Long After Midnight (38 page)

 
          
The
police ambulance went up into the palisades at the wrong hour. It is always the
wrong hour when the police ambulance goes anywhere, but this was especially
wrong, for it was long after midnight and nobody imagined it would ever be day
again, because the sea coming in x>n the lightless shore below said as much,
and the wind blowing salt cold in from the Pacific reaffirmed this, and the fog
muffling the sky and putting out the stars struck the final, unfelt-but-disabling
blow. The weather said it had been here forever, man was hardly here at all,
and would soon be gone. Under the circumstances it was hard for the men
gathered on the cliff, with several cars, the headlights on, and flashlights
bobbing, to feel real, trapped as they were between a sunset they hardly
remembered and a sunrise that would not be imagined.

 
          
The
slender weight hanging from the tree, turning in the cold salt wind, did not
diminish this feeling in any way.

 
          
The
slender weight was a girl, no more than nineteen, in a light green gossamer
party frock, coat and shoes lost somewhere in the cool night, who had brought a
rope up to these cliffs and found a tree with a branch half out over the cliff
and tied the rope in place and made a loop for her neck and let herself out on
the wind to hang there swinging. The rope made a dry scraping whine on the
branch, until the police came, and the ambulance, to take her down out of space
and place her on the ground.

 
          
A
single phone call had come in about midnight telling what they might find out
here on the edge of the cliff and whoever it was hung up swiftly and did not
call again, and now the hours had passed and all that could be done was done
and over, the police were finished and leaving, and there was just the
ambulance now and the men with the ambulance to load the quiet burden and head
for the morgue.

 
          
Of
the three men remaining around the sheeted form there were Carlson, who had
been at this sort of thing for thirty years, and
Moreno
, who had been at it for ten, and
Latting
, who was new to the job a few weeks back. Of the
three it was
Latting
now who stood on the edge of the
cliff looking at that empty tree limb, the rope in his hand, not able to take
his eyes away. Carlson came up behind him. Hearing him,
Latting
said, "What a place, what an awful place to die."

 
          
"Any
place is awful, if you decide you want to go bad enough," said Carlson.
"Come on, kid."

 
          
Latting
did not move. He put out his hand to touch the
tree. Carlson grunted and shook his head. "Go ahead. Try to remember it
all."

 
          
"Any
reason why I shouldn't?"
Latting
turned quickly
to look at that emotionless gray face of the older man. "You got any
objections?"

 
          
"No
objections. I was the same way once. But after a while you learn if s best not
to see. You eat better. You sleep better. After a while you
leam
to forget."

 
          
"I
don't want to forget," said
Latting
. "Good
God, somebody died up here just a  few hours ago.  She deserves—"

 
          
"She
deserved,
kid, past tense, not
present. She deserved a better shake and didn't get it. Now she deserves a
decent burial. That's all we can do for her. It's late and cold. You can tell
us all about it on the way."

 
          
"That
could be your daughter there."

 
          
"You
won't get to me that way, kid. It's not my daughter, that's what counts. And
it's not yours, though you make it sound like it was. It's a nineteen-year-old
girl, no name, no purse, nothing. I'm sorry she's dead. There, does that
help?"

 
          
"It
could if you said it right."

 
          
"I'm
sorry, now pick up the other end of the stretcher."

 
          
Latting
picked up one end of the stretcher but did not walk
with it and only looked at the figure beneath the sheet.

 
          
"It's
awful being the young and deciding to just quit."

 
          
"Sometimes,"
said Carlson, at the other end of the stretcher, "I get tired, too."

 
          
"Sure,
but you're—"
Latting
stopped.

 
          
"Go
ahead, say it, I'm old. Somebody fifty, sixty, ifs okay, who gives a damn,
somebody nineteen, everybody cries. So don't come to my funeral, kid, and no
flowers."

 
          
"I
didn't mean ..." said
Latting
.

 
          
"Nobody
means, but everybody says, and luckily I got the hide of an iguana.
March."

 
          
They
moved with the stretcher toward the ambulance where
Moreno
was opening the doors wider.

 
          
"Boy,"
said
Latting
, "she's light. She doesn't weigh
anything."

 
          
"That's
the wild life for you, you punks, you kids." Carlson was getting into the
back of the ambulance now and they were sliding the stretcher in. "I smell
whiskey. You young ones think you can drink like college fullbacks and keep
your weight. Hell, she don't even weigh ninety pounds, if that."

 
          
Latting
put the rope in on the floor of the ambulance.
"I wonder where she got this?"

 
          
"It's
not like poison," said
Moreno
. "Anyone can buy rope and not sign. This looks like block-and-tackle
rope. She was at a beach party maybe and got mad at her boyfriend and took this
from his car and picked herself a spot. .. ."

 
          
They
took a last look at the tree out over the cliff, the empty branch, the wind
rustling in the leaves, then Carlson got out and walked around to the front
seat with
Moreno
, and
Latting
got
in the back and slammed the doors.

 
          
They
drove away down the dim incline toward the shore where the ocean laid itself,
card after white card, in thunders, upon the dark sand. They drove in silence
for a while, letting their headlights, like ghosts, move on out ahead. Then
Latting
said, "I'm getting myself a new job."

 
          
Moreno
laughed. "Boy, you didn't last long. I
had bets you wouldn't last. Tell you what, you'll be back. No other job like
this. All the other jobs are dull. Sure, you get sick once in a while. I do. I
think: I'm going to quit. I almost do. Then I stick with it. And here I
am."

 
          
"Well,
you can stay," said
Latting
. "But I'm full
up. I'm not curious anymore. I seen a lot the last few weeks, but this is the
last straw. I'm sick of being sick. Or worse, I'm sick of your not
caring."

 
          
"Who
doesn't care?"

 
          
"Both
of you!"

 
          
Moreno
snorted. "Light us a couple, huh,
Carlie
?" Carlson lit two cigarettes and passed one to
Moreno
, who puffed on it, blinking his eyes,
driving along by the loud strokes of the sea. "Just because we don't
scream and yell and throw fits—"

 
          
"I
don't want fits," said
Latting
, in the back,
crouched by the sheeted figure. "I just want a little human talk, I just
want you to look different than you would walking through a butcher's shop. If
I ever get like you two, not worrying, not bothering, all thick skin and tough—"

 
          
"We're
not tough," said Carlson, quietly, thinking about it, "we're
acclimated."

 
          
"Acclimated,
hell, when you should be
numb?"

 
          
"Kid,
don't tell us what we should be when you don't even know what we
are.
Any doctor is a lousy doctor who
jumps down in the grave with every patient. All doctors did that, there'd be no
one to help the live and kicking. Get out of the grave, boy, you can't see
nothing from there."

 
          
There
was a long silence from the back, and at last
Latting
started talking, mainly to himself:

 
          
"I
wonder how long she was up there alone on the cliff, an hour, two? It must have
been funny up there looking down at all the campfires, knowing you were going
to wipe the whole business clean off. I suppose she was to a dance, or a beach
party, and she and her boyfriend broke up. The boyfriend will be down at the
station tomorrow to identify her. I'd hate to be him. How he'll
feel—"

 
          
"He
won't feel anything. He won't even show up," said Carlson, steadily,
mashing out his cigarette in the front-seat tray. "He was probably the one
found her and made the call and ran. Two bits will buy you a nickel he's not
worth the polish on her little fingernail. Some
slobby
lout of a guy with pimples and bad breath. Christ, why don't these girls
leam
to wait until morning."

 
          
"Yeah,"
said
Moreno
. "Everything's better in the
morning."

 
          
"Try
telling that to a girl in love," said
Latting
.

 
          
"Now
a man," said Carlson, lighting a fresh cigarette, "he just gets
himself drunk, says to hell with it, no use killing yourself for no
woman."

 
          
They
drove in silence awhile past all the small dark beach houses with only a light
here or there, it was so late.

 
          
"Maybe,"
said
Latting
, "she was going to have a
baby."

 
          
"It
happens."

 
          
"And
then the boyfriend runs off with someone and this one just borrows his rope and
walks up on the cliff," said
Latting
.
"Answer me, now, is that or
isn't
it
love?"

 
          
"It,"
said Carlson, squinting, searching the dark, "i3 a kind of love. I give up
on what kind."

 
          
"Well,
sure," said
Moreno
, driving. "I'll go along with you, kid. I mean, it's nice to know
somebody in this world can love that hard."

 
          
They
all thought for a while, as the ambulance purred between quiet palisades and
now quiet sea and maybe two of them thought fleetingly of their wives and
tra
*ct houses and sleeping children and all the times years
ago when they had driven to the beach and broken out the beer and necked up in
the rocks and lay around on the blankets with guitars, singing and feeling like
life would go on just as far as the ocean went, which was very far, and maybe
they didn't think that at all.
Latting
, looking up at
the backs of the two older men's necks, hoped or perhaps only nebulously
wondered if these men remembered any first kisses, the taste of salt on the
lips. Had there ever been a time when they had stomped the sand like mad bulls
and yelled out of sheer joy and dared the universe to put them down? • And by
their silence,
Latting
knew that yes, with all his
talking, and the night, and the wind, and the cliff and the tree and the rope,
he had gotten through to them; it, the event, had gotten through to them. Right
now, they had to be thinking of their wives in their warm beds, long dark miles
away, unbelievable, suddenly unattainable while here they were driving along a
salt-layered road at a dumb hour half between certainties, bearing with them a
strange thing on a cot and a used length of rope.