Regiment of Women (36 page)

He drove in stoic silence for a time and then, unexpectedly encountering another large motorway, took it, traveling with the sun on the back window, in the direction marked “Boston.”

The girl made no protest—not that one would have done her any good. He intended to realize the plan she had rejected: go straight to the FBI office, surrender himself, and clear her name. It was the only answer. Having a conviction, a destination, he felt whole, as he had not since—that evening on which he had unsuspectingly started for Charlie's? No, since birth he had lived a pointless life; and from the time of his arrest on, it had been a burlesque and he a sexless monstrosity without an identifiable self.

Castration held no terror for him: in the moral sense he had always been a eunuch. Ironically, until now. He would lose his manhood through an assertion of his virility.

Virility? His progression of thought, so straight and clear and true, was suddenly tortuous, befouled, corrupt. What was masculine about self-assertion? He floundered for a while in the swamp of his emotions—though driving steadily—but firm ground was reached at last. He was not a pervert. He was
sacrificing
himself: there was absolutely nothing more masculine than that.

At peace, he proceeded to become one with the fluid motion, the hum of the wheels, the rushing ribbon of road.

Within an hour, he passed, at a hundred miles an hour, not one but five exits leading to metropolitan Boston, and followed the motorway on its swing towards the north.

Furthermore, he did this with only the faintest glimmer of reflection, and no shame whatever. It was as if by the very making of the resolve he had satisfied it. At bottom, he was still a normal man.

C
HRISTABEL
P
ANKHURST
, 1911

T
HEY
HAD
TRAVELED
the entire length of the Maine Turnpike and were now on a narrow asphalt road to both margins of which grew an unbroken wall of big Christmas trees, and it was dark and they had no place to stay the night.

In addition to which the fuel gauge told a bleak story. He passed it on to the girl, who an hour or so back, when it became clear that they were leaving civilization, had got over her sulk and was by now almost jolly.

“Well,” she said, “it looks as if we've done it.”

He, on the other hand, had got more and more sardonic.

“We sure have. No gas, food, or shelter.” And it was cold outside. A long time earlier she had shut off the air conditioner, and about ten miles back she had switched the heater on.

She stretched her short legs and wriggled smugly.

“Listen,” said he, “I'm not kidding. See for yourself. We're out of fuel. And look at that forest. What do we do when the car stops?”

“I told you ages ago: sleep in it.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Plenty of room. You can have the rear. It's beautiful, padded leather.” She turned around, kneeled on the seat, and began to poke at something on its back. “Hey, you know what? There's a bar here, a little built-in bar, and it's full of bottles.” He heard a
clink
. “Isn't that terrific?”

“What's terrific about it? Are they full of gas?”

She was leaning so far over that her behind was almost across the top of the seat. He had a strong urge to slap it.

Her fishing produced a bottle. “It wouldn't matter if you ran off the road here.” She sounded drunk already. He had known girls like that, whom the very prospect of drinking made irresponsible. With a few actual glasses under their belts, they were capable of becoming downright disorderly.

“Put that away,” he said firmly. But she went on, trying to unscrew the top. He was driving slowly now because of the darkness. The very brilliance of the headlights tended somehow to falsify surfaces and distances and give the effect of traveling through a tunnel.

She had finally got the bottle open, and he heard a gurgle and smelled the unpleasant odor of strong drink.

“I told you to put it away!”

She said: “Since when are you the boss?”

The word gave him pause. He had said repeatedly that what he wanted to escape from was authority in itself, no matter who the master and who the underling.

“I'm not,” he hastened to say. “It's for your own good. You haven't eaten anything but an orange all day.”

“'Swhy I need this,” said she, already slurring her speech and waving the bottle inordinately. It was just as he feared: she was one of those. She upended the bottle again. The whiskey smell was awful in the closed car. Cornell feared he might get woozy from the fumes. He opened the window. The air was quite cold and had a marked scent of its own, which, after several deep, breaths, he decided was rather the absence of an odor. For the first time in his life he was smelling unadulterated air. He had read this about Maine, a strange state where hardly anybody lived. What a place to choose for escape: they might never be caught, but how could you survive without other people to sell you liverwurst, TV dinners, and Kleenex?

The girl leaned against him. “C'mon, take a blast.” She shoved the bottle in front of his eyes. He dodged it, and almost ran off the road.

“Please
put that away,” he said, trying to be nice.

Her answer was surly: “Make me.”

He replied pleasantly: “You know I could.”

“You could shit too.” She took another swallow.

“You're beginning to get on my nerves,” he said.

“You bore my ass off,” said she.

“Now, listen! That's enough of the foul language. You're disgustingly drunk already.” Diplomatically he added: “A fine girl like you.”

Glug-glug
. “What's fine about me? I'm a flop, Cornell.”

“So am I. That doesn't have anything to do with being fine.”

“I don't think you're fine. I think you're an asshole. I want you to take a drink!” She shoved the bottle at him again. “I
order
you to take a drink, you man you.”

Cornell accepted it by the neck and threw it out the window.

She studied him for a while in the light from the dashboard, and then said, slowly, thickly: “Somewhere you got the erroneous idea I'm afraid of you.”

He continued to drive, but ever more slowly owing to his worry about the fuel.

She said: “I'm going to have to cut you down to size, Cornell. No man is gonna push me around.” She climbed onto her knees on the seat, and faced him.

He shrugged. “Let's talk about that later.” From the corner of his eye, he saw her cock a fist and begin a swing at his head. While maintaining control of the wheel with his left hand, he raised his right shoulder to take the blow. It was sharper than he expected, given her condition.

“Are you crazy?” he shouted. “I'm driving.”

“C'mon,” she said. “Fight like a woman.” She threw another punch at him. It glanced off his shoulder cap and struck the base of his head, not hurting him really but shaking his skull in an ignobling way. He slammed on the brakes, and she fell hard against the dashboard. He pulled her up, none too gently, but then, she being limp, was anxious: “Are you hurt?”

His arms were under her slender shoulders. In a moment he became aware that his hands had of their own volition descended to enclose her breasts. The oddest sensation in the world. He had been wont, before the dressing-table mirror, to cup his own bosoms, when he had had them, to try out alternative profiles with a new brassiere in mind. The current experience was similar but different. He had never touched a woman's breasts before fondling and sucking Lieutenant Aster's. These were smaller, firmer, and warmer, even through the blouse.

The girl had not answered his question. However, she was breathing regularly: in fact, a bit faster than that. He should probably search her head for cuts or bumps, but he could not move his hands—hers were covering them.

Her phobia against being touched had apparently been diluted by the alcohol—as in fact had Cornell's own inhibitions against wearing women's clothes, that night so long ago at Charlie's, and look where that had led.

He was suddenly desperate to get free, and tore his hands from under hers. She groaned, became conscious at once, lurched away, opening the door. She stumbled out into the night, and he heard her throw up. He waited considerately until the sounds ended, and then was sliding across to aid her when she returned. He gave her the handful of Kleenexes.

After using them, she said: “I didn't eat anything all day.”

“I know.”

“I never could hold my liquor.”

“Neither can I,” he said.

She was shivering. “It's freezing out there.”

Cornell closed his window and turned the heater to maximum.

She said: “And these clothes are so thin.”

He got out of the senator's jacket and draped it around her. He began to drive again.

“Look,” she said. “There's a clearing!”

So there was. The trees swung away from the shoulder, leaving a semicircular patch of low bushes and weeds several car-widths wide. He drove in, with a noise of crushing vegetation, and some small furry thing went bounding through the headlight beams and plunged into the forest.

“Did you see that?” he cried.

“What?”

“Some awful animal. I just hope it's not a rat.”

“This far from a city?”

“Are there wild rats?”

“I don't know,” she said. “But I'd think this big car would scare them.”

He switched off the ignition. “Well, this is it for tonight, I guess. I think I'll just leave the lights on.”

“You'll run down the battery.”

“Hey, the heater's stopped.”

“Of course. It's electric.”

“No light and no heater all night?”

She shook her head. “We don't have any choice.” She was showing no effects from her recent performance. Cornell found himself wondering, strangely, whether it had been all it seemed. She had got drunk in a second, and sobered almost as quickly. For a moment he was afraid of her. Perhaps she intended to violate him in some fashion while he slept.

But this wilderness was obviously genuine, and she was stuck in it as hopelessly as he. Anyway, now that the engine was off, he was suddenly too exhausted for apprehension and opened the door and started to climb out, regardless of the animal.

“Did you say I could have the back?” he asked when he had already claimed it, tucking his legs in and lying on his side.

She looked over the seat. “Sweet dreams.”

“Same to you.”

She stayed there for a while, silhouetted against the light from the dashboard. “Are you warm enough?”

“Yes, thanks.” He closed his eyes. “You keep the jacket.”

When he looked again she had disappeared, and in a moment the dashboard lights went out. He turned onto his back and immediately felt constricted in those clothes. He opened the collar of the shirt and loosened the tie. The trousers were also uncomfortable, cutting into his crotch. He considered slipping them off in the dark, but he might not awaken until after she did next morning, and he wore no underwear.

A brighter morning light than he had ever seen woke him up. He looked through the window at the brilliant, moist greenery of the world outside. For a moment he thought of himself as alone in a new, fresh existence, but then he remembered the girl and looked for her over the seat.

His jacket was there, but she was gone. He left the car. There she came, emerging from the forest. She held her skirt well above the calves to avoid the clutching underbrush, and was barefoot.

“How'd you sleep?” he asked.

“Great. And you? Were you cold?”

“I guess I was too tired to know.”

She had reached the car and put a hand on the fender to support herself, lifting a foot and exploring its undersurface. “I'm not used to this.” She plucked at something. “Thorn.” She put her foot down and tested it. Her bright hair was irradiated by the sun. She looked so fresh though having spent the night in a car. He realized that the remains of the makeup, including the purple eyeshadow, were gone. So were the navy-blue textured stockings.

“Did you wash your face somehow?”

“There's a brook back there. It's ice-cold, though, I'm warning you. But you feel great when you're out.”

“Were you
in?
I mean, a real bath?”

“I went for broke.”

“Mary.” Cornell was impressed.

She pointed. “See that fuzzy tree? Well, you go back that way, between that tree and the big boulder, and before very long you'll hear the sound of the water.”

He supposed he would have to meet the challenge, but there was little in the world that Cornell loathed more than cold water. He daintily picked his way through the woods. Most of the trees were fuzzy, and there was more than one boulder. He could always claim he couldn't find the brook.

But in all honesty, you couldn't miss it once you got back in there a way. The gurgling could not be ignored. It was very pretty, like a painting on a calendar. He sat down on a rock and watched the stream run enthusiastically wherever it was going.

At last he knelt, scooped up a double handful of the icy liquid, paralyzing his fingers, and stunned his face in it.
Wow
. He sputtered and blew. After a deep breath, he wet a finger and rubbed his teeth.

On the way back he peed in a bush. He might have done the other had he something with which to wipe, but he was probably constipated anyway owing to yesterday's diet. Zipping up, he thought he saw a snake nearby and caught some hair in the fastener, but the serpent was just a stick on which the sun, filtering through the foliage, had made a moving pattern.