The Ax (22 page)

I drive slowly past, trying to see up the driveway. Is he up there, waiting for the mail? Doesn’t he care about the mail? He has to. Or is he ill? There’s a lot of psychosomatic illness among us, we who’ve gotten the chop. Maybe he’s in bed and won’t get up until his wife finally brings him some good news. That would make him very tough to get at.

About two miles farther north, there’s a parking area for a scenic view, pine-covered mountains with a valley between, stretching away to the west, full of peaceful villages. I pull off the road there, put the Luger under the raincoat at last, and study my road atlas, but it doesn’t do me any good. It doesn’t show any roads that might run along above and behind GRB’s property. This road he’s on just makes that elbow at that particular point, because of a hill, and their house is built on the slope above the road, with what looks like nothing but undeveloped hillside above them. And I already know, from looking at it, that there’s nothing downhill in front of the house but scruffy woods, because of that stream.

There must be a way. I feel like a cat circling a mousehole. I know he’s in there, and I know there has to be a way to get at him. But what?

Finally I decide to just drive by the place yet again, see if there’s
anything
to be done. So I leave the turnoff, headed south once more, and drive along, the road atlas now on top of the raincoat, and the pressure of other traffic keeps me from going as slowly as I’d like when I go around that curve.

The house, barely seen. No sign of cars or people.

Nearly a mile later, there’s a right turn off Scantic River Road. I take it, and am now on a very small residential road marked DEAD END.

There’s no other traffic with me now. I drive up as this narrow road twists and turns, with very few houses visible along the way, broad forested spaces between them. Then I come to the dead end, which is clearly marked by a single width of wooden rail fence painted white, with a yellow DEAD END sign on it.

I stop the Voyager and get out to look around. According to the road atlas, this spot where the road has petered out is not that far from the elbow on Scantic River Road containing GRB’s house. It should be down that way, to the right, through the woods.

I’m not a woodsman, never have been. It could be both stupid and dangerous to go roaming around in there and get lost, and eventually be found by police or boy scouts or whoever, and have no explanation for why I’m here, with a Luger in my raincoat pocket. Still, I’ve got to find some way to get at GRB.

I walk around to the far side of the white fence. The woods, out ahead of me, are cool and pleasant. June second; gnats come flying, to study my face. I brush them away, but they won’t go. Anyway, they’re merely curious. They don’t want to bite me, they just want to memorize me. So long as I breathe with my mouth shut, they won’t really bother me. They’re just an irritation, these tiny fast dots in front of my face.

Looking past them, gradually learning to ignore them, I at last see what seems to be some sort of path, moving away to the right through the trees. Don’t deer create paths sometimes, in the woods? But so do people; Marjorie and I have friends, whom we haven’t seen for a while, who’ve made woods walks into the land out behind their houses. (We used to see more people. We used to know more people. When you can’t afford to entertain, a certain embarrassment keeps you from maintaining those old friendships.)

So I come to a decision. I’ll wear the raincoat, with the Luger in the pocket. I’ll walk along that seeming path, which looks to be at least headed in the right general direction. I’ll see where it goes, and how far it goes, and the instant it starts to fork or disappear or do anything that might make it hard for me to retrace my steps I’ll turn around and come right back here.

It’s a pleasant day for walking, with the airy trees protecting me just enough from the rays of the sun. The air is a bit cool, in a refreshing way, like the air near an ice cube. I walk along, following this very clear brown trail in the green woods, and the first time I look back the Voyager is already out of sight.

I stop, then. Is this a good idea? I really don’t want to get lost in here.

But so far, this path is very obvious. Also, the land slopes very gently downward here, and the path follows that downward tendency, so if I do get confused at some point, I should merely turn around and head up the slope. That’s a theory, anyway.

I walk for about fifteen minutes, and for much of that time I’m not even thinking about why I’m here, what the purpose of all this is, what the function is of that weight dragging down my raincoat on the right. I’m just going for a walk in the woods, led along by this clear path and by gravity. It’s nice. No cares, no problems. No hard solutions.

A noise. Up ahead, a sharp cracking noise. Something’s coming.

What is it? I look to the sides, and off to my right there’s a tumbled mass of boulder sticking out of the ground. It’s all tangled brush and weeds between here and there, but it’s the only hiding place I see, so I set off toward it at once, trying to be silent. Behind me, I hear that cracking sound again.

If this is a deer, fine, no problem. But if it’s a person, I don’t want to be seen. I don’t want to be the mysterious man wandering in the woods just around the time GRB is done away with.

The boulders. I scramble around them, and the crack rings out again. I crouch low, looking back toward the path, and here she comes.

The wife, it’s the wife. The same woman I saw collecting the mail, still dressed in the same cap and cardigan and corduroys. She’s walking alone, briskly, and she’s carrying a nice thick walking stick, like a shillelagh, and as I watch she uses it to hit a tree as she goes by:
crack
.

Oh, of course. Snakes. She’s afraid of snakes, and somebody’s told her that if she makes a noise as she goes along they’ll stay away from her.
Crack
. On she strides.

Good God, what if she’d had a dog with her? What a mess that would be. The dog would surely know I’m here, would probably come over to investigate. And then I’d
really
be in it. Not just a strange man wandering in the woods, but a strange man
hiding
in the woods.

She’s gone; I hear a distant
crack
. I straighten up, behind my boulder. Is he home alone? Do any of the four sons still live with these people? If I follow this path, will I find the house?

One good thing. She announces her presence by hitting trees with that stick, so I’ll always know when it’s time to get out of her way.

I decide to chance it. I hurry back from the boulders to the path, my raincoat flaps catching on the thorny waving reedy branches of wild roses, and now I set a much brisker pace, walking, I hope, toward GRB’s house.

It’s another quarter hour, and there it is. Or there something is, some house, visible through the woods where a smaller path branches leftward from the main one. Is it the right place?

I go there to see, and find a two-strand electric fence across my route, to keep the deer out. The other side of it is an expanse of lawn, fringed by plantings of rhododendrons and other things that deer like to eat. Ahead and to the left is a smallish in-ground pool, still covered, even though this is June. But you can’t afford to maintain the pool this year, can you? Not without a job.

Beyond the pool and the lawn stands the house, fairly large, stone on the first floor, white clapboard above, several dormers along the top. Yes, that’s the house I glimpsed from the road. There’s no one in sight.

The gate in the electric fence is just here, at the edge of the lawn. But if I go through, there’ll be no cover, and GRB will be able to see me if he looks out any of those windows over there. And what if I’m still on the property when the wife comes back?

No, the thing to do is wait. First, I have to find out for sure where GRB is. There’s a stone patio over there, between house and pool, with a table topped by a big umbrella, and several white metal chairs. Maybe they’ll have lunch together, right there. Can I do a shot that long? Or can I hope for something to bring him closer to the fence?

Crack
. Some distance away behind me. But that means she’s coming back. I move away along the fence, careful not to touch it, grateful they’ve kept the shrubbery cleared along the fence line—for maintenance, I suppose—and as those occasional
cracks
come closer I reach at last the end of the fence, where it attaches to the small pool house. From here I can be very well hidden. And I’m somewhat closer to that patio, which is just beyond the pool, which is just beyond the pool house. Still a longer shot than I’ve ever tried before, but what if he has to come to the pool house, for ice or something? Then he’s mine.

I see her, to my right, as she goes through the fence, carefully hooking it shut behind her. As she strides to the house, planting that walking stick firmly into the lawn at every second pace, I look at my watch: twelve forty-five. Lunchtime. But I didn’t bring any.

Well, I’m getting used to not eating my midday meal. There’s a tree stump about five feet back from the fence, a large one. Some big tree was once here, and probably cut down when they put in the pool house. I ease back there, gather my raincoat about myself, sit down. The Luger is in my lap.

Four o’clock. It’s getting cooler now, the sun hidden behind higher hills off to the west. I’m stiff and achy, and my back is complaining about this length of time, over three hours, seated here on this stump, with no support.

He never came out. She never appeared again, either, after that walk. I can catch a glimpse of their driveway from here, and neither of them used the car today. I don’t know what GRB looks like, and I don’t know what his car looks like.

This day wasn’t wasted, not entirely wasted. I’ve learned how to get near the house. But it’s frustrating, nevertheless. I want to get this over, over and done with.

Tomorrow I won’t be able to come here, because of the counselor, Longus Quinlan. So it’s Wednesday, while Marjorie is again working at Dr. Carney’s office, that’s when I’ll be back.

When I stand, bones crack all over my body, enough to scare any snake in the county. I’m tottering, having trouble making my feet work. But it’s time to go, get back to the Voyager, drive homeward, get to the mall by six o’clock to pick up Marjorie.

Staggering like Frankenstein’s monster, I make my way along the path, back toward the Voyager. In this direction, it’s uphill.

Yesterday, at the counseling session, Marjorie said, “When Burke first lost his job, I thought it was a kind of opportunity. I thought things were too good for us, we always had whatever we wanted, and so we never had to struggle together for anything, we never had to prove ourselves to each other. I thought this was going to be some little short time, and it wasn’t really going to mean anything in the long run, but I could prove myself to Burke, and I guess to myself, too, to be honest about it, just to prove I was the perfect wife, the perfect partner. We’re in this together, and this is my chance to prove it. So I immediately started all these little economies and showed how we could save money here and save money there, like I was Mrs. Noah on the Ark, going around finding little leaks, plugging them up, keeping the water out. I never thought it was going to go on this long. I don’t think Burke did, either. I think at first he took it a little more seriously than I did, because he knew a little more about what the real situation was, but I don’t think he took it really really really seriously then, at first. I think after a while he did, and instead of turning to me and saying, ‘Marjorie, we’re in a jam, this is a tougher situation than I thought,’ he just closed down inside himself, more and more. I thought for a while he was blaming
me
for what was going on, that he thought it was my fault he still didn’t have a job, we didn’t have any money, but I’ve thought about it some more, I’ve had plenty of time to think about it, and now I think Burke’s been doing the same thing I’ve been doing, trying to prove what a perfect husband he is, perfect provider, keep the little woman safe and happy, don’t let her see how bad things are. I mean, I can
see
how bad things are, but we can’t talk about how bad things are, or what we’re going to do about them, or what’s going to happen next, so I never actually
know
what’s going to happen next. Burke’s gotten more and more secretive, more and more silent, more and more cold, and sometimes when he’s looking at me it’s almost as though he hates me, just for being there and seeing the situation he’s in, it looks in his eyes as though he could kill me for being there, just because he feels like he can’t protect me the way he’s supposed to, and I don’t
want
to be protected like that, but how can I say anything? He keeps that wall up. The wall is supposed to be his strength, I guess, but I never thought that was why he was strong. When I met him, I was still in college, I was a completely useless Liberal Arts major, but I also took typing and shorthand, and summer vacations I did temp jobs to help out, make some money for myself, and I always thought I’d work in industry someplace, as a secretary, something like that. I actually did work for an insurance company for about six months after I graduated, and got one promotion and raise, and I could have stayed, but Burke wanted to get married right away, and then he wanted a family right away, so I dropped out of the job market. The magazines I used to read were always full of pieces about women dropping out of the job market, and then what happens when you get divorced or widowed, and I was never afraid of that.
This
they didn’t talk about. This is worse than divorced or widowed, because I’m still with Burke but he’s wounded. I’m with a wounded man, and we both have to pretend nothing’s wrong. About half the wives I know have jobs or careers, one’s a speech therapist, one’s a librarian, a lot of them I know, but it seems just as normal either way, if the wife works or doesn’t work, and I’ve always thought that was the woman’s decision, except with us it’s mostly been Burke’s decision, and he makes it plain in different ways. Like, a few years ago, at Christmastime, he bought a computer, a personal computer for the home, he said it was for the whole family. It was really for Billy, our son, but I knew why he said it was for the whole family, and why he teased me about learning it and putting the checkbook in it and all. The children were growing up, almost out of high school then, and I’d been talking about looking for a job again after all these years, wanting to do something with myself, and Burke didn’t want me to. This was before he was laid off, before anybody thought he
could
be laid off. So he wanted to be the provider, the protector, the same as always, and he brought that computer into the house just to let me know I didn’t have the skills any more. When I got out of college, it was typing, but the computer isn’t typing, it’s something else, and he wanted me to know I’m hopelessly behind. But actually, he doesn’t know it, but I’m farther along with the computer than he is, because I’ve been doing the billing for this dentist we know, Dr. Carney, so I’ve been using his computer, and his regular nurse showed me what I had to know, and I’ve taught myself some more on my own, so I’m not so hopeless after all. But I couldn’t tell Burke how happy I was and pleased that I was learning the computer, because he wouldn’t like that. I had to keep it to myself, and pretend there wasn’t
anything
I was happy about, or anything I could possibly be happy about, until he got a new job, and the exact same kind of job again, of course, even though we read in the newspaper every day that people don’t
get
the same kind of job back, especially if they’re over fifty. We know a man, a neighbor of ours, he was always considerably more wealthy than us, he was a bank executive, he only had to commute in to the office in New York three days a week, he was that important, and there was a merger, and they let him go, it must be three years ago now, and he was out of work for almost two years, wanting to be a bank executive again. And now he works at a Mercedes dealership in Hartford, he sells cars, and he works six days a week and he doesn’t make anywhere near as much money, and Burke, did you notice? Their house is for sale. But a lot of houses are for sale, you’ve probably noticed that, Mr. Quinlan, so I don’t know how long they’ll have to wait. And I don’t know if we’ll have to try to sell our house, too, or
what
is going to happen. I can’t find a full-time job now, because I was out of the job market too long, I’m too old, I’m not
that
skilled, and nobody knows when Burke will find another job or what kind of job it will be or when he’ll agree to settle for it. It isn’t fair for the children, but that isn’t Burke’s fault, even if he does take the blame all on himself, but they have to live with it the same as we do, and usually I think they understand that, though Billy did get himself in trouble. But that’s not the point. The point is, it’s so hard to be
happy
at home, and you have to have some place in your life where you’re happy. And you have to have some person you can talk with, open yourself with, laugh with. Or even cry with, I don’t care, just
something
. But Burke’s been so— He’s like cryogenics, he’s frozen himself, he won’t thaw out until he gets a job, and in the meantime I’m living with this frozen thing, and finally, four months ago, a man I know acted tender toward me and I responded, and something started between us. Burke’s off on his own secret mission all the time, for a while I thought
he
was having an affair, but I don’t believe that any more, I believe he’s doing strange like
magic
things, like going off and reading entrails or something, I don’t know, he has some kind of mysterious
project
with papers in his office and mysterious trips, and lying to me about where he’s going, and I wouldn’t
dream
of asking him what’s going on. Because he wants to shoulder it all himself, shoulder the burden, shoulder everything, the family, the responsibility, and I’m left out here, and I turned to this other man because at least he’d
talk
to me, and he’d let me talk to him. And he has problems, too, but he isn’t afraid to talk about them or say he feels weak when he gets up in the morning, he doesn’t know what to do next. I could console him, he was somebody I could put my arms around, I could find some way to make him laugh. I can’t do anything with Burke, he’s like a rock or a dead person, he’s like a stone, you can’t put your arms around a stone. You can’t get anything from a stone. So when I realized that it wasn’t this other man I wanted, it was Burke I wanted, but it was Burke when he’s alive, when he isn’t all shut down and cold and waiting for a miracle, and I thought, I have to use dynamite. So I told him we needed to see somebody like you, and he fought that idea, and I knew he’d fight it, of course he’d fight it.
Talk
about things! When he fought it, I told him about the man, because I thought that would be sink or swim, kill or cure, and I thought, I can’t go on like this. I either want Burke back or I want it over with. And thank God he said all right, let’s come here, because I could-n’t say this to him without you in the room. And he knows I’m not seeing the man any more, but the truth is, I’m not seeing Burke either, and I want to see Burke, I want my husband back, and I don’t know what to do.”