Tony and Susan (26 page)

‘You know.’

‘Aw shit.’ He ran his hands through his mostly bald head. ‘I was asleep, man.’ Tony waited. ‘What happened to Lou?’

‘He was killed.’

‘What? That sonofabitch killed him?’

‘He’s dead.’ Some odd shame prevented him from confirming it was Bobby who killed him, a shame Tony felt no obligation to feel.

‘That’s big trouble for your friend, you know that?’

‘He’s not my friend,’ Tony said, wondering why he said it.

‘He ain’t? Ain’t that interesting?’

‘Let’s go,’ Tony said.

‘Go where?’

‘I’m taking you in.’

‘In where?’

‘Back to the camp.’

‘You ain’t taking me anywhere, mister.’

‘You’re coming with me. Come on, now.’ He jerked the gun.

Ray laughed. ‘You think that’s going to make me go?’

Tony cocked the gun. Ray got up and came toward him. For a moment Tony thought he was obeying, then he saw differently. ‘Stand back,’ he warned.

‘Relax,’ Ray said. ‘I ain’t going to hurt you.’ He turned to the door. ‘I’m just taking my leave. So long, old buddy.’

‘Stop,’ Tony said. He thought, desperate, it can’t happen again. He thought, resolve, I’m different now. He pointed the gun at the door, in front of Ray. There was an explosion and a flash and a violent force jerking his hand up. He saw Ray stop, yank his hands back like a burn. He saw the torn aluminum frame of the door jamb where the bullet must have hit.

He saw Ray looking at him with surprise. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘You missed.’

Tony Hastings felt a thrill. ‘I wasn’t trying to hit you,’ he said. ‘That was a warning.’

‘Warning. Okay. May I go sit on the bed, sir?’

‘Come on, outside. Let’s go to the car.’

Ray turned and went back to the bed, where he sat down.

‘I said, let’s go.’

‘What’s gonna make me?’

‘I just showed you.’

‘If you shoot me, what good will that do? You’ll have to carry me.’

‘I’m not afraid to shoot you,’ Tony said.

‘Yeah.’

He did not move. Tony waited, and he did not move. Tony said, ‘Let’s go now,’ and Ray opened his eyes wide, shrugged his shoulders, spread his palms out wide. Tony cocked the gun, and he clicked his tongue, tsk tsk. ‘I’m not afraid to shoot you,’ Tony repeated, hearing the strain in his voice, and Ray did not move. Tony thought. He pulled up the little straight-backed chair, straddled it backwards resting his chest on the chair back, and said, ‘Well, if you’d rather wait here, they’ll be along after a while.’ Thinking that was true, they would look for his car when he didn’t show up, and they would find it here.

Then wondered if that much of a concession was a mistake.

Ray said, ‘You want me to wait for them?’

‘You wouldn’t have to wait so long if you came in the car.’

‘I don’t seem to want to do that, do I? Listen mister, I think I’ll be going now. It’s been nice talking to you.’

He got up and headed for the door again. Tony said, ‘I warned you. Watch out.’ His voice was turning into a scream. ‘I don’t want to shoot you, but if you try to get away, I swear I’ll kill you.’

The strange voice stopped Ray, who put up his hands, okay okay, and went back to the bed. Tony thinking, if I can’t make you go, I can make you stay, and another thrill of power.

They sat looking at each other. Ray said, ‘Listen mister, why does a nice guy like you keep such crummy company? That Ganges Andes fella, he’s a bloodthirsty crook. He kills people. If I go back to him, he’s going to kill me, just like he did Lou. You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?’

Tony thinking, he’s right about Bobby Andes. He said, ‘
You
kill people.’

‘Aw shit.’

‘Don’t you shit on that,’ Tony said. ‘That’s why I’m here. That’s why you’re here.’

The annoyance in Ray’s face, like something inconvenient he’d rather not talk about. Tony enjoyed seeing that look.

He said, ‘There’s no point denying it. I
remember
you.’

‘You got a cigarette?’

‘I don’t smoke.’

‘Nah, of course you don’t.’

Looking at him, staring at him, after a moment Ray said, ‘They had it coming.’

‘What? Who?’

‘Your fuckin wife. That kid.’

The leap of Tony’s heart, after all these months, a whole year, news, news at last. ‘So you do admit it. It’s about time.’

‘You got me wrong,’ Ray said. ‘That was an accident.’

‘What was an accident?’

‘Your wife, yeah. I remember your fuckin wife.’

‘My wife and my daughter, whom you killed.’

‘Take it easy man. An accident, like I say.’

Wait. Hold back your joy, husband your energy. ‘So. What sort of accident?’

‘Listen mister, I know it’s your wife and kid, and I sympathize with your loss, but that don’t excuse how they treated us.’

‘How
they
treated you?’

‘They asked for it,’ Ray said.

Well now. That’s good. That calls for joyful uncorrupted rage. Contain it, though, steam to drive the cylinders, not swoosh out the stack. Hold the voice down, still: ‘Exactly what do you mean, they asked for it?’

‘You want to know? Nah mister, you don’t want to know.’

‘You tell me just how you think they asked for it.’

‘They called us vile things.’

‘They were right.’

‘They was full of suspicion and dirty thoughts. Mister, they was set against us from the start. They didn’t give us a chance. They thought we was crooks and murderers and rapists from the moment they laid eyes on us. You saw that daughter of yours when we fixed your tire. They acted like we was the scum of the earth. When we got in the car, they thought it was the end of the world, like we was gonna slit their throats and fuck their dead bodies. I tell you mister, I got a certain pride how people talk to me, and there certain things I don’t put up with.’

Slow and easy. Tony said, ‘Their suspicions were justified.’

‘They brought it on themselves.’

‘You are murderers and rapists. You murdered and raped them.’

‘Let me tell you, man, when someone accuses me of something, that’s an insult, it gives me the right. When Leila accuses me of screwing Janice, by God I screw Janice. If your fucking daughter thinks I’m a rapist, by God she gets raped.’

‘They were right to fear you. Everything they feared came true.’

‘Because they fuckin asked for it.’

‘They were right you are the scum of the earth, because you are the scum of the earth.’

‘You’re a fucking mushroom, man.’

‘You have no rights. You lost your rights when you killed Laura and Helen.’

‘I have as much rights as you do.’

‘You have no rights. I’ve been waiting a year for this.’

‘Yeah?’

Tony Hastings knew this pleasure of the gun in his hand and the right to insult which it gave him was a treacherous and dangerous power, for every additional insult would have to be backed up by his willingness to use that gun. He was proud of himself for running that risk, the courage he was acquiring, minute by minute.

He said, ‘Let me tell you something. Nobody gets away with what you did to me.’

‘They don’t?’

‘You came after me, that was a mistake you’ll never forget.’

‘You’re scaring me.’

‘You ruined my life, you’d better be scared.’

‘Well gee, if I’d a known I was ruining your life –’

‘I mean to make you suffer. I mean to make you remember,
the reason for your suffering is what you did.’

Tony thought, I sound like Bobby Andes. Ray did not look impressed. ‘How do you propose to do that?’

He thought about that, a flaw in his strength, he did not know the answer. The power was only for now, the two of them together here, he with the gun. He considered how to extend the menace, protect his pleasure. ‘I’m turning you back to Andes.’

‘That won’t work,’ Ray said. ‘They’ve already decided there’s no case.’

How to make it dire and frightening. ‘Andes has other plans for you.’

‘It’s Andes’s own ass from now on.’

Probably true. True also realizing this orgasm of power was based on an assumption he had not made, namely, that he was going to kill Ray Marcus. But there was also an ecstatic notion that he had now been liberated to do so, though he did not know where that idea came from. This feeling he had a right, it had been given to him. Or even a duty, which gilded the right and made it an orgy. He looked back, trying to find it: where did that liberation come from which would change the killing of Ray Marcus from a murder to a right or duty?

He remembered Bobby Andes saying, Kill him in self-defense. He doubted that was it.

He thought, Tony Hastings, professor of mathematics. Not the right thought for moments like this.

He thought, Is Tony Hastings professor of mathematics willing to accept the sympathetic but scandalous publicity and possible detention for a crime of passion everyone would understand?

Ray was studying him and said, ‘So why don’t you just kill me, man?’

‘I’ll kill you if I have to. You think I won’t?’

‘Come on man, you don’t know nothing. It’s fun to kill people. You ought to try it sometime.’

‘Fun? Yes, it would be, for you.’

‘Fun, right.’

‘You found it fun to kill my wife and child?’

‘Well, yes, I did. Yes, that was fun.’

Fun? Tony heard the word. He gathered himself together and expressed shock. ‘You sit there and tell me it was fun to kill my wife and daughter?’

‘It’s a acquired taste,’ Ray said. ‘It’s something you gotta learn, like hunting. You gotta get over the hump. You gotta kill someone before you know what it’s like.’

Tony was experiencing a sensation like a dazzling light.

Ray kept talking. ‘My pals Lou and Turk, they didn’t get it. They were scared shitless when your folks died. Shitless. They thought they was going to be charged with murder. It takes some people longer to catch on than others.’

‘You don’t deserve to live,’ Tony said.

‘You ought to try it, Tony. Kill somebody, I guarantee you’ll want to do it again. You’re no different from nobody else.’

‘Is that why you did it?’ Tony said. ‘Because it was fun?’

‘Sure. That was why.’

At that moment, Tony felt an explosion of what he thought was disgust but was really joy. The light was blinding, and it lit clearly the difference between himself and Ray, how simple it was. The fact was that Ray was wrong, Tony was not like his notion of everybody, he belonged to a different species of which a savage like Ray was completely ignorant. It was not that Tony was inhibited or asleep to the joys of killing, but that he knew too much, had too much imagination to be capable of such a pleasure. Not that he had not yet grown up
to appreciate such joys but that he had grown out of them as a natural part of the process of maturation. The possible fun of killing had been trained and cultivated out of him by a civilizing process of which Ray had no comprehension, and Tony was full of fierce and vengeful contempt for that lack of comprehension. It gave him a luminous clear feeling, where he had hitherto been murky and uncertain. He felt confident. He felt right, knowing he could trust his instincts and feelings. He felt invigorated, and in this exciting mood he made a decision.

He said, ‘Okay Ray, enough talk. It’s time to go.’

‘I told you, I ain’t going nowhere.’

They sat there a minute. Tony cocked the gun again. ‘Why don’t you just leave then?’

‘You’ll let me?’

‘I didn’t think it mattered whether I let you or not.’

‘That depends on whether you can shoot that gun or not.’

‘I can shoot it.’

There was a look from Ray, and Tony saw he had lost his confidence, he had seen the change in Tony.

‘Maybe I’d better not leave then.’

‘In that case, maybe you’d better go out and get in that car.’

‘I ain’t gonna do that.’

‘Then you just want to wait until they come and get you?’

‘Maybe I will leave, now that you mention it.’

‘I’m not going to let you.’

‘Then I’d better stay.’

‘Go ahead and leave. I dare you.’

‘I don’t think I will.’

‘I think you ought to at least try.’

‘I think maybe it’s safer just sitting here.’

‘I don’t think that’s so safe.’

‘You don’t. Maybe you’re right.’

He stood up. ‘Maybe I will go.’ He took a step forward, watching Tony’s hand with the gun, stopped, stepped back.

‘You’d better not.’

‘That’s what I’m thinking.’

‘You don’t know what to do, do you?’

‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘I didn’t shoot you the other time. That was Bobby Andes. So what makes you think I’ll shoot you now?’

‘Just to be on the safe side of things.’

‘You think I’ve changed, do you? You think I’ll shoot you now?’

‘It’s a dangerous weapon. You have to be careful around dangerous weapons like that.’

‘The safest thing for you is to come out to the car with me.’

‘I see no need of that.’

‘You’re scared of me. You’re really quite frightened.’

‘Don’t overrate yourself, man.’

‘Why don’t you go, then?’

‘I think I will.’

‘What’s keeping you?’

He looked Tony in the face. He began to grin, the insolent grin of recognition Tony knew so well. ‘Why, nothing I guess,’ he said, and stepped forward again.

Toward the door, with nothing in his way. Tony felt his lungs freeze, himself paralyzed and all his courage gone, failure and humiliation the rest of his life. Meanwhile, the gun went off. He heard the yell, ‘Ow! you sonofabitch,’ after the explosion, which knocked the gun in his hand up bang against his forehead as the chair tilted and he fell over backward. There was Ray roaring down on him like the world, holding something, and time only to cock the gun again before the sun exploded.

The sun explodes, so does the book. Susan Morrow stops a last time to appreciate, reading almost over, only one chapter left. Dorothy and Henry are upstairs, having returned from skating just when Tony put his fingerprints on the door latch. She heard them stomping on the porch, calling good bye across the snow, then in the vestibule breathing and giggling. Now they are talking upstairs, Rosie too, probably a rehash.

Again Susan finds the screened porch in her mind, the one in Maine, the path and rocky steps by the boathouse, the still harbor with a mirror afternoon sheen across to the trees. Dying, like her mother and father. Like Bobby Andes. Like her jealousy. Like Edward’s writing. Like this book.

Edward is coming, so is Arnold. Susan, for no reason at all, is full of dread.

The trailer was open to the woods, its walls gone, its roof propped on stakes to make a shelter. He was under a picnic table, and Ray had escaped down a stream bed, and others were looking for him because they knew Tony could not. The people who had been fussing over him had disappeared, the picnic bench was on his chest, he couldn’t push it away, he thought if he rested he would be all right.

The sky beyond the trees was a dome of darkness weakening into light, dim green. Beyond it was another dome which he could not see, world within a world. It was the inside of an eyelid the size of a world, but he lacked the strength to open it. This is dream, he said.

There was no sky and no eyelid, however, and it was no dream. It was total dark, and the picnic tables and trees were inventions of thought. He knew that sometimes in a dream you wonder if it is real, but in waking life there is never a doubt. He knew now. He was awake, with something on his eyes like a bandage. He could not see, but it was no dream.

He remembered the trailer, Ray coming after him, the sun bursting. He was lying on a floor, the back of his head against a wall, his right arm crowded against a bulky object. Something had fallen on his legs. Something else was pushing his head.

He could not feel what was on his eyes. He raised a hand from the floor, a move he could make, moved his hand toward his eyes, then stopped, frightened. It was no bandage. He did not want to touch his eyes, afraid what he would find there. He wanted to know, am I in the darkness or is the darkness in me? If Ray had turned out the light, could it be this dark? He tried to test, look for the window, the door, but he did not know how to look, something was missing in the forward part of his face, a blank space, wires cut. He heard the news whispered in the back: I’m blind, which in younger years would have been the worst of all possible news.

He moved his right leg, it was okay, his left leg too. The object lying across his legs was the chair, he remembered falling backwards. He raised his knee and shoved it aside. He wondered what Ray had done to his eyes, whether he had blinded him with a blow to the head or had attacked them directly, fingers or knife or fork, torn them or stabbed them with a pain he
was yet to feel. He wondered why Ray had not grabbed the gun and shot him dead. He wondered how much time had passed, how far Ray had gone by now. He would have taken my car, Tony said. If he had gone. If he was not sitting over there now watching and waiting for me to wake up so as to torture me.

He felt too heavy and leaden to be frightened by that thought. Even the blindness did not frighten him yet, though he knew a moment was coming when it would rip him like a rake. He felt cold, shivering. His insides rose, gorge, he turned his head to heave but nothing came.

Tony Hastings knew time had passed but he had no memory of it except the scraping where his eyes had been. Now he felt the gouges burning, holes dug in the front of his face with fish hooks in them. The pain was a loud noise, he could not think, wonder, calculate, the only words were Stop This Now. Still unable to move because of something on his head, he banged his legs and hips against the floor. He shoved his hand into his pocket for his handkerchief, too small, tore off his necktie, rolled it up, put it gingerly to his face but it was not enough. He pulled his shirt out of his belt, tried to tear it, could not, remembered obscurely dish towels above a sink, and after a long resolve forced himself to move despite the threat of a headache like Zeus out of the sky. No headache could be as bad as this though, and thereby he discovered he could get up. He staggered, leaned against the wall, bumped into some huge object at his feet, found the sink, felt above it, the soft edge of one dish towel, then the other, grabbed them both, crumpled them, touched them lightly to the holes in his face, then pressed hard and soft to keep out the acid air.

The pain was deep and permanent but no longer a flame. He found the chair with his feet, lifted it up and sat in it,
keeping the towels on his eyes to keep it out. Not knowing if he had eyes or sockets, not daring to feel and find out, nor if Ray had gouged him or merely smashed him hard in the eyes with his fist or if it wasn’t Ray at all but the gun going off too close to his face. Someday someone would examine him and tell him. Wet streams and crusted riverbeds on his cheeks.

He thought, Am I sure it’s both eyes? He took the towel away from first one side, then the other. The air was quicklime. The second edition of the news came screeching: I’m blind. Not dead, blind. His worst childhood fear. The rest of my life, blind man, grope. Green, yellow, trees, mountains, ocean, red blue and magenta shades, tints of violet.

Looking ahead, the question, Can I endure it? Thinking, could he learn braille? Would people read to him? A seeing eye dog. A white tipped cane.

On the chair, himself as tragic. Chosen for catastrophe. The bad things that can happen which won’t happen to you. The third edition of the news – I’m blind – was the melancholy fulfillment of a long downward process, his fate confirmed. He thought woefully, the life and career of Tony Hastings, mathematics, Louise Germane. Louise Germane and the blind man. Instead, unlucky fellow.

He heard a car on the curve, like some old myth of danger. What he needed was help. They should come looking for him. If they missed him when he didn’t return, it wouldn’t be much longer. He tried to remember what the ugly thing was that darkened the recent memories of his friends.

Then he realized that if Ray Marcus took his car, no one would think of looking here. He would have to rescue himself.

He would have to grope his way out of the trailer and up to the road. He would have to stand by the road with the bloody towels on his eyes and hope a driver would see his
distress and stop. He would say, Help me to the state police office in Grant Center. There was a reason not to go to the state police in Grant Center. Bobby Andes, he was on the edge of remembering something. He felt around on the floor and found his necktie which he tied around his head to bind the towels to his eyes. Wondering, night or day? He listened and heard the cool distant whistle of a bird, two clear notes, and again the fortified distant roar of mankind being civilized, so it must be day.

Every move exhausted him as if he had been kicked in the belly. Force himself. Which way the door? He turned, and his foot caught against whatever it was on the floor, big. Like a bag of earth, he remembered feeling something like that against him when he was lying there. He felt down, touched heavy cloth containing something hard, an arm, a shoulder, a person.

‘Ah,’ Tony said. ‘You.’

This would be Ray, then, and he had not got away. From the shoulder, he felt for the head and recoiled, cold skin. He lifted the arm and let go, heard it fall, thump.

So I killed you, Tony Hastings whispered.

He had bought something with his blindness.

To make sure he was dead, Tony forced himself against revulsion to touch the head again, feel around the eyes, up to the bald front. The touch shocked him, and he allowed his hand to rest a moment on the brow, the hair of the eyebrows, the shape of the forehead, liberties he could never have taken before. The devil had a skull like Tony’s. The devil had guts and organs, charted in an endlessly replicated geography like his own, like all of us, making it easy for doctors, who would find the same things wherever they looked.

He wondered how he had killed him and if Ray had had time while dying to reflect and understand why. But from the talk
they had had just before, he realized there was no way Ray would understand, no way he could grasp what he had done or see what Tony saw, neither the crime nor the punishment. The only understanding would be what Tony could imagine for him as he went, the figure of Tony’s imagination, suffering in Tony’s imagination. Eventually that could be plenty, a tremendous satisfaction, later when Tony was himself again, though at present he felt nothing, and the only Ray was a dead body.

He tried to resurrect his hatred so as to enjoy this death by imagining Ray dying slowly. Bleeding to death, not so much pain as weakness and helplessness and knowing he was dying. But his hatred and vengeance all seemed remote, dead feelings of no interest now. He remembered Ray’s boast about the pleasure of killing and his own imagined superiority, and he wondered if Ray had blinded him to make him pay for that superiority. Blinding him because he wanted Tony to be conscious of something too. Refinements of revenge.

He felt around for the gun. His hand discovered a cold place on the floor, sticky, crusty, Ray Marcus’s clotting blood. He started back, banged his head on the table. He tried to get up, put his hand on the table for support, found the gun there. Think about that, Tony. That means Ray Marcus found the gun before he died. Then watched himself bleed to death.

He didn’t want to stay in the room with the corpse. He put the gun in his pocket, forced himself up, and tried to find his way around the obstacle, prodding with his feet. The stickiness on the floor seemed to be everywhere. He stumbled against the bed where it shouldn’t be. He found the wall, the stove in the wrong place, he rearranged it, found the door. Cautiously he stepped out, but despite his care there was no ground. He dropped, landed hard against tree roots, for he had forgotten the trailer door had no step.

Head aching from his fall, pain returning, he waited a while to recover. His belly ached from where he must have been kicked. The air was moving sweetly, it was warm, he could feel the sun on him. He would try to find the car. He thought if he went downhill he would end in the ditch under the curve and could climb up to the shoulder. He would stand by the road and when he heard a car step out to wave. The ground scrambled beneath his feet, he slid and fell again. Held by branches, he grabbed them, staggered over roots and mossy rocks and tangled limbs. He kept going down, longer than he should. He was on bare rock and slipped again, lost his footing and landed in water. A cold stream ran around his ankles.

He was so tired he sat down in the water. His clothes soaking cold made his middle ache, he couldn’t stay there. After waiting a moment for breath, he decided to retrace his steps. He tried to climb up but the bare rock wouldn’t have him, he stumbled upstream and then managed by reaching out for saplings to grab and pull himself up by. He came to what seemed like a grassy spot. He could feel the sun which he couldn’t see. He had no idea where the trailer or the road were. His strength gone, he decided to rest until the sound of a car could give him a clue.

After a few minutes one went by. It was closer than he expected, off to his left and below in the direction from which he had come. He thought, I’ll sit in the sun and wait here. Close enough that when they come, if they don’t already see me, I can call out. Up here, you guys. He didn’t know whether it was shock from having been blinded or the kick in the belly, but he felt faint, like spots before his eyes if he had eyes.

He thought, Now we’re square. You took my wife and daughter and blinded me, and I killed you. That’s three to one, but he could accept it as the additional price he had to
pay for his pretensions. His ego and vanity, the comfort he took in his name and title, which cost something, quite a lot, evidently. Right now they meant nothing, but at a later date doubtless they would again.

Similarly he anticipated the plans he would make later for a future restored by blindness, as if he had not had a future during the last dark year. There would be an interval of preparation and learning. He would be granted a leave by the university to learn how to change his living habits. New ways, how to study, how to prepare classes, how to teach. Where to live. What to do about clothes, food, hygiene, all the details, which he could see ahead like a mess of trees on a mountainside becoming distinct as he approached. He could see himself on the campus, on the streets of his neighborhood, with his black glasses, his cane, perhaps his dog, known to everyone as a story: Tony Hastings blinded by the man who killed his family. The black glasses, hiding the eyes not there, would spread the legend.

He was not afraid of the police. For them too, he thought, the blinding exonerated him. Not to claim self-defense as Bobby had said, how could he claim self-defense when he had the gun? He thought he would tell them what actually happened. It would give him a good feeling to tell it. I found Ray Marcus in the trailer, asleep. We had a conversation. What did you talk about? What if they asked what you were doing with that gun? What if they said you were trying to provoke Ray to attack?

Which reminded him of Bobby Andes. Was he still obligated to say Ray killed Lou Bates? The possibility sickened him, but he thought his blindness excused him from having to think about it, and he did not think about it.

The day dragged on, he felt the sun shining on his head,
the temperature rising, the day getting hot. The early birds silent now, the woods still at midday. He thought, I can wait.

Sitting there under the blind dome, Tony Hastings felt the light through his skin. He reconstructed without eyes the place where he sat: a clearing with sunbaked yellow grass dropped down in front of him into small trees beyond which were the trailer and the curve of the road with his car parked on the shoulder. He grew big trees in the other directions with an oak near by and a rising slope of woods beyond. As clear as seeing, absolute knowledge, he did not know where it came from.