The Doomsters

4

CARL SAT TENSE and quiet in the seat beside me. After a while he said: “Did you know that words can kill, Mr. Archer? You can kill an old man by arguing with him. I did it to my father. At least,” he added on a different note, “I’ve thought for the last six months that I was responsible. Father died in his bath that night. When Dr. Grantland examined him, he said he’d had a heart attack, brought on by overexcitement. I blamed myself for his death. Jerry and Zinnie blamed me, too. Is it any wonder I blew my top? I thought I was a parricide.

“But now I don’t know,” he said. “When I found out about Dr. Grantland, it started me thinking back all over again. Why should I go by the word of a man like that? He hasn’t even the right to call himself a doctor. It’s the strain of not knowing that I can’t stand. You see, if Father died of a heart attack, then I’m responsible.”

“Not necessarily. Old men die every day.”

“Don’t try to confuse me,” he said peremptorily. “I can see the issue quite clearly. If Father died of a heart attack, I killed him with my words, and I’m a murderer. But if he died of something else, then someone else is the murderer. And Dr. Grantland is covering up for them.”

I was pretty certain by now that I was listening to paranoid delusions. I handled them with kid gloves: “That doesn’t sound too likely, Carl. Why don’t you give it a rest for now? Think about something else.”

“I can’t!” he cried. “You’ve got to help me get at the truth. You promised to help me.”

“I will–” I started to say.

Carl grabbed my right elbow. The car veered onto the shoulder, churning gravel. I braked, wrestling the wheel and Carl’s clutching hands. The car came to a stop at a tilt, one side in the shallow ditch. I shook him off.

“That was a smart thing to do.”

He was careless or unaware of what had happened. “You’ve got to believe me,” he said. “Somebody’s got to believe me.”

“You don’t believe yourself. You’ve told me two stories already. How many others are there?”

“You’re calling me a liar.”

“No. But your thinking needs some shaking out. You’re the only one who can do that. And the hospital is the place to do it in.”

The buildings of the great hospital were visible ahead, in the gap between two hills. We noticed them at the same time. Carl said: “No. I’m not going back there. You promised to help me, but you don’t intend to. You’re just like all the others. So I’ll have to do it myself.”

“Do what?”

“Find out the truth. Find out who killed my father, and bring him to justice.”

I said as gently as possible: “You’re talking a little wild, kid. Now you keep your half of the bargain, and I’ll keep mine. You go back in and get well, I’ll see what I can find out.”

“You’re only trying to humor me. You don’t intend to do anything.”

“Don’t I?”

He was silent. By way of proving that I was on his side, I said: “It will probably help if you’d tell me what you know about this Grantland. This morning you mentioned a record.”

“Yes, and I wasn’t lying. I got it from a good source – a man who knows him.”

“Another patient?”

“He’s a patient, yes. That doesn’t prove anything. He’s perfectly sane, there’s nothing the matter with his mind.”

“Is that what he says?”

“The doctors say it, too. He’s in for narcotic addiction.”

“That hardly recommends him as a witness.”

“He was telling me the truth,” Carl said. “He’s known Dr. Grantland for years, and all about him. Grantland used to supply him with narcotics.”

“Bad enough, if true. But it’s still a long way to murder.”

“I see.” His tone was disconsolate. “You want me to think I did it. You give me no hope.”

“Listen to me,” I said.

But he was deep in himself, examining a secret horror. He sobbed once in dry pain. Without any other warning, he turned on me. Dull sorrow filmed his eyes. His hooked hands swung together reaching for my throat. Immobilized behind the steering wheel, I reached for the door handle to gain some freedom of action. Carl was too quick for me. His large hands closed on my neck. I struck at his face with my right hand, but he was almost oblivious.

His close-up face was immense and bland, spotted with clear drops of sweat. He shook me. Daylight began to wane.

“Lay off,” I said. “Damn fool.” But the words were a rusty cawing.

I hit at him again, ineffectually, without leverage. One of his hands left my neck and came up hard against the point of my jaw. I went out.

I came to in the dry ditch, beside the tire marks where my car had stood. As I got up the checkerboard fields fell into place around me, teetering slightly. I felt remarkably small, like a pin on a map.