As Good As Gone (9781616206000) (22 page)

He gets his cigarette lit and inhales.

“What did she say about being chased?”

“Not much. She's backing off that story a bit. Could be she's embarrassed.”

“Backing off? How?”

Calvin shrugs. “Says maybe she let her imagination run away with her. She might have heard something and got spooked.”

“Oh, Calvin, that just doesn't sound like her. Another teenaged girl perhaps, but not Ann.”

“No? Well, you'd know better than I would.”

Coming from the mouth of another man, that remark might be tinged with regret or self-­pity, even self-­accusation, but from Calvin Sidey it's nothing more than a statement of fact.

Beverly says, “Maybe I shouldn't say anything . . . it's probably not remotely connected to this business of someone chasing her, but over the past few weeks I've noticed a car—”

“A Ford? A black Ford?”

“I'm not very good on makes, but yes, black. Definitely black. Circling our block. Parked in the alley.”

“I saw that car. A black Ford—'fifty-­one or 'fifty-­two. It was parked in the alley a few nights ago, and I thought Ann might be looking to sneak out and meet someone.”

“That doesn't sound like Ann either.”

He walks a few steps away from the hospital doors, then stops and gazes up at the building. Is he counting lighted windows, trying to calculate the floor Ann is on? Or is he looking for the nighthawks whose whistles he can hear overhead? Beverly walks out to him and loops her arm in his.

“I'm not saying I'm right,” she says.

“But if someone was after her, why wouldn't she say something?”

“Maybe she was afraid no one would believe her, that they'd say she was being silly or worse. Hysterical. Girls have to contend with such things. Or maybe she's trying to protect someone.”

His laugh is quiet but hard-­edged. “Who would she be protecting?”

Beverly takes a deep breath and draws herself closer to him. She can feel his heat through the damp cotton of his T-­shirt.

“You,” she says.

He doesn't pull away, as she feared he might. “I can take care of myself.”

“That's not what I meant. Maybe Ann thinks you need to be kept
from
yourself.”

“She doesn't know me that well.”

“She shares your name. That could be enough to make her feel she knows you. Maybe you've been living like a hermit out on the prairie, but you've got a reputation that's still living in this town. She might have heard talk.”

Beverly holds her breath again, waiting for him to ask
What talk?
But the question doesn't come, and in its absence she lets go a sigh and plunges ahead. “Can I confess something? That's why I was willing to go with you to Brenda Cady's house. Because I was afraid of what you might do. I wasn't going along to help you so much as to get in your way, if it came to that.”

“I figured as much.”

“But I
am
trying to help, to help you understand. You can't just act the way you do, not without knowing certain things.” She presses herself tighter to him, hoping to soften him with the softness of her body. In all her years of marriage, she probably never spoke to Burt the way she has just spoken to this man, of whom she knows little but his capacity for ferocity.

Yet he doesn't explode in anger. He speaks as softly, in fact, as he would if he were still in the hospital's corridors. “It's been a long time since anyone expected me to think or know much of anything. I've drawn wages for most of my years for simple doing.”

“And do you think your son asked you to come here to
do
something?”

“If need be.” He flicks away his cigarette, and together they watch its sparks pinwheel down the drive. “If need be.”

“Have you called Bill?”

This is the question that moves him to extricate his arm from hers. “Not yet. I'll wait until morning. At this hour a phone call wouldn't do a damn thing but worry him. I wouldn't want him racing home in the middle of the night.”

Beverly thinks of that earlier conversation about Marjorie's condition and about Calvin's wife, a conversation that was, of course, about ignorance and knowledge.

“Should you be the one to decide that?” she asks. Why does she persist in asking him questions that are sure to challenge and probably irritate him as well? Is she trying to drive this man away? The best she can do for an answer is this: If they are to have a future together—a future beyond this night—it can only be with full awareness of who the other is. Beverly has decided, without even knowing when or how, that she'll live alone—without love, a man, a mate—if companionship requires her to clamp her jaw or bite back a single word.

“Since I'm the one who made the decision,” Calvin says, “I guess I am.” He takes a couple steps toward the hospital, then stops and turns back to Beverly. “As long as we're making confessions, I've got one of my own. My truck's got damn near a full tank of gas. I wanted us to take your car, so I could get in your garage and put my hand on the hood. If it was hot, that would mean it had been driven recently.”

“But it was cold?”

“As cold as metal is likely to be in this weather.”

“So as a result of your detective work, you concluded—what?”

“Well, I already checked out your son's car, so I knew he hadn't been driving that one. And with your car cold, that meant he couldn't have been the one chasing Ann.”

“That was your only reason for ringing my doorbell?”

“I needed someone to be there for Will. I was telling the truth on that score.”

She steps close to him. “God
damn
you.” She folds her arms tightly to make certain she doesn't give in to a temptation to strike him. “You say something like that? To me? About my son?”

But as Calvin Sidey has said about himself, he has been away from civilization for a long time, so long in fact that he perhaps doesn't know that there might be a reason other than the obvious one that will make a woman stand close to a man.

Calvin reaches out and tenderly but determinedly pulls her close to him. He performs this action with one arm, as if, like his granddaughter, he has a partial disability. And because Beverly knows the incapacity is not in his arm but in his soul, she relents and allows herself to be held.

TWENTY-­SIX

Will wakes at three o'clock in the morning and knows instantly that Ann has not come home yet. He knows because he put a note on her bed:
Wake me up when you get home, it doesn't matter what time it is.
Will is certain she will because she'll believe he has news about their mother. In reality, he planned to sneak outside after Ann woke him. He'll go out the front door, creep through Mrs. Lodge's yard, and into the lilac bushes. From there he'll be able to see if Stuart and the others are up on the garage—they'll be silhouetted by the street lamp in the alley—and if he sees them, he'll light his fuse.

But the luminous hands of his Westclox say it's 3:00 a.m., and Ann has not wakened him. Is she taking advantage of Dad and Mom being gone to stay out as late she likes? Wait—what's that click-­clicking sound? Is it possible that Ann has come home but not yet gone to her room? Will throws off the sheet and heads for the source of the noise.

By the time he enters the kitchen where the only light in the house shines, he knows what he heard. It's the sound of a typewriter, and he's heard it in the house plenty of times before. Mom types up papers for Dad's business. This time however the herky-­jerky clacking of a typewriter's keys comes from Adam Lodge, sitting at the kitchen table with his back to Will.

Will speaks up in a voice close to a shout: “Where's my grandpa?”

Adam jerks around in his chair, knocking his cigarettes to the floor. “Jesus! Clear your throat or something—you scared the hell out of me.”

“Is my grandpa here?”

Adam pulls out a chair for Will. “Come on over. Have a seat.”

Warily, reluctantly, Will follows Adam's suggestion. In the warm house, the chair's chrome tubes are cool on the backs of his legs.

Adam moves his own chair closer to Will. Adam Lodge was once a schoolteacher, and Will knows that this is exactly the way teachers sit—leaning forward, their elbows on their knees—when they want to have a “special” talk and you're supposed to be honest and they'll be understanding. Will wraps his legs tighter around the chair and grips the seat cushion with both hands.

“The first thing I want to say”—Adam pauses and clears his throat, just enough time for Will to think, So say it! —“ is that your sister's okay. She's in the hospital, but she's okay.”

“Ann . . . ?” This is why it's wrong for Adam Lodge to be here; he doesn't know what's going on with the Sidey family—it's Will's
mother
who's in the hospital, not his sister!

“She broke her arm. I'm not sure how it happened. She fell. But it's nothing serious, and she'll probably be home tomorrow.”

“A broken arm?”

“That doesn't sound too bad, does it? And I bet she'll let you be the first one to sign her cast.”

“I can sign . . . ?”

“Her cast. You know, plaster . . . Haven't you had any friends who broke an arm or a leg and had to wear a cast?”

Will wasn't there when it happened, but two summers ago Joel Bevan fell from a tree and broke his leg. That happened in early June, and he was still on crutches and in a cast when school started.

Will didn't write his name on Joel's cast, and he didn't care if he got to sign Ann's or not. Another idea has occurred to him, and Will has all he can do not to jump up and run around the kitchen, so excited is he that his dilemma has suddenly been solved.

Ann will have to wear a cast!
Won't that fat white hard sleeve have the same effect as a disfiguring scar—only temporary? Won't she become, like Joel Bevan, an object of laughter? Won't Stuart and Gary—won't
any
boy—lose interest in seeing her without her clothes on now that she can't be naked, not really?

“How long are you going to be here?” Will asks Adam. He doesn't mean to sound rude, but Will is so excited he momentarily forgets his manners.

Adam sits up straight and looks carefully at Will as if he, Adam, has to recalibrate his judgment of the boy. “I'll be here until your grandfather returns. Or until my mother comes to relieve me.”

“I'm old enough to stay by myself. I have lots of times.”

“Sure you are. Sure. But I have to obey
my
mom. She told me to stay here, and I'll get in trouble if I leave, even if you gave me permission.”

Will is fairly certain that Adam is humoring him, but that doesn't matter. Some of the antipathy he felt for Adam Lodge begins to dry up. “I'm hungry,” he says finally. “Can I have something to eat?”

Adam glances at the clock. “Why don't you just go back to sleep? In a few hours, it'll be time for breakfast.”

“I'm pretty hungry right now.”

Subjected to Adam's prolonged stare, Will knows he's supposed to give up and return to his room, but Will holds fast. Finally, Adam rises and goes to the counter. “What are you hungry for? How about a bowl of cereal?”

Will shakes his head.

“I don't even know what you've got . . . Toast?”

“No.”

Adam opens the refrigerator. “How about some of this hot dish?”

“I didn't really like it that much.”

He pulls out the produce bin. “You want an apple?”

“Could I have a sandwich? My mom fixed a ham before she left, and she said we could have that for sandwiches.”

“A ham sandwich . . . Yeah, okay. What do you want on it?”

“Mustard.”

“And where do you keep the bread?”

Will points to the counter and the white metal bread box, its surface decorated with red bundles of wheat.

“What the hell,” Adam mutters. “I might as well have one.”

While Adam slices the ham and prepares the sandwiches, Will walks around to see what's printed on the paper rolled in the typewriter. At the top of the page in capital letters are “Showdown at Red Rock” and the number 121. Below that is double-­spaced typescript with many words and phrases x-­ed out. Will reads:

In the mirror behind the bar, Matt Sloane watched the black-­clad man across the room. That was Slade, the gunfighter hired by the cattlemen, and Matt knew that Slade not only had a reputation for being fast, fast on the draw, but that he often was the first to go for his gun. Matt had not ridden that far to let Slade get the drop on him. Even as he raised his whiskey to his lips, Matt kept his eye on Slade's right hand, watching.

Adam brings the unsliced sandwiches, one stacked on top of the other, to the table.

“Like what you see?” he asks Will.

At first Will thinks that Adam is referring to the sandwich, but of course he means the story. “Is there going to be a gunfight?” asks Will.

Adam takes a large bite of sandwich, and when a strand of ham doesn't quite fit into his mouth, he pokes it in with a fingertip. “You'll have to buy the book to find out,” he says.

“From you?”

“From me? No, not from me. From the . . . Oh, never mind. Eat your sandwich.”

Will should have said that he likes
only
mustard on his sandwich. Adam has slathered on so much butter that some of it squishes out between the slices of bread. He isn't sure he'll be able to take a single bite.

He points to the typed page. “That's what Shane said.”

“What?”

“In the movie. My dad and me went to it two summers ago. Shane said Wilson was fast, fast on the draw.”

“Are you sure? How the hell could you remember that?”

Will shrugs and takes a tentative bite from the corner of the sandwich. “I saw it twice. Once with my dad and once with some friends.”

“Shit,” he says softly. “You're probably right.”

“Have you seen it too?” asks Will.

Wearily, Adam Lodge holds up three fingers. “And read the book.” He riffles through the typed pages as if he's searching for something, yet when he comes to the bottom of the pile, he pushes the manuscript away.

“I like the part where Shane teaches the little boy to shoot.”

“Hurry up. You have to get back to bed.”

His father, mother, and sister all know better than to prepare sandwiches with butter, and so do the mothers of his best friends. Or they ask. The point is, Will never has to eat a sandwich prepared with butter, and now he finds that he likes it! The butter makes the sandwich . . . juicier, as if the ham has been fried, which is the way Will's father makes ham sandwiches, and they're Will's favorite. For so many reasons, Will wishes his parents would return home, but now he has another—so he can tell them, Now I like butter on my sandwiches!

ANN WAKES TO DISCOVER
that she has fallen asleep outside—she must have been sunbathing—and the sun is concentrating its rays on her side, no, its focus is even tighter: All the heat is baking into her shoulder and arm, and she must have slept so hard that she has cut off her circulation, for that limb is immovable, thick, and numb.

But then her second waking, following quickly the false first, reveals that she is lying in a hospital bed, and her right arm and its new plaster cast, extending from her knuckles to nearly her shoulder, is being baked by a heat lamp. She has to squint at the lamp's brightness, but when she turns her head she finds a light to which she could fully open her eyes. Sunlight shines through the row of windows at the far end of the ward, and from the sky's pink cast Ann knows it's early morning.

Nearby a child begins to cry, and it's the weak whimper of someone waking at midnight and wanting his mother near. Next comes a voice so rare to Ann's ears she doesn't know where in her life to locate it.

“That arm bothering you?” her grandfather asks.

“No.” She answers without bothering to test it. In truth, her arm can't compete with her headache, a speeding, spiraling pain that seems as though it intends to lift her head right off the pillow. “Am I—?”

“In the children's ward. I told them this isn't where you belong, but they've got their rules.”

He looms over her, and she remembers now that he had appeared at her side the night before in the emergency room. He reminded her then of a hawk perched on a tree branch or telephone pole, yet she never felt as though he was training his fierce eye on her as prey. Instead, he was watching for any sign of danger, a sentinel hawk. Now, however, his eye does not look so keen. Its blue is as washed out as the morning sky, and the white stubble on his neck and jaw seem a mark of old age's fatigue.

Ann asks, “When can I go home?”

“Maybe later today. The doctor thinks you had a concussion. That's why he wants to keep an eye on you. If you had to stay another night, that wouldn't be the worst thing, would it?”

The crying on the other side of the room intensifies, and Ann looks in that direction.

“Little boy fell out of a pickup truck,” her grandfather explains. “He's going to be fine, the nurses say. Doesn't even have any broken bones. But he got skinned up pretty bad. If they want to keep you overnight, we'll see about moving you to a different room.”

“Have you told my mom and dad that I'm here?”

Her grandfather shakes his head. “I thought I'd wait until you can make the call yourself. I can tell your father you're doing fine, but if he hears it from you, it'll mean more.”

“Can you call work for me?” she asks. “I was supposed to go in at noon.”

“I'll let them know.” Her grandfather shifts from side to side and winces as if he wishes he could sit down and take the weight off his feet. “And now I'll ask you to do something for me.”

“All right,” Ann says, though she's immediately worried—what could her grandfather possibly need from her?

“Last night you were a little vague on this business of somebody chasing you. First it was maybe yes then maybe no. Now I want you to clear up the matter.”

Ann hesitates.

Her grandfather doesn't give her a chance to make something up. “So I'm guessing the answer is yes. I think you know what's coming next. I need a name.”

She turns her head, hoping that will make it easier to lie. But there's the heat lamp, and its glare is just like the bright lights that the police use on television shows when suspects are interrogated. Ann closes her eyes.

“I didn't want to say anything,” she says. “It was my boyfriend. We had a fight—”

“Did he strike you?”

“No, no. It was just, you know, an argument.”

“Did he put his hands on you? Twist your arm?”

“No, nothing like that. It was really all my fault. I was just mad at him because he was out of town and didn't come back in time to take me to a party. I finally sort of stomped off. I didn't want him to follow me, so I went down into this ravine. He wasn't chasing me, he wasn't even . . . I don't know why I said that he was. I was still mad, I guess.”

“Uh-­huh. But now you're not?”

Ann shakes her head and pays for her action—or is it for her lie?—with a fresh swirl of pain that concentrates itself at the back of her skull.

“I'd still like to know your boyfriend's name,” her grandfather says.

“What for? I told you, it wasn't his fault.”

Does no one ever refuse her grandfather? The clouds clear from his gaze, and its intensity blazes once more. “Let's just say I'd like to have it for personal reference.” He offers a pained little smile, and even that sends the message, On this matter I'll have my way.

Reluctantly Ann says, “Monte Hiatt.”

Her grandfather continues to look expectantly at her, and finally Ann understands: She said the name so softly that he needs to hear it again.

“Monte,” she repeats. “Monte Hiatt.”

Calvin Sidey nods. He has it. The name has been in Ann's possession, but now she has handed it to her grandfather. He has it now.

Suddenly Ann feels very, very tired, but it's an exhaustion mixed with relief, as if she can finally relax after carrying a heavy weight farther than she ever thought possible. She closes her eyes, and sleep, a white sleep that matches the room, the bright heat lamp, the bed, the blankets and sheets, enfolds her.