If You Could See Me Now (27 page)

At night, I experienced fear.

Rinn had given up answering her telephone, and I kept telling myself that I would visit her tomorrow. But that too I feared. The anonymous calls ceased, both from Onion Breath
and from the—whatever the other thing was. Perhaps there was a fault in the old telephone.

I received no more blank letters, and only one more bit of fan mail. It was printed on lined paper with torn perforations along one side, and it read
WE
'
LL GET YOU KILLER
. I put it in an envelope and mailed it with a note to Polar Bears.

It seemed to me that I had died.

Many times, I thought: you were wrong, back at the quarry. That he had Coke bottles in his truck is no proof; the doorknob taken from wherever I had put it is no proof. And then I thought of him slicing open his hand.

I said: it is not your problem. And then thought of his dedicating a record “to the lost ones.”

And thought of Alison Greening coming toward me, a creature of sewn leaves and bark. But the thoughts which followed this could not be true.

It was impossible to talk with Polar Bears. He did not respond to my note or to the printed threat.

When the telephone finally rang on a Monday afternoon, I thought it would be Hovre, but when I was greeted by another voice pronouncing my name, I thought of a bent hungry man with tight curling black hair and aging face. “Miles,” he said. “You told me to call you if I ever wanted help.” His voice was dry and papery.

“Yes.”

“I have to get out of here. I'm out of food. I lied to you that day—I said I went out, but I hadn't in a long time.”

“I know.”

“Who told you?” Fear made his voice trill.

“It doesn't matter.”

“No. No, it probably doesn't. But I can't stay in town anymore. I think they're going to do something. Now even more
of them are watching my house, and sometimes I see them talking, planning. I think they're planning to break in. I'm afraid they'll kill me. And I haven't had anything to eat for two days. If—if I can get away can I come there?”

“Of course. You can stay here. I can get a gun.”

“They all have guns, guns are no use…I just have to get away from them.” During the pauses I could hear him gasping.

“Your car doesn't work. How can you get here?”

“I'll walk. I'll hide in the ditches or the fields if I see anyone. Tonight.”

“It's ten miles!”

“It's the only way I can do it.” Then, with that ghastly wanness, that dead humor in his voice, “I don't think anyone will give me a ride.”

About nine thirty, when the light began to fail, I started to expect him, though I knew that he could not possibly arrive for many hours. I walked around the old house, peering from the upstairs windows for the sight of him working his way across the fields. At ten, when it was fully dark, I turned on only one light—in my study—so that he would not be seen crossing the lawn. Then I sat on the porch swing and waited.

It took him four hours. At two o'clock I heard something rustle in the ditch behind the walnut trees, and my head jerked up and I saw him moving across the ripped lawn. “I'm on the porch,” I whispered, and opened the door for him.

Even in the darkness, I could see that he was exhausted. “Stay away from the windows,” I said, and led him into the kitchen. I turned on the light. He was slumped at the table, panting, his clothing covered with smears of dirt and bits of adhering straw. “Did anyone see you?” He shook his head. “Let me get you some food.” “Please,” he whispered.

While I fried bacon and eggs, he stayed in that beaten position,
his eyes fluttering, his back bent and his knees splayed out. I gave him a glass of water. “My feet hurt so much,” he said. “And my side. I fell into a rock.”

“Did anyone see you leave?”

“I wouldn't be here if they did.”

I let him recover while the eggs fried.

“Do you have any cigarettes? I ran out six days ago.”

I tossed him my pack. “Jesus, Miles…” he said, and could go no further. “Jesus…”

“Save it,” I said. “Your food's about ready. Eat some bread in the meantime.” He had been too tired to notice the loaf set squarely in the middle of the table. “Jesus…” he repeated, and began to tear at the loaf. When I put the food down before him, he ate greedily, silently, like an escaped convict.

When he had finished I turned off the light and we went into the living room and felt our way to chairs. I could see the tip of his cigarette burning in the dark room, tilting back and forth as he moved in the rocker. “Do you have anything to drink? Excuse me, Miles. You're saving my life.” I think he began to cry, and I was glad the lights were off. I went back to the kitchen and returned with a bottle and two glasses.

“That's good,” he said when he had taken his. “What is it?”

“Gin.”

“I never had it before. My mother wouldn't let alcohol in the house, and I never wanted to go to the bars. We never had anything stronger than beer. And that was only once or twice. She died of lung cancer. She was a chain-smoker. Like me.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“What are you going to do now, Paul?”

“I don't know. Go somewhere. Hide. Try to get to a city somewhere. Come back when it's over.” Cigarette glowing
with his inhalations, dipping forward and back as he rocked. “There was another one, another girl. She disappeared.”

“I know.”

“That's why they were going to come for me. She's been missing more than a week. I heard about it on the radio.”

“Michael Moose.”

“That's it.” He gave a crackly humorless laugh. “You probably don't know Michael Moose. He's about three hundred and fifty pounds and he chews peppermints. He's grotesque. He's got flat slicked-down hair and pig's eyes and a little moustache like Oliver Hardy's. He's right out of
Babbitt
. He imitates Walter Cronkite's voice, and he'd never get a job anywhere but Arden, and kids laugh at him on the street, but he's better than I am. To Arden. They think he's funny-looking, and they make jokes about him, but they respect him too. Maybe that's too strong. What it is, they take him as one of them. And do you know why that is?”

“Why?”

His voice was flat and bitter. “Because when he was growing up they knew he went out on dates, they know the girls, and because he got married. Because they know, or say, that he's got a woman over in Blundell who's a telephone operator. Red hair.” The cigarette waved in the air, and I could dimly see Paul Kant raising the glass of gin to his lips. “That's it. He's one of them. You know what my crime is?” I held my breath. “I never had a date. I never had a girl. I never told a dirty joke. I never even had a dead girl, like you, Miles. So they thought I was—what they thought. Different. Not like them. Like something bad they knew about.”

We sat there in silence for a long time, each of us only a vague form to the other. “It didn't start that way, you know. It didn't matter that I was less, shall we say robust, when we were all
little kids. In grade school. Grade school was paradise—when I think about it, it was paradise. It got bad only in high school. I wasn't
cute
. I wasn't like Polar Bears. No athlete. I didn't chase the girls. So they started to talk about me. I noticed that people didn't want me around their kids about the time I had to leave school.” He bent, and felt for something on the floor. “Would you mind if I had another drink?”

“It's right on the floor beside your chair.”

“So now when this admirable character goes around ripping up little girls, they assume it's me. Oh yes, Paul Kant. He's never been quite right, has he? A momma's boy. Not quite normal, in a society that makes being normal the most virtuous quality of them all. And then there was another thing—some trouble I had. Stupid scum. They put me in a police station. They hit me. For doing nothing. Did they tell you about that?”

“No,” I lied. “Not a word.”

“I had to go to a hospital. Seven months. Little pills every day. For doing nothing. Stares when I got out. Only job I could get at Zumgo's. With those leering women. Jesus. Do you know how I got here tonight? Had to sneak out of my own house. Wind through the streets like a dog. Know about my dog, Miles? They killed him. One of them. He came up at night and strangled my dog. I could hear him crying. The dog.” I could imagine the little monkey face contorting. The smell of gin and cigarettes drifted through the dark room. “Jesus.” I thought he might have been crying again.

Then: “So what do you say, Miles Teagarden? Or do you just sit and listen? What do you say?”

I said, “I don't know.”

“You were rich. You could come here in the summers and then go back to one of your private schools and then go to some expensive university and smoke pipes and join a fraternity
and get married and get a Ph.D. and live in apartments in New York and go to Europe and wreck cars and buy Brooks Brothers suits and, I don't know, do whatever you do. Teach English in a college. I'm going to have some more of your gin.” He bent, and I heard the bottle clinking against the glass. “Oh. I spilled some.”

“It doesn't matter,” I said.

“It wouldn't to you, would it? I'm getting drunk. Is it you, Miles? Is it you? Come on.”

“Is what me?” But I knew.

“Are you the admirable character? Did you take time off from your
Atlantic Monthly
life to come out here and rip up a few little girls?”

“No.”

“Well, it's not me either. So who is it?”

I looked down at the floor. Before I had decided to tell him about Zack, he was speaking again.

“No, it's not me.”

“I know that,” I said. “I think—”

“It's not me, no way is it me. They just want it to be me. Or you. But I don't know about you. Still, you're being nice to me, aren't you, Miles? Being so nice. Probably never had someone strangle your dog. Or do people like you have dogs? Borzois, wolfhounds. Or a cute little cheetah on a leash.”

“Paul, I'm trying to help you.” I said. “You have a ludicrous misconception of my life.”

“Oops, sorry, oops, mustn't be offensive. Just a poor country boy, I know. Poor dumb pitiable country schmuck. I'll tell you why no way it's me. This is it, boy. I'd never go after a girl. That's why. You hear what I'm saying?”

I did, and hoped he would not torture himself by going further.

“You heard that?”

“I heard.”

“You understand?”

“Yes.”

“Yes. Because I'd do it to boys, not girls. Isn't that funny? That's why it isn't me. That's what I've always wanted, but I never did that either. Never even touched one. I wouldn't hurt any of them, though. Never hurt them.”

He sat there, slumped in the rocking chair, the cigarette glowing in his mouth. “Miles?”

“Yes.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Is it important to you to be alone now?”

“Get the hell out of here, Miles.” He was crying again.

Instead of leaving the room, I got up and walked past his chair and looked through the window facing the porch and the road. I could see nothing but the darker square mass of my own face reflected in the glass and the torn meshes of the screen beyond it. Beyond that, everything was black. His mouth made noises on his glass. “Okay,” I said, “I'll leave you alone, Paul. I'll be back though.”

I went upstairs in the dark and sat at my desk. It was three fifteen. There was the morning to worry about. If the men from Arden broke into Paul's house and found that he had gone, the news, I was certain, would reach Polar Bears almost immediately. And if they were going to break into his house, it could only mean that they had been persuaded somehow that he and not I was responsible for the girls' deaths. But then they might think of looking for Paul at my house—and I could see nothing but disaster for both of us if a gang of Arden hooligans stormed into the house and found the two of us. A shotgun from Duane's basement would not rescue me again. I heard the sound of a car starting up outside, and I jumped. It faded.

Fifteen minutes passed. Time enough, I thought, for Paul to have recovered. I stood up, and recognized how weary I was.

I came down the stairs into the dark room. I saw the tip of a cigarette glowing at the edge of the ashtray. The odors of gin and smoke seemed very thick in the air of the cold small room. “Paul?” I said, going toward the rocking chair. “Paul, let me get you a blanket. I have a plan for tomorrow.”

And then I stopped. I could see the top of the rocker against the window, and it was unbroken by the silhouette of his head. The rocker was empty. He was no longer in the room.

Immediately I knew what had happened, but I switched on one of the lights anyway, and confirmed it. The glass and three-fourths empty bottle sat on the floor beside his chair, the cigarette had burned nearly to the rim of the ashtray. I went into the kitchen, and then opened the door to the bathroom. He had left the house shortly after I had gone upstairs. I swore out loud, half in anger at myself for leaving him, half in despair.

I went through the porch and out onto the lawn. He could not have gone far. And I remembered the sound of the car that I thought I'd heard upstairs, and began to run across the lawn.

When I got to the road, I turned right by reflex and pounded down toward the Sunderson farm, in the direction of Arden, for perhaps forty seconds. But he could have gone the other way, deeper into the valley—I didn't even know what lay in that direction; and I recognized that he could also have gone into the fields, as he had done on the way from Arden earlier that night. I thought of him hiding behind a building or crouching in a field, riven by fear and self-loathing, and told myself that he had nowhere, really nowhere to go. He would come back before daylight.