The Ax

27

The weight of my raincoat is more balanced today as I walk through the woods, with the Luger in the right pocket and two apples in the left. Today I'm prepared for a long wait.

It's not yet ten in the morning when I reach GRB's house and take up my position, seated on the stump at the edge of the woods, behind the pool house. The house over there beyond the lawn seems shut up tight, as though the owners have gone away forever. But she, at least, was here the day before yesterday, when I saw her hike through the woods, hitting trees with her shillelagh.

I settle down, trying to find a position that's more comfortable for my back, on this stump, and I wait. And after a while, I find myself thinking about this or that part of yesterday's session with Longus Quinlan, and how all of that history just came pouring out of Marjorie. I must be a different person from the one I always thought I was, if she had to keep so silent around me for so long, if she had to create this entire scenario, an affair, counseling, before she could suddenly blurt it all out like that, like a dam bursting.

I remember what I said yesterday about retraining, that word from when I got the chop, bubbling to the surface all at once there, and I think I'm serious about it. I've just been going along, doing my best to take care of my family, but ignoring the effect I was having on Marjorie, taking it for granted she was happy with me.

Retraining. That was part of the separation package at the mill, what they called retraining, and what they called retraining was so miserable and false that I really ought to find some other word for the reappraisal I want to make in connection with myself. What they called retraining was…

I don't suppose they actually meant it to be insulting. I think what they were trying to do was keep us all calm and hopeful until we were well out the door, and that's why we had the severance packages and the inspirational meetings and the offers of retraining, all this crap.

At first, I was even hopeful about the idea of retraining. I'd read all the stuff about it, the same stuff we've all read, how it's going to be necessary in the brave new world of tomorrow for people to move on from job to job, learning new skills along the way, and how males older than fifty have the hardest time giving up the old skills in exchange for the new skills, and I was absolutely prepared to prove that particular generalization false, here's one guy can adapt, just try me.

And so they tried me, all right. They offered me air conditioning repair.

Where am I, in a vocational high school or a minimum security prison, which one? Air conditioning repair? How is this a brand new skill to carry anybody into the brave new world of tomorrow? And what does air conditioning repair have at all to do with my entire work history? I manage assembly lines, that's what I do.

Okay, forget specialized paper processes, just talk about assembly lines, the management thereof, and that's what I do. Retrain me to run a different kind of assembly line, all right? I'm adaptable. The product lines are still out there, the products are still churning out the factory door. I'm happy to retrain, if it connects with me in any way at all, if it makes any kind of sense.

Let's say you're the owner of a company that services air conditioning units in large office buildings, and you have an opening for a repairman, and thirty guys apply (and thirty guys will apply) who have had years of experience repairing air conditioners, and I show up with a certificate of two months' training in air conditioner repair and a quarter century of experience in manufacturing specialized paper products. Are you gonna hire me? Or are you not that crazy?

Take James Halstead, the banker turned car salesman. Is that retraining? He looks like a banker, which means he looks like a Mercedes salesman. He already has the suit. Is he where he is because he actively welcomed retraining, or is he where he is because he failed? Did he seek for solace in Marjorie's arms because he'd made a successful transition to the brave new world of tomorrow, or because he was discarded like last year's computer? Can it be he's unhappy because he just found out the bank didn't need him after all? Those complacent days of plenty, riding the commuter train three days a week to what turned out not to be his actual life, but just a game they were letting him play, for a little while.

When one of his old bosses comes in to buy a Mercedes, using the money they've saved on his salary, do they recognize him? They do not. But he recognizes them. And never lets on. And smiles, and smiles, and sells the car.

That's retraining.

Eleven-fifteen; she appears, in the same hat and cardigan and corduroys, but a different blouse. The last time, the blouse was light blue, this time it's light green. She carries the shillelagh again, and she marches across the lawn like the commander of a prisoner-of-war camp on inspection. She goes through the gate in the electric fence, and strides off up the path: crack… crack… crack…

Is he in there? Do I dare try it? I have at least half an hour, probably more, before she gets back, judging by last time. I can't sit here forever, day after day, on this stump, like a leprechaun.

I rise — stiff already — and cross to the gate, and let myself through, carefully hooking it shut behind me. I thought at first I'd slink around to the right, along the fence, past the rhododendron beds and the birdbath, to where the wires of the fence are attached to the right rear corner of the house, but now I realize there's no point hiding. What if he does see me? So what? I'm a respectable looking man in a raincoat, walking across his lawn, probably got lost out there in the woods, looking for directions. He comes to the door, he asks if he can help, and I shoot him.

So I cross the lawn, not exactly boldly, but casually, looking around as though with a normal curiosity about somebody else's home. Nobody appears at a door, nobody appears at a window. I veer to the left, cross the patio, and try one of the sliding patio doors. It glides open, and I step inside.

The central air conditioning is on, discreet but apparent. If anything happened to it, I wouldn't know how to fix it.

This is a dining room, with its view through the glass doors to the patio and pool. I cross it, and now I'm definitely a trespasser, not an innocent man lost in the woods.

I move swiftly and quietly through the house, first downstairs, then up, and it's empty. GRB isn't here. At the very end, I open the door from the kitchen to the attached garage, and there's no car in it.

He's out. Where is he? Does he have a counterman job, like Everett Dynes? Is he selling automobiles? How do I find him? How do I get my hands on him?

I'm crossing back through the kitchen when I glance out the window and see her coming, still marching firmly forward, headed this way across the lawn, mashing it every second step with her stick. A shorter walk today; damn.

I don't want her to find me, because I don't want to have to kill her. For many reasons I don't want to kill her, but the primary reason right now is that her husband isn't home, and if I leave her dead and him alive he'll be alerted, he'll be surrounded by police, I'll never get my hands on him. If I kill her, and then wait for GRB to come home, what happens if he doesn't come home? What if he's on an overnight job interview, won't be back till late tomorrow?

I can't stay here, to wait for him. I can't kill this woman, so I can't permit her to know I'm here.

She uses the patio door, or she has in the past, the same door I just came in by. When she enters, which way will she go?

Either the kitchen, I think, or the downstairs bathroom, which means through the dining room and the smaller sitting room and the hall, not through the large living room facing the front of the house. So I move into the living room, and crouch behind the sofa that stands in the middle of that large space. It looks toward the stone fireplace, with its back to the large bow window showing front lawn and the driveway that recedes downward toward the invisible main road. Crouched here, behind the sofa, eight feet from that window, I'm fully exposed to anyone out front, but why would anyone be out front?

I hear her enter, as the door glides open, and then shut. I hear the final click as she puts the shillelagh down, its tip striking the polished wood floor.

I crouch behind the sofa. My right hand grasps the Luger in my raincoat pocket. I try to remember to keep my finger away from the trigger, afraid I'll spastically shoot when I don't want to, probably wounding myself, certainly alerting her, surely destroying everything I've done so far.

I hear the duller tocks of her shoes as she crosses the dining room. This way, or the other?

The other. Across the smaller sitting room, into the hall, and into the bathroom. Yes, a brisk walk in the woods does exercise the bladder, doesn't it, and that's why the walk was cut short. And she shuts the bathroom door, even though she's alone in the house, as her mother taught her.

I rise up, behind the sofa, and take my right hand out of my pocket, away from the Luger. My fingers are stiff, like arthritis. Briskly, I cross the living room and the dining room. As silently as possible, I slide open the door, exit, slide it shut. I trot across the lawn, wanting to be well off her property before she's done in the bathroom, because next she'll surely go on to the kitchen, and from the kitchen windows over the sink she'll have a full view of this entire lawn.

The gate. I unhook it, step through, hook it. Without a backward glance, I stride up the path, almost as purposeful as she is.

On the walk back, I eat both apples.