“Well, perhaps your experimental situations were all wrong to begin with?” Beckman said and, as he persisted, Dr. Drew’s face tightened into death mask rigidity. “I mean, maybe it’s close to, if not dependent on, a more primitive survival mechanism. Take, for example, people who have been victims of armed robberies. They see the gun, their minds go into slow motion, something happens, and the robber misses with every shot. What I’m saying is, maybe the intense energy of self-preservation, combined with the superior human mind, may generate a kind of energy that has limited control over material objects. It would seem to me that it might even indicate a new avenue of human evolution”
Dr. Drew shrugged. “Are you suggesting that I go out and point a gun at somebody, pull the trigger, and see what happens?”
“No, but I think it’s worthwhile paying a little more attention to those who have had the experience.”
“Simple-minded trash for tabloids,” Dr. Drew almost shouted. He whirled around to face Honey. “I’d be more careful next time, if I were you,” he said, spitting the words out so that Beckman saw drops of saliva arching all around Honey’s face. Dr. Drew strode hurriedly away, back straight, head erect.
“What did he mean by that?” Beckman asked.
“Oh, nothing. Really, dear. You shouldn’t have needled him like that. He has a heart condition, and I understand from his wife that he’s been impotent for years.” She slipped her arm through Beckman’s, impulsively. “Let’s get out of here. I’ve had enough of these people.” And she meant it.
“What about them?” Beckman said, looking back to find Hoss and Malany.
“Oh, they’ll come back with Leon or something. I get the impression that your friend Hoss can take care of himself, and I know Malany can. Come on, Beckman, I want to go for a ride in the Model A.”
Hoss waved him on and shouted across the room, hands cupped over his mouth, “See you back at the ranch, boy.”
“Really, Beckman. All of this row about the genuineness of the common man, his innate nobility, his honesty and alienation simply isn’t fashionable any more. You know, you should tell your friend Hoss that the ‘good ole boy’ mystique is no longer charming. ”
“You think he’s a phony, huh?” Beckman asked.
“No, he’s genuine enough. But I do think he enjoys himself a little too much, at the expense of others,” Honey said, slowly dragging Beckman toward the door.
“From what I’ve seen, you should know.” Beckman felt the left corner of his mouth curling up into a kind of snarl like a dog sniffing at a stranger.
“Now, Beckman, there’s no point in being insolent. I want us to have a pleasant ride in the country in my beautiful Model A. It can be 1928 again. You can be F. Scott Fitzgerald, or anyone you would like to be, dear, so long as it’s consistent with the period.”
“Mrs. Moskowski, I’m satisfied being Beckman. I don’t see that I have to choose.”
“Oh, but you do, dearest. You can be anybody you want to be. Let’s go. I’ll be a young Dorothy Parker. That should be interesting, and you can be a young Ernest Hemingway, with everyone raving about your latest book. We can go dashing about the countryside with the whole world at our fingertips. You know how to speak like Hemingway don’t you—you know those pithy sentences that hit you like a bullet, the poignant word that had so much implied meaning in it. It would be very fulfilling, maybe even a little erotic, if you would give it a try.”
“Good Lord, Mrs. Moskowski, that’s sick. It’s crazy.”
“Yes, but that’s what makes it so much fun. You’re free to play, and believe, like a child. It’s like when you discovered that sex wasn’t a sin anymore. It’s a whole new world now. Don’t you see?”
Beckman wanted to protest against the way Honey was tugging on his arm, dragging him forcibly out of the house, whispering “come on” like the hissing of a cat. He could have stopped it right there. He could have said “no” and let it go at that, but he was curious, and he felt some responsibility for Malany. He didn’t want to be the instrument of destruction, this time, by angering her friend who was beginning to seem somehow superhuman.
Honey headed south on Interstate 55. Cars passed them, sounding more like jet airplanes, some angrily sounding their horns. She ignored them and continued chatting about A Farewell to Arms.
“Tell me, Ernest, did you consciously intend to make Catherine so shallow? Is she your idea of what a woman should be, fatuous and completely devoted?”
“Come on, Mrs. Moskowski, this is nuts.” Beckman shouted into the din of traffic noises, but he realized that she was not hearing him. Some transformation had taken place. It wasn’t really a case of multiple personality. Beckman sensed that she was aware of who she really was. She was more like a neurotic actress, pretending almost to the point of insanity, but remaining sane.
“You know, Ernest, people are not saying good things about you, leaving that sweet Hadley and latching on to Pauline’s money. Selfish and unnecessarily cruel, that’s what I hear.”
“My God, Mrs. Moskowski, this has gone far enough. It’s . . . ”
Honey veered sharply onto a right-hand exit and another right turn at the intersection onto an unlighted hard-surfaced road.
“This is Mississippi, Ernest. I just love driving through Mississippi. Oh, and you know, your colleague William Faulkner lives not far from here. I would suggest stopping by, but I know you two aren’t on the best of terms.”
Honey was clearly insisting on her fantasy. Beckman felt that, even though she wasn’t truly insane or drunk, the only thing for him to do was to play along. He knew it was leading somewhere, perhaps even following (as it seemed) some circuitous plan. The design began to show when she made another turn down a dirt road. Beckman asked her if she had seen Faulkner lately.
“Just last week. He loves to go riding like this.”
Beckman wondered who had played that role. Then another right turn down a much narrower dirt road. They rode for about a mile when Honey stopped the car and switched off the engine. Beckman, still curious, waited for the next event, which came rather quickly when Honey threw her arms around his neck.
“Oh Ernest, let’s make love.”
Whatever it was—the perfume, Honey’s luscious body, the thrill of adultery—whatever it was, the desire for Honey’s body swept over him so swiftly and powerfully that he was unable to move.
She unfastened his pants deftly and, with a simple, single, downward motion, jerked them down around his ankles. Then, with acrobatic expertise, she started undressing herself as she fondled Beckman’s swelling genitals. Then she rose and clamored into the back seat. He saw her beautiful legs scissoring the air as she kicked to get over. Beckman followed but caught his pants on something, and in a frantic effort to free himself, heard something rip. The releasing force sent him lunging against the back of the rear seat. Honey lay writhing and moaning, her lovely legs and bottom spread grotesquely across the back seat.
“Hurry, hurry.”
Beckman, slightly dizzy from the heat of the moment, felt himself plunging in with slick and surprising ease. He surrendered himself, in only a few moments, to nature’s sweetest and greatest demand, all the while remaining oddly aware of his peculiar surroundings, of the mosquitoes biting his bottom and of the abnormally loud squeak of the car’s springs.
“Oh, I dearly love screwing in the backseat of a Model A in the woods of Mississippi. It’s so regenerative, so wonderfully primitive. How do you feel, Ernest? Can you do it again? That was so fast.”
She ran her hand down to Beckman’s genitals.
“Oh, you’re limp. Well, we’ll just have to do something about that.”
“Really, Mrs. Moskowski, don’t you think we had better be going?” Beckman said.
She mumbled something unintelligible, and after a few minutes of her special technique, words and considerations were again made insignificant. Somewhere in this timeless world of agony and desire, she stopped and backed up to him.
>
“Do it this way, and touch my boobs. Oh God, yes!”
There was a third time after a sufficient rest period; Honey on top and humping tirelessly for what seemed to Beckman like hours. At last she groaned and fell limp over Beckman’s body. Beckman, in spite of his strong wish to get dressed, fell irresistibly asleep.
It was the sun finding a slit in the trees and through the back window of the Model A that woke them. That, and the muzzle of a twelve-gauge shotgun leveled at the top of Beckman’s head. Beckman looked down the barrel in horror, at the face of a wrinkled, whiskered old man peering back at him along the barrel with one good eye, the other white and dead as a stone.
“Jonny, look at this, would you?”
Beckman looked over at the face of a mongrel dog leaning, paws up, on the front seat.
“Jonny, what do you suppose they been up to?”
Honey now realized their situation and screamed. Instantly the man cocked the hammer on the gun.
“Wait!” Beckman yelled, “Wait! Take it easy. We’re not after anything. We got lost, and we’re engaged to be married.” Beckman could not keep the tremor out of his voice.
“That so, huh?” The man looked skeptical. “Well, suppose you all get your clothes on and don’t try anythin’, you hear?”
“Right, right,” Beckman said, juggling to get his pants on and not caring about the rip in the crotch. Honey, visibly trembling and making an unconscious whining sound, reached frantically for her clothes.
“Listen, mister, what’s the reason for holding a gun on us? We haven’t done anything to you.”
“Did you hear that, Jonny?”
The dog barked and lowered his ears.
“They say they ain’t done nothin’. Hit’s my guess is one of ’em’s married and they been out here all night doing somethin’ they ought not ta, and they just happen to be doing it on my place. And, Jonny, how do we know they ain’t the law? The law does some mighty strange things these days.”
“Your place?” Beckman said, looking around.
“Right over there.”
The man pointed with his free hand while still holding the gun on them with the other. Beckman began to make out a small structure, almost completely covered by trees, with a single path leading up to it. Rusted and burned out bodies of cars representing three decades lay scattered all around the structure.
“Now,” the man said, backing away, the gun still leveled at Beckman’s head. “You two get out real slow and let’s all go up to my place. And remember, any notions and you don’t have to worry about the sins of this world anymore.”
“Look, mister,” Honey said, “just let us go. We didn’t mean anything. I’ll pay you any amount you ask. I have money, please!”
“I bet you would, you Jezebel. And is it you who’s out being unfaithful to your husband? My God, if you don’t look like a married woman to me. Now, no more talking. Go along.”
Beckman took Honey by the hand. It was cold and trembling. He felt its bony frame under the flesh, not at all the warm, soft thing that had caressed him so tenderly during the night.
They walked quickly together, ahead of the man, always aware of the gun at their backs. They walked past the burned-out hulks, up the path to the man’s cavernous dwelling. Somewhere behind the place, a chorus of howls rose.
“Just my bird dogs. Have to keep ’em locked up or they’d be all over the place. Old Jonny here’s my watch dog. He ain’t much for pedigree, but he’s got more brains than all them pure bloodhounds put together.”
The walk had taken much longer than Beckman had estimated. He and Honey were panting as much from exhaustion as from fear. They stopped at the door.
“Can we rest a minute?” Beckman asked, entertaining somewhere in his mind the theatrical possibility of escape and rejecting simultaneously any hope of reasoning with the old man. The man, himself, had obviously rejected or had never even considered a reasonable life. Great pictures of the craziness of Beckman’s life flashed on and off in his mind. Isolation and murder could never have been a part of it. He would have drawn the line there. He was sure of that.
“Inside,” the man commanded, waving the barrel toward the door.
Honey looked at Beckman with such sick terror that he almost surrendered to the impulse to throw himself bodily on the man, but the old man goaded him with the barrel of the gun and they stumbled into the dark, windowless interior of the man’s home.
“Over in the corner.”
Slowly, still clutching each other’s hand, Beckman and Honey made their way into the shack by the light of a kerosene lamp, and past the central wood table littered with the remains of a half-eaten fowl.
Honey crouched in a corner, holding her legs next to her body. Beckman squatted beside her, not taking his eyes off the shotgun which was now leveled at them from the man’s seat at the table.
“What are you going to do with us?” Honey shrieked.
The man shrugged. “Don’t know. I ain’t had nothing to eat in the past two days but this old wild duck, and he’s pretty near gone to the bad. Wild game just don’t keep very long. Hell, if I get hungry enough, I just might eat one of you. Or,” the man laughed, “both of you. Save going out huntin’ and using up shells.”
Honey started crying and Beckman, stunned by the horrifying image of being chopped up like a cut of beef, was even more revolted at the thought of his body turning to feces inside the bowels of this madman. The man brought a half gallon ceramic jug out from under the table and, without taking his eye from his captives, drained the remaining contents. He slammed the empty jug on the table.
“I hope you folks got some money.”
Honey shouted, “Yes, yes! I have!”
“How much?”
“As much as you want. You can have it all.”
The man smiled, baring his yellow gums, and said that he only needed enough for another jug. That was all the money he required from the world.
“What about other things? Don’t you need money for those? Your guns and fuel—things like that?”
“Hell, ma’am, I suppose I do but you see, I just don’t worry about them till the time comes. Right now, all I need is another jug. Everything else will take care of itself.”
“I can get you one, the best whiskey money can buy,” Honey said.
Beckman looked at her with surprise.
“Yes, yes.” She shook her head wildly. “I have a whole quart, hasn’t been opened.”
“Where?” the man asked.
“Let me take you to it. I keep it hidden.”
Tears were running down Honey’s cheeks, but her voice was surprisingly controlled. The man sighted down the barrel and cocked the hammer. He was not to be played with.
“For Christ’s sake, tell him!” Beckman shouted.
“In the car. Under the front seat.”
“Now that’s some hiding place,” the man said, lowering the gun. “You know, Jonny, I believe that the little lady here was planning to make a run for it and leave her boyfriend behind. You see what I tell you, Jonny, about women, just can’t trust ’em a-tall. I guess I’ll have to fix it so’s they’ll stay put.”
He stood up, walked a few paces over to the wall, and lifted a small coil of line from a peg.
“Now get on your bellies and hands behind you.”
Beckman and Honey lowered themselves to the floor. Honey looked as though she believed she was going to die. Beckman looked away. He didn’t have the courage to face her. His mind raced. If the man meant to kill them, he would do it outside, not in his living room. He had time.
Beckman tensed the muscles in his wrists and hands, remembering from the Cowboys and Indians games of childhood that if he tensed his muscles while he was being tied up, he might be able to pull his hands free after relaxing them. The man tied Honey’s hands. Then her feet. She was sobbing.
“Shut up,” the man shouted, enraged.
“Please, Mrs. Moskowski, don’t make him mad,” Beckman plead
ed.
The man tied Beckman next, biting the cord into his wrists and ankles.
“That’ll hold you till I get back,” he said. “And for a long while after.” The man left, followed by his dog.
Beckman immediately relaxed his hand and leg muscles and began tugging to free himself, but the cord would not give. He tried, sometimes frantically, until his hands and feet felt swollen and numb. His desperation only seemed to strengthen the cords. He relaxed again, and calmly formed an image of the bindings in his mind. He felt sure this time, even confident. Wasn’t he in the very same position that he had described to Dr. Drew? The image of the cords formed with that of his hands and wrists, bound in grotesque and twisted blue shapes. He concentrated on the cords, down into the thread structure, deeper into the fibrous twisting’s; down, down into the heart of its molecular chains, its atoms, electrons, protons, and neutrons, and deeper into the level where all energy and matter become one.
The desperate need for his gift began to work. He could no longer see it mentally, but he knew it was working; altering energy levels, separating sub-atomic particles, breaking molecular chains, loosening fibers, the destructive, internal eruption spreading and decaying throughout the cord like a swift-moving disease.
“Beckman! Beckman! God! What’s wrong with you? Can’t you do something?”
“I’m trying, dammit. I was concentrating. Why did you have to interrupt?”
“Jesus, it’s no time for games. For God’s sake, do something sensible, something logical.”
Beckman ignored her and tried to break the cord once more. He tried concentrating again, but that was gone too. They heard the sound of the Model A outside, then the car door slammed. The man’s dog barked, and then the sound of both of them coming up the wooden steps.
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