The Ax

14

I sleep like a log. I wake up refreshed, comfortable, hungry as a bear. I left no morning call, so I've slept until I was finished sleeping, and the clock-radio reads 9:27. I'm usually out of bed by seven-thirty, so this is really coddling myself. I always had to get up at seven-thirty to get to my job, when I had a job, and I did that for so many years that the habit has stayed with me.

I shower with the curtain only half closed, which is much more comfortable for me, but leaves the floor very wet. I'm sure that's not the first time that's happened.

It's still raining outside, a steady rain out of a low grayish white sky. It won't stop today. I put my overnight bag, with the Luger in the bottom, into the car, then hunker down in the protection of the roof overhang to look at the front of the Voyager.

The glass over the left parking light is gone, and so is the chrome rim around the headlight, but the headlight seems to be intact. There are dents on the bodywork in the left front. If there was ever any blood anywhere on the car, the rain has washed it away.

I go back into the room one last time, to see if I've left anything, and that's when I see the sheet of paper on the table. I'd completely forgotten about that, done in the woozy hysterics of the night. Wow, and I almost left it behind.

I sit at the table, and read what I wrote last night, and that awful dread begins to creep over me again. How terrible I felt last night. Tense, anxious, terrified, unable to sleep. I'm glad writing this made it possible at last for me to lose consciousness for a while.

I meant all of this last night, I know I did. Everything seemed so hopeless. The first one, Everly, went so smoothly, but both of them since have been absolute disasters. I'm not used to this sort of thing, it would be hard enough to do even if they all went smoothly and cleanly, but to have two horror shows in a row really ground me down.

From now on, I have to be more careful and more patient. I have to be sure the circumstances are right before I make my move.

I sympathize with the me from last night, who felt such despair, and wrote these words, and apologized to his victims. I too would apologize to them, if I could. I'd leave them alone, if I could.

I take the confession with me, folded in my pocket. I'll burn it later, somewhere else.

I don't have to go back through Lichgate, which is good. I head south toward Utica on Route 8, and as I drive I think about the damage to the car. I have to get it repaired. I have to fill out a report for the insurance company, though I'm not sure the damage will exceed the deductible. I have to give Marjorie an explanation.

And at the same time, of course, I have to remember the police will be looking for this car. Even if they don't call it a murder back there — and I have no idea if they can tell the body was driven over more than once — but even if they don't call it murder, even if it's merely a hit-and-run, that's still manslaughter, and they'll be looking for the car.

What do they have? Probably tread marks. The glass from the parking light. The rim from the headlight. One or all of those things will tell them the make and model of the car. They'll know they're looking for a Plymouth Voyager with these specific injuries to the left front. I didn't see any paint chipped off, so they probably don't have the color.

There are a lot of these cars on the road, but there won't be many with these particular scars. Fortunately, the headlight still works, and the headlights are switched on because of the rain. With that rain falling, and with the light glaringly on, it will be very hard for any passing cop to see the small dings around the front of the car. I should be safe, until I can get it fixed, and I think I know how to do that.

I told Marjorie I was going to a job interview in Binghamton, so I have to wait until I'm far enough south to be on a route that makes sense for that to be where I'm coming from. Then, with the help of the rain, I'll take care of this problem.

My chance doesn't come until early afternoon, just short of Kingston, New York, where I will cross the Hudson River. For my route back, I continue south after Utica, and although I'm starving I wait a good long time, until almost noon, before I stop at a diner to eat what they would call lunch but I would call breakfast. While I'm in there, I make sure to put the Voyager where no one can casually see the front end of it.

After breaking my fast with lunch, I drive on down through Oneonta, where I turn southwest on State Route 28 through the Catskill Mountains, a winding hilly road, mostly only two lanes wide. It's in a little town along in there that my opportunity knocks.

There's a lumberyard up ahead on the left side of the road, with several vehicles along its front, parked facing in. A pickup truck suddenly backs out from there, too fast and too far, without the driver paying sufficient attention. I could avoid him, if I tromp on the brake, or if I drive briefly onto the shoulder to steer around him, but I do neither. I tromp on the accelerator and ram him, my left front against his left side by his rear wheel.

The pickup skids away sidewise on the wet road, taking my hooked bumper with him, and winding up just off the road in front of the lumberyard. I fight the wheel, roll to the right shoulder, and stop. I turn off the ignition, and get out of the car.

Three men in mackinaws come out of the lumberyard, staring at the destruction. The driver of the pickup truck, a skinny kid in his early twenties wearing a New York Giants warmup jacket and a baseball cap on backwards, sits in the truck, stupefied with shock. His engine has stalled, and his right hand is still high on the steering wheel, holding tight, and country music is blaring loudly from his radio. A dozen planks and a big can of joint compound are in the back of the pickup.

I cross the road and meet the three men in mackinaws. I say, sounding as dazed as that kid over there looks, "Did you see that?"

"I heard it," one of them says. "That was good enough for me."

"He came," I say, and shake my head, and point this way and that, and start again. "He came out, all of a sudden all the way across the road. I was going that way, I was way over there."

One of the men in mackinaws goes over to tell the kid to turn off his ignition, and he does, and the music stops. Another of them says to me, "We better call the cops."

"He came right out," I say.

Everybody agrees I am not at fault. Even the kid knows he's to blame, jumping way out into the road like that, not looking both ways, playing his radio too loud.

The state police treat me with the calm courtesy reserved for the innocent victim, and they treat the kid with the cold efficiency reserved for assholes. They take down everybody's particulars, get names and phone numbers from the three men in mackinaws in case witnesses are ever needed, and assure me they'll send me a copy of the accident report for me to give my insurance company.

I thank them all for their help, and at last I get back into the car, which still runs, though it has some new rattles, and I drive on, and when I reach Kingston I stop in a little neighborhood bar, nearly empty at this time of day, to have a beer, to quiet my nerves.

When I come back out, a Kingston city cop is looking at the damage to the front of my car, parked at the curb by the door to the bar. This damage is now considerably more severe than it was. He asks me if it's my car, and I say yes. He asks to see a driver's license, and I show it to him. Still holding my license, he says, "Do you mind telling me when you got that?"

"About half an hour ago," I tell him, "maybe ten miles back up Route 28. I was just calming myself with a beer in there."

He asks me the particulars of the accident, and then asks if I mind waiting while he calls in, and I tell him in that case I think I'll have another beer.

"Don't drink too much," he says, but he smiles, and I assure him I won't. He walks off to his own car, carrying my license.

I'm still in the bar, a warm and dark and comforting place, five minutes later, halfway down this second draft beer, when the cop comes in and says, "Just wanted you to know, it checked out." He hands me my license. "Thanks for the cooperation."

"Sure," I say.