He couldn’t avoid it, another bump, a slight one with a crunching sound against his left front, he felt the damage and
something rattling, shaking his steering wheel as the other car forced him to slow. The car trembled as if mortally wounded, and he gave up, pulled onto the shoulder, and prepared to stop. The other car stopped in front of him. The third car, the one that had been lagging behind, came into sight and zipped by at high speed.
Tony Hastings started to open his door, but Laura touched his arm.
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Stay in the car.’
That’s the end of the chapter, and Susan Morrow pauses to reflect. It looks more serious than expected, and she’s relieved, glad to see the firmness of the writing, how well Edward has learned his craft. She’s in for something and worries on behalf of Tony and his family on that lonely highway amid such menace. Is he safe if he keeps the doors locked? The question, she realizes, is not what he can do to keep them safe, but what the story has destined for him. That’s Edward, who has the power in this case: what he has in mind.
She appreciates the irony in Edward’s treatment of Tony, which suggests maturity, an ability to mock himself. She’s full of illegal questions, like whether that’s Christmas-card Stephanie putting her hand so affectionately on Tony’s neck, and whether Helen is derived from Edward’s own domestic life. She reminds herself not to confuse Tony with Edward, fiction is fiction, yet noticing Tony’s last name she wonders if Edward deliberately named him after the town where they grew up.
She wonders how Stephanie likes Edward the Writer. She remembers, when Edward told her he wanted to quit school and write, she felt betrayed, but she was ashamed to admit it. After the divorce she followed Edward’s surrender of that dream through her mother’s reports. She drew her own conclusions, the transformation through stages of Edward the Poet into Edward the Capitalist, thinking it vindicated her doubts.
From poetry writing to sports writing. From sports writing to journalism teaching. From journalism teaching to insurance. He was what he was and was not what he was not. Money would compensate for lost dreams. With Stephanie presumably behind him all the way. So Susan supposed, but apparently she was wrong.
She pauses to locate herself before going on. She puts the box on the couch beside her, looks up at the two paintings, tries to see them fresh, the abstract beach, the brown geometry. Monopoly bargaining on the floor in the study, Henry’s friend Mike has a mean laugh. On the gray rug in this room, Jeffrey twitches, asleep. Martha approaches him, sniffs, jumps on the coffee table, threatening Dorothy’s camera. What?
That menacing unidentified monster she remembers in her mind before she began to read. Has the book put it to sleep? Just keep reading. Paragraphs and chapters on a lonely highway at night. She thinks of Tony, the tall thin face with the beaked nose, the glasses, the sad bagged eyes. No, that’s Edward. Tony has a black mustache. She must remember the black mustache.
The driver’s door of the old Buick opened and a man stepped out. Tony Hastings felt Laura his wife’s hand on his arm, to restrain or give him courage. He waited. The other men in the car were looking at him from their windows. He couldn’t see what they looked like.
The man ambled over, slowly. He was wearing a pitcher’s warmup jacket, zipper open but fastened at the bottom, with his hands in the pockets. He had a high forehead, the front
part of his head bald. He looked at the front of Tony Hastings’s car and came over to the window.
‘Evening,’ he said.
Tony Hastings felt rage rising for what he had been through, but he was more frightened than angry. ‘Good evening,’ he said.
‘You’re supposed to stop when there’s an accident.’
‘I know that.’
‘Why didn’t you stop?’
Tony Hastings did not know what to say. The reason he did not stop was that he was afraid, but he was afraid to admit that.
The man leaned down and looked inside the car, at Laura and at Helen in the back.
‘Hah?’
‘What?’
‘Why didn’t you?’
Close by, the man had big teeth in a small mouth with a small receding jaw. He had bulging eyes over small cheeks and his hair stood up in a pompadour behind the bald front of his head. His jaw was working but his mouth could not shut. The jacket had an elaborate Y in curling script sewed on the left front. Tony Hastings was thin, he had no muscle, only a black mustache, his soft sensitive face. He kept his hand on the key in the ignition. The window was half open, the door was locked.
Laura spoke up, her voice strong. ‘We were going to report it to the police.’
‘The police? You’re not supposed to leave the scene of an accident. The law says. It’s a crime.’
‘We have reason not to trust you on this lonely road,’ Laura said. Her voice was louder than usual with an edge Tony
recognized when she said drastic, revolutionary, or scared things.
‘What you say?’
‘Your behavior on the road –’
The man called: ‘Hey Turk!’ The doors on the right side of the other car opened and two men got out. They were not in any hurry.
‘I’m warning you,’ Laura said.
‘Be ready,’ she whispered to Tony.
The man put his hands on the half-open window, stuck his head in, and grinned. ‘What did you say? You’re warning me?’
‘You stay away from us.’
‘Why lady, we’ve got an accident to report.’
The other two men had a flashlight and were inspecting the front of Tony’s car, putting their hands on the hood, leaning down out of sight.
‘All right,’ Tony said, thinking all right if you want the protocol of accidents we’ll have the protocol of accidents. ‘Let’s exchange information.’
‘You have information you want to exchange?’
‘Names, addresses, insurance companies.’ He felt a sharp nudge from Laura, who thought giving these thugs their name was a bad idea, but protocol is protocol, he knew no other way.
‘Insurance companies, hey?’ The man laughed.
‘You have no insurance?’
‘Haha.’
‘I’m going to report this to the police,’ Tony said. He heard the weakness in his voice.
‘Right, we report this to the cops, right,’ the man said.
‘So, we’ll go to the cops. Let’s do that,’ Tony said.
‘Great idea, man. What do we do, go together? What’s to keep you from running away? It was your fuckin fault, right?’
‘We’ll see about that!’ Laura said.
‘Hey Ray,’ one of the men in front said. ‘This guy’s got a flat tire.’
‘Aw come on,’ Tony said.
Ray went around to see. The men started to laugh. ‘Well what do you know?’ ‘Well sure thing.’ Someone kicked the tire, they could feel the jolt in the car.
‘Don’t believe it,’ Helen said from behind.
The three men came back to the driver’s window. One of them had a black beard and looked like a movie bandit. The other had a round face and wore silver rimmed glasses.
‘Yes sir,’ Ray said. ‘Your right front tire is flat, sure is.’
‘Flat as a pancake,’ the man with the movie beard said.
‘It sure is flat,’ Ray said. ‘You must have busted it when you was shoving us off the road.’ Someone cackled.
‘It wasn’t I, it was you who –’
‘Hush up,’ Laura said.
‘Don’t believe them Daddy, don’t believe them, it’s a lie, it’s a trick.’
‘What’s that?’ Ray said, sharper than before. ‘You don’t believe me? You think I’m a liar? Shit, man.’
He waved the other guys back. ‘You don’t got a flat, go on and drive. Start the engine and drive. Drive on it, damn you, drive away. Nobody’s stopping you.’
Tony hesitated. He realized what the vibration had meant and the jiggling of the steering wheel when he was forced to stop after the second collision. He leaned back in his seat and murmured, ‘God damn!’
‘Tell you what,’ Ray said. ‘We’ll fix it for you.’ He looked around. ‘Won’t we, guys?’
‘Ya, sure,’ one said.
‘To show you we’re okay, we’ll fix it for you, you won’t
have to do a thing. Then we can go to the cops together, you and me, report our accident.’
In a low voice Helen said, ‘Don’t believe them.’
‘You got tire tools, mister?’ the man with the beard said.
‘Don’t get out of the car,’ Laura said.
‘No need,’ Ray said. ‘Use ours. Come on, let’s get moving.’
The three men went to the trunk of their car while Tony and his wife and daughter watched with their doors locked, watched while the men brought out their tools, the jack, the tire iron.
‘You got a spare tire?’ the man with the glasses said. The men started to laugh, except Ray. ‘You can’t change a tire without a spare.’ Ray was not laughing. He was not grinning. He looked in the window and didn’t say anything. Then he said, ‘You wanna give me the keys to the trunk?’
‘Don’t do it!’ Helen said.
The man looked at her a long time, staring.
‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ he said.
Tony Hastings sighed and opened the door. ‘I’ll open it for you,’ he said. He heard Helen moan in the back, ‘Daddy.’
And Laura saying softly, ‘It’s all right, just be calm.’
He got out and opened the trunk and lifted out the suitcases and boxes in the light of the flashlight held by the man with the beard, until they could get at the spare tire. He watched the two men get it out while Ray stood by. They put the jack under the front wheel, and the man with the beard said, ‘Get them women outa the car.’
‘Come on,’ Ray said. ‘Get them out.’
‘It isn’t necessary, is it?’ Tony Hastings said.
‘Get em out. We’re fixin your tire so get em out.’
Tony looked in at his wife and daughter. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘They just want you out while they fix the tire.’ So they
got out and stood close to Tony near the door of the car. He thought if these men were dangerous it would be safer to stay near the car. The men went to work raising the car on the jack and loosening the flattened tire.
‘Hey you,’ Ray said. ‘Come over here.’ When Tony didn’t move, he came over. He said, ‘You think you’re fuckin hot stuff, don’t you?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘“What are you talking about?” They think they’re fuckin hot stuff, don’t they?’
‘Who?’
‘Them, your women, your bitches. You too. You think you’re something special, you can bump a guy’s car and run off to the cops in violation of the law.’
‘Listen, you were playing some crazy games out there.’
‘Yeah.’
Every so often while they worked a car or a truck went by, full speed. Tony Hastings wished one would stop, he wanted someone civilized between him and these wild men he didn’t know what they might do. Once a car slowed down, he thought it was going to stop, he stepped forward, but something grabbed him by the arm, drew him back. Ray was in front of him, blocking the view, and the car drove on. A little later, he saw the flashing blue lights of a police car approaching. They’re coming to rescue us, he thought, and he ran out toward it as it neared, coming fast. It did not slow down and he suddenly realized it wasn’t going to stop. He waved anyway and tried to shout as it zipped by. He heard women’s family voices shouting too, but the car was already sparkling down the road at a hundred miles an hour out of sight.
‘There goes your cops,’ Ray said. ‘You should have stopped them.’
‘I tried to,’ Tony said. He felt defeated, wondering what other trouble had caught the attention of the police while his own remained unnoticed in the dark.
The men seemed to enjoy their work. They were laughing, and he realized one of them had worked in a garage. Only Ray was not laughing. Tony Hastings did not like the waiting expression on Ray’s pinched chinless face. The man is angry, he said to himself, while his own anger had ravelled out in the strangeness of things. He thought, they are trying to show me they are not what they seemed to be. They are trying to show me they are decent human beings after all. He hoped that was it.
Susan Morrow sets down the page. Quiet returns, here where she lives, with the sound of the refrigerator, the Monopoly-playing children murmuring and laughing in the next room. Here, in this wooded enclave of winding residential streets, all is calm, all is still. It’s safer here. She arches, stretches, this impulse to the kitchen for more coffee. Resist. Have a green wrapper mint instead, on the table under Martha’s tail.
Once she too drove all night, Susan and Arnold and the children to Cape Cod. Arnold is smarter than Tony Hastings, could he have avoided Tony’s fix? He’s a distinguished man, he could give those men bypass surgery for fixing his tires, would that protect him? He’s also a grinning boy with dusty hair who makes questionable jokes and waits for your response. Tonight Arnold is in a hotel, she almost forgot from worrying about imaginary Tony, in a tropical bamboo lounge underground in the dark, having drinks with the medical folk. Don’t watch.
Martha the cat studies her, quietly puzzled. Every night Susan sits like this, stalking the flat white page in the glare as if she saw something which Martha sees is plainly not there. Martha understands stalking, but what can she stalk in her own lap, and how can she stalk with face so relaxed? Martha stalks for hours too, with only her tail twitching, but when she stalks there’s always something, a mouse or bird or the illusion of one.
The man with the triangular face whose name was Ray, the mouth too small for his chin, the half bald head with the pompadour, stood with hands in his pockets and watched the others work. He tapped his feet on the ground like a dance. I mustn’t forget this is the man who forced me off the road, Tony Hastings said to himself, not forgetting. The man kept murmuring, ‘Fuck you,’ like a song. Tapping his feet and murmuring ‘Fuck you,’ looking at Tony’s wife and daughter standing by the back door of the car close together, as if saying it to them, and then at Tony, looking at Tony while he murmured it, as if to him. In a kind of tune just loud enough to be heard, ‘Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.’
‘What are you looking at?’ the man said.
‘What were you trying to do, there on the road?’ Tony said.
A truck was coming, it went by, loud. If the man answered Tony did not hear it. A car or truck would go by every three or four minutes, maybe more. As long as cars go by we’re safe, Tony thought, wondering what danger he was safe from.
‘Hot shot,’ the man said.
‘What?’
‘Law-abiding driver.’
‘What?’
‘That all you can say, “what”?’
‘Look here –’
‘I’m looking.’
He could not speak, caught, not having prepared a speech for his emotions.
‘What were you trying to do, there on the road?’ the man said after a while.
‘We’re just trying to get where we’re going.’
‘Where a you going?’
Tony held back.
‘Where a you going?’
‘We’re trying to get to Maine. We’re just trying to get to Maine.’
‘What’s in Maine?’
Tony did not want to answer.
‘What’s in Maine?’
He felt like a boy resisting bullies.
The man stepped toward him. ‘I said what’s in Maine?’
The man came close enough for Tony to smell the onions with something sweet and liquory, his face level with Tony’s, and though he was thin, Tony knew the man could destroy him. He took a step backward but the man closed the gap. It’s the age difference, Tony said to himself, not adding that he had not been in a fight since he was a boy and never won one then. I live in a different world, he almost said to himself.
He didn’t want to say he had a summer place in Maine.
The man leaned forward, forcing Tony to lean back. He’d better not touch me, he said to himself. The man took hold of Tony’s sweater and pushed a little. ‘What did you say was in Maine?’ he said.
Let go of me, Tony ought to have said. ‘Let go of me,’ he said. He heard his voice frail like a small kid being tortured.
Her voice rang out loud in the night: ‘Let my Daddy alone!’
‘Fuck you baby,’ the man said. He let go of Tony’s sweater, laughed, and strolled over to the women. Terrified, trembling, trying to heat his cowardly blood to the required temperature, Tony followed. ‘What’s in Maine? Your Daddy won’t tell me, so you tell me, okay? What you going to in Maine?’
‘What’s it to you?’ she said.
‘Come on baby, we’re nice guys. We’re fixin your tire. You can tell me, what’s in Maine?’
‘Our summer place,’ she said. ‘Okay? Satisfied?’
‘Your Daddy thinks he’s better than me. What do you think of that?’
‘Well he is,’ she said.
‘Your Daddy is scared of me. He’s scared I can beat the shit out of him.’
‘You’re a lousy little no good,’ she said. ‘You’re a punk, you scum.’ Her voice was high and frantic, like a scream.
The man took an angry step toward her. When Laura stepped between he pushed her aside. He put his hands on the girl’s shoulders up against the car and instantly Laura was on him again, hitting him, clawing, pulling at him from behind, until he flung about and pushed so she fell. ‘Bitch!’ he murmured. Somehow Tony must have gotten in there too, with a leap of strength before the man’s arm swung around like a crowbar and knocked him back. His nose felt hit like a crowbar, it stung. The man faced the three of them and snarled: ‘Watch it, you sons a bitches, you got no call to talk to me like that.’
The men by the tire had stopped their work to watch.
When Tony Hastings saw his wife Laura fall, when he heard her little cry of shock and pain in the private voice he knew so well and saw her in her traveling slacks and dark sweater sitting on the ground and watched her laboriously turn to pull herself to her feet, he thought, bad, a bad thing is happening, like news of the breakout of war. As if in his whole lucky life he had never before known a really bad thing. He remembered thinking, when his cowardly blood exploded in his head, jumping on the man and being flung back by the man’s arm like a crowbar: this is no childhood bully. Real people are being knocked down.
The man looked a grievance at him. ‘Christ sake, we’re fixin your fuckin tire,’ he said. He walked over to the others. They were almost finished, tightening the bolts. ‘And when we’re done we see the cops about this here accident you caused.’
‘We’ll have to find a telephone,’ Tony said.
‘Yeah? You see any telephones around here?’
‘What’s the nearest town ahead?’
The others put on the hubcap. They rolled the bad tire back to the trunk of Tony’s car and stowed it in with the jack.
‘What do you want a town for?’
‘To report to the police.’
‘Right,’ the man said. ‘So how you gonna do that?’
‘We’ll drive to the police station.’
‘Leave the scene of the accident?’
‘What do you want to do, wait until another police car comes by?’ He remembered, you already sent one away.
‘Daddy,’ Helen said, ‘there’s phones along the road. Emergency phones, I saw them.’
Yes, he remembered.
‘They’s out of order,’ the man said.
‘All they good for is breakdowns and repairs,’ the man with the glasses said. The man with the beard was grinning.
‘We have to go to Bailey, it’s the only way,’ Ray said. ‘You can’t get cops on them road phones anyway.’
‘All right,’ Tony said, decisively. ‘We’ll go to Bailey and report it there.’
‘So how do you propose to get there?’ the man said.
‘In our cars.’
‘Yeah? Which car?’
‘Both cars.’
‘Naw, mister. Don’t try no fuckin business with me.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘How do I know you ain’t going to scoot outa here, leave me holding the bucket?’
‘You think we would not go to the police?’
‘How do I know you wouldn’t?’
‘Don’t worry. I mean to report this.’
‘You don’t even know where Bailey is.’
‘You lead the way, we’ll follow.’
‘Hah!’ The man laughed. Then he seemed to think a while, looking out into the night woods as if something had occurred to him. He thought some more and seemed for a moment to have forgotten them all, dreaming away about something of his own. He’s crazy, Tony thought, the words sounding like news. Then the man returned. ‘What’s to keep you from fading away and taking one of them crossways to the other side?’
‘You seem pretty good at keeping close to other cars,’ Tony said. The man laughed again. ‘Okay, we’ll go first and you follow. We couldn’t get away from you very well that way.’ They were all grinning now as if these were jokes, and even Tony grinned a little.
‘Fuck you,’ the man said. ‘You go in my car.’
‘What?’
‘You go with us.’
‘No way.’
‘Lou can drive your car. He’s a law abiding citizen. He’ll take good care of it.’
Helen groaned. ‘No.’
‘We can’t do that,’ Tony said.
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not going to leave my car in your hands, for one thing.’
The man pretended to be surprised. ‘You’re not? What, you think we’re gonna steal it?’ Then he said, ‘Okay. You go in your car, the girl comes with us.’
A cry of alarm from Helen. She went to the car, but the man blocked her way.
‘No you don’t,’ Tony said.
‘Sure you will,’ the man said. ‘You’ll come with us, won’t you honey?’ He put his hand on her plaid shirt over her breast, and they struggled a little.
‘Tony,’ Laura said. She was looking at him, and the man was looking at them both. Then she shouted: ‘Leave her alone!’
‘Stop it,’ Tony said, fighting the quaver in his voice.
‘She likes it,’ the man said.
‘I do not!’ she said.
‘Sure you do honey, you just don’t know.’
‘Tony,’ Laura said again, quietly. He tightened his muscles, clenched fists, and stepped toward the man, but the man with the beard held him by the arm. He tried to pull loose. The man named Ray noticed and turned to Tony, releasing the girl. She broke away and ran down the road.
‘Helen!’ Tony called.
‘Who’s boss in your family?’ Ray said.
None of your business was in his head but he said nothing. He was looking at his daughter running along the shoulder of the highway. ‘Helen, Helen.’ The man named Ray was grinning at him with his oversized teeth in his undersized mouth. About fifty yards away she sat down on a rock just off the edge of the shoulder. He could see she was crying. There was a moment of silence.
With a nod of his head Ray signalled to the others and they went over to his car and had a conference. Tony was aware of the night, of the coolness and the mountain clarity of the stars. Behind him the ground descended into black woods, he could not see into them at all. The opposite lanes were out of sight up the slope on the other side, concealed by trees.
When cars went by there they cast a white light in the trees like a ghost in the branches. The men in their conference were gesturing, excited, laughing, and Helen down the road was sitting on the rock with her head in her hands.
A car came along. As it approached Helen went to the roadside and waved at it frantically. It increased its speed and went by.
Then Laura spoke to Tony. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘we can pick her up down there.’ She got into their car. But when Tony went around to the driver’s side, he saw Helen coming back, and the three men standing between her and the car.
She had a stick in her hand.
Another car was approaching. She had come almost up to the three men’s car and when the lights came closer she ran into the highway waving both arms and the stick over her head. The car slowed down. It was a pickup truck, and it stopped just short of her. The driver leaned over to the right side and looked out. ‘What are you trying to be killed?’ he said.
He was an old man in a baseball cap. They all went up to him except Laura, who was in the car. ‘These guys –’ Helen said.
‘It’s okay,’ Ray said. ‘She’s a little shook up.’
‘It’s not okay, ask my Daddy.’
‘Eh?’ the old man said.
‘We need help,’ Tony said.
‘What say?’
‘Flat tire,’ Ray said. ‘We fixed it for them.’ He was nodding and smiling, his teeth like a rodent. ‘Everything’s under control.’
‘Eh?’ the old man said. ‘She trying to get herself killed?’
Ray shouted at him. ‘It’s okay! Everything’s under control!’
Tony stepped forward. ‘Excuse me –’ he said. He heard Helen crying: ‘Help us, please.’ The old man looked at Ray, who was laughing and waving the tire iron.
‘What say?’ He cupped his ear.
‘No problem,’ Ray said in a loud voice.
‘No no,’ Tony tried to shout. Someone was dragging him back by the arm. The old man looked at the group of them. His face was bewildered and unhappy, but perhaps it was always that way. He looked at Ray’s tire iron, hesitating. ‘No problem then,’ he said suddenly. His voice was testy, and he disappeared from the window, put the pickup truck in gear, and drove off.
Behind him, Tony heard Helen cry out, ‘For Christ sake, mister!’
‘What’s the matter, baby?’ Ray said. ‘You don’t want to mess with a deaf old man like him.’
There was a rush of motion, the men startled, Helen making a dash around them to the car, into the back seat, slamming the door. Another moment of silence, Ray holding Tony by the elbow, not hard, Laura and Helen waiting for him in the car.
‘Okay,’ Ray said at last. ‘We go in both cars.’
The relief at last of the nightmare ending, tired of their game, which had gone as far as it could, they must have realized nothing more was possible. He knew they would not go to the police, but he didn’t care, glad only to be free of them.
Except that Ray had him by the elbow. He moved toward the car and felt the grip tighten, hold him back.
‘Not you,’ Ray said.
‘What?’
The real fear now, shock of the first nuclear warning in the war.
‘We split up,’ Ray said. ‘You go in my car.’
‘No way.’
He saw the action at his car, the man with glasses running to the driver’s door, opening it just before Laura on the passenger side realizing too late what was happening could reach over to lock it, the man holding it open, bracing it where he stood with his foot in the car, while Ray was saying, ‘You ain’t got no choice.’