Tony and Susan

TEN

Upstairs, water running, Dorothy taking a shower. Susan Morrow thumbs ahead, trying not to see words, finds PART TWO not far ahead. How sad it is, she thinks. Sadness in the news to come, which nobody mentions but all expect. She gropes for the possible loophole Edward might have allowed, but finds none. Meanwhile, despite the sadness, she feels this energy and does not know if it’s her own chemistry or the book, Edward in a state of excitement, enjoying his work? She likes to see Edward enjoying his work, it sparks her up. She awaits the horrible discovery her spirit deplores, she awaits it avidly.

Nocturnal Animals 9

The reason Tony Hastings was afraid to go back up that mountain driveway. There was no reason and hence no fear. An ir-rational residue of the night. No reason to be afraid now, he was safe in the back seat of the comfortable police car with two officials (representatives of the civilization which had taken him back) whose whole effort was for him, to help him get back what he had lost.

A newly built highway with cars, making a long sweep up the wooded ridge. At the crest was a curio store, pennants and carved wooden owls. The reason he was so afraid. No reason. They were simply checking out possibilities. Reason to hope, actually. If Laura and Helen had been in that car driving in, if they had been left there as he had been, if the intention was that they all three would meet there. They should have walked out before now, however. That was the trouble with that idea. Unless they had decided to go to sleep and wait for day. But even so, by now almost noon after driving all over the countryside, they should have walked out by now.

As they drove Bobby Andes asked friendly questions about his life. His work. His place in Maine. The happiness of his marriage. His only child. Bobby Andes’s only child. Why Bobby Andes had only one child, it wasn’t deliberate. I mean we didn’t deliberately attempt not to have another child. Did you?

The car stopped in a straight stretch where the road was above the floor of the woods on both sides, except right here where. He had not recognized it because they had approached from the opposite direction. He did not know how they had got around to the other side. It would be the direction in which the men drove off after trying to run him down.

The reason Tony Hastings was afraid to go in gulped in his heart as the driver turned the car and bumped across the ditch past the broken gate into the woods. The reason was, it was too late, the sun approaching noon with driving around all morning, much too late to meet Laura and Helen walking out from there.

Since it was too late, there was no reason to go in.

“I just want to see what they’ve got in here,” Bobby Andes said.

“I didn’t see anything but woods.”

“That was at night.”

“You think they got a still in there?” the driver said.

Andes laughed. “Maybe there’s a house.”

“They took me to the end of the road, I think. I don’t think there’s anything in there.”

Tony Hastings did not think there was a house, nor did he believe Bobby Andes expected to find one. The track was narrow, it turned sharply around dodging rocks and trees, the car jounced and banged, “Jesus!” Bobby Andes said. The woods were light and airy, messy with chunks of underbrush and fallen branches. Trees grew up around boulders and rocky outcrops. Tony Hastings could not connect what he saw with anything he could remember, either driving in with his headlights flashing on the trees or coming out in darkness guided by the power of his dilated eyes to distinguish shadows. He looked for the outcrop where he had hidden while Ray and Turk went by. He saw several that could have served but none like what he remembered.

The reason Tony Hastings was afraid to go into the woods was the credibility it gave to his imaginings. That the lieutenant, Bobby Andes, thought it should be done. To be checked out, eliminated. The act of driving up this agony road, the strain with every minute doubled by the additional minute it would take to drive out—it made a reality of what otherwise would have been a mere ghostly dream. It turned the ghostly dream into a fact.

Driving in, he felt again the grief which made him want to cry last night. It slashed him for his failure when the men had called, for now he was sure they had meant to reunite him with Laura and Helen. Dead or alive. And if he had thought it wise to escape being killed, how stupid that wisdom seemed if they had been killed. And if they had not been and were in the car at the time, with still a chance, how much worse.

He saw the log bridge and realized the thinning of the trees ahead was the clearing. His heart tightened. Already, as they dipped down to the bridge and lurched up the steep short slope, he felt the pure deep relief of having seen enough to know nothing was there. The clearing opened out, it really was a grassy field, empty, with recent tracks of cars turning around.

“Uh oh,” the driver said.

“Oh shit, god damn it!” Bobby Andes cried out.

Tony Hastings did not know what the matter was, he was so relieved and disappointed to see nothing in the clearing, nothing of what he had either expected and feared or what he had hoped. He saw someone had been here, the red kerchief and dark sweater and pair of jeans draped on the bushes across the grass. When Bobby Andes moved his head, he saw the lovers naked under the bush, their naked limbs, asleep.

“Easy man,” Bobby Andes said. He wondered why they were so concerned about him. Already he was out of the car walking fast over to where the lovers lay, and Bobby Andes and the policeman were after him, running, someone trying to hold his arm as if he needed restraint. That was not the problem. He merely wanted to eliminate once and for all the grotesque assumption his officer companions were making, and even if they were naked make these lovers, boy and girl he could see, wake up so they could tell these men who they were not. Boy and girl, though which was which he was not yet sure, one lying on her back, the other close by, face down. It was possible, he realized as he approached, that they were dead, not asleep, that they might have been killed by someone. If so, that was proper business for his officer companions, not him.

It wasn’t Laura and Helen because these two were naked and looked like children sprawled asleep, or stunned, knocked out on the head, in a coma, or possibly dead. He was walking fast, away from Bobby Andes who was trying to hold him back, because he wanted to make sure they were not Laura and Helen. He was not running because he knew of course they were not.

Only they were. That was why he was out of the car even before it stopped, he knew the instant he saw them, naked children asleep in the bushes, they were Laura and Helen, this was the meaning of the car coming in back here last night and the lesson of Ray and Turk and Lou, he knew it before he saw them, before he saw the kerchief on the bush, before he heard the cries of outrage of the two men in the front, he knew it.

Helen’s kerchief, Laura’s sweater and slacks. He was hurrying because he could not yet see their faces. They looked too small, children only, nor could he yet tell their sexes, which was the girl, which the boy.

They were inside the bush with crushed branches as if they had crashed and fallen there, and he could not see their faces, the graceful naked girl lying on her back with her head turned away, the bigger person lying close by face down, head down concealed by her shoulders so he could not see her hair, and his way was blocked by the branches. “Easy man,” holding him.

“Let me see, let me see.”

The policeman holding him while Bobby Andes slashed at the branches with a knife, shoved through to the girl, where he knelt and lifted her head gently in his hand, he saw the face from the side, from an angle, still unsure. While Bobby Andes dropped her and climbed over her quick to the other, pushing her by the shoulder, trying to force her over, the dark hair, the thick black hair like Laura’s, lifting her face.

He saw Laura’s mouth half open like a cry, her cheeks and eyes contorted with pain, he recognized the cry, the cheeks and eyes, he recognized the pain, the frozen intelligence, the language, the years. There was Bobby Andes, contorted too, looking up at him, supporting her head for him to see. Bobby Andes, a stranger from the world. He plunged forward to look, if there was still a chance, if not too late, the vines grabbed him around the feet, he fell forward, he sagged into branches.

“Is this your wife?”

“Is she all right?”

The face was white, the eyes fixed. Bobby Andes did not answer.