If You Could See Me Now (16 page)

“Sure,” I said. “I didn't have time to waste.”

“Well, I been waitin' on the porch to see you come back. I sacked out up there a little bit—didn't think you'd be so long. But just in case, I took your keys out of your jalopy. And I turned off your lights to save your battery.”

“Thanks. I mean it. But please give me the keys. Then we can both get to bed.”

“Wait up. What were you doin' up there anyhow? Or were you just runnin' away from me? You were sure goin' like a jackrabbit. What are you tryin' to get away with, Miles?”

“Well, Red, I can't really say. I don't think I'm trying to get away with anything.”

“Uh-huh.” The amusement became more acid. “According to my ma, you been doin' some pretty peculiar things up to Updahl's. Says that little girl of Duane's been hangin' around more than she should. Specially considering the problem we got here lately. You kinda got a
thing
about hurting girls, don't you, Miles?”

“No. I never did, either. Quit wasting my time and give me my keys.”

“What's so good you got up in those woods?”

“Okay, Red,” I answered. “I'll tell you the truth. I was visiting Rinn. You can ask her yourself. That's where I was.”

“I guess you and that old witch got somethin' going.”

“You can guess all you want. Just let me go home.”

“This ain't your home, Miles. But I guess you can go back to Duane's. Here's your keys for this piece of shit you're driving.” He held them out by extending one big blunt finger protruded through the keyring so that ring and keys looked dwarfed, like toys. It was a gesture obscurely obscene.

PORTION OF STATEMENT BY LEROY (“RED”) SUNDERSON:

July 16

It was just eatin' at me that Ma had to be working in the same house as that Miles Teagarden—I'll tell you, if I'd been in Duane's shoes, I wouldn't of let my daughter hang around a man with a reputation like that. And some say he learned, good. I'd have run him off first thing, with a load of birdshot. So I thought, let's see what we got here, and started comin' down the drive to talk to him as soon as I saw his car begin to slow down outside below our house. Well Miles he jumps out of his car and looks away like he was seein' things, and he just begins to run like crazy. When I yelled he just kept on running.

Now there's two ways of looking at that. Either he was in one hell of a hurry to get at something in these woods, or he was runnin' away from me. I say both. I'll tell you, he was scared as hell of me when he came back. And that means he sure as hell was plannin' out what was gonna happen up in those woods—see?

I just said to myself, Red, you wait on him. He'll be back. I went down and switched off the lights in that beat-up junker of his. Then I waited for him. Ma and me
both looked out for him for a little, and then she went up to bed, and I laid out on the porch. I had his keys, so I knew he wasn't going anywhere without me.

Well, a long time later, he comes back. Steppin' light. Loose as a goose. Walkin' like a city nigger. When I got up close to him he was workin' away at his car, swearin' and bangin' on the horn. Then I saw his face. He looked all burned or something—he had big red spots all over. The way Oscar Johnstad did when he got alcohol poisoning a few years back. Maybe somebody coulda been scratching on him.

I said, well Miles, what the hell you been up to?

I been makin' myself happy, he says.

I says, up in the woods?

Yeah, he says, I go up there to make myself happy. I been seein' Rinn.

How do we know what those two was up to? Funny things go on with these old Norwegians in the valleys around here—I'm a Norwegian myself, and I won't say a word against 'em, but some of those old people get up to crazy things. And that Rinn was crazy as a coot all her life. Sure she was. She was just about the only friend Miles had around here. You remember about old Ole, down at the Four Forks? Well, he was related to half the people in this valley, me included, and when he started going crazy he tied that half-wit daughter of his to a beam up in his attic and he started usin' his other daughter as his wife. On Sundays he stood there at the back of the church lookin' like an angry chunk of God that happened to land near Arden. That was twenty-thirty years ago, but funny things still go on. I never did trust Rinn. She could put the spooks in you. Some folks
say Oscar Johnstad started drinking heavy because she put the evil eye on a heifer of his and he was afraid he was next.

The other thing you got to think about is Paul Kant. Pretty soon after this, no more than a couple of days, is when he saw Paul. And then he tried to kill himself, didn't he?

I think he wanted to get out of it, fast—maybe Rinn told him to do it, crazy as she was. Maybe little Paul did too. Well, if he didn't he sure was sorry later. I mean, whatever Paul Kant did to make himself happy, he didn't go up into the valley woods at night to do it.

I feel all involved in this, you know. I found that poor Strand girl and talked to you fellows a couple of hours that day. I almost puked too, when I saw her—I knew nothing normal had been at that girl. She was damn near ripped in two. Well, you were there. You saw it.

So after we finally found out about the next one I got a call from one of the boys who drinks down at the Angler's, about that car idea, and I said, sure go ahead, I'll give you all the help you want. You set it up, and I'll help over at this end.

By the time I got the car into the driveway, my face had begun to burn and itch; my eyes watered, and I left the car just past the walnut trees and walked diagonally across the lawn, pressing the palm of my unbandaged hand to my face. It felt as cool and healing as water. My face was blazing. The night air too seemed ovenlike and composed of a million sharp needling points. I was moving slowly, so that the rush of hot gelatinous air would not scrape at my face.

As I approached the house, all the lights came on at once.

It looked like a pleasure boat on dark water, but it made me feel cold. I lowered my hand from my face and went slowly toward the screen door. The mare in the field to my left began to whinny and rear.

I half-expected a jolt from the metal doorknob. I almost wished that I were back on that bed of mold, beneath those giant dark trees.

I crossed the porch, hearing no noise from the interior of the house. Through the mesh of the screen, I looked sideways to see the mare's body plunging up and down, scattering the dumbfounded cows. Then I swung open the door to the sitting room and looked in—empty. Empty and cold. The old furniture lay randomly about, suggesting an as-yet-unlocated perfect order. All the lights, controlled by a single switch beside the doorframe, were burning. I touched the switch, aware that the mare had ceased her whinnying. The lights went off, then on, apparently working normally.

In the kitchen the overhead bulb in its shade illuminated the evidence of Tuta Sunderson's work: the plate of cold food had been removed from the table, the dishes washed and put away. When I touched the light switch, it too worked in the usual fashion.

The only explanation was that the wiring had gone massively wrong. At the moment that this possibility came to me I became aware that something—something important—was out of place in the living room. And that my face was still reacting painfully to contact with air. I returned to the kitchen and turned on the taps over the sink and splashed water over my forehead and cheeks. The feverish sandpapered feeling began to lessen. The only soap within reach was dishwashing liquid, and I squeezed a green handful into my right palm and brought it to my face. It felt like balm. The stinging disappeared. Delicately
I rinsed away the soap: my skin felt tight, stretched like canvas over a frame.

This transformation, temporary as it was, apparently also made me more acute, for when I was in the living room again, I saw what had caused my earlier sense of dislocation. The picture of Alison and myself, the crucial picture, no longer hung on the nail over the doorway to the stairs. Someone had removed it. I looked around at the walls. Nothing else had been changed. It was an unthinkable violation, a rape of my private space. I rushed into the old bedroom.

Tuta S. had evidently been at work. The mess I had left on the floor had been bundled back into the broken sea chest and the splinters of wood from the chest's lid were laid out beside it like gigantic toothpicks. I knelt to open the chest and threw up the lid to see Duane's unhappy mulish countenance scowling at me. I lowered the lid gently. Pandora's box.

Unless it had been stolen, there was only one place where the photograph could be, and it was there I found it—in fact, even while I was ascending the narrow staircase I knew where I would find it. Propped between wall and desk, beside the earlier photograph of Alison.

And I knew—if the unknowable can be at all said to be known—who had put it there.

Following what seemed to be a general rule about nights spent in the old Updahl farmhouse, my sleep was interrupted by a succession of disturbing dreams, but all I could remember of them when I awoke—too late, I noted, to witness the parting of the lovers on the road and Alison's athletic, comic entrance through her window—was that they had made me start into wakefulness several times during the night. If you cannot remember them, nightmares lose all of their power. I
was as hungry as I could remember ever being, another sign of renewed health.

I was as certain as if she'd left a note that Alison Greening had moved that photograph, and the information that she had influenced another hand to do it for her did not alter my conviction.

“You don't mind my moving that picture, do you?” said Mrs. Sunderson when I came down for breakfast. “I thought since you had that other one up there, you might want them both. I didn't mess with anything in that writing room of yours, I just put the picture on your desk.”

Startled, I looked at her. She was working her fat arms over a frying pan. Grease spat, flames jumped. Her face was set in an expression of sullen obduracy.

“Why did you do it?”

“Because of the other one. Like I said.” She was lying. She had been Alison's agent; it was also clear that she had disliked having the photograph within her view.

“What did you think of my cousin? Do you remember her?”

“Not to speak of.” She went firmly back to the eggs.

“You don't want to talk about her.”

“No. What's past is past.”

“In one sense,” I said, and laughed. “Only in one sense, my dear Mrs. Sunderson.”

The “my dear” made her look toward me with magnified goggling eyes. More brooding, puzzled silence over the sizzling eggs on the gas burner.

“Why did you tear up that picture of Duane's girl? I saw it when I straightened up your mess in the front bedroom.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said. “Oh I do remember. I didn't really know what it was. It was a random gesture. A reflex.”

“So some would say,” she pronounced as she brought me the eggs. “Maybe some would say the same about that car of yours.”

I could still taste those eggs two hours later when I stood on the asphalt of the Arden filling station beside a squat young man with
Hank
blazoned over his heart and listened to him groan about the condition of the VW.

“This is some mess,” he said. “I sure hope you got insurance. First off, we ain't even got a man these days who can beat out those dents for you. And all these is foreign parts. This glass here, and that headlight and missing hubcap. They might be a long time in coming. It's gonna cost plenty.”

“You don't have to get them from Germany,” I pointed out. “There must be a VW agency around here somewhere.”

“Maybe,” the boy reluctantly agreed. “I heard about one somewheres, but I can't remember where it is right now. And we're all backed up on work. We're doubling up.”

I looked around at the deserted gas station.

“You can't see it all,” Hank said defensively.

“I can't see any of it.” I was thinking that it must have been at this station that the Polish lover of Duane's fiancée had worked. “Maybe this will help you squeeze it into your schedule.” I took a ten-dollar bill from my pocket and folded it into his hand.

“You live here, Mister?”

“What do you think?” He just coolly regarded me. “I'm a visitor. I had an accident. Look. Forget about the dents, they're not too important, just get the glass and headlights repaired. And take a look at the engine to see if it needs any work. It's been acting up.”

“Okay. I need a name for the slip.”

“Greening,” I said. “Miles Greening.”

“That Jewish?”

The boy reluctantly parted with one of the garage's loaners, a 1957 Nash that steered like a lumber wagon; further into Arden, I took the precaution of parking it in a side street in an area where the houses appeared to be at least moderately prosperous.

An hour and a half later, I was listening to Paul Kant say to me, “You put yourself and me in trouble just by coming here, Miles. I tried to warn you. You really should have listened. I appreciate your friendliness, but there are only two people that the good folks around here think could have done these crimes, and here we are together. Cozy. If you're not scared, you should be. Because I'm terrified. If anything else happens, anything else to a child I mean, I think I'm a dead man. They took baseball bats to my car last night, just to let me know they're watching.”

“Mine too,” I said. “And I saw them working on yours, but I didn't know whose it was.”

“So here we are, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Why don't you just get out while you have the chance?”

“I can't, for several reasons. One of them is that Polar Bears asked me to stay put until everything is over.”