Wilderness

CHAPTER 11.

"So how do you get him?" Janet Newman said.

They sat in the Newmans' kitchen with beer and wine and sandwiches.

"We wait," Hood said, "and watch. We'll see the chance. Killing him's easy. Getting away with it is the hard part."

"Janet, you wouldn't believe what it was like to walk in there on them," Newman said. "The guys that tied you up, one was huge and kind of slick-looking?"

"Yes, and the other had thick lips and a long face. We already went through this." "That was them," Newman said. He drank some beer. "The same ones, and Karl, sitting right there. The same man I saw kill that woman. And I walked right in on them and got away with it." "But you didn't kill them," Janet Newman said.

There was silence for a moment. Then Hood said, "It would have been suicide, Janet. We agreed before we went in there that Aaron wouldn't do anything but look and get the layout."

Newman opened another can of beer and drank some.

"Bullshit," Newman said. "When I went in Chris said don't be afraid to use the gun. I don't need anyone alibiing to my wife for me, Chris."

Hood shrugged and looked out the big picture window at the back lawn.

"So why didn't you?" Janet Newman said.

"Because I was scared shit," Newman said, "that's why. I was in a fucking trance I was so scared."

"Well, when won't you be scared? How will you do the job if you're in a trance?"

"Janet," Hood said. "There were two other men in there. Three men with five shots is too much. He did the right thing."

"Shut the fuck up, Chris." Newman said. Hood looked at Newman a moment and something stirred in his eyes again. The muscles at his jaw-hinge tightened for a moment and relaxed. "She can think what she wants," Newman said.

"What the hell is wrong with that question," Janet said. "I am simply looking for information. I am not thinking anything. You got in. You had a gun. You didn't shoot Karl. What's wrong with asking why you didn't?"

"If you don't know, I'm not sure I could tell you," Newman said.

"You tell me it was too dangerous, I understand that. I don't want you to get killed. I don't want you to take crazy risks. But how will I know if you don't tell me."

"Maybe you better do it yourself," Newman said. He took two cans of beer from the refrigerator and handed one to Hood. Hood put it down on the table in front of him unopened. He sipped from the first can he'd taken. Newman snapped the ring tab off the can and threw it hard at the kitchen sink. It missed and skidded along the counter. "Maybe you better get you a gun and get out and have a go at it. Maybe that will be harder than quarterbacking from your fucking armchair."

The flint edge came into her voice, the one that scared him. "Maybe," she said, "maybe I should be involved. Maybe if I'd been there with a gun this would be over now. Chris, can you teach me to shoot?" "Either one of us can," Hood said.

Newman sat silently looking at the beer can in his hands. His hands were big and muscular and brown. They were callused. He was a skillful man and could do carpentry and mason work and wiring. He had restored most of the old house they lived in.

"Well," Janet said. "I think you should."

Newman got up from the table and walked out of the kitchen, through the dining room, out of the house through the side porch.

He stood in the dark in his driveway under the spread of the three-hundred-year-old maple that shaded their bedroom during the day.

His eyes stung again with tears and his face was wet. Different, he thought. In the dark your own land looks different and feels different. He walked down the driveway and onto the main street.

Smithfield was small and had a New England common with a meetinghouse.

At night when there were no cars Newman could imagine being back two hundred years when his house was built and Jefferson was president and the Revolution was but recently past. Am I right? Or is it booze. Why are there always a few beers involved when I get mad at her? Does the beer distort what I hear, or does it break down inhibitions and allow me to say what I'm too careful to say when I'm stone sober? What did I say? Actually I didn't say anything. What the fuck am I mad at? How could she treat me that way? How could she be so fucking insensitive?

He walked past the small village shopping center. His face was still wet with tears. The lights were on in the shopping center, though the stores were closed. It would be embarrassing to be seen walking about crying. He prided himself on the goodness of his marriage and the loving relationship. He would admit no problems. He crossed the street, out of the light, and sat on the small curving stone wall that enclosed the old cemetery. What fucking difference does it make? We'll all be in the ground in forty years or so. At dinner with a body of politic worms. All there is is her. He dropped his head and felt sorrow saturate him. It's her disapproval. I cannot take any hint of disapproval from her. I want too much. She has to provide the complete meaning in my life. Moths fluttered in the arc of the streetlight. I've got to separate at least a little. Like a kid going to kindergarten. It's part of growing up. Like the girls going to college. I've got to make her less central. A fluffy gray cat with a white saddle walked silently past, jumped the fence into the cemetery, and disappeared among the stones. For cris sake I'm doing this for her and she's bitching about it. A ten-year-old Chevrolet Impala sedan turned the corner at the common. There were teenage children in the front and back. One of them yelled something at Newman. He couldn't make out what it was.

"How about I kill you, kid," he murmured. "Teach you some manners."

Insects began to swarm about him. Doesn't take the bastards long, he thought. The ways of the Lord are often dark but never pleasant. He slapped at a mosquito. What will I say to her when I go back. Or in the morning. The silence will be awful or the formal courtesy without warmth. I won't apologize, goddamn it, I'm right. She should have been supporting me. She should have been saying, "Oh heavens, don't get hurt, sweetheart. If anything happened to you I'd die," that's it.

That's what it is. She's so fucking businesslike and practical. So controlled. Why can't she just now and again be girly-girly for cris sake He shook his head as the bugs settled on him. He got up from the wall and walked across the street toward the library. Just like sex, the bastard. "Here"-in his mind he mimicked her in a high voice-"here, you lie still and I'll take hold of you here, and rub you there, and-no no, don't touch-and then I'll do this and that and now we're ready I'll put it in." Fuck her.

He walked back to his house. Chris was gone. The kitchen was picked up. He went up to bed. She was lying on her side with her back to him watching television on the bedside table with a private listening plug in her ear so that there was no way to know if she were awake. She often slept that way, all night with the television going.

He got into bed beside her without touching and lay on his back in the cool silent room. He stifled real crying that came up on him. He stifled it hard by putting the pillow over his face. But he hoped as well that she'd hear him, know he was stifling tears and lean over to him and put her arm around him and say "Don't cry, I love you" and pull away the pillow and kiss him, and say "I'm sorry I hurt you. You're everything I ever wanted." But she didn't. He could not remember that she had ever done such a thing, and he wondered why he thought she might, each time. Twenty-three years you'd think I'd learn something.

Know what I could expect and what I couldn't. Jesus Christ, what a jerk I am.

With an angry effort of will he stopped crying and lay silent and full of pity in the dark room staring at the ceiling, his hands folded on his stomach. His eyes wide open in the dark.