The Truth of the Matter (22 page)

“Look behind us!” he rasped at her, speeding down a flat and endless stretch of highway. “I told you to keep looking behind us! There are things I can’t see in the mirror.”

Dutifully, she twisted in her seat and looked out the rear window. “The highway’s empty, Lou.”

“Good thing,” Roebuck muttered. “See if you’re bright enough to remember to look back there every five minutes or so.”

Ellie didn’t answer. Roebuck reached over and turned off the radio so violently that the knob almost twisted loose in his hand.

“That goddamned thing is getting on my nerves!”

“I thought you might want to listen for the news.”

“You thought, huh?”

Again she met him with one of her receding silences.

They were nearing the state line before Ellie spoke. “Do you think you ought’a have that gun laying on the seat, Lou?”

“Nobody can see it,” Roebuck said. “It’s up against my body.”

“Just the same, there’s probably a law….”

“Law!” Roebuck snorted the word with half a laugh. “Don’t you understand we’re wanted for murder?”

“It’s not that, Lou. I mean, it just seems to be taking a chance, calling attention to us, to have a gun out in plain sight if somebody does come up to the car. Maybe a truck driver could even look down and see it.”

“Law!” Roebuck spat the word out again, as if he hadn’t heard her last statement. “I’ll tell you about the law. If I had this gun in my pocket it would be a concealed weapon, understand? But here, right out where it can be seen, it’s not breaking the concealed weapons law. Don’t you see that?”

Ellie’s voice was helpless, “I didn’t know, Lou. I’m no lawyer.”

“You sure as hell aren’t! But I did go to law school for two years, so believe me, I know a little something of what I’m talking about.”

“All you have to do is tell me, Lou.” Ellie sat primly with her hands in the lap of her new green dress.

She was acting like what she was now, Roebuck thought. A ten dollar pickup who liked to be pushed around. What had he ever seen in her that made him want her so? What did he still see in her? Why didn’t he just stop the car and shove her out? She was one problem he could get rid of easily.

He thought about that, and he decided that she was still good cover, would still come in useful if the law did force a showdown.

“I told you, you tramp, take a look now and then out the rear window!”

Ellie obeyed, but he saw the anger, the reddish flush at the roots of her blonde hairline when she turned back.

“If I bother you, Lou, all you have to do is let me out at the next town. I can make my own way.”

Roebuck was surprised. So she would actually leave him. “You wouldn’t go if I did try to get rid of you,” he said. “I’d have to drag you out of the car.”

“I don’t want to go unless you want me to. But if you tell me to go that’ll be it.”

She didn’t sound so sure now, he thought. The hell of it was that he didn’t want her to go, and she had a lot of nerve threatening him like that. He knew what she was.

Taking a banked S curve, he paid more attention to his driving than was necessary. “You let Boadeen have you, didn’t you?” he said abruptly, surprising himself that the words came so easily. He had that on her, though; he had known it all along.

“Yes,” she said, as if admitting to something of little importance. “I did that for us, to keep him from getting suspicious and investigating. And if he did get onto us, I thought he might not do anything for fear of getting himself in trouble.”

Roebuck’s breathing was coming harder. “It didn’t work too well, did it?”

“I didn’t know he was that rotten.”

“
He
was that rotten! He didn’t do anything you didn’t! And are you trying to tell me you didn’t enjoy it?”

Ellie’s hands were out of her lap, resting lightly on her knees. “I enjoyed it some, I admit that.”

Roebuck slapped the seat beside him. “How the hell do you think that makes me feel?”

“I didn’t think you’d find out,” Ellie said calmly, “or I wouldn’t have done it.”

“At night you say you love me and the next day you’re letting that bastard take your pants off! What the hell kind of woman are you?” The words were rushing from Roebuck in a stream of bitterness, his voice tight, tears brimming his eyes. “There was only one other woman who ever did that to me, in Singapore, a high-class girl from the Wing family! A little bitch is what she was, like you, goddamnit! She was going to marry me and I found her in bed with my best friend and his brother! I knew a man who’d take care of her! The last time I saw her she was on a Mongolian slaver’s junk sailing off to God knows where and what!”

“I did it for us, Lou,
us!
”

Roebuck narrowed his eyes and looked straight ahead. She didn’t seem ashamed. That was the thing about it.

“You’re a whore,” he said in a controlled and vicious whisper. “A cheap, hick town whore!”

Even that didn’t seem to stir Ellie as she sat very still, not looking at him. “You didn’t have any trouble picking me up, Lou. It started out as a business proposition.”

“You admit what you are, then? A small town, bar-hopping slut?”

Her voice was tolerant, as if she were explaining something to a child. “I never said I was anything else, Lou.”

Ellie was quiet, across the state line, into Colorado. What bothered Roebuck was that she didn’t seem at all upset about the conversation they’d had. Of course, Roebuck had understood all along what she was. That was part of her appeal to him. Ellie was the kind of woman a hard-bitten fugitive from the law should have; she was part of the cast for his present role, like Gipp chasing him across the country, like the gun on the seat beside him and the moustache he was beginning to cultivate—props, all of them. He was beginning, only beginning, to understand that, to face it.

His eyes went slowly to the rear view mirror, checking the empty road behind him. The fear of Gipp was there, so why couldn’t Gipp be? Running from Gipp made Roebuck feel like a character in a movie he’d once seen, where a private detective traced the man who killed his partner all the way from New York to San Francisco—only this time the hero and villain were reversed.

Ellie sighed, leaning back in her seat and staring up at the yellow upholstery on the car’s ceiling.

“You aren’t ashamed of what you are,” Roebuck said. “I don’t understand that.”

“Ashamed?” Ellie closed her eyes. “Why should I be ashamed?”

Roebuck didn’t answer.

“I never told you,” Ellie said, “but I tried marriage—twice.”

“What happened?”

“My first husband turned out to be a drunk. That’s when I started going out with other men, and we got a divorce. Marriage worked for a while the second time; then I started going out again. I liked going out with other men; I couldn’t help it. Al found out and divorced me. He wouldn’t have had any trouble finding correspondents if I’d contested it. It was my fault and I didn’t much care.” Her voice wavered and Roebuck saw her hand clutch the material of her dress. “Except for my little girl. Al’s family got her.”

“If you loved your girl, why didn’t you stay home?”

“Because I couldn’t, Lou. You called me a whore, and I guess I am one. I can’t change. I accept myself as what I am, and I’m…you know…content.”

Content. Roebuck didn’t completely understand that, but he envied it. Ellie accepted what she was, and so she was somebody. It was the source of her strength, knowing what she was. “Whore,” that was her label. She might wish it was something else, but that was her label. Oh, people were classified, by society, by God, by themselves. Everybody was something that marked him or her—thief, housewife, cop, con, queer, drunk, wife beater, businessman, tramp, pimp….The list went on. People fell into their niches, were held fast there. They were labeled, to themselves and to everyone else, and sometimes they didn’t like what they read on their labels.

Ellie’s voice was gentle, a confirmation of what he’d been thinking. “You knew what I was, Lou, really.”

“Yeah.” Roebuck passed his hand over his perspiring face, as if wiping away a vision. “I knew.”

“And you loved me anyway.”

“How could I?”

“Everybody loves somebody anyway.”

“Maybe they do,” Roebuck said.

The mountains appeared before them suddenly, shockingly. Around them the land was still low and rolling, and like weird, unsymmetrical pyramids built on level sand, the mountains loomed out of place and purple in the distance. One second they were an idle thought in the back of Roebuck’s mind; the next second he felt he could stretch out his hand and touch them.

“They’re still far away,” Ellie said. “They fool you, like mirages.” She turned to Roebuck. “If you want to stop soon, Lou, I’ll fix us some supper and go out and get a bottle somewhere. You’ll feel better.”

“Okay,” Roebuck said, staring at the distant mountain range, “that sounds good.”

The mountains reminded him of a roller coaster at an amusement park he’d gone to once as a school boy. Everybody in the class had been afraid to go on that roller coaster; he’d been the only one who’d volunteered. He’d gone not only once, but over and over, roaring through dips and turns, listening to the screams, feeling the rise and fall tear at his stomach, proving his courage to himself and his timid classmates, finally and forever.

He knew now why some people went on roller coasters, pretending they had courage, taking a hundred thousand to one chance to reassure themselves and their girls. Comparing courage with going on a roller coaster was like comparing love with going to a whorehouse. Roebuck felt a twinge of alarm at the thought and looked at Ellie, almost afraid she’d read his thoughts.

As they drove the mountains loomed ahead of them as before, magnificent and unchanging, like a fantastic mural against a canvas of dimming blue sky.

“There’s a sign that says Clinton’s Motel’s five miles away,” Ellie said.

“I see it.” Roebuck rested his arm on the rolled down window. “That’s where I’d planned on stopping.”

Clinton’s Motel was like a thousand others, low, square, with a garish neon sign that blinked a slumbery invitation.

In the dead silence of the turned off engine Roebuck tucked the .38 in his belt beneath his shirt and got out of the car. He felt an unexpected cool passage of air as he stood there, like a chill emanating from the faraway mountains. Making sure the revolver was wedged firmly in his belt, he entered the motel office.

Roebuck felt immediately ill at ease at Clinton’s Motel. The desk clerk had given him a strange look when he’d signed the register, a penetrating gaze from hooded blue eyes. And now that they were in their room Roebuck was even more uncomfortable. Everything in the tiny, ultra-modern room was square and sharp-angled—everything but the people. Roebuck felt his own human softness and vulnerability in contrast to the hard, precision angles and clean, cutting lines around him.

After a quick drink from the bottle of bourbon Ellie had bought at the motel lounge, he lay on the firm bed, feeling out of place and uneasy, his stockinged feet hanging over the edge of the mattress. It was silly, he told himself. These four walls concealed them just as the walls of any motel room.

“You want to rest before we eat?” Ellie asked, stepping over to examine the bathroom.

Roebuck told her he wanted to. He toyed with the notion of apologizing to Ellie for the things he’d called her, but damn it, they were true! Besides, she was acting as if it hadn’t happened. It didn’t bother her, being called what she was.

The occasional whine of a passing truck invaded the quiet room, and now and then the resonant slapping of the motel pool’s diving board sounded. The window air conditioner was drawing in a faint chlorine scent from the pool to hang cool and clear in the atmosphere of the small, sparsely furnished room, giving it the antiseptic air of an operating room.

Roebuck heard and felt Ellie stretch out on the bed next to him, but he kept his eyes closed and let everything become distant. He descended into sleep.

It was pitch-black in the room when Roebuck opened his eyes and fought his way up, up out of sleep like a man struggling to the surface of dark water.

The lamp by the bed came on and he slumped back limply, lying with his fingertips pressed for reassurance against the firmness of the mattress beneath him.

Ellie’s voice came to him, as comfortingly real as the light and the mattress. “What did you dream this time?”

Roebuck folded his hands behind his head, expanding his chest to breathe in the too cool air in the room. He held his breath as long as he could and then let it out in a long sigh. “The same dream,” he said. “It’s always the same dream.”

“It must be a bad one.”

He was quiet, letting the reality around him implant itself, taking the place of the more horrible reality he’d experienced in his sleep.

“Why don’t you tell me about it?” Ellie said. “Tell me about it and you might not dream it anymore.” She touched his bare arm, and the touch was like a lifeline.

“I’ll always have that dream,” Roebuck said, “even when I’m awake.” Since they’d left the cabin at Lake Chippewa the dream had become a presence in him, a swelling, shadowed thing that grew and grew.

“I don’t guess you can be blamed for your dreams,” Ellie said, “awake or asleep. For the things that come into your mind when you let your guard down.”

Roebuck didn’t answer.

“Tell me about it,” Ellie said.

He had never told anyone about his dream.

Her fingers, peaceful, compelling, caressed his arm. “Tell me about it….”

“I was eleven,” Roebuck said. “I was raised in Arkansas on a little farm something like the one we stayed at with Claude and his mother, not enough land to really make a living, and what land there was all rocky and dry. And tilted. No matter what you did on the land, plowing, tilling, seeding, it was always on a tilt. There were only a few buildings, a frame house, barn, chicken coop…all falling apart, paint peeling. We lived there, though, me, my dad and my two older brothers, Mark and Frank. They were my half brothers, really, from my dad’s first wife, and five and six years older than me. I remember when I was a lot younger asking my dad what happened to my mother. He told me she’d died in childbirth, and he’d been drinking ever since.