The Search

CHAPTER ELEVEN

He arrived there at midday, his knee stiff and tender from the cramped confines of the coach. It turned out to be a grim desert town lacking any distinguishing characteristics — which made it all the more puzzling that not only had Malory come here but he had spent longer here than any of the other places he had been. There was nothing to detain even the most thorough visitor, but almost everyone Walker asked had some recollection of Malory. Slightly bemused by the suggestion that he might have left town, they said he was sure to be around some place — as if he had just stepped outside to get a bite to eat and would be back in a few moments. The prospect of being so close to Malory should have excited him but Walker felt oddly deflated, as if he hardly cared.

Each night he ate at the bus station diner and then went back to his motel room and watched TV. One evening a guy gnawing ribs at the bar suggested he try a rooming house over in the east of the city — Malory was living there, last he’d heard. Walker resolved to head over there the next morning but when it came to it he could not face the prospect of the long journey across town, seizing on the dull ache in his knee as an excuse. Later that week, when he did drag himself over, nobody at the boarding house had ever heard of a guy called Malory. He hung around a few more days and decided it was pointless to spend any more time there: Malory had left, he was certain of that. Tomorrow he would do the same.

The next morning, however, he found he had no urge to leave and once again dawdled the day away. By evening he was furious with himself for having squandered yet another day and made up his mind to leave town first thing in the morning. The following day he loitered his time away until the evening when — as on each of the nights to follow — he was seized with a feverish determination to leave. His resolution was always particularly acute after a few drinks; then it seemed inconceivable that so much time had already gone by like this. What was so difficult about leaving? All he had to do was pack up his stuff and turn up at the bus station. Nothing could have been easier. Tomorrow he would leave. So intense was his desire to be up and on the move that he had trouble getting to sleep. His thoughts paced the room as he hatched wild schemes to make up for the time he had wasted in Despond. It took hours to get to sleep and by the time he woke the bus had already left. Every night he was filled with resolution and every morning he was devoid of energy. A couple of times he woke early, looked at his watch and saw that if he got up now he could catch the bus but, on each occasion, he felt so drowsy, so worn out by his mental exertions of the night before, that he was unable to face the effort of getting out of bed into the greyish cold. Instead he turned over, loving the fart-warmth of his bed, and slept on until the sun had climbed into the lunchtime sky.

When he did get up it was with a feeling of contentment which turned to disappointment in the afternoon and which, by the evening, had mounted to a frantic urge to leave. The longer this went on the worse it became: the more urgently he wanted to leave at night the less inclined he felt to do so in the morning.

As time went by even the normal chores of the day came to seem burdensome. The more time he had the less he did with it. During his first few days in town he had done exercises but soon the thought of a sit-up exhausted him. He began to lose track of time. He no longer changed his sheets, stopped washing his clothes. For food he had relied on fruit and biscuits and all-day breakfasts at the diner, but now he dropped the fruit and made do with biscuits and breakfasts. Since he gnawed biscuits throughout the day he could see little point in cleaning his teeth. Why bother when he would be munching biscuits again in five minutes? The same with shaving: what was the point when you’d have to do it again in a day’s time? Some days he lay in bed all morning, thinking how satisfying it would be to be a junkie, to have that sense of purpose each day, knowing you had to score. In another way he was glad to be spared the effort: even going to the shops was an exertion he dreaded. Sometimes he sat for upwards of an hour, needing to piss but unable to force himself out of the chair and into the dismal bathroom. He took to sleeping in the afternoons — far and away, he decided, the best part of the day. He loved waking up and — for a few moments — not knowing where or who he was. Then his head gradually enclosed itself around his thoughts and, still clinging to the fond memory of sleep, he became slowly aware of the first faint rumblings of what by the evening would be a bearable despair.

Each day the sun came up and the sky blued over and darkened again until sunrise the next day. Walker rarely thought of Malory. The whole idea of trying to find him seemed a waste of time and energy he didn’t have. Besides, he realized, rummaging through his stuff one afternoon, he had lost the documents Malory was supposed to sign. Not that he cared one way or the other. And Carver? He’d probably bump into him in a bar somewhere in town. They’d get drunk together, play pool and talk about what a lot of fucking bollocks it had all been.

Occasionally he picked up the dictaphone and listened to the soundings he had taken so that the motel room was filled with the faint noise of other rooms. Several times he turned on the machine, thinking it might be worth recording his current condition. Unable to think of anything to say, he muttered, ‘Fuck it,’ and clicked it off. He lay where he was and pulled out the photo of Rachel. He had spent whole days like this in prison, staring at the image of a woman, numb with longing. He looked at her hair, her eyes. Reached for the phone and dialled her number. The machine did not click on. After eight rings the tone became bleak. In case she was just coming through the door he let it ring another ten times, hoping that when she got back she could tell that he had called, furniture and walls preserving his message. Then he just let it ring, the phone pressed to his head like a pistol, her picture in his hands.

Eventually even the drunken, nocturnal desire to leave began to evaporate — and this, oddly, was what prompted him to leave: the knowledge that if he stayed any longer he would never escape. He knew he would have to go tomorrow. It was his last chance. That night he had a troubled sleep, full of images of regret and things he had left behind: women, jobs, homes, things he’d never had in the first place. He woke early, the sun still struggling to clear his window sill. The bus would arrive in thirty minutes. Everything was as he hoped — except he did not want to leave. It was not that he had no desire to leave: no, he actually wanted to stay, that was what he wanted. He liked it here, it wasn’t such a bad place.

By mid-afternoon he was wretched with despair and that night he hit the bar early. He sat next to a guy who had been living in Despond for the last fifteen years. He had just been passing through but, gradually, had taken a kind of liking to the place. There were plenty worse places.

Walker bought two more beers and clunked glasses with the guy. Looking at him he understood how unhappy marriages could last tens of years, how people survived amputations and debilitating illness. He thought of rushing back to his room, packing his bag and just walking out of town. No sooner had he formulated it than he recognized the ludicrousness of the scheme. There were weeks of desert in every direction. That was the thing about this place, it was impossible to take yourself by surprise; always you thought of an action before doing it and then, immediately, there ensued a reason for not doing it. He was distracted from this reverie by the old man nudging his arm.

‘Ready for another,’ he said. Walker looked at the old man, saw himself reflected in his eyes. He shook his head, slugged back the rest of his drink and left.

He needed to collect his belongings from his room but was almost frightened to set foot in there. He gathered up his things quickly but even in those few seconds he could feel the urge to lie down and sleep. What was the point in spending the night outside in the cold? He could stay here — not sleep, just sit up until daybreak. Shaking these thoughts from his head he moved into the bathroom to get the last of his belongings. Glimpsed his bearded face in the mirror, shattered it with his fist and closed his palm around a shard until the pain cut through his lethargy.

Outside he looked up at the desert sky where the stars hung in the same places night after night. He stood at the bus stop, already chilled to the bone. A few people came out of the diner but after a while there was no more movement and the town appeared deserted except for buildings and sky. He squatted down on the sidewalk but that was too cold so he stood through the long night, too tired to move, too cold to sleep.

It took weeks to get light. First the darkness diminished, then the sky became grey and the shapes of things came alive. Trees appeared against the orange-blue light. It was no warmer but the day was finally arriving. The diner opened and he thought he would go inside for a coffee — and immediately drove the thought from his mind.

Eventually he heard the bus rumble into town, a slow curl of dust in its wake. Four people got off. He was the only person waiting to board. The driver looked at him with surprise when he asked for a ticket to wherever the bus was going.

‘That’ll be Bad Axe.’

‘Bad Axe is perfect.’

Walker made his way to the back of the bus. There were few other passengers — a couple with rucksacks, an old Mexican woman, a man with a cane. He stretched out in the back seat, sun slanting in through one of the side windows. He wanted to sleep but wanted also to savour this view of the city which so few had shared. Most buildings were flat and pale brown, enlivened only by the neon signs of shops that paled in the gathering sunlight. He was struck by the sprawling extent of the town, by the number of homes that each year encroached a little further into the desert. He found it hard to believe that he had been there — how long? It hardly mattered — however long he had been there he was lucky it was coming to an end. Everything came down to luck. The search was a matter of luck, a test of luck — and luck was a test of character. You could gauge yourself by the quality of your luck. Luck was everything. He breathed a sigh of relief as the bus pulled past a half-built office block, a fence that would never be creosoted.