I Married A Dead Man (25 page)

               
He must have known what she was going through, though he didn't look at her.

               
"I told you to go home," he reminded her quietly.

               
"I'm all right," she said. "I'm all right Go ahead." It came out tinny, like something on a worn-out disk played by a feathered needle.

               
The door cracked shut, and they were in motion.

               
Bill kept the car down to a laggard crawl the first few moments, using only one hand to the wheel. She saw him reach over with the other and tilt down the hat-brim low over the face beside him.

               
He found time for a word of encouragement to her, conscious of her there behind him, though still he didn't turn to glance at her.

               
"Can you hear me?"

               
"Yes."

               
"Try not to be frightened. Try not to think of it. We've been lucky so far. The check and the notebook were on him. Either we make it or we don't Look at it that way. It's the only way. You're helping me, too, that way. See, if you're too tense, then I'm too tense too. You react on me."

               
"I'm all right," she said with that same mechanical bleat as before. "I'll be quiet. I'll be controlled. Go ahead."

               
After that, they didn't talk. How could you, on such a ride?

               
She kept her eyes away. She'd look out the side as long as she could; then when that became a strain, she'd look up at the car ceiling for a moment to rest. Or down at the floor directly before her. Anywhere but straight ahead, to where those two heads (she knew) must be lightly quivering in synchronization to the same vibration.

               
She tried to do what he'd told her. She tried not to think of it "We're coming home from a dance," she said to herself. "He's bringing me home from the Country Club, that's all. I'm wearing that black net with the gold disks. Look, see? I'm wearing that black dress with the gold disks. We had words, so I'm--I'm sitting in the back, and he's sitting alone up front."

               
Her forehead was a little cold and damp. She wiped it off.

               
"He's bringing me home from the movies," she said to herself. "We saw--we saw--we saw--" Another of those blocks, this time of the imagination, occurred; it wouldn't come. "We saw--we saw-- we saw--"

               
Suddenly she'd said to him, aloud, "What was the name of that picture we just now came away from?"

               
"Good," he answered instantly. "That's it. That's a good idea. I'll give you one. Keep going over it." It took him a moment to get one himself. "Mark Stevens in I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now ," he said suddenly. They'd seen that together back in the sunlight, a thousand years ago (last Thursday). "Start in at the beginning, and run through it. If you get stuck, I'll help you out."

               
She was breathing laboredly, and her forehead kept getting damp again all the time. "He wrote songs," she said to herself, "and he took his foster-sister to a--to a variety-show, and he heard one of them sung from the stage--"

               
The car made a turn, and the two heads up front swung together, one almost landed on the other's shoulder. Somebody pried them apart

               
She hurriedly squeezed her eyes shut "When--when did the titlesong come into it?" she faltered. "Was that the opening number, they heard from the gallery?"

               
He'd halted for a light, and a taxicab had halted beside him, wheel-cap to wheel-cap. "No, that was--" He looked at the taxicab. "That was--" He looked at the taxicab again, the way you look vaguely at some external object when you're trying to remember something that has nothing to do with it. "That was 'Hello, Ma Baby.' Cakewalk number, don't you remember? The title-song didn't come until the end. He couldn't get words for it, don't you remember?"

               
The light had changed. The taxicab had slipped on ahead, quicker to resume motion. She crushed the back of her hand against her mouth, sank her teeth into it "I can't," she sighed to herself. "I can't." She wanted to scream to him, "Oh, open the door! Let me out! I'm not brave! I thought I could, but I can't--I don't care, only let me get out of here, now, right where we are!"

               
Panic, they called this panic.

               
She bit deeper into her own skin, and the hot frenzied gush subsided.

               
He was going a little faster now. But not too fast, not fast enough to attract suspicion or catch any roving eye. They were in the outskirts now, running along the turnpike that breasted the sunken railroad right-of-way. You were supposed to 'go a little faster along there.

               
It took her several moments to realize that the chief hazard was over. That they were already out of Caulfield, clear of it, or at least clear of its built-up heart Nothing had happened. No untoward event They hadn't grazed any other car. No policeman had come near them, to question them over some infraction, to look into the car. All those things that she had dreaded so, had failed to materialize. It had been a ride completely without incident The two of them might have been alone in the car, for all the risk they'd run-- outwardly. But inwardly--

               
She felt all shrivelled-up inside, and old; as though there were permanent wrinkles on her heart

               
"He wasn't the only one that died tonight," she thought. "I died too, somewhere along the way, in this car. So it didn't work, it was all for nothing. Better to have stayed back there, still alive, and taken the blame and the punishment"

               
They were out in open country now. The last cardboard-box factory, kept at a civic-minded distance away from the city limits, the last disused-brewery stack, even those had long slipped by. The embankment that carried the turnpike had started a very gradual rise, the broad swath of railroad-tracks, by illusory contrast, seemed to depress still further. The neat, clean-cut concrete-facing that had been given the embankment further in toward town didn't extend this far out, here there was just a natural slope, extremely steep, but with weeds and bushes clinging to it

               
He'd stopped all of a sudden, for no apparent reason. Run the two outside wheels off the road on the railroad's side, and stopped there. That was all the space that was allowed, just two wheels of the car; even that was an extremely precarious position to take. The downslope began almost outside the car door.

               
"Why here?" she whispered.

               
He pointed. "Listen. Hear it?" It was a sound like the cracking of nuts. Like a vast layer of nuts, all rolling around and being cracked and shelled.

               
"I'd like to get him out of town," he said. He got out, and scrambled down the slope a way, until she could only see him from the waist up, and stood looking down. Then he picked up something-- a stone, maybe, or something--and she saw him throw. Then he turned his head a little, and seemed to be listening.

               
Finally he fought his way back up to her again, digging his feet in sideways to gain leverage.

               
"It's a slow freight," he said. "Outbound. It's on the inside track, I mean the one right under us here. I could see a lantern go by on the roof of one of the cars. It's unearthly long--I think they're empties--and it's going very slow, almost at a crawl. I threw a stone, and I heard it hit one of the roofs."

               
She had already guessed, and could feel her skin crawling.

               
He was bending over the form on the front seat, going through its pockets. He ripped something out of the inside coat-pocket A label or something.

               
"They don't always get right of way like the fast passengers do. It may have to stop for that big turnpike crossing not far up, you know the one I mean. The locomotive must be just about reaching it by now--"

               
She'd fought down her repulsion; she'd made up her mind once more, though this was going to be even worse than back there at the doorway. "Shall I-- Do you want me to--?" And she got ready to get out with him.

               
"No," he said, "no. Just stay in it and watch the road. The slope is so steep, that when you get down below a certain point with-- anything--it will plunge down the rest of the way by itself. It's been sheared off at the bottom, it's a sheer drop."

               
He'd swung the front door out as far as it would go, now.

               
"How's the road?" he asked.

               
She looked back first, all along it. Then forward. The way it rose ahead made it even easier to sight along.

               
"Empty," she said. "There's not a moving light on it anywhere."

               
He dipped down, did something with his arm, and then the two heads and the two pairs of shoulders rose together. A minute later the front seat was empty.

               
She turned away and looked at the road, looked at the road for all she was worth.

               
"I'll never be able to sit on the front seat of this car again," it occurred to her. "They'll wonder why, but I'll always balk, I'll always think of what was there tonight."

               
He had a hard time getting him down the slope, he had to be a brake on the two of them at once, and the weight was double. Once the two of them went down momentarily, in a stumble, and her heart shot up into her throat, as though there were a pulley, a counterweight, working between them and it.

               
Then he regained his balance again.

               
Then when she could only see him from the waist up, he bent over, as if laying something down before him, and when he'd straightened up again, he was alone, she could only see him by himself.

               
Then he just stood there waiting.

               
It was a gamble, a wild guess. A last car, a carboose, could have suddenly come along, and--no more train to carry their freight away. Just trackbed left below, to reveal what lay on it as soon as it got light.

               
But he'd guessed right The sound of cracking nuts thinned, began to die out. A sort of rippling wooden shudder, starting way up ahead, ran past them and to the rear. Then a second one. Then silence.

               
He dipped again.

               
Her hands flew up to her ears, but she was too late. The sound beat her to it

               
It was a sick, hollow thud. Like when a heavy sack is dropped. Only, a sack bursts from such a drop. This didn't.

               
She put her head down low over her lap, and held her hands pressed to her eyes.

               
When she looked up again, he was standing there beside her. He looked like a man who has himself in hand, but isn't sure that he isn't going to be sick before long.

               
"Stayed on," he said. "Caught on that catwalk, or whatever it is, that runs down the middle of each roof. I could see him even in the dark. But his hat didn't. That came off and went over."

               
She wanted to scream: "Don't! Don't tell me! Let me not know! I know too much already!" But she didn't And by that time it was over with, anyway.

               
He got in again and took the wheel, without waiting for the train to recommence its run.

               
"It'll go on again," he said. "It has to. It was already on its way once. It won't just stand there the rest of the night"

               
He ran the car back onto the rim of the road again, and then he brought it around in a U-turn, facing back to Caulfield. And still nothing came along, nothing passed them. On no other night could this road have been so empty.

               
He let their headlight beams shoot out ahead of them now.

               
"Do you want to come up here and sit with me?" he asked her quietly.

               
"No!" she said in a choked voice. "I couldn't! Not on that seat."

               
He seemed to understand. "I just didn't want you to be all alone," he said compassionately.

               
"I'll be all alone from now on, anyway, no matter where I sit," she murmured. "And so will you. We'll both be all alone, even together."