The Houseguest (17 page)

This was hardly the time to remind Lyman that a cousin of his, another Finch, owned the drive-in movie, which was patronized almost totally by locals and never summer people.

“Chief,” Lydia said, “what's the punishment for rape in this part of the world?”

“That's a theoretical question, Lyman,” Doug said quickly. “I'm sure the crime itself is rare on the island.”

The chief lifted the bottle and sucked at its mouth: but then he had not been furnished with a glass. When he brought the vessel down he inspected the label. “Is this imported? Or did you take a leak in it before handing it to me?” The question, if a joke, was nevertheless put without evidence of humor or even good feeling.

“Rape?” he said then. “I'll tell you who commits it around here: the womenfolk.” He winked at Lydia.

“Well, does that answer your question, Lydia?” Doug had moved into a position back of the chief, so that he could indicate, with violent grimaces, that she should abandon the inquiry.

But she ignored him and continued to address Lyman. “I assure you I am being serious, and I'll thank you to answer me with respect.”

Couldn't she see that her tone was the worst to use with a brute like Lyman Finch?

Doug shouted, “Hey, I forgot the ice!” and made as much commotion as he could in going to the refrigerator.

But behind him Lyman said, “You didn't bring me a glass, neither. You figured the likes of me wouldn't drink from a glass, right? We're all shit to you, ain't we?”

Doug turned and said, “No, that isn't the case at all, Lyman. We've been friends for what? Thirty-forty years?” He tried to inject some false warmth into this phrasing, and spoke to Bobby, “Lyman and I knew each other as boys.”

“I always wanted to whip his ass,” the chief told Lydia. “But they wouldn't let me, not even when he tried to fuck my little sister. She was doin' maid work for them, cleanin' their toilets, and she was only fourteen years of age.”

The facts were that at that time Roberta Finch was at least three years older and it was she who had propositioned Doug, successfully, and displayed a good deal more sexual technique than he, seventeen himself and already experienced with “bad” city girls and professional whores, had yet to encounter. When questioned on this, Roberta alluded to home study, as the only sister in a family of boys. It was even likely that her father had had at her, given the appearance of her mother.

“Come on, Lyman,” Doug protested, though of course he could not dare to give his real defense. “We were all just kids in those days.”

The chief continued to direct his words to Lydia. “What really got Bertie was he offered her fifty cents! Mr. Lottabucks here. A half dollar for her cherry.” He swigged more gin from the bottle and banged it down. Suddenly he threw back his head and emitted a bellow of laughter. “Shit, she might of taken it, if it had been seventy-five!”

Audrey had been silent till this moment. Now she rose in her place. “You disgusting, squalid man. Get out of this house.”

As if more conflict were needed! Doug began to gesture ineffectually, but could find nothing to say. It was the women who had brought about this latest debacle, damn them.

But a remarkable thing happened in the next moment. The chief removed the campaign hat he had been wearing since he entered the kitchen. He surveyed the tabletop and then slid his chair back so as to accommodate the high-crowned hat on his lap. A dank lock of hair clung to his very pale bald spot.

He glanced sheepishly at Audrey. “I beg your pardon, ma'am. I got a bug yesterday and am on medication.” He nodded at the bottle. “This here is all I had to drink I swear. I been running off at the mouth, I know. I'm really sorry.”

Doug was relieved but also embarrassed. “Bobby, get some glasses. Why don't we all have a nice drink at this point?” In making this suggestion he was thinking mostly of Audrey: no doubt much of her indignation towards Lyman Finch was due to his having exclusive possession of the bottle.

But Audrey said, “No! This man must leave immediately. We've been imposed on too much today.” She was displaying an authority that her husband had never before seen in her.

Saying, “Yes, ma'am,” Lyman got to his feet, holding his shield-bearing hat flat against his crotch. “I didn't mean no harm.”

But his hostess would not relinquish her advantage. “Sure you did,” she said. “You're full of resentment, and you'll take it out on anybody who will put up with it. Go out and give someone a speeding ticket, and let us alone. We're what we are.”

“Just a minute,” said Lydia, rising to her feet. She was speaking to Audrey. “Don't let him go!” To Lyman she said, “We've got a problem, officer. We're trapped here. It might not look like it, but we're actually prisoners. We need your help. We're being terrorized. … .”

She was exaggerating outlandishly, and Doug would have jumped in to dampen or deflect the worst of this crazy stuff, which if it became public knowledge through Lyman, who was surely the typical Finch gossip, the Graveses would be derided all over the island and perhaps all the way back to the city.
Did you hear this? How some drifter, a little nobody, just walked in and took charge?

Doug would surely have acted had Chuck Burgoyne not strolled in at this moment, saying, “Hi, Lyman.”

The chief turned and, when he saw who it was, stopped cringing. “Charley! I didn't know you was still here.”

“Where else would I be?” asked Chuck, with the warmest of smiles for all. “This place suits me. I'm staying permanently. I hope you're not leaving right now, Lyman. Let's have a drink!”

Lyman put his hat on his head and returned to the table.

Doug asked, incredulously, “You know each other?”

“We're cousins,” said Chuck. He made a shooing motion. “And we want some privacy. You all get out of here and go to bed, chop-chop.”

Lyman stared at Doug for an instant and then guffawed. “By God, you got 'em trained, Charley.” He winked. “That include the little chippie?”

Chuck returned the wink. “What do you think, Lyman?”

Obviously, new plans had to be made now. Even Lydia seemed to agree. At least she did not launch an attack on the cousins, but decorously left the kitchen with the rest of the family.

“Now what?” asked Bobby. They were back again in his father's quarters, demoralized. “Who could know that the law would be on his side?”

“Not the law, Bobby, just the police chief. There's an important difference that is basic to our form of government.” He shook his head. “All the same, it
is
discouraging. I've despised the Finches all my life, but they're local yokels. I would never have thought the likes of Chuck would have a connection with them. At least he's civilized.”

Bobby's mother snorted, and his father added, irritably, “You know what I mean: he eats with a knife and fork, et cetera.”

Lydia was frowning. Bobby disliked seeing that vertical line appear between her eyebrows. She asked, “These people who run the everyday affairs of the island, they hate you?”

Bobby's mother shrugged. “Well,” said she. “You know how it goes.”

“No,” Lydia said stubbornly. “Don't people like you furnish their livelihood?”

Bobby suddenly got the point, but it seemed that Lydia did not.

“The fact is,” said Bobby's father, “we now have to arrange a new strategy. We can't expect much help from the usual agency to which a citizen applies in a crisis.”

Bobby's mother said, “I have always respected Mrs. Finch. I can't say I have ever been actually fond of her, as one is sometimes fond of people who work for you, but then why should that always be the case? Common decency would seem to be all that's called for, and she certainly got that from me. I haven't ever lorded it over her, for heaven's sake.” She sighed. “I am aware that she's from the same family, but it's not necessary that she be part of this thing.”

Bobby said, “Mother's idea of burning the house down begins to make sense.”

“Oh, come
on,”
said his father.

“Well, didn't you hear Chuck say he has decided to stay here forever? And we couldn't even get rid of him
before
we knew he was related to the police chief.”

“If they
are
all in it together,” said his mother, who was essentially talking to herself, “then tomorrow will get worse. Mrs. Finch
plus
the cleaning crew.”

Lydia spoke sternly. “Then we have to handle it as soon as possible. How much more that fat cop can drink without falling in his face is in doubt. I think we could take them in the kitchen. Chuck's the more dangerous. Luckily he's seated with his back to the outside door. I'm willing to go out and around the house to that door, and on a prearranged signal I'll burst in and slug him with something, a good solid hit this time, while you, Doug, and Bobby come in through the butler's pantry and take the chief from behind.”

Bobby's father asked irritably, “And then what do we
do
with them?” She made a fist, “We have to get
everything
settled before we start
anything
, including every eventuality that could possibly occur, such as what happens if Lyman's not as drunk as we think or even, if so, can still handle himself effectively. He's awfully fat, remember, and that means he can hold more alcohol than most.” He made his voice gentle and said to Lydia, “With all respect, do you really have the nerve to hit Chuck hard enough to knock him out?”

For an instant she looked as though she might flare up in anger, but she said slowly, “You're right. Look what happened last time.”

The idea came to Bobby from nowhere. “The drapes and blinds and all,” said he. “All those cords.” He pointed at the window that now was a framed view of the black of night woods. Its Venetian blind was in a tight furl, and therefore most of the cord hung free.

“All right,” said his father. “We take them by surprise and we tie them up. So far so good. Then what?”

Lydia groaned. “It keeps coming back to the same question, which nobody can answer. And now you can't haul Chuck somewhere out on the highway and abandon him, because what can be done with Lyman?”

“Actually, that idea came from what the rangers do with troublesome bears in the national parks,” said Bobby's father. “It probably wouldn't work with human beings, anyway.” His eyes widened. “The state police! There's a barracks on the mainland, about a mile from the ferry pier. They'd be free of the Finch connection.”

Lydia's face was showing the effects of her ordeal. Bobby's wife had been in the forefront of all the action of the day. She was that kind of person. He was pleased with himself for having found her, though it had actually been the other way around: she had first spoken to him, in the university library, offering her help when he displayed his understandable confusion in filling out the call slip for a certain reference book. He had all too seldom done that sort of thing in three years of college. He was no scholar and never pretended to be. What he was, was a good fellow. He had no malice in him, which meant he was at a terrible disadvantage when dealing with a man like Chuck. His mind simply didn't work that way.

Therefore when he spoke now, it was in the spirit of make-believe. “I just can't see any way to deal with Chuck except to do him in. It keeps coming back to that. Because even if we were able to reach the state police, what could we get them to do? What would we charge Chuck with? We know he's a criminal, but it would be hard to explain to anyone else.”

“Carrying a concealed lethal weapon,” said his father. “At least. And that's a felony… . Of course, if he's Lyman's cousin he probably already has a license to carry a gun on the island, or if he hasn't now, Lyman could easily fix him up with one, make him a deputy. Maybe he's already been deputized. That would account for his arrogance.” He stared at his wife. “Do you realize what this is beginning to sound like? That the Finches are making their big move. After all these years! For example, Lyman said the phone service is off all over the island, not just here. Maybe there's a Chuck in everybody's house: we all use the Finches for everything.”

Lydia protested to Bobby. “You just can't speak of Chuck now as if dealing with him alone will solve anything. Whether or not your father's right in seeing this as some sort of peasant uprising—”

His father snorted. “Some peasants! They own a lot more than I do. They might be clods, but old Ronnie Finch, Lyman's uncle, who must be eighty but still does all the local landscaping, pays cash for the heavy machinery he buys. They could buy and sell
me
, that's certain.”

“All right,” said Lydia, “but my point remains: with Lyman's appearance Chuck has got at least a temporary reprieve from anything really extreme, though I'll admit that anything less probably wouldn't be effective.”

“There you are,” said Bobby.

His father was still occupied with the Finches' holdings. “Do you realize they own miles of undeveloped shoreline property? It's not for sale either, at least not at the moment. But when the time comes, and the price is right, they'll sell it to the most vulgar entrepreneur. We'll have condominiums and marinas and shopping malls full of overweight teenagers and gaudily dressed people wearing eyeglasses. Supermarkets and soft-drink machines and discount drugstores. Not just Chuck—if only we could exterminate the whole tribe!”

The passion of this speech brought Bobby back to reality for the moment. It was likely that Lydia had relatives, perhaps even immediate, to whom such a commercial vision would have been very attractive. After all, such a complex would produce many tons of rubbish and thus much potential profit for a business like her father's. And had there not been money in private refuse collection, she could not have afforded to attend the university at which Bobby had met her. He was acquiring a new awareness of the interconnectedness of things, so perhaps not all this ongoing episode was deplorable, and then there was the growing, and unprecedented, solidarity within the family. During the last few hours he had spent more time in his father's company than he could remember having done previously in all his life. Furthermore, the man had listened with respect to several of his ideas on how to vanquish their common enemy.

“How about tampering with the brakes or the steering on Lyman's jeep?” he asked now. “You know that big curve just before you get to the village? If he lost control there, especially drunk as he is, it would be quite a fall, and it's all granite boulders below.”

Lydia gave him a searching look. “You've got a bloodthirsty side I've never seen before.”

His father asked, “Does any of us have enough technical knowledge to do something like that so it would definitely work—and then not be detected later? I doubt it.” He assumed a judicious expression. “You see, not only do we have to extricate ourselves from this predicament, but we must do it so that it is brought to an absolute end, with no subsequent repercussions. We must not only keep our noses clean legally, but we must be
extremely
careful not to incur the vengeance of the remaining Finches.”

“But,” wailed Bobby's mother, “we seem to be suffering from
that
as it is.”

“Exactly, and we must not make it worse—and here our work is cut out for us—we must not only rid ourselves of Chuck but dissipate the existing resentment that can be detected in Lyman, which surely must be shared by the other members of the tribe.”

Bobby's mother said, “I still insist that Mrs. Finch and I have never exchanged a harsh word.”

“That sullen old bitch,” said his father. “She's cheated on the household accounts for years.”

This was an old theory of his father's, and in the past the occasion for many angry words between his parents, but Bobby now was relieved to hear his mother say, “Maybe you're right. Everything is changing so rapidly.”

His father returned the favor and replied inoffensively. “Or maybe it's always been what we only now are recognizing since Chuck has revealed his true colors.”

A gunshot was heard at that moment, a sound that had to travel around and through many obstructions, and yet it reached them, as a scream or bellow could not have done if produced in the faraway kitchen.

Lydia's brief expression of alarm was replaced by one of hope. “Could that possibly mean that one of them has shot the other?”

Before she could be answered came the sounds of two volleys of gunfire.

Bobby's mother spoke with her eyes closed. “They're shooting up the house: that's what they are doing.”

Bobby could not have anticipated the fear that claimed him at the sound of this distant fire, so different from that heard in movie and TV battles, so flat, literal, undemonstrative. As it continued, it seemed ever so gradually to be coming closer.

With an effort, he rose above what might otherwise have become stark terror, and said, already in motion, “We'd better fortify this place before they get here.”

Bobby had taken the initiative. Doug had to grant him that; perhaps he was finally arriving at manhood. Doug followed his son into the bedroom, and together they tore away what was necessary to get to the naked mattress, lifted it off the frame, and carried it to lean vertically against the outer door of the study, where Lydia and Audrey held it in place while the men pushed pieces of heavy furniture against it, the upended sofa and, back of that, Doug's desk, which remained horizontal, offering a surface onto which the bedclothes and sofa cushions were piled.

“Not bad,” Doug said when the barrier had been completed, standing back like a general, hands on hips, a posture for which his only training had been in military school so many years before. Of that time his principal memory was of the tormenting of an effeminate boy till he fled the Regiment (calling it “school” could get you ostracized interminably) and went home to Mother. Doug might well have been obliged to be of the company that, carrying out a traditional ritual by which a weakling was shamed, sodomized the lad had not the screaming response to the first attacker alerted the Officer of the Day.

In short, he had had no serious preparation for war, which was clearly what he was faced with now. With an effort of will he avoided dwelling on the fact that the battle had hardly been recognized as such when it was already at the stage of a Thermopylae.

But leave it to Audrey to make the point aloud. “Now our backs are really to the wall,” said she, staring disconsolately at the barrier. “But what could we do once the guns started?”