The Truth of the Matter (17 page)

Now he was afraid to move. He stood breathing faster and faster, his fear welling up in him.

“Ellie!”

“Lou?”

The voice was so close that he took a startled step away from it.

“Is that you, Lou? Where are you?”

Roebuck felt a relief surge through him greater than the physical relief he’d felt earlier.

“Take it easy, Ellie, I’m coming.”

He made his way to the campsite, only a few yards away from where he’d been standing.

“I didn’t mean to leave you alone,” he said, settling back into the leaves that were warmed by her body.

“What in heaven’s name were you doing out there in the dark?”

“I thought I heard something in the woods, in the night. I thought it might be a lawman who found us and was going back for help. Whatever it was, I followed it for about half a mile and I’m pretty sure it was just an animal of some kind. Probably a coyote.”

Ellie lay back down in the leaves beside him. “I don’t see how anybody could find us, dark as it is.”

“Infrared glasses,” Roebuck said, snuggling up to her. “They have infrared glasses.” He wrapped a protective arm around her and went to sleep.

They started out early the next morning, after only a can of peaches and a swig of water for breakfast. The country seemed to get rougher, the woods denser. They would be lucky to make over six or seven miles if they walked hard all day, Roebuck thought dismally. And he was getting a blister on his heel.

They walked for hour after hour, and it seemed as if they had gotten nowhere. The woods were the same in front of them, behind them, all around them. Well before sundown Roebuck suggested making camp to give Ellie a rest, and they went through the motions of last night, the lean-to, the bed of leaves, the fire, only this time supper out of a can.

Roebuck tramped briefly into the woods to make sure he wouldn’t have to get up in the middle of the night again, and when it got dark enough for the smoke to be unnoticeable, he built a somewhat larger fire that would burn longer into the night.

The vision of that still smoldering campfire comforted him as he closed his eyes and slept.

“I heard a scream!”

“You screamed, Lou. It was you.”

Ellie was bending over him, staring down at him with pity and alarm. Roebuck saw that it was light; it was morning. He pressed his hands to his temples, trying to adjust to the sudden shift in time. Just a minute ago it had been dark, except for the reddish, flickering glare. And the suffocating haze….

Ellie placed her hand on his shoulder and he flinched.

“You yelled something about a fire,” she said in a puzzled voice.

“Fire? A nightmare. I dreamed the woods were on fire, a forest fire.”

“Just a dream,” Ellie said. “It’s morning. We slept later than we should have, I guess.”

Roebuck glared up at the sun, as if he had some personal grudge against it. “It must be past ten o’clock.” He stood, trying to shake off the effects of last night’s dream, the dream that he kept locked within him, that broke its confines during his nights to intrude into his sleep.

“We better get going,” Ellie said. “Do you want to eat breakfast?”

“We should have something.” He went to the open suitcase and got the thermos of water, half full now, and rinsed the thickness from his mouth.

“How do apricot halves sound?”

“I wish to hell I had some coffee,” he said.

His only answer was the little hiss of inrushing air as Ellie opened the can of apricots.

That day was a repetition of the last two—at least until late afternoon. They continued to trudge through the crisp leaves and harsh underbrush, wondering now if they would ever see Highway R. At times Roebuck feared they might have been walking in a circle, like the prospectors in the desert who become dazed and die of thirst. Then he would reassure himself. They had been very careful about their direction, and traveling had been slower than they’d anticipated. Highway R wasn’t moving; it was ahead of them somewhere, waiting for them like home.

God, but it would be good to get out of the woods, to take a shower and change into clothes that didn’t itch. Roebuck vowed to himself that as soon as they made Ironton they would buy some new clothes and stop at a motel just to shower and rest.

He ran his tongue over the cottony dryness on the roof of his mouth.

“Time for a water break,” he said. “You must be choking with thirst.”

They stopped and got the thermos from the suitcase. There were barely two inches of water left in it.

“We better watch for a spring or something,” Ellie said.

Roebuck took a swallow of water and looked up at the sky through the roof of leaves. “You’re right. It doesn’t look like it’s ever going to rain again.” He shuddered. “A fire would sweep through these woods like a wind.”

Ellie wiped the sweat from her face. “A forest fire’s the least of my worries now.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever seen a big forest fire. The flames leap five stories high! There’s no stopping them; they travel over the treetops.”

“I’m still not too worried,” Ellie said. “They don’t have forest fires that often.”

“More often than you think.”

There was a slight sound, a very soft, sudden sound, and they both started and turned toward it.

Only the woods.

“It’s something!” Roebuck whispered. They both knew somehow that what they had heard was not an animal, that it was a sound unnatural to the harmony of the woods. There was in the deep woods the noise made by things frightened, by things stalking, by things wary or watching. But this had been none of those; this had been the bold sound of something unafraid but unaggressive, outside the ritual of nature.

They heard it again, a rising and falling steady sound of something moving through the carpet of leaves. It was moving toward them, but from what direction they couldn’t tell.

Then it stepped out from behind a tree.

A boy, about twelve years old, his eyes wide and startled at seeing two people suddenly appear before him. He was wearing a long-sleeved plaid shirt and blue jeans, ragged, and he stood very still and stared at them, waiting for them to make the first move.

Roebuck’s head was spinning. Now they were spotted! Now someone could tell the law that they were still in the area, on foot and easy to capture! This wasn’t in his plans. This was an aberration that he couldn’t tolerate.

The gun was suddenly in his hand, pointed at the boy.

“What are you doing here?” Roebuck asked.

The boy backed up a step, his skinny body tense. He stared from the gun up into Roebuck’s eyes and saw a subtle change of light in them, like something turning in deep water. For a fragment of a second man and boy stood staring at each other, the will of death between them.

“He’s only a boy, Lou,” Ellie said from beside Roebuck.

“Of course he is,” Roebuck said. “I’m not going to hurt him. But what are we going to do? He knows about us now. What in the hell are we going to do?”

“We’ll think of something,” Ellie said. “We’ve thought of something so far, haven’t we?”

Roebuck motioned with the gun. “Come over here, son.”

The boy walked toward them reluctantly, afraid but a long way from panic.

“What are you doing out here in the woods alone?”

The voice was thin and unsteady. “I live near here.”

“How far away?” Ellie asked gently.

The boy turned toward her, sensing her sympathy. “’Bout half a mile.”

Roebuck slid the revolver back in his belt. “What are you doing out here alone?”

“Jus’ walkin’.”

“To where?”

“Nowheres. I jus’ like to walk in the woods is all.”

“What’s your name?” Ellie asked.

“Claude Mulhaney.”

Roebuck knew what they must do. They would never be safe once this boy was out of their sight.

“How many are in your family?” he asked, glowering menacingly at the boy to frighten a correct answer from him.

“Me an’ my dad an’ ma.” Young Claude was not nearly as frightened as he had been, and in fact was showing a certain degree of cockiness, the instinctive courage of something cornered.

“Who’s home now?” Roebuck asked.

“Jus’ my ma.”

Roebuck made a jerking motion with his thumb. “Lead the way.”

Claude didn’t move.

Roebuck again drew the pistol from his belt. “Why aren’t you moving, son?”

“I want you to promise.”

“Promise what?”

“That you won’t hurt my ma.”

“Nobody’ll hurt your mother,” Ellie said.

“Nobody’s going to hurt anybody.” Roebuck waved the pistol. “That’s a promise from somebody who’s never broken one, son. Now you show us where you live.”

Claude gave him a searching look, then turned and began leading them in the direction he’d come from. Roebuck saw that the boy’s sandy hair was close-cropped around the neck and ears, as if someone actually had placed a bowl on his head to give him a haircut. He had to admire the courage of the boy in the face of a loaded gun. What might such courage grow into?

They had gone only a short way through the woods when they came upon a path, a winding dirt trail through a corridor of green where the woods thinned to let in the sunlight and there was high foliage beneath the trees on either side of them.

“We’re being honest with you,” Roebuck said, as they followed the small bobbing head. “We don’t expect you to try something cute like leading us in a circle.”

“Don’t worry,” Claude said without looking back. “Long as I got your promise.”

“Brigadier generals have taken my word,” Roebuck said. “You can rely on it.”

“You some kind of soldier?”

“Was.”

“Really? In the army?”

“For a while,” Roebuck said, “then I was in the Special Service, a spy outfit.”

“You don’t look like a spy.”

“That’s enough yapping,” Roebuck said. “You just lead the way.”

Claude’s home was situated at the foot of a tall but not very steep bluff. As he led Roebuck and Ellie down the dirt path on the opposite hill, Roebuck could see a small garden behind the ramshackle house, an outhouse, and to one side a fairly big patch of corn. The house itself was frame with a tin roof. There was another frame building behind it that leaned to one side away from the garden. As they got closer Roebuck saw that both buildings were in terrible disrepair, with peeling, colorless paint, spots of rotting wood, and cardboard where some of the window panes should have been. Some scraggly chickens pecked about in the bare earth before the house and on the wooden porch where a worn kitchen chair sat.

“Stop here, son,” Roebuck said, when they were still far enough from the house not to have been seen by its occupants. “You’ve got my promise, now I want yours that there isn’t anybody in that house but your mother.”

“There ain’t,” the boy said sincerely. “I swear it!”

Roebuck lifted the gun that had been dangling in his hand and slipped it inside his shirt

“Okay, son, let’s go.”

When they entered, the woman looked up from where she was sitting at the kitchen table. There was nothing on the table before her; she had just been sitting there.

“These here are some people I met, Ma,” Claude stammered.

Roebuck nodded at her, smiling. “Mrs. Mulhaney.”

She wasn’t an old woman, but she had very stooped shoulders and a lock of drab brown hair carefully flattened over one side of her forehead that made her look older. She coughed and touched a wadded handkerchief to her thin lips.

“Where’d you meet these folks, Claude?”

“In the woods, Ma—they said they wouldn’t hurt you!”

The woman looked blankly at Roebuck and Ellie, her face gaunt and very pale.

“There’s no reason for anybody to get hurt,” Roebuck said, strangely ashamed at having intruded into the woman’s privacy. He looked about him at the small farmhouse’s pathetically worn furniture and saw an old wooden radio on a shelf above the yellowed sink.

“There’s no use to pretend,” the woman said, following Roebuck’s gaze. “I know who you are.” Her voice was throaty and rich, the voice of a nightclub torch singer insanely out of place. “I’m Iris Mulhaney and this is my son Claude.”

“We meant it when we said nobody was going to get hurt,” Ellie said.

“I believe you did, ma’am,” Iris Mulhaney said, and she bent forward momentarily as a fit of coughing doubled her. “You’ll haft’a excuse me.” The handkerchief dabbed at her mouth.

Claude went over to stand by his mother. “Ma ain’t well. You see there’s no call to hurt her, no reason.”

Roebuck walked to the sink and turned the tap for a drink of water but got nothing.

“Somethin’ wrong with the line,” Iris Mulhaney said. “You’ll haft’a use the hand pump out back.”

“Where’s your husband?” Ellie asked, slumping into a torn armchair.

“Works in the city. He comes home on weekends, sometimes not even then.” There was no bitterness in the fogged voice, only fact stripped of all emotion, ancient history still happening.

“That means he won’t be home for three days,” Roebuck said, leaning on the sink.

“Maybe not then.”

Roebuck turned the knob on the radio to satisfy, himself that it worked, then turned it off. “We don’t have any choice but to stay here, Mrs. Mulhaney. You have my promise that we won’t cause any trouble.”

Iris Mulhaney nodded and Roebuck saw that the lock of hair was combed down over her forehead to conceal a reddish scar, possibly from a burn.

“How long do you think we’ll have to stay, Lou?” Ellie asked.

“It depends,” Roebuck said, “on a lot of things.”

“There ain’t much to eat,” Iris said in a voice of apology.

“I’ll fix us something later,” Ellie said to her with a smile. “We might as well make this a vacation for you, Mrs. Mulhaney.”

Roebuck turned to Claude. “How far is your nearest neighbor, son?”

“Ain’t got no neighbors.”

“There must be somebody….”

“The Webster place,” Iris said, “but I wouldn’t call ’em neighbors. It’s over a mile.”

Roebuck nodded and looked again at Claude. “Are there any guns in the house?”

Claude hesitated.

“We have each other’s word,” Roebuck said.