Death Claims (14 page)

He said now, "What did you come for? You've told me how it is and that's how it is." 

"And you won't try to make it different?" Dave shut the door and leaned against it, hands in pockets. "I'm not worth the effort?" 

"You said that." Doug sat up, swung his feet to the floor. "I didn't say it." 

"You went to some pains to demonstrate it. You didn't leave a thing behind. Nothing to excuse your coming back to pick it up. So we could talk." 

"You mean, so you could talk and I could listen." Doug pushed at his tousled shock of gray hair. Squinting in the light, he picked up his cigarette pack from the scatter of loose change, keys, crumpled bills, comb, matchbook under the lamp. "According to you, the fault's all on my side." He lit a cigarette. The ashtray he dropped the spent match into was makeshift. Doug hadn't smoked when he lived in this room twenty-five years ago. It was a seven-ounce catfood can. On the label a tom in hip boots winked and lifted a plumed cavalier hat. "You're a little short on self-awareness. People who are always exacting right behavior from other people tend to be that way." He blew smoke out of the circle of light, laid the cigarette in the catfood tin, bent for his loafers, slid them onto stockinged feet, small feet. "The mote in the other man's eye." 

"Versus the beam in my own," Dave said. "Right. You want to try to extract it?" 

Doug stood up. "No." He gave Dave a wan little smile and a quick headshake. "Too painful. And I never could believe that 'I'm hurting you for your own good' crap. I can't believe it now. People who talk like that are lying. They may not realize it, but they like to hurt." He'd stacked cartons against the dresser. He lifted folded clothes out of one and knelt to lay them in the suitcase at Dave's feet. "I don't like to hurt. Not anybody. Certainly not you." 

"You're going back overseas," Dave said. 

Doug returned to the shadowy corner, shifted a carton, rummaged in another. There was a wavery oval mirror attached to the dresser. In it Dave saw him nod. "England. I'd have saved myself a lot of grief if I'd gone there in the first place. Straight from France. Never come back here. What the hell was there here?" Something was wrong with his voice. He tried to say it over. "What the hell was there here?" 

"There was me." Dave stepped over the suitcase, pushed aside an empty carton with his foot, gripped Doug's shoulders and turned him. He was crying. "There still is me. I'm willing to fix whatever's wrong, but you'll have to tell me what it is. I know you don't want to. I know you want only to be kind. That's one of the better things about you, one of the reasons I don't want you to go to England." He gave the shoulders a gentle shake. "Come on, Doug. It's your turn. I won't hold it against you." 

"Yeah, okay." The voice was shaky, but the nod was firm. He went back to the table, to the cigarette lifting its blue smoke up into the inverted white bowl of the lamp. He picked the cigarette up, drew deeply on it, turned to face Dave. "You're pissed off because I keep a few pictures of him, some music, some books. You keep a whole God-damn house that says Rod Fleming to you all day. He remodeled it, redecorated it, chose the furniture, rugs, color schemes, the faucets in the bathroom, even the frigging pots and pans. He chose that nelly bed. It's not me that's lived with you in that house since last November. It's not me that's slept with you. It's him. No, you don't keep pictures of him. But Madge told me. I look like him." He didn't want the cigarette. He twisted it out. "And you come at me about Jean-Paul. Jesus!" 

"Don't start throwing things," Dave said. "Tell me what to do. List the house with Coldwell and Banker?" 

"Yes. Get someplace for us. Not you and Rod's ghost. You and me." Doug shut his eyes. "Ah, Christ!" He dropped onto the bed edge, bent forward, face in hands. "I'm sorry. It's too much. It's a beautiful house. Forget it. You shouldn't have made me say it." 

Dave sat beside him, put an arm over his shoulders. "Don't feel bad," he said. "You're right. I ought to have shed it all when he died. Madge told me. The sign goes up tomorrow, Doug. I'll drop keys off at R. Fleming. They'll take back the furnishings." 

Doug sat straight, dragged a sleeve across his eyes. "Thanks. And now for the ungrateful part. I'm not going back there, Dave. I'm not sleeping with you in that God-damn bed. Never again." 

"Right." Dave smiled and kissed the tear-salty mouth. "We'll go someplace else." He thought it would probably be Madge's. She had room and she'd like having them. But he didn't care where it was, so long as he could sleep. He'd never felt so tired in his life.

N
OT MUCH MONEY
had gone into the building of little Los Collados College. The architect, if there'd been one, had focused on utility. Red brick. Square corners. An even count of plain windows, plain doors. Like a child's drawing. But that had been years ago. And ivy had long since taken hold, masked the ugliness. The buildings faced each other across a long slope of good lawn sheltered by old oaks. At the far end, backgrounded by the worn tapestry of the Sierra Madres, a chapel aimed a mean steeple at the sky. At the crux of four brick walks a statue was green with bronze disease. Dave read the birdlimed plaque on its base. T. Knox McLeod, D.D. The founder. Dead 1913. He clutched a Bible and looked stern. 

Was the frown deepening? Past his feet, along the walks, flocked long-haired boys in frontier mustaches and fringed leather coats, girls in tight dungarees and boots. Some of them smoked and the cigarettes looked handmade and not tobaccofilled. Transistor radios blared rock. Over it the loud, cheerful talk was studded with words Dave doubted the Reverend McLeod would have countenanced. Eight in the morning was early for beer, but in the green woven-wire trashbaskets he passed Dave saw yesterday's empty Olympia cans. He grinned and shook his head. 1913 was a long time ago. 

All that was alive in the library was a hefty girl in a long peasant skirt and black tights practicing ballet kicks back of a golden-oak counter. She was judging the height of the kicks by the top of a wooden cabinet of index-card drawers. Her back was to him. The door made no noise opening, but she heard it close and got her foot down fast and turned. She had a creamy skin and it blushed rosily. But she didn't lose self-possession. She wiped her forehead with the back of a hand. 

"If you have a weight problem," she panted, "you have to do something. I don't eat anything—I mean, almost literally, nothing. And I still get fat. Ugh! Look at you. I'll bet you eat all you want and you're thin. There's not an extra pound on you." 

"It's a matter of metabolism," Dave said. "Don't wear yourself out. It'll only make you old before your time." 

"I'll bet you're old," she said, "but you don't look it. How old are you?" 

"A hundred and forty-five," Dave said. "Can you direct me to the College Press office?" 

She looked blank. 

He explained. "A few years ago something called Los Collados College Press published a book by your Professor Ingalls. About Thomas Wolfe." 

"Oh, I see what you mean. No, really, there's no office. I mean, the College doesn't publish all that much. What did you want?" 

"My name is Eugene Gant," Dave said. "I teach at Altamont in North Carolina." He watched her. If she'd read
Look Homeward, Angel
, she'd react. She hadn't read it. He went on, "I'm preparing a critical bibliography of books and articles on Wolfe. I'd like to look over the reviews Dr. Ingalls's book received. Usually publishers keep files of reviews." 

"Oh, sure. Those are here. I mean, not out here." She waved tapering fat-girl fingers. "They're in the library office." She nodded at a far door. He started for it. ''Wait. There's no one there yet." 

"There's no one here yet, either," Dave said. 

"No, there isn't, is there?" With a little shrug of her big, plump shoulders she came from behind the counter. She moved lightly, almost floating, the peasant skirt billowing around surprisingly trim ankles, her long hair drifting after her like smoke. She moved quickly and the breeze she stirred smelled of lilac. "Here you go." She opened the door and sailed through. 

Dave followed. Desks, typewriters, mimeograph, Xerox machine. A green metal workbench where a big screw-down press held the glue of bright new bindings to stacks of old pages freshly trimmed. A harp of cotton string for resewing loose signatures. Tools with worn red handles for stamping catalogue numbers on book spines. Above the bench, among trussed and tagged bundles of magazines, aged and ailing books waited for treatment on green metal shelves. 

From a green metal four-drawer file the girl pulled a manila folder, handed it to him, smiled her one and only time and went away. He put on his glasses, sat on a creaky tin posture chair and for a half-hour attentively leafed through yellowed clippings—from newspapers, magazines, but mostly from academic and literary quarterlies. For twenty minutes of that half-hour he doubted his hunch. Then he didn't doubt it anymore. 

Grimly he laid the folder on top of the file cabinet and went out into the library. The girl wasn't alone anymore with the sunlight through the windows. Students worked at tables, slammed catalogue drawers, squinted at shelves. The girl was busy. Dave found for himself the thick volume of Wolfe's letters on a bottom shelf and crouched there, reading carefully the sad final pages. Then he pushed the book back, got stiffly to his feet, called thanks to the girl and went to find the bursar's office. 

Through the shaggy pines that lined the road the sky overhead was as blue as it was going to get. But the sun hadn't climbed high yet, and down below the road, among its dense trees and shrubs, Dwight Ingalls's house was in cold shadow. Dave shivered and rapped the loose screen door. The redwood door inside it was shut now, like a sleeper's face. He turned from it. Above, on the road, a yellow schoolbus passed, its engine rattle drowned by shrill kindergarten voices. Downhill a dog barked. Farther off a rooster crowed. Dave heard the door open and turned back. 

Framed by the screen, Ingalls blinked sleepily. He was barefoot. His hands fumbled with the tie of a brown bathrobe. Recognition didn't come right away. When it did, his hand went for the door as if to close it. 

Dave said, "No, don't do that. You were seen leaving John Oats's place the night he died. You didn't mention you'd gone there that night. Why not?" 

"It was—" Ingalls's voice came out hoarse. He cleared his throat. "It was the same situation. He called me for money. I took him money. It would only have been inviting complications to have brought it up." 

"You didn't have to invite them," Dave said. "They're here. Yesterday you told me your wife died ten days ago. Ten days ago yesterday was when John Oats died. My impression was that you cared deeply for your wife. Aside from the time you had to spend teaching, you looked after her yourself. But that night, of all nights, you weren't with her. You were in Arena Blanca, a hundred miles from here, in the rain. What kind of hold did John Oats have over you?" 

"Hold?" Ingalls's voice came out cracked and he was too white even for a man who's just wakened. His larynx jumped in his throat like a trapped animal. "I don't know what you're talking about." 

"He was extorting money from former customers. Not borrowing it. Extorting it. You weren't in any position to lend him money. You said as much. You told me you had to get an advance on your wages to give him that first hundred in January. I drove away from here thinking it was kind of you. It wasn't kind. You were afraid. And you got more afraid. I've just talked to the bursar's office. Eleven days ago you withdrew another five hundred dollars. You gave as your excuse an emergency involving your wife. Right?" 

Ingalls's hand went to the hook on the screen door, pried it up, let it drop rattling. He pushed the door at Dave, who took it. Ingalls turned away. In a dead voice he said, "Come in." 

Dave went in. The handsome room was dim, chill with the dampness of old houses hedged too thickly by trees. There were shut-up smells of stale tobacco smoke and old books. Ingalls made no move to lighten the darkness. Dave wanted to see him. He bent and pulled the chain on the hammered-copper lamp. It drew wan circles on ceiling and floor. The light through the burlap shade gave Ingalls a parchmenty look. It went with the sickness in his tone. 

"I need coffee," he said. 

Dave nodded and went with him through the murky dining room into a kitchen where dishes had accumulated beside a sink where a faucet dripped. Ingalls clicked a wall switch, went to a range that dated from before the war, lifted a worn drip coffee pot that stood on a dead burner. Dave heard coffee slosh inside the aluminum. Ingalls lit the burner with a wooden match. Shaking it out, he looked at Dave. Bleakly. 

"You don't trust me out of your sight." 

"The man who saw you leaving Arena Blanca said that when he got to the house out at the point, no one was home. He arrived just after you left. Oats had made an appointment with him. And Oats didn't have a car to go anywhere in. He ought to have been there. Especially since he was desperate for money." 

Ingalls's smile was skeptical but thin. "You believe I killed him, dragged his body into the surf?" 

"That was the night it happened. Did you have a reason to kill him?" 

"Your profession," Ingalls said, "has given you an outlook I can't share. I've never been able to conceive of a 'reason,' as you put it, for one human being to kill another. My life for the past ten years has been devoted to keeping death away from one human being. To the best of my ability. Which wasn't enough." 

"Maybe my witness is lying," Dave said. "Maybe he killed John Oats. Was Oats there to be killed when you left?" 

Ingalls shook his head. Beyond the window over the sink a pair of butterflies played tag in a sudden streak of sunlight. Black wings with yellow borders.
Nymphalis antiopa
. The irony of their common name was almost too obvious here, now. Mourning Cloak. Ingalls turned from watching them to open a cupboard, take down cups and saucers. 

"No," he said. "He wasn't there. Lights were on inside, the door was standing open, but when I rang the bell no one came. I went inside and called. No answer. I sat down to wait. I smoked a cigarette."