Night My Friend (24 page)

When he awakened in the morning, one sandy eyeball pressed against the wrinkled white of the sheet, he saw that Helen was already up. She was standing at the window smoking a cigarette, and he could see at once that she was upset.

“What’s the trouble?” he asked.

“I had a dream, Dave. A terrible dream!”

He propped himself up on an elbow, looked around for his cigarettes, and then decided he didn’t need one. “Tell me about it.”

“I don’t know how to—it was so awful! We were—we were at a bar someplace. Up in the mountains, I think. Just the two of us. After a while I went to the ladies’ room, and when I came out you were gone, just gone! You had left me there, all by myself! I was frantic and I ran outside. A car came from somewhere and hit me. That’s when I woke up, just as the car hit me.”

“Crazy dream,” he said.

“It was awful.”

“Well, forget about it now.”

She had put down the cigarette and was twisting her hands together. “Dave—”

“What?”

“Dave, it was you driving the car.”

“Helen, pull yourself together. It was only a dream.”

He showered, shaved, and dressed in silence, trying to keep his hands from shaking, trying not to think about the black shape forming, growing, in his mind. It was a full hour before he could bring himself to ask her about their plans for the evening. “Still want to go out to dinner?”

“Of course. I’m counting on it.”

“Good,” he said. “I think it will help us both.”

Neither of them mentioned the dream again. There was no need.

The Willow Grove was, in the off-season, a dark and almost deserted place that stood by itself next to a seldom-traveled country road. The willows, that had given the place its name in some far distant past, were almost gone now, felled by blight and age and an ever-expanding parking lot. Dave imagined that the summer customers on a Saturday night would crowd the walls to bursting, but in February there were only a few tables of scattered diners, and a dimness of illumination that unintentionally directed the eye to the glowing cigarette machine that was the brightest single spot in view.

Dave had parked far back in the nearly deserted lot, and inside he led Helen to a table a bit out of the way. They chatted through dinner with a rapport that was almost like the old days, though he was not completely unaware of the occasional strain between them.

“The food is always good here,” he said once, when the conversation threatened to lag.

“We’ve only been here once before.”

“Still, it’s good. Want another drink?”

“I guess not. What time is it?”

“A little before nine. Why? Got a late date?” He said it with a chuckle, but she did seem edgy about something. She had kept her coat over her shoulders, the new red one with the black speckles that matched her hair, but he thought still that he detected a shiver. “Are you getting a cold?”

“I don’t think so, honey. I’m just nervous, I guess. I’d like to get out of here, head south.”

“Then you couldn’t wear the coat.”

“No kidding, Dave, when are we going?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you still thinking of leaving me?”

“Let’s talk about it on the way home,” he said, postponing the conversation.

Coffee came, and an after-dinner drink. Finally, Helen excused herself while he motioned for the check. He watched her go off in the direction of the ladies’ room, and sat for some moments wondering whether he could really go through with it. Then, almost reluctantly, he rose from the table and started for the door. It was just five minutes after nine, by the clock in the checkroom.

Outside, his breath white against the night air, he climbed behind the wheel of the car and started the motor. He turned the car a bit, into position, aiming it down the driveway like a torpedo.

He waited, the motor purring, ready for a touch of his foot on the pedal. Waited for Helen to come running out.

As in the dream.

But then perhaps all of life was but a dream, and Dave Krown, sitting in the dark, was only a vision conjured up by nightmare. Perhaps all this would pass, as it had the night he’d shot the man in the gas station, halfway across the country.

Had he ever died, finally? Don’t we all die, finally?

Helen, Helen… forgive me.

And there she was, running out of the doorway, her new red coat bundled against the cold, black hair barely visible over the fuzzy collar. His foot went down and the car shot ahead.

Forgive me, Helen.

He closed his eyes at the last instant, feeling rather than seeing the thud and crunch of metal against flesh.

“It was an accident,” he kept saying over and over. “I didn’t see her. It was an accident!”

Someone had covered the body with a tablecloth from inside, and far in the distance he could hear the beginnings of an approaching siren. One of the bartenders stepped forward through the sparse crowd of onlookers. “He’s right. I saw the whole thing through the window. This dame came tearing out and ran right out in front of him. He couldn’t have stopped for her.”

One or two others mumbled in agreement, and Dave began to relax for the first time. He still averted his eyes from the sprawled, broken body, though, even after the first police car pulled into the parking lot.

“She dead?” the officer asked, reaching for the clipboard he kept on the dash.

“She’s dead.”

“Anybody here know her?” he asked, his voice reflecting the professional’s only half-concealed boredom with death.

“I knew her,” Dave started to reply. “Her name was Helen…”

He stopped, the words frozen in his throat like a lump of suddenly congealed sweat. There in the doorway, not twenty feet away, stood Helen Reston. There was a slight smile playing about her lips, and of course she wasn’t wearing her coat.

“This the woman you know?” the officer asked, lifting the tablecloth and turning the head for a better view in the sparse lighting of the parking lot.

Dave didn’t answer. He knew without looking that the dead woman at his feet had become, fantastically, not Helen, but his Susan.

“Driver’s license in her purse says her name is Susan Brogare. Looks like she worked at the Motor Vehicle Bureau. She the one you knew?” the officer queried.

“I knew her,” Dave answered mechanically.

“Well, you’ll have to come along with me for questioning. Just routine, you know.”

He nodded, then asked, “Can I speak to a friend over there for a moment?”

“Sure. I got all the time in the world.”

Dave pushed his way through the people and walked over to Helen in the doorway. “What did you do? God help us, what did you do?”

The smile, if it was a smile, still played about her lips. “I called her, told her I had to see her. I said I knew all about you two and had reached a decision. She met me in the ladies’ room at nine o’clock. I told her she could have you, told her you were waiting in the parking lot to take her away. I even gave her the coat, because I said you wanted her to have it. She ran out there to meet you.”

“But—but you knew I’d be waiting to—”

“I knew, Dave.”

“There never was a dream, was there? You made it all up. You knew just what I would do.”

“I’ve always known what you would do, Dave. And there have never been any dreams, not really.”

“No dreams,” he repeated, not understanding. Understanding only that this woman before him had depths of which he had never dreamed—depths of wisdom, and hate.

“You’ll get off,” she said. “It was an accident.”

“Sure.” But he was remembering the letter, the damning letter, Susan had written on that day so long ago, a week ago. The letter that would send him to the electric chair.

“I couldn’t let you go, Dave. I couldn’t.”

“How did you know about her?”

“I said I didn’t dream, Dave. I never have. But you talk in your sleep. You’ve talked in your sleep every night for two years.”

Behind him, like a voice from a dream, the police officer said, “Come on, mister. We’d better get going.”

I
WAS ALMOST TOO YOUNG
to remember it, and certainly too young to understand it all, but that July weekend of Uncle Ben’s funeral has stayed with me through all these years. Perhaps, by putting the words down on paper, I can expel the demon from my memory. At the very least I may be able to clarify my own thinking on those awful events.

The farm that Uncle Ben had worked alone since his wife’s death was a great sprawling sort of place, stretching out on both sides of the dusty road that bisected it. He’d planted crops on only a small portion of the land closest to the house, preferring to leave the rest for grazing or for timberlands that might prove valuable in his old age. Thus it was that Uncle Ben rarely visited some parts of the vast farmlands.

That summer, that July, we’d seen very little of him. My mother and father were busy with other things and I’d reached the mid-grammar school age when a trip to the beach twenty miles away was much more exciting than a journey over the hill to Uncle Ben’s farm. So it was with a special sense of shock that the midnight phone call reached my father. I remember even then the deep dread I felt at the unknown, and I remember the next morning when my mother dressed me in my only Sunday suit with a lecture that I was to act like a perfect gentleman for the next few days. Then we waited on the front porch in the shade until my father came by for us with the car.

I could see at once, even with my youthful eyes, that the death of his brother had greatly upset my father. He barely spoke during the brief trip up to the farm, and he handled the old Packard as if he’d never driven it before.

“How did it happen?” my mother asked him once.

“Fell off the tractor and hit his head on a rock. Mike Simpson found him out in the field after dark, when he heard the tractor still running.”

That was as much as he said, and the rest of the trip was completed in silence. Overhead, the sun had retreated behind a vast grey cloud that stretched beyond the horizon.

I’d never seen so many people at Uncle Ben’s farm before. The driveway that led past the house and back to the barn was lined with cars and a few wagons. Even the county’s dirt road out front was almost blocked by the vehicles. I recognized only a few of them, and decided at once that I wouldn’t enjoy myself here today.

A group of the men were standing in a circle near the barn, listening to Mike Simpson. He was probably telling them how he’d found Uncle Ben out by the tractor and I wanted to hear it, but my mother hustled me inside. There the women were gathered, somber already in black, speaking in whispers about the tragedy.

My Aunt Mary, a large woman married to a balding banker from a nearby town, came over to take mother’s hand. “A terrible shock, Barbara. He was so young!”

“Are they having the wake here, Mary?” my mother asked.

Aunt Mary nodded. “The undertaker will have him back tonight, and the funeral will be on Monday.”

My mother sighed deeply. “It will be a hard weekend for us all. Tom told us on the way over that he fell off the tractor and hit his head on a rock.”

Aunt Mary dropped her voice to a whisper I could barely hear. “That’s what they say, but my God! Ben never fell off a tractor in his life. He was only forty-three, still in the prime of life.”

“What do you think did happen then?”

“Ever since his wife died he’d taken to drink. That’s no secret. I think he’d had too much, and then out there in that sun…”

“He was your brother, Mary,” my mother admonished.

“I’d say the same thing about anyone, if it was true. Ben was a good man, but he drank.”

My mother seemed suddenly to remember my presence at her side. “Run out and play, David,” she told me. “But don’t get dirty and stay away from the animals.”

I let the screen door bang behind me, happy to be out of that house with its blanket of whisper and gloom. As I ran across the barnyard toward the freedom of the open fields beyond, one or two of the men called out to me, but I kept on going. My father was with Mike Simpson and the others, and if he noticed my going he didn’t seem to mind. The Simpson farm was right next to Uncle Ben’s, and as I ran across the field I saw the deserted tractor still parked where it had stopped, near the wire fence that was the property line.

I started toward the tractor, to investigate it with the curiosity of childhood, but then turned quickly away. A tall lean figure had risen from the shadows behind it, and I recognized the familiar tanned face of Sheriff Yates. I wondered what he was looking for, but I knew better than to go any closer. Sheriff Yates was a terrifying figure at any time, and there was something about him just then—rising from behind Uncle Ben’s tractor—that sent a special chill down my spine.

They brought Uncle Ben’s body back that night, and I watched the arrival of the distant hearse with a feeling of unreality that only distance could achieve. It was a hot night, although the sun was low in the western sky, and even on the hill that was my vantage point only a little breeze was stirring.

I stayed up there until my mother called, and returned there early the next morning—after a hurried embarrassed prayer before the open coffin. I was too young to have a full sense of death, and the man in the coffin was not the Uncle Ben I’d known for all of my brief life. He was not really a man at all, but only a thing to be buried in the ground like so much waste.

But from the hill, all was different. I could see the entire stretch of Uncle Ben’s property, all the way to the tin-roofed sugar shack in the distant corner, where maple syrup was brewed each spring. I could see the rolling hills and the lush farmlands, the wooded patches and even the swampy stretch where industrious beavers had dammed a meandering stream. To me just then, it seemed like the world.

I’d been playing on the hill most of that afternoon, watching the distant comings and goings with detached interest, when I spotted a vaguely familiar figure coming out of the farmhouse. The first thing I recognized was the great waving bush of red hair, flaming in the afternoon sunlight, and then the swift-paced gait, almost like a horse moving at a trot. It was my Uncle Charlie, up from New Orleans, and in that instant I hated to admit that I’d completely forgotten about the logic of his coming for his brother’s funeral.