The Fiend

(23)

He was moving toward the sea as inevitably as a drop of water. There were stops for traffic lights, detours to avoid passing places where Ben or Louise sometimes went; there were backtrackings when he found himself on a strange street. These things delayed him but they didn’t alter his destination.

He passed the paper company where he worked. A light was burning in the office and he went over and peered into the window, hoping to see Mr. Warner sitting at his desk. But the office was empty, the light burning only to discourage burglars. Charlie was disappointed. He would have liked to talk to Mr. Warner, not about anything in particular, just a quiet, calm conversation about the ordinary things which ordinary people discussed. To Mr. Warner he wasn’t anyone special; such a conversation was possible. But Mr. Warner wasn’t there.

Charlie went around the side of the building to the loading Zone, which was serviced by a short spur of railroad track. He followed the spur for no reason other than that it led somewhere. He took short, quick steps, landing on every tie and counting them as he moved. At the junction of the spur and the main track he stopped, suddenly aware that he was not alone. He raised his head and saw a man coming toward him, walking in the dry, dusty weeds beside the track. He looked like one of the old winos who hung around the railroad jungle, waiting for a handout or an empty boxcar or an even break. He was carrying a paper bag and an open bottle of muscatel.

He said, “Hey, chum, what’s the name of this place?”

“San Félice.”

“San Félice, well, what do you know? I thought it seemed kinda quiet for L.A. It’s California, though, ain’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Not that it matters none. I been in them all. They’re all alike, except California has the grape.” He touched the bottle to his cheek. “The grape and me, we’re buddies. Got a cigarette and a light?”

“I don’t smoke but I think I have some matches.” Charlie rummaged in the pocket of his windbreaker and brought out a book of matches. On the outside cover an address was written: 319 Jacaranda Road. He recognized the handwriting as his own but he couldn’t remember writing it or whose address it was or why it should make him afraid, afraid to speak, afraid to move except to crush the matches in his fist.

“Hey, what’s the matter with you, chum?”

Charlie turned and began to run. He could hear the man yelling something after him but he didn’t stop until the track rounded a bend and a new sound struck his ears. It was a warning sound, the barking of dogs; not just two or three dogs but a whole pack of them.

The barking of the dogs, the bend in the tracks, the smell of the sea nearby, they were like electric shocks of recognition stinging his ears, his eyes, his nose. He knew this place. He hadn’t been anywhere near it for years, but he remembered it all now, the boarding kennels behind the scraggly pittosporum hedge and the grade school a few hundred yards to the south. He remembered the children taking the back way to school because it was shorter and more exciting, teetering along the tracks with flailing arms, waiting until the final split second to jump down into the brush before the freight train roared past. It was a game, the bravest jumped last, and the girls were often more daring than the boys. One little girl in particular seemed to have no fear at all. She laughed when the engineer leaned out of his cab and shook his fist at her, and she laughed at Charlie’s threats to report her to the principal, to tell her parents, to let some of the dogs loose on her.

“You can’t, ha ha, because they’re not your dogs and they wouldn’t come back to you and a lot of them would have babies if they got away. Don’t you even know that, you dumb old thing?”

“I know it but I don’t talk about it. It’s not nice to talk about things like that.”

“Why not?”

“You get off those tracks right away.”

“Come and make me.”

For nearly an hour Virginia had been standing at the window with one corner of the drape pulled back just enough so that she had a view of the front of the Brant house and the curb where the black Chrysler was parked. She had seen Gallantyne and the lawyer getting out of it and had stayed at the window watching hopefully for some sign of good news. Minute by minute the hope had died but she couldn’t stop watching.

She could hear Howard moving around in the room behind her, picking up a book, laying it down, straightening a picture, lighting a cigarette, sitting, standing, making short trips to the kitchen and back. His restless activity only increased her feeling of coldness and quietness.

“You can’t stand there all night,” Howard said finally. “I’ve fixed you a hot rum. Will you drink it?”

“No.”

“It might help you to eat something.”

“I don’t want anything.”

“I can’t let you starve.”

For the first time in an hour she turned and glanced at him. “Why not? It might solve your problems. It would certainly solve mine.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“Why not? Does it hurt your ego to think that your wife would rather die than go on living like this?”

“It hurts me all over, Virginia. Without you I have nothing.”

“That’s nonsense. You have your work, the company, the customers — you see more of them than you do of me.”

“I have in the past. The future’s going to be different, Virginia.”

“Future,” she repeated. “That’s just a dirty word to me. It’s like some of the words I picked up when I was a kid. I didn’t know what they meant but they sounded bad so I said them to shock my aunt. I don’t know what future means either but it sounds bad.”

“I promise you it won’t be. I called the boss in Chicago this morning while you were still in bed. I didn’t mention it to you because I would have liked the timing to be right but I guess I can’t afford to wait any longer. I resigned, Virginia. I told him my wife and I were going to — to adopt a baby and I wanted to spend more time at home with them.”

“What made you say a crazy thing like that?”

“I hadn’t planned to, it just popped out. When I heard myself saying it, it didn’t seem crazy. It seemed right, exactly right, Virginia.”

“No. You mustn’t—”

“He offered me a managerial position in Phoenix. I’d be on a straight salary, no bonuses for a big sale or anything like that, so it would mean less money actually. But I’d be working from nine to five like anybody else and I’d be home Saturdays and Sundays. I told him I’d think about it and let him know by the end of the week.”

She had turned back to the window so he couldn’t see her face or guess what was passing through her mind.

“Maybe you wouldn’t like Phoenix, Virginia. It’s a lot bigger than San Félice and it’s hot in the summers, really hot, and of course there’s no ocean to cool it off.”

“No... no fog?”

“No fog.”

“I’d like that part of it. The fog makes me so lonely. Even when the sun’s shining bright I find myself looking out towards the sea, wondering when that gray wall will start moving towards me.”

“I guarantee no fog, Virginia.”

“You sound so hopeful,” she said. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

“What’s wrong with a little hope?”

“Yours isn’t based on anything.”

“It’s based on you and me, our marriage, our life together.”

She took a long, deep breath that made the upper part of her body shudder. “We don’t have a marriage any more. Remember the nursery rhyme, Howard, about the young woman who ‘sat on a cushion and sewed a fine seam, and fed upon strawberries, sugar and cream’? Well, the sitting bored her, the cream made her fat, the strawberries gave her hives and her fine seams started getting crooked. Then Jessie came to live next door. At first her visits were a novelty to me, a break in a dull day. Then I began to look forward to them more and more, finally I began to depend on them. I was no longer satisfied to be the friend next door, the pseudo-aunt. I wanted to become her mother, her legal mother... Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you, Howard?”

“I think so.”

“I saw only one way to get what I wanted. That was through Dave.”

“Don’t say any more.”

“I have to explain how it happened. I was—”

“Even if Phoenix is hot in the summer, we can always buy an air-conditioned house. We could even build one from scratch if you’d like.”

“Howard, listen—”

“We’ll look around for a good-sized lot, make all our own blueprints or hire an architect. They say it’s cheaper in the long run to hire an architect and let him decide what we need on the basis of what kind of life we want and what kind of people we are.”

“And what kind of people are we, Howard?”

“Average, I guess. Luckier than most in some things, not so lucky in others. We can’t ask for more than that... I’ve forgotten exactly what the phoenix was. Do you recall, Virginia?”

“A bird,” she said. “A bird with gorgeous bright plumage, the only one of his kind. He burned himself to death and then rose out of his own ashes as good as new to begin life again.” She turned away from the window, letting the drape fall into place. “Lieutenant Gallantyne is leaving the Brants’ house. Ask him to come in here, will you, Howard?”

“Why?”

“I want to tell him everything I didn’t tell him before, about Jessie and my plans for her, about Dave, even about the twenty dollars you gave Jessie. We can’t afford to hide things any more, from other people or each other. Will you ask the lieutenant to come in, Howard?”

“Yes.”

“It will be a little bit like burning myself to death but I can stand it if you can.”

She sat down on the davenport to wait, thinking how strange it would be to get up every morning and fix Howard’s breakfast.

The girl was coming toward him around the bend in the tracks. She was taller than Charlie remembered, and she wasn’t skipping nimbly along on one rail in her usual manner. She was walking on the ties between the rails slowly and awkwardly, pretending the place was strange to her. She had a whole bundle of tricks but this was one she’d never pulled before. The night made it different, too. She couldn’t be on her way to or from school; she must have come here deliberately looking for him, bent on mischief and not frightened of anything — the dark, the dogs, the winos, the trains, least of all Charlie. She knew when and where the trains would pass, she knew the dogs were confined and the winos wanted only to be left alone and Charlie’s threats were as empty as the cans and bottles littering both sides of the tracks. She always had an answer for everything: he didn’t own the tracks, he wasn’t her boss, it was a free country, she would do what she liked, so there, and if he reported her to the police she’d tell them he’d tried to make a baby in her and that would fix him, ha ha.

He was shocked at her language and confounded by her brashness, yet he was envious too, as if he wanted to be like her sometimes: It’s a free country, Ben, and I’m going to do what I like. You’re not my boss, so there— He could never speak the words, though. They vanished on his tongue like salt, leaving only a taste and a thirst.

He stood still, watching the girl approach. He was surprised at how fast she had grown and how clumsy her growth had made her. She staggered, she stumbled, she fell on one knee and picked herself up. No, this could not be pretense. The nimble, fearless, brash girl was becoming a woman, burdened by her increasing body and aware of what could happen. Danger hid in dark places, winos could turn sober and ugly dogs could escape, trains could be running off schedule and Charlie must be taken seriously.

“Charlie?”

During her time of growing she had learned his name. He felt pleased by this evidence of her new respect for him, but the change in her voice disquieted him. It sounded so thin, so scared.

He said, “I won’t hurt you, little girl. I would never hurt a child.”

“I know that.”

“How did you find out? I never told you.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“What’s your name?”

“Louise,” she said. “My name is Louise.”

Gallantyne let Mac off in the parking lot behind police headquarters.

Mac unlocked his car and got in behind the wheel. The ugliness of the scene with Brant, followed by Virginia Arlington’s completely unexpected admissions, had left him bewildered and exhausted.

“Go home and get some sleep,” Gallantyne said. “I don’t think you were cut out for this line of work.”

“I prefer to function in the more closely regulated atmosphere of a courtroom.”

“Like a baby in a playpen, eh?”

“Have it your way.”

“The trouble with lawyers is they get so used to having everything spelled out for them they can’t operate without consulting the rule book. A policeman has to play it by ear.”

“Well, tonight’s music was lousy,” Mac said. “Maybe you’d better start taking lessons.”

“So you don’t approve of the way I handled Brant.”

“No.”

“I got through to him, didn’t I?”

“You broke him in little pieces. I suggest you buy yourself a rule book.”

“I have a rule book. I just keep it in my Sunday pants so it doesn’t get worn out. Now let’s leave it like that, Mac. We’re old friends, I don’t want to quarrel with you. You take things too seriously.”

“Do I.”

“Good night, Mac. Back to the playpen.”

“Good night.” Mac yawned, widely and deliberately. “And if you come up with any more hot leads, don’t bother telling me about them. My phone will be off the hook.”

He pulled out of the parking lot, hoping the yawn had looked authentic and that it wouldn’t enter Gallantyne’s head that he was going anywhere but home.

The clock in the courthouse began to chime the hour. Ten o’clock. Kate would be asleep inside her big locked house from which everything had already been stolen. He would have to awaken her, to talk to her before Gallantyne had a chance to start thinking about it: how could she have known about the affair between Brant and Virginia Arlington? She didn’t exchange gossip with the neighbors, she didn’t go to parties or visit bars, she had no friends. That left one way, only one possible way she could have found out.

He expected the house to be dark when he arrived, but there were lights on in the kitchen, in one of the upstairs bedrooms and in the front hall. He pressed the door chime, muted against Sheridan as the doors were locked against Sheridan and the blinds pulled tight to shut him out. Yet he’s here, Mac thought. All the steps she takes to deny his existence merely reinforce it. If just once she would forget to lock a door or pull a blind, it would mean she was starting to forget Sheridan.

Mary Martha’s voice came through the crack in the door. “Who’s there?”

“Mac.”

“Oh.” She opened the door. She didn’t look either sleepy or surprised. Her cheeks were flushed, as if she’d been running around, and she had on a dress Mac had never seen before, a party dress made of some thin, silky fabric the same blue as her eyes. “You’re early. But I guess you can come in anyway.”

“Were you expecting me, Mary Martha?”

“Not really. Only my mother said I was to call you at exactly eleven o’clock and invite you to come over.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t ask her. You know what? I never stayed up until eleven o’clock before in my whole, entire life.”

“Your mother must have had a reason, Mary Martha. Why didn’t you ask her?”

“I couldn’t. She was nervous, she might have changed her mind about letting me stay up and play.”

“Where is she now?”

“Sleeping. She had a bad pain so she took a bunch of pills and went to bed.”

“When? When did she take them? What kind of pills?”

The child started backing away from him, her eyes widening in sudden fear. “I didn’t do anything, I didn’t do a single thing!”

“I’m not accusing you.”

“You are so.”

“No. Listen to me, Mary Martha.” He forced himself to speak softly, to smile. “I know you didn’t do anything. You’re a very good girl. Tell me, what were you playing when I arrived?”

“Movie star.”

“You were pretending to be a movie star?”

“Oh no. I was her sister.”

“Then who was the movie star?”

“Nobody. Nobody real, I mean,” she added hastily. “I used to have lots of imaginary playmates when I was a child. Sometimes I still do. You didn’t notice my new dress.”

“Of course I noticed. It’s very pretty. Did your mother make it for you?”

“Oh no. She bought it this afternoon. It cost an enormous amount of money.”

“How much?”

She hesitated. “Well, I’m not supposed to broadcast it but I guess it’s O.K., being as it’s only you. It cost nearly twenty dollars. But my mother says it’s worth every penny of it. She wanted me to have one real boughten dress in case a special occasion comes up and I meet Sheridan at it. Then he’ll realize how well she takes care of me and loves me.”

In case I meet Sheridan. The words started a pulse beating in Mac’s temple like a drumming of danger. He knew what the special occasion would have to be, Kate had told him a dozen times: “He’ll see Mary Martha over my dead body and not before.”

“Louise?” Charlie peered at her through the darkness, shielding his eyes with one hand as though from a midday sun. “No. You don’t look like Louise.”

“It’s dark. You can’t see me very well.”

“Yes, I can. I know who you are. You get off these tracks immediately or I’ll tell your parents, I’ll report you to the school principal.”

“Charlie—”

“Please,” he said. “Please go home, little girl.”

“The little girls are all at home, Charlie. I’m here. Louise.”

He sat down suddenly on the edge of one of the railroad ties, rubbing his eyes with his fists like a boy awakened from sleep. “How did you find me?”

“Is that important?”

“Yes.”

“All right then. I could see you were troubled, and sometimes when you’re troubled you go down to the warehouse. You feel secure there, you know what’s expected of you and you do it. I saw you looking in the window of the office as if you wanted to be inside. I guess the library serves the same purpose for me. We’re not very brave or strong people, you and I, but we can’t give up now without a fight.”

“I have nothing to fight for.”

“You have life,” she said. “Life itself.”

“Not for long.”

“Charlie, please—”

“Listen to me. I saw the child last night, I spoke to her. I don’t — I can’t swear what happened after that. I might have frightened her. Maybe she screamed and I tried to shut her up and I did.”

“We’ll find out. In time you’ll remember everything. Don’t worry about it.”

“It seemed so clear to me a couple of hours ago. I was the witness then. It felt so good being the witness, with the law on my side, and the people, the nice people. But of course that couldn’t last.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re not on my side and never will be. I can hear them, in my ears I can hear them yelling, get him, get him good, he killed her, kill him back.”

She was silent. A long way off a train wailed its warning. She thought briefly of stepping into the middle of the tracks and standing there with Charlie until the train came. Then she reached down and took hold of his hand. “Come on, Charlie. We’re going home.”

Even before Mac opened the door he could hear Kate’s troubled breathing. She was lying on her back on the bed, her eyes closed, her arms outstretched with the palms of her hands turned up as if she were begging for something. Her hair was carefully combed and she wore a silky blue dress Mac had never seen before. The new dress and the neatness of the room gave the scene an air of unreality as if Kate had intended at first only to play at suicide but had gone too far. On the bedside table were five empty bottles, which had contained pills, and a sealed envelope. The envelope bore no name and Mac assumed the contents were meant for him since he was the one Mary Martha had been told to call at eleven o’clock.

“Kate. Can you hear me, Kate? There’s an ambulance on the way. You’re going to be all right.” He pressed his face against one of her upturned palms. “Kate, my dearest, please be all right. Please don’t die. I love you, Kate.”

She moved her head in protest and he couldn’t tell whether she was protesting the idea of being all right or the idea of his loving her.

She let out a moan and some words he couldn’t understand.

“Don’t try to talk, Kate. Save your strength.”

“Sheridan’s — fault.”

“Shush, dearest. Not now.”

“Sheridan—”

“I’ll look after everything, Kate. Don’t worry.”

The ambulance came and went, its siren loud and alien in the quiet neighborhood. Mary Martha stood on the front porch and watched the flashing red lights dissolve into the fog. Then she followed Mac back into the house. She seemed more curious than frightened.

“Why did my mother act so funny, Mac?”

“She took too many pills.”

“Why?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Will she be gone one or two days?”

“Maybe more than that. I’m not sure.”

“Who will take care of me?”

“I will.”

She gave him the kind of long, appraising look that he’d seen Kate use on Sheridan. “You can’t. You’re only a man.”

“There are different kinds of men,” Mac said, “just as there are different kinds of women.”

“My mother doesn’t think so. She says men are all alike. They do bad things like Sheridan and Mr. Brant.”

“Do you know what Mr. Brant did?”

“Sort of, only I’m not supposed to talk about the Brants, ever. My mother and I made a solemn pact.”

Mac nodded gravely. “As a lawyer, I naturally respect solemn pacts. As a student of history, though, I’m aware that some of them turn out badly and have to be broken.”

“I’m sleepy. I’d better go to bed.”

“All right. Get your pajamas on and I’ll bring you up some hot chocolate.”

“I don’t like hot chocolate — I mean, I’m allergic to it. Anyway, we don’t have any.”

“When someone gives me three reasons instead of one, I’m inclined not to believe any of them.”

“I don’t care,” she said, but her eyes moved anxiously around the room. “I mean, it’s O.K. to tell a little lie now and then when you’re keeping a solemn and secret pact.”

“But it isn’t a secret any more. I know about it, and pretty soon Lieutenant Gallantyne will know and he’ll come here searching for Jessie. And I think he’ll find her.”

“No. No, he won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“He’s a very good searcher.”

“Jessie’s a very good hider.” She stopped, clapping both hands to her mouth as if to force the words back in. Then she began to cry, watching Mac carefully behind her tears to see if he was moved to pity. He wasn’t, so she wiped her eyes and said in a resentful voice, “Now you’ve spoiled everything. We were going to be sisters. We were going to get a college education and good jobs so we wouldn’t always be waiting for the support check in the mail. My mother said she would fix it so we would never have to depend on bad men like Sheridan and Mr. Brant.”

“Your mother wasn’t making much sense when she said that, Mary Martha.”

“It sounded sensible to me and Jessie.”

“You’re nine years old.” So is Kate, he thought, picturing the three of them together the previous night: Jessie in a state of shock, Mary Martha hungry for companionship, and Kate carried away by her chance to strike back at the whole race of men. That first moment of decision, when Jessie had appeared at the house with her story about Virginia Arlington and her father, had probably been one of the high spots in Kate’s life. It was too high to last. Her misgivings must have grown during the night and day to such proportions that she couldn’t face the future.

There was, in fact, no future. She had no money to run away with the two girls and she couldn’t have hidden Jessie for more than a few days. Even to her disturbed mind it must have been clear that when she was caught Sheridan would have enough evidence to prove her an unfit mother.

The three conspirators, Kate, Mary Martha, Jessie, all innocent, all nine years old; yet Mac was reminded of the initial scene of the three witches in Macbeth— When shall we three meet again? — and he thought, with a terrible sorrow, Perhaps never, perhaps never again.

He said, “You’d better go and tell Jessie I’m ready to take her home.”

“She’s sleeping.”

“Wake her up.”

“She won’t want to go home.”

“I’m pretty sure she will.”

“You,” she said, “you spoil everything for my mother and me.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way. I would like to be your friend.”

“Well, you can’t be, ever. You’re just a man.”

When she had gone, he took out the letter he’d picked up from Kate’s bedside table before the ambulance attendants had arrived. She had written only one line: “You always wanted me dead, this ought to satisfy you.”

He realized immediately that it was intended for Sheridan, not for him. She hadn’t even thought of him. First and last it was Sheridan.

He stood for a long time with the piece of paper in his hand, listening to the old house creaking under the weight of the wind. Over and beyond the creaking he thought he heard the sound of Sheridan’s footsteps in the hall.