Five Smooth Stones (106 page)

"Sure. Anything you say." For a moment Garrison's disclosure about Garnett knocked his little planned speech out of his mind. The hell Garnett was working with ALEC. David doubted that Sue-Ellen had discussed any proposed coalition of activities with Garnett; whenever Garnett had been around she had treated him very definitely as a subordinate. She ought to be tipped off to the fact that Garnett had evidently sized up her group and ALEC, decided ALEC was the best bet and was going to try to worm his way back into ALEC's graces. She was asking for trouble if she kept him around, and any joint plan of action by the two groups was out until she got rid of him.

Garrison was talking now from the pulpit, had been for several minutes. "... and so we're privileged to have tonight this distinguished guest here, this fine young man who's come all the way down here to tell us 'bout something we been hearing about for a hundred years and ain't known nothing about yet—freedom. Lawyer Champlin—"

***

Driving the "up road" back to the motel, he decided first to wait until morning to talk to Sue-Ellen, then changed his mind. He and Luke wanted to leave early; she might still be asleep, and he might as well get it over with while the feeling of accomplishment from the meeting he had just left was still with him. He was glad they were leaving in the morning; Sue-Ellen seemed perilously close to becoming a Problem.

He saw that there was a light in her room, a little beyond his. Luke apparently hadn't made out too well; the shades were drawn in their room, and a light was burning, indicating that Luke was probably there in bed reading. He'd tell her about his misgivings over Garnett as soon as he saw her, then get away fast and get a night's sleep.

He never had a chance. He had not taken more than three steps into the room when the blow landed on one cheek, openhanded but backed by the wiry strength of an enraged woman who believed in physical training. The blow was so hard, so unexpected, it sent him off-balance, one hand reaching out and grabbing the footboard of the bed. It also was so savage that it knocked out of him, for that moment, any anger, leaving him gaping in stunned amazement and shock at a finely sculptured face grown gaunt with rage, at eyes ink black with fury.

"Good God! What—"

"You bastard."

That was all. Why didn't she scream, curse—she wouldn't be half so dangerous as she was now, tight-lipped, speaking in a half-whispering snarl, deep in her throat. He looked quickly around for some sign of a weapon, saw none. This woman was killing mad. She moved toward him, and he saw that her fingers were curled, long nails clawlike. He grabbed her wrists before she could avoid him, held them and kept her at a distance, feeling, he thought later that night, much as he would have felt trying to hold an enraged mountain lion.

"Keep your hands off me." She did not struggle, and he loosened his grip. But only slightly.

"When you tell me why in hell you put one of yours on me I will. When someone hits me I want to know why. Right now."

"Let go of me." Still that low snarl.

"And lose an eye? You think I'm crazy?"

She twisted both arms suddenly in a downward arc, and the pressure was so strong on his thumbs that his loosened grip was broken and she was free. He couldn't get away from her without sidestepping or rolling backward over the bed.

The latter move he didn't let occupy his mind for more than a small fraction of a second. And if he tried to sidestep he wouldn't be quick enough. For some reason—shock, he supposed—he had no impulse to retaliate in kind. He knew she expected it, even wanted it.

Her breathing was short, heavy; with her eyes still fixed on him she reached sideways and snatched a newspaper clipping from the bureau. He would have expected her hand to be shaking with anger when she held the clipping out to him, but it was steady. And this was even more dangerous. God damn, what in hell ailed the woman? Maybe she was a manic-depressive, an honest-to-God mental case—yet he knew she wasn't. He couldn't read the clipping without taking his eyes off her. At the moment that seemed risky.

"Read it. Read it, you son of a bitch."

There was nothing to do but take a chance. He glanced down at the clipping in his hand. It was a gossip column from a New York paper. Every now and then the columnists ran a paragraph that was led into with the identifying words in boldface caps: "Torchbearers." In the text the names of individuals were also in boldface. The items were short, always in the same style: "So-and-So for that movie starlet who just married her producer. So-and-So for her ex, now living it up—or down?—at a Swiss ski resort with a famous Italian beauty." Vapid stuff that could have come strictly from the need to fill space, and out of the columnist's own sterile imagination.

Halfway down the paragraph his own name sprang out at him, and as he read the item there was the familiar feeling of tightening knots of tension in his belly, nerves crawling like snakes just under his skin. The item read: "David Champlin, former Boston attorney and State Department appointee, and Sara Kent, young American artist now getting kudos from European critics—for each other."

He wanted to run, leave Sue-Ellen and this small room, find a solitary place where he could battle with what the item had awakened in him.

The hoarse half-whisper broke through to him: "I didn't know. I was stupid. But Garnett knew. He gave me this. He told me who she is."

(Don't snarl at me. Let me alone. Let me the hell out of here—) "It's no one's—"

"Be quiet. Oh, be quiet, you son of a bitch. Do you think I'd have had anything to do with you if I'd known?"

There was no time now to kick himself for not getting the hell out of this situation before, for not seeing more clearly than he had that Sue-Ellen was not just becoming a Problem, but had become one.

This was a woman enraged by jealousy beyond all reason, her rage the more flaming because she had learned that he had been involved with a white woman—and the hint contained in the column that he was still involved emotionally. There was more than resentment in her, there was bitter fury, brought to life by the awakening of memories of her first lover, a white man. There was no "right thing" to say at the moment, only a multitude of wrong ones, and he said the first one that came into his head: "You're acting like a three-year-old."

During the storm that rocked the room for the next few minutes his only thought was escape, but he was literally trapped, with Sue-Ellen standing now between him and the door. He wished again that she would curse; obscenity would be easier to take than the accusations she was hurling at him. The only answer seemed to be to knock her clear across the room, but he was damned if he wanted his first physical attack on a woman to be on this embittered, enraged embodiment of hate. She gave no signs of running down, of running out of either words or breath. A flash of memory brought to his mind the scene in a Boston kitchen when his landlady had launched a tirade of filth at him because she had seen Sara coming to his apartment. Then he thought of nothing but the need to duck as Sue-Ellen, in an incredibly swift movement, launched a heavy glass ashtray at his head, followed through with a vase, then started in a quick rush toward him. He heard the words, louder, far louder, than the previous torrent, "white woman's nigger—" and moved in.

Because she was moving he caught her off-balance, one arm around her waist, lifting her feet from the floor, one hand holding one of her wrists behind her. It was only a few feet to the shower, but by the time he made it he was out of breath. This was a powerful woman with—at last—a powerful voice. In the shower room he wrestled with her briefly, freeing her arm but holding her, still off the floor, tightly against him. With his free hand he opened the door of the shower stall, reached in, and turned on the cold water full force. Somehow he forced her to the floor of the stall, rolling her under the icy cascade, then shut the glass door of the shower. The door to the bedroom opened outward and he slammed it shut, wedging a heavy chest of drawers across it. Even as he hurried from the room, Sue-Ellen's screams following him, he thought what a damned shame it was to subject such physical perfection to such an ignoble and complete messing up.

The tiny screened window high up in the wall of the bathroom was open, and Sue-Ellen's screams for deliverance, he thought, must be heard by the occupants of every room in the place.

He ran the last few steps to the office. No man could have sent him fleeing at that speed, but Sue-Ellen was making him wish he had wings. When he thudded into the lobby her voice was still shatteringly audible, louder and more carrying even than it had been when she had first regained her breath. All he could see as he entered the lobby were the enormously wide eyes of the tall thin night clerk behind the desk.

"Man!" he gasped as David hurried toward him. "Man! You in trouble! You in
real
trouble—"

"Tell me something I don't know—" David fumbled for his wallet. "Give me our bill quick. Tell that kid Luke I'll call him from somewhere in the morning—"

The clerk was out from behind the desk, grasping his arm. "You ain't leaving. Where the hell you gonna go? Ain't no-wheres nearer'n a hundred miles you can find a place to sleep." He was pulling David around the side of the counter. "Y'all come back here to my room. Gimme the keys to your car. I'll stash it away in a garage out back."

"No—"

"Y'all do like I say. Far's I know you done taken off, anybody asks. An' they sure as hell gonna ask—"

David found himself in a tiny bedroom in the rear, between kitchen and lobby. That chest of drawers he had wedged across the shower room door had been heavy, but sooner or later Sue-Ellen would be able to push her way out. He had to stay now. Too much time had been wasted. The clerk said: "I sleeps here when I works, and goes home weekends. I'll bring you a drink later." He put the old-fashioned key he carried in the keyhole. "You lock the door, y'hear. I'll get that woman out."

"No. Look, I can't let you—"

"Ain't no 'cain't' about it. You stays here. What that woman'd do to you, mad as she is, I don't want happenin' in my daddy's new motel. Gimme them car keys now—"

David handed over the keys. "I sure thank you." Then added piously, "And may God have mercy on your soul—"

***

Half an hour later there was a soft knock, followed by Luke's voice, low and a little unsteady. "It's me, boss. Luke." David unlocked the door, and Luke slid in sideways, then locked it again quickly. He was in pajamas and robe, barefoot. David, after a rough half hour during which many emotions had fought for ascendancy, had arrived at a state of suspension of all emotion. Until he saw Luke's face; then his body shook with his effort to control a reaction of wild laughter.

"Boss—" The awe in Luke's voice matched the awe in his eyes. "Boss, I didn't know you had it in you. Mr. Champlin, sir, do me the kindness to tell me what in hell happened—"

"You'll die wondering, kid. It's over. I hope."

"Yeah. I figured you'd say something like that. Like it says in the Bible, huh? Sufficient unto the day are the kicks thereof—"

"Did she come to our door?"

"Did
she! You never heard? Scared the hell out of me. I thought I was next in line. That desk clerk, he hauled her away. I heard him tell her you'd taken off."

"You could hear all right from under the bed?"

"Under the bed! Man, I locked myself in the shower!"

"Look—go back and pack our stuff. I'll find out from that clerk how we can make it out in the morning. Then go back to sleep."

"Who can sleep?" He grinned. "You always said you didn't like to fight. Even when you were a kid—"

"I'm fighting now! Man, I'm running like a scalded cat. Give me a red-neck cop—-damn it—pull your face in line. One laugh out of you—"

"Yes, sir, I hear you." Luke checked laughter with difficulty. "Always been a pleasure to work for you, sir. Sure been a pleasure. But damned if I ever thought it would be fun—hold it! Temper, temper! I gotta get out of here whole and get that guy to sneak me back home—"

***

He stretched, yawned, brought himself back to New Orleans gratefully; this was a hell of a way to spend one of those precious hours when he could sleep in, remembering a scene like that last one with Sue-Ellen Moore. His shock at the news of Brad's injury had worn off; his appetite was beginning to assert itself, and Chop-bone's was making itself known vocally. His feet thudded on the floor and he headed for the shower, saying, "Courage, cat. Food next—"

CHAPTER 67

When David called ALEC headquarters he was told that Isaiah Watkins was in Baton Rouge for the day. He was relieved to hear it and, still in robe and slippers, leaned back in the big chair, fighting an almost overwhelming impulse to crawl back into bed with a prayer to God to act intelligently for once, just once, and repudiate His handiwork: mankind and all its works.

When he finally looked up he said, "Food, Chop-bone," and rose slowly, stretching. There were still twinges in his back and in the rib area, but not, he supposed, as bad as the twinges Brad must feel in the scar tissue of a healing gunshot wound. He cooked scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast, but found that his appetite of the night before was gone, and he gave the eggs to a delighted cat. The bacon and toast he forced down, helping them along with more coffee.

Afterward he puttered around the house, fighting off what he knew was coming, holding it off with a tired mind, trying to build around that mind and the secret places of his emotions steel-strong walls, yet knowing that at last, like glass, they would shatter.

What brought him back to loneliness like this, time after time, a loneliness he felt nowhere else with such poignancy? That it was bad this time because he was physically and nervously depleted be acknowledged. Usually the worst of it passed after a couple of nights' sleep, a day or two of relaxation. This time he knew it would not.

He looked down at Chop-bone as he made the bed, and could hear Gramp's banjo and Gramp's singing, so husky and deep for so small a man, "Jesus gonna make up my dyin' bed—" and he responded softly to that ghostly voice, "'Ya-ah, Jesus gonna make it up—' " tucking in sheets, squaring corners, smoothing the bright, striped counterpane.