or some stubborn sense of obligation to her.
Out of the dark, alongside the highway, the tavern and roadhouse signs appeared, one on top of another, flickering across his mind. Anonymous places, with a car or two parked in front. The odor of taprooms welled out of his memory, his throat was dry. He could turn off at any one of the low, garish buildings and nudge the Cadillac against the siding. Inside, he would likely be alone; no one would try to talk to him. He knew just how he would do it: three cold beers to ease his thirst and then the first double shot of scotch, no ice. He had forty dollars in his pocket. Enough for two fifths and one of the cabins out back, deep in the pines. There were always cabins, with an iron bed and a faded pink spread, a cracked yellow dish covering the light bulb in the ceiling.
If he was lucky, he would never come out of it long enough to remember John Guthrie or Dore or Chris or Lucy.
Headlights hit his face like an icy deluge; he turned the wheel hard to the right and the other car roared by an inch away, with a howling horn, trailing off in a crazy weave of red taillights, as the driver left the pavement and then steered out of trouble.
The near miss had cleared his mind, and he sat up straighter. A headache was lodged on the left side of his skull, above the ear. Crazy bastard, he thought, and wasn’t sure if he was referring to the driver of the car he had almost run down. He found himself thinking of Lucy and that curled smile of hers, reproving smile.
What do you think of when you think of me, Lucy?
A signpost rose up out of his headlights: Lake Road, next right.
He began to feel anxious again, wishing that he had called Mike Liles before leaving, to find out if there was any news of Val St. George. It was now almost seven o’clock. Six hours earlier, St. George had committed murder. Where was he now?
The Lake Road appeared. Practice slowed, turned off the highway, and accelerated. There was a bewildering profusion of signposts along the road, and for a few moments he had no idea where to go. Then he noticed a red and yellow cutout windmill with an arrow, and took the road pointed out to him.
He was driving as fast as he dared, almost too fast for safety on the unfamiliar road. The mill appeared, an artificial creation with neon blades, apparently some sort of restaurant. There were a few cars around the place. Again he slowed, scanning the many signposts, and picked out the one that said “Baldtree” in faded hand lettering.
The lodge was almost hidden from the road by the thickness of trees around it. Practice had to back up to the single gatepost and rutted drive that wound up the knoll to a point overlooking the reservoir. He shone the spotlight of the Cadillac on the mailbox and saw the name “Childs.” But from the road the house was unlighted and looked deserted.
He had driven within a hundred feet of the lodge before he saw an old Plymouth in a lean-to garage not far away. It was Lucy’s car; she kept it at her brother’s house in town and rarely drove it anywhere.
There was a half-moon low over the hills south of the reservoir, creating enough light in the black and yellow sky for him to make his way to the front door without stumbling over the stones of a neglected rock garden. He had taken a flashlight from the dash compartment of the Cadillac, but didn’t turn it on.
He knocked several times at the heavy timber door of the lodge.
“Lucy!”
Practice waited for several seconds, then tried the door and opened it slowly. The air inside was warm and stale. He fumbled for a light switch beside the door, found one, and pushed the button several times, but there were no lights.
He thought he heard someone breathing in the room, and shut the door behind him. Then brought the flashlight up and the beam spilled into the large living room, traveling over the kind of furniture that used to grace the verandas of resort hotels thirty years ago.
“Lucy?”
He heard the slow hiss of her breath and then the beam of the flashlight found her, crouching in one corner, eyes staring intently and blinded by the light. Her lips were shaped in a snarl, and there was a sixteen-gauge shotgun in her hands, pointed directly at him. She didn’t move or speak, but the breath hissed through her teeth from time to time and her head would jerk up and down as she tightened her grip on the shotgun.
“It’s all right, Lucy,” he said gently. “It’s Jim. I came as soon as you called. What is it? What’s wrong?”
She stared at him without changing expression. Her eyes appeared to narrow a little, and there was a tiny compressed sound in her throat that sounded like “uh-oh.” Then with a rush her eyes lost their look of blindness and her face its frightening rigidity. The shotgun fell from her hands and bumped the floor. Practice swallowed hard. Lucy toppled forward on her hands and knees and stayed in that position for several moments, her hair hanging forward like a curtain.
“Oh, Jim,” she said in a dry, weightless voice. “It’s Fletch. He’s dead. And Val killed him.”
• 16 •
After leaving the mansion that morning, Lucy had gone to her brother’s house hoping that Val St. George might try to get in touch with her there.
She had seen him about once a month since his release from the state hospital, but always he had sought her out. Either he came to the house to visit her or else he telephoned and arranged a meeting. They never met twice in the same place. Lucy never had any idea when he would call, or appear, but she was always glad to see him.
The pattern of their meetings was invariable. Val St. George talked and Lucy listened. Sometimes he went on for hours, eagerly, excitedly, like someone who had been marooned, intolerably isolated from a friendly ear. He talked until his throat was a rasp, spilling out everything he had thought or read or dreamed. Sometimes he acted out skits he had written for Lucy, or sometimes he read passages from books that had attracted him, while Lucy sat by attentively, with an occasional smile or comment.
She never asked him where he had been or what he had been doing. She saw him as an appealing, lonely boy with a need for grandeur in his life, a boy with vision and imagination, and—yes—talent, whose unhappy existence was beneath the contempt of most people. She was certain that he had a job in a neighborhood where he could be as anonymous as possible, not an easy task in a city the size of Osage Bluff.
All Lucy knew about his life was what he chose to tell her, and she felt that some of the harrowing stories he related of his ghetto childhood were fabricated, substitutions for the story he could not bring himself to tell anyone.
He came to her full of pride, vanity, schemes, and plans, as well as a rich good humor, leaving his bitterness behind. Lucy knew that Val was often tempted to unload his frustrations and resentments on her, that it was sometimes a struggle not to do so; but to come to her for pity would he to admit a final defeat, and that he wouldn’t allow himself.
The pattern of their meetings had only recently been broken. Three times in the past month Val had called her, and when she saw him, she noticed the change. He was not so quick to dominate the hours with jokes and ambitions. Instead, he asked a great many questions about her work, about the mansion, about John Guthrie and his wife and child. He seemed almost obsessed by John Guthrie; no detail of the Governor’s daily routine was unimportant to him. Lucy supplied what information she could, innocently wondering at the change in Val. When he saw that his interest in the Governor perplexed h
er, he quickly changed the subject for a while, but always, with the curiosity of a hound sniffing out a buried bone, would return to the same subject and probe, intently, a fixed, almost glazed look in his eyes.
The last call from Val had come yesterday afternoon. Would she meet him?
Lucy had hesitated; it meant breaking a date with Practice and leaving the mansion without telling anyone just where she was going; but the note of pleading in Val’s voice made it impossible for her to refuse.
She had waited almost an hour on the lawn of one of the high schools for him, and then returned to the mansion, feeling both annoyed and disturbed. It was the first time he had ever missed a meeting.
And little more than an hour after that, staring at the wreckage of Governor Guthrie’s bedroom, she had allowed herself to believe for an instant that somehow Val might have been responsible.
But why?
She lay sleepless most of the night. Then, after getting Chris off to school, she awakened Dore and received permission to take the day off—though Lucy was aware that the sleep-drugged Dore had scarcely heard a word she’d said.
She felt certain that Val would try to get in touch with her. But by one o’clock, as she waited in the living room of her brother’s house, an unread magazine on her lap and a ticking clock working at her nerves, she was no longer so sure, and she was no longer as confident of Val St. George as she had been.
Lucy lighted one of her infrequent cigarettes and called Fletch’s office, but his nurse told her that he hadn’t been in all morning. She received the same answer at the university hospital. It was not his day to teach nor his day to play golf, even if the weather had made golf possible. Fletch was a man of established routines, and any deviation was unheard-of.
Possibly he had taken his fishing tackle and gone down to the reservoir. Lucy went up to her brother’s bedroom and looked in the case where he kept his fishing rods and tackle, but nothing had been removed.